Pumpkin Spice Muffins

What could be better on an autumn morning than spicy pumpkin muffins?  With all the pumpkin around this time of year, this is the perfect time to make these flavorful, not-too-sweet muffins.

 

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

adapted from epicurious.com

·         1/3 cup golden raisins, soaked in orange liquor or rum for 15 minutes and drained if needed

·         1  ½  cups all-purpose flour

·         ½ cup whole wheat flour

·         2 teaspoon baking powder

·         ¼  teaspoon baking soda

·         1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

·         ¾  teaspoon ground ginger

·         1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

·         1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

·         ½  teaspoon salt

·         1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled

·         ¾  cup packed light brown sugar

·         ¾  cup canned pure pumpkin

·         ¼  cup well-shaken buttermilk

·         2 large eggs

·         1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

·         1/3  cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter muffin pan if not nonstick, or add paper muffin cups. 

Whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in a large bowl. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together butter, brown sugar, pumpkin, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. 

Add to dry ingredients and stir until just combined, then stir in raisins and pecans. 

Divide batter among muffin cups bake until a wooden pick comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly on a rack.

Bacon, Lettuce and (fried green) Tomato sandwich

I've never had fried green tomatoes before.  I've heard of them, of course, but being from the Midