Balsamic Roasted Asparagus

Atlanta is a tough place to be at the end of March. Everywhere you turn, the insanely beautiful dogwood trees and their musty perfume smack you upside the head. No matter how many times I pass a tree, my heart fills with joy to realize it is not sodden with snow, but rather, blossoms.

The garden sprouts! Bok choy, coming right up.

Spring is here, but where are the posts on this blog? Good question. I'd say Kate and I quite possible bit off more than we could chew the past month. Alas, unless there is some cheese being served with this wine, let move on to the recipe.

As we came into this asparagus season, I dreaded the memories of my past attempts to steam, blanche and broil these spears into submission. Must avoid mush at all costs. Luckily, that cost is pretty low when you roast tender asparagus shoots. Even thick asparagus spears can receive this treatment. 

A splash of balsamic vinegar helps them continue on the path to caramelization. Choose fat or ultra thin spears, but adjust your cooking time accordingly. You may also want to first peel the especially fat ones first. 

Speaking of the 384 times I use the word spear, how do you store those sharply worded (the PUNS!) spring shoots? This is my method. Straight form the store, not washed but trimmed a bit, upright in a cup with a bit of water then covered in plastic. I've heard many methods, is this the best way to go?

Balsamic Roasted Asparagus
Serves 3-4 as a side

1/2 pound asparagus
Glug of olive oil
Glug of balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to at least 450°. Wash asparagus and snap the woody end of a single spear to gauge where to make your cuts across the bunch. Trimming the ends is more important to the thicker spears. You can get away with skipping this step for the the little thin ones.

2. Lay spears in a single layer across a metal roasting pan. Toss to coat with a glug of olive oil and a glug of balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

3. Roast. Watch them carefully, the thin ones will be done in five minutes, the ticker stems might be up to 10. You can take them out when a knife easily pierces the flesh, and perhaps the ends are crunchy crispy. Overcooking is your worst enemy, beware!

For some more suggestions on roasting asparagus, check the Chow boards or this Mark Bittman recipe.

Healthy Banana Bread

No good pictures resulted from the baking of this bread. I do have these lovely, if not blurry, walnuts.

I hated bananas as a kid. They usually appeared with my breakfast, on the green side, because what mother has time to wait for them to turn the perfect shade of yellow? Not mine, and bless her for feeding me great food. But I secretly dreaded eating that part of my breakfast. Green bananas seem to have more of the banana string- that weird stuff that comes off with the peel? I once heard someone say their idea of hell was listening to that part of Britney Spears song, "Oops I did it Again"- Eeehyahyahya and being covered in banana string. I can relate.

One way I did enjoy bananas was in bread form. Banana bread made its debut in our house fairly often growing up, usually one loaf baked for now and another frozen for later. It now has a place in my house, usually with a handful of chocolate chips thrown in for good measure. This time around, I wanted a healthier bread that would make a better breakfast, especially as half-marathon training comes to a peak. So I took my standard, the Joy of Baking recipe, and amped it up. With whole wheat flour, flax seed, walnuts, cinnamon, its still just as tasty as the original.

Banana Bread
Makes 1 loaf

1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tbls ground flax seed-thanks Ames!
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 ripe large bananas, mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and spray a 9 x 5 loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.

2. Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 to 10 minutes or until toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

3. In a large bowl combine flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nuts, and flax. Set aside.

4. In another bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted cooled butter, and vanilla.

5. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until combined and the batter is thick and chunky. Don't overmix- like pancakes, batter will be very lumpy.

6. Pour into prepared pan. Bake until bread is golden brown and a  toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan.

Brown Rice Pudding

Between the mounting crazy to-do list I have created, fighting the airlines on booking a flight to Miami, my first tweetup/networking session it had been a long day. I managed an entire hour at the tweetup, talking the whole time and meeting new people, which was a super accomplishment for yours awkward truly. But then when I got home it was time to plan out this Miami thing. Prices had gone up in the time since the original check, the times I wanted were sold out, and just when I thought I had one, it disappeared into the American Airlines black hole of doom.

I did manage to find one finally, hit the buy button, shut down my computer, and went straight to the kitchen to make brown rice pudding. With lots of leftover brown rice from earlier in the week, a pint of cream in the fridge, and the necessity to quiet my mind, rice pudding popped up. This seems to be a touchy texture thing with most people, but I love the milky saucy thing going on.

While stirring, it finally occurred to me that I had booked a long weekend trip to sunny and warm Miami where my duties were going to be partying down at Calle Ocho- one of the largest Hispanic festivals in the world, with VIP tickets to everything, that maybe it was worth the trouble I went through to get the ticket.  Then the Will Smith utterly ridiculous/awesome song Welcome to Miami popped into my head, and I haven't stopped singing it since.


Brown Rice Pudding

2 cups cooked brown rice
1 cup half and half
1 cups milk
1 cinnamon stick
3/4 tsp vanilla extract or paste
pinch of cardamom

1. Bring milk and half and half, with cinammon stick, vanilla and cardamom to a very low boil over medium heat.

2. Add rice, and cook stirring over medium heat until thickened, about 30 minutes. This took me longer and left me with very soupy pudding, so check on my ratios of liquid to rice. This recipe is adjusted down a bit, but it all depends on your liking.  I kind of think that as long as you're cooking milk gently with rice, good things will happen, so don't be afraid.

3. Pluck out cinnamon stick and enjoy.

Store this puppy in the fridge for less than a week.

Flourless chocolate cupcakes

Valentine's Day can either be a cruel holiday or an awesome chance to celebrate yourself, as a single girl. I also realize this is way past due for V-day, but here you go anyway.

For Valentine's Day I was supposed to go to Charleston with a bunch of international med students from Emory. Then snowpocaplyse hit Atlanta, and there was a 20 mile stretch of I-85 shut down due to, well, panic and lack of intelligent response. So that was called off, and I was left alone on Valentine's Day weekend while my roommate frolicked in Aruba. True story.

So after bitching and moaning to myself (alone) about, what was I going to do now? I went outside with Nic and DH, sled down a hill in Piedmont Park, baked bread, made butter, then celebrated my singleness with these, raspberry sauce and more Big Love. Single, cupcake sized flourless chocolate cakes with a dash of raspberry sauce go a long way to salve injustices of a snowy weekend invented to trash single people by some card company. 

Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 6 cakes, adapted from Baking Bites

7 tbls butter (permission to use whole stick granted)

3.5 oz of dark chocolate, chopped (exactly the size of a 72% dark bar from TJ's)

1/2 cup sugar

2 room temperature eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tbls cocoa powder

dash salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. For the love of sanity, line a muffin tin with 6 papers.

2. Using microwave, cause who is really going to whip out a double broiler, melt butter and chocolate in 30 second increments, stirring in between, until melted.

3. Stir in sugar, then set aside to cool for a while.

4. Once cool to the touch- as in stick your finger in it, then whisk in eggs one at a time, followed by vanilla, cocoa powder and salt.

5. Divide evenly into six muffin liners. I got exactly 6.

6. Bake for 10 minutes. Leave them in, turn off the oven, and let sit for 10 additional minutes. Do not over bake, so make sure you're paying attention to not let them dry out.


Raspberry Sauce

1 cup frozen raspberries
sugar to taste

1. Place raspberries in a microwave save bowl, and nuke for about 2 minutes or until mushy and defrosted.

2. Press through a sieve to remove seeds. This is optional- it makes a smoother sauce but is a pain in the ass.

3. Add sugar to taste.

4. Cool. Then puddle in the middle of a plate like you see in restaurants, add cake on top, and scoop of vanilla ice cream. Holler.