Choco-Cranberry Beer Bread

Things have been a little quiet in the Beetle's kitchen. I've been making peace with my sacrifice of meat for Lent. I'm not a big meat person like my husband, who, by the way, effortlessly gives up meat every Lent. I don't crave meat normally whereas my husband NEEDS meat with every meal. The day I cook a vegetarian meal, the first question he'll ask is, "where the meat at?", regardless of how delicious the dishes may be. For him, a meal is not complete without meat.

Majority of my cooking is based on what my husband would like to eat because left on my own, I'll survive on instant noodles or takeout for every meal. So, I thought giving up meat would be easy, given that (a) I don't crave meat and (b) I wouldn't really feel like cooking meat just for myself. But, ever since Lent began, my eyes have been involuntarily hunting for meat. I have to literally fly past the meat section at the grocery store because I look like a kid standing at the candy store with no money from mom to get candy. It doesn't help when I'm reading my favorite blogs and you have irresistible pictures of chicken, steak, beef or the 5-letter B-word (my favorite). Yeah, even saying it makes me cringe with temptation.

Every day I stand with the fridge door open, hoping the contents in the vegetable drawer will talk to me and tell me what delicious dish I can put them in so I won't miss meat. The ungrateful things aren't really helping, so I grabbed the bottles of beer that had been pushed to the back of the fridge and hunted for a beer bread recipe.

I'm not fond of beer and the husband drinks beer depending on what his mood dictates. So, these bottles had been sitting inside for quite a while. Now, I'm aware of what people say about not cooking with ingredients you don't care about, but, I couldn't care less about that right now. My good friend, Alton Brown, had this lovely video on how to make Beer bread and I got down to business. 

While Alton made a cheese and dill beer bread, I switched up the flavor components and decided to throw in cranberries and chocolate. I needed the chocolate to appease my meat cravings. One thing I would note about Alton's video and recipe are that he uses one whole 12 fl oz bottle of beer, but, to get the texture from his recipe video, I had to leave a few sips behind. Otherwise, it got soggy. So, watch out for that. You want a gooey texture and not a smooth, flowy texture.

I wasn't stopping at the beer bread because I was pulling the big guns out for this one. I remember watching Bobby Flay demonstrate an orange-honey butter on The Worst Cooks in America. I decided to make a cranberry-honey butter to go with my bread. Best. Decision. Ever. I can eat the cranberry-honey butter all by itself, if I wasn't reminded of the fact that it is still butter! Sigh

The combination of the cranberry-honey butter and the bread is amazing, to say the least. You could also overload on chocolate and toast your bread a bit before slathering with some chocolate sauce. *SLURP* Pure yum!

Choco Cranberry Beer Bread (adapted from Alton Brown's Beer Bread recipe)

Ingredients and instructions

• Nonstick spray
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries (do not thaw if frozen)
• 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
• 12 ounces cold beer, ale or stout
• 1 to 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds, optional

Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Coat the inside of a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan with the nonstick spray and set aside.

Whisk together the all-purpose flour, wheat flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and chocolate chips in a large mixing bowl. Add in the cranberries and stir in the beer just to combine. Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan. Sprinkle with the sunflower seeds, if using.

Bake on the middle rack of the oven until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 210 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, about 45 to 55 minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Transfer the loaf to a cooling rack for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Cranberry Honey Butter (adapted from Bobby Flay's version on The Worst Cooks of America)

Ingredients and instructions

• 1 cup cranberry juice, ready-made or home-made*
• 3/4 stick butter, slightly softened
• 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
• Pinch salt

Place cranberry juice in a small non-reactive saucepan over high heat and reduce to 1 - 1 1/2 tablespoons. Place butter in a bowl and add the cranberry syrup, honey, and salt; mix until combined. Scoop into a large ramekin, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

*Home-made Cranberry Juice

If you're feeling all adventurous and have your kitchen mojo on, make your own cranberry juice as well. Mind you, I've just learnt that cranberries in their fresh state or on their own are very sour and bitter. So, constitute the right amount of sugar according to your taste. I like mine sweeter than bitter so I added more sugar. Taste as you go.

