Poco-Cocoa

I made this some time ago and forgot to post it. I keep doing that! Oh well, better late than never, right?

I’ve always wanted to find new and easy recipes for the slow cooker. I love coming home at the end of a work day and smelling dinner already cooked and ready to serve. I prefer those recipes that require little more than just plopping all the ingredients in the cooker and turning it on. If it requires browning and sauteeing and all that BEFORE I even put it in the slow-cooker…I lose interest.

This is one of those plop-it-all-in-and-turn-it-on recipes. We used local, pasture-fed beef for this, and organic veggies, and it turned out sooooo good. Just fall-apart tender, simple, and comforting.

Slow-Cooker Pot Roast

• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 8 medium carrots, cut into thirds
• 2 medium onions, each cut into 8 wedges
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 1 beef chuck roast (3 pounds), trimmed of excess fat
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

In slow cooker, stir together cornstarch and 2 tablespoons cold water until smooth. Add carrots and onions; season with salt and pepper, and toss.

Sprinkle roast with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper; place on top of vegetables, and drizzle with Worcestershire. Cover; cook on high, 6 hours (or on low, 10 hours).

Transfer roast to a cutting board; thinly slice against the grain. Place the vegetables in a serving dish; pour pan juices through a fine-mesh sieve, if desired. Serve roast with vegetables and pan juices.

Makes 8 servings.

Source: Everyday Food website.

This is going to have to be a short one, folks, because I just found the amazing application called Evernote.

How have I lived without this? It keeps all your favorite things in one searchable place. It’s a little hard to explain, but you can grab things from the internet, take pictures of things, hand write things, scan in things, and it will file it all away and make it all searchable. So I now have folders for home ideas, crafts, recipes, clothes…and every time I find something on the internet that I like, I just drop it into Evernote. I can look back on every recipe that has broccoli in it, or every scarf, or every knitting project, or every kitchen decor idea. It’s perfect for me…I have a zillion bookmarks of ideas, folders of random images I’ve pulled off the internet for inspiration, scrapbooks of magazine images…and now it will all be in one place.

Even better, you can download the program for your computer, for your web browser, and for your phone, and they will all be synchronized. Which means if you’re at the farmer’s market, and the swiss chard looks fabulous, you can pull out your phone, look up all your saved recipes that have swiss chard in it, and buy everything you need for that recipe. Right then and there.

I’m itching to go back and play with it a bit more, so I’ll make this quick!

I made these muffins a while back and forgot to blog about them. How could I do that?! They were so delicious! This is another recipe from my new favorite baking book, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. If you read poco-cocoa often, you’ll know that I’m ALWAYS looking for ways to use up over-ripe bananas, and I’m glad to have found this recipe. The tiny bit of coffee adds a nice depth of flavor, and of course the chocolate makes it wonderful.

Here’s the recipe for you all…I’m off to categorize my ideas again. 🙂

Banana-Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins

• 1 1/2 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (about 4 medium bananas)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup milk or soymilk
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, stir together the bananas, sugars, butter, milk and egg.

In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, instant espresso powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the well and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill each cup about three-quarters full. Bake in the center of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Move the muffin pan to a cooling rack, and let cool for 15 minutes. Remove muffins from the pan and let them finish cooling on the cooling rack.

Muffins can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Makes 12 muffins.

Source: Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

I had to share this one immediately with you guys. We just ate this tonight…the soup pot is still soaking in the sink…and it was stupendously good.

The soup itself is a great use of winter ingredients…canned tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and oranges. It’s fragrant and smooth and bright. And then there’s the crostini. Goat cheese by itself would be great, but mix in lemon zest, fresh thyme, and olive oil, and it’s amazing.

You know, I’ve never been let down by a recipe by Peter Berley. I borrowed The Flexitarian Table from the library, but I think I’m going to have to buy it soon. I made another recipe from this book last week, which I’ll share here on the blog soon. It’s also seriously delicious.

On to the recipe!

Winter Tomato Soup with Goat Cheese Crostini

Soup

• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
• Kosher salt or sea salt
• 1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
• Large pinch of red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 (28-ounce) can whole plum tomatoes or diced tomatoes in juice
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 2 (2-inch) strips orange zest (removed with a vegetable peeler; leave the white pith behind)
• 1 sprig fresh sage
• Freshly ground black pepper

Crostini

• 4 ounces fresh goat cheese (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 baguette

For the soup: In a large soup pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring, until the onions are softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic cloves, carrot and pepper flakes, lower the heat, cover and cook until the vegetables are sweet and juicy but not browned, 15 to 20 minutes. Check, stirring occasionally, and add 1 tablespoon water if the vegetables appear dry.

Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, until the olive oil turns reddish orange, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes with their juice, the broth, orange zest, and sage and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove pot from heat and discard the orange zest and sage. Puree the soup with an immersion blender (or, working in batches, in a regular blender or a food processor) until smooth. Season with salt and black pepper. Transfer to a saucepan and reheat before serving.

For the crostini: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a small bowl, use a fork to beat together the goat cheese, olive oil, thyme, lemon zest, and a few grinds of black pepper until smooth.

Slice the baguette on the bias into four to six 1/3-inch-thick slices that are 2 to 3 inches long. Lay the slices in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast in the oven until crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Spread the toasts with the goat cheese mixture. Ladle the soup into four bowls; float a crostini on each (I served the crostini on the side, as Justin is not a fan of soggy bread).

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Adapted from The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley.

It’s been cold, then hot, then cool, then hot, then cold here in Austin. I’ve decided to call it winter and leave it at that. So whether it’s 70 degrees or 30 degrees outside, it’s winter, darnit, and winter means soup.

This one’s so simple…nourishing and comforting and delicious. It was also really easy to throw together. I often make this cauliflower soup, but it takes a bit longer with the roasting and the sauteing and all.

The toasted cumin and squeeze of lime adds a little something special to what might be an otherwise humdrum soup. I’ll definitely be making this one again, especially now that the farmer’s market is full of huge, lovely heads of cauliflower.

Cauliflower Soup with Toasted Cumin and Lime

• 1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seed
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 4 cups chopped cauliflower (about one medium head)
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, or to taste

In a dry small skillet toast the cumin seed over moderate heat, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until it is fragrant and several shades darker, being careful not to let it burn; set aside to let the cumin seed cool. Once cool, grind the cumin seed into a powder with a mortar and pestle.

In a heavy saucepan cook the onion in the butter over moderately low heat, stirring, until it is softened. Add the cauliflower, the broth, and the water and simmer the mixture, covered, for 20 minutes, or until the cauliflower is tender. Using an immersion blender, purée the mixture to your desired consistency and stir in the cream, the lime juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Heat the soup over low heat, stirring, until it is hot, but do not let it boil. Ladle it into bowls, and sprinkle it with the cuminseed powder to taste.

Makes 4 servings.

Adapted from epicurious.com.