Ingredients and instructions:

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons orange juice

In a soup kettle, bring water and cranberries to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until berries begin to pop.

Strain through a fine strainer, pressing mixture with a spoon; discard berries. Return cranberry juice to the pan. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice and orange juice. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Remove from the heat. Cool. Transfer to a pitcher; cover and refrigerate until chilled. Yield: 1 cup.

Deviled Eggs by Edna Lewis

(Part of a weekly series by a group of bloggers, featuring Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food - see end of post for list of bloggers participating & their blogs)

We have another inspiring story this week as we look back on the life of Edna Lewis, who's at #36 of Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food. Edna is one of the legends of southern cooking. She grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a town founded by freed slaves, one of whom was her grandfather. All the families in Freetown lived on farms and that's where Edna's foundation was established. Every morning, all of them would help harvest crops and vegetables and raise poultry, which was their basic livelihood. At the age of 15, when the great depression struck, Edna left Freetown in search of a better life. She landed in New York and sustained herself through odd jobs. She worked as a seamstress, window dresser and also in the office of the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper. 

Edna loved cooking for her friends and slowly, her cooking started gaining popularity and praise among friends and acquaintances. In 1948, her friend, John Nicholson, an antique dealer, asked her to take on the role of head chef at the restaurant he was opening. The restaurant was a huge success and attracted famous guests like Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Truman Capote, who were regulars. She worked at the restaurant, serving up delicious southern food, until 1954.

She went on to travel, teach and write her own cookbooks. Her landmark book, The Taste of Country Cooking, was one of the first cookbooks by an African-American woman to reach a nationwide audience and is credited for starting the interest in genuine Southern cooking. While cooking for one of the festivals in Atlanta, she met Scott Peacock, who was in awe of her and wanted to follow her to learn everything she had to impart. Over the years, they both developed a deep friendship, working on recipes together, and even co-authored the popular cookbook, The Gift of Southern Cooking. Edna passed away in 2006, at the age of 89.

So, to honor her, I picked the recipe of Deviled Eggs, that was a dish Edna and Scott developed. This is a lovely, light appetizer that's both simple and tasty. It's extremely easy to whip up and highly customizable. Once you have the base, you can throw in either cayenne pepper to add a little bit of spice or add a herb to infuse some flavor. This is something ANYONE can make since all it involves is boiling an egg and mixing stuff with it. Unless, of course, the eggs you're working with don't co-operate with you. Like mine did. I use brown eggs that take much longer to cook and I can never figure out the right time to pull them out. So, I may have had to fight with the shell to get it off and it made my job a little harder to hide all the flaws on the outside of the egg white. But, otherwise, it's a fool-proof recipe!

While preparing the eggs, I suddenly thought of mixing things up a bit and utilizing the egg mixture in a couple of different ways. It works beautifully as a cracker topping and I'd nibbled on all of them by the time I cleaned everything up! All you have to do is chop the egg whites into tiny pieces and mix it up along with the yolk mixture (this is perfect especially if you have un-cooperative eggs like mine that come out damaged when you try to take their shells off). Then, spread away on your favorite cracker.

That same egg mixture can be used as a sandwich filling too. This is something familiar to me since my mom makes similar egg sandwiches. So, experiment and have fun with it! The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination! 

Deviled Eggs by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

Ingredients and instructions:

• 1 dozen large eggs
• Fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons snipped chives and chervil (I couldn't find either so I used scallions and they tasted delicious too)

Put the eggs in a large saucepan with water to cover by 2 inches. Add 1 tablespoon of salt and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Immediately remove the pan from the heat, cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour off the hot water and fill the saucepan with cold water. Gently crack the eggs in the water to loosen the shells.

Shell the eggs. Cut a very thin slice from the bottom of each egg so the eggs will stand up. Slice off the top third of each egg and scoop the yolks into a coarse strainer; reserve the whites. Press the egg yolks through the strainer into a bowl. If you're too lazy like me to use a strainer, just mash them with a fork.

Blend in the mayonnaise, cream, sugar and vinegar. Season with salt. Using a teaspoon or a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, generously fill the egg whites. Arrange the eggs on a plate, sprinkle with the chives and chervil and serve.

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Here's a list of the other bloggers participating in this series. Do go over to their blogs to see what yummy dishes they've whipped up. If you'd like to join the group, please get in touch with Mary of One Perfect Bite.

Val - More Than Burnt Toast [] Taryn - Have Kitchen Will Feed [] Susan - The Spice Garden [] Heather - girlichef [] Miranda - Mangoes and Chutney [] Jeanette - Healthy Living [] Mary - One Perfect Bite [] Kathleen - Bake Away with Me [] Sue - The View from Great Island [] Barbara - Movable Feasts [] Linda A - There and Back Again [] Nancy - Picadillo [] Mireya - My Healthy Eating Habits [] Veronica - My Catholic Kitchen [] Annie - Most Lovely Things [] Claudia - Journey of an Italian Cook [] Alyce - More Time at the Table [] Amrita -Beetles Kitchen Escapades

Chocolate Mousse with Brandied Cherries

It's Fat Tuesday! Now, I LOVE southern food but, all I'd had running through my mind the last week or so was - Chocolate. I've never really craved chocolate before but, I get these sudden pangs of desire so strong that I have to do something to satiate them.

Growing up, all I'd ever want were strawberries or something pink. Be it an ice cream sundae, cake, jam, just about anything that could have strawberries in it. And as I got into my 20s, that slowly changed and I found love for anything sweet! I'm still not a very big fan of chocolate ice cream and will most probably pick that last if I had a choice of ice creams. Actually, that holds true for just about any dessert, I'd probably pick the chocolate dessert last, unless I was in one of my current chocolate-lovin' moods. 

I know I probably have made a million people go, 'what is wrong with this person?' but, hey, someone's gotta give a lot of love to the other desserts out there, too, right? Well, I think so :)

Last week, though, I had to hunt my chocolate desserts down since nothing else would satisfy. So, I made chocolate mousse. And I wanted something more with that, so I threw in some brandied cherries and nearly died with how rich and decadent that whole thing was. I couldn't get enough! The mousse tastes terrific with fresh strawberries too, because that's how I ate them after the brandied cherries were happily in my tummy. It tasted just like chocolate-covered strawberries. Oh. so. divine!

Chocolate Mousse with Brandied Cherries (adapted from Alton Brown's recipe on Food Network)
Ingredients and instructions:

For the mousse:

• 1 3/4 cups whipping cream
• 6 ounces quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks cut up
• 3 ounces espresso or strong coffee
• 1 tablespoon dark rum
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon flavorless, granulated gelatin

For the cherries:

• 1 tin of dark cherries
• 6 tablespoons of brandy or cognac

Prepare the cherries first. Empty out the cherries alone in a bowl with a couple of teaspoons of the juice as well (you can save the remaining juice for another dish or drink it all up, like I did). 

Add the brandy or cognac and mix well. Make sure all the cherries are immersed in the brandy. Cover and put it away in the fridge to soak while you prepare the mousse.

For the mousse: Chill 1 1/2 cups whipping cream in refrigerator. Chill metal mixing bowl and mixer beaters in freezer.

In top of a double boiler, combine chocolate chips, coffee, rum and butter. Melt over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. Remove from heat while a couple of chunks are still visible. Cool, stirring occasionally to just above body temperature.

Pour remaining 1/4 cup whipping cream into a metal measuring cup and sprinkle in the gelatin. Allow gelatin to "bloom" for 10 minutes. Then carefully heat by swirling the measuring cup over a low gas flame or candle. Do not boil or gelatin will be damaged. Stir mixture into the cooled chocolate and set aside.

In the chilled mixing bowl, beat cream to medium peaks. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Fold in the remaining whipped cream in two doses. There may be streaks of whipped cream in the chocolate and that is fine. Do not over work the mousse.

When you're ready to serve, spoon a few of the brandied cherries and a little liquid in a bowl or martini glass. Spoon some of the luscious mousse on top and chill for at least 1 hour. 

(If mousses are to be refrigerated overnight, chill for one hour and then cover each with plastic wrap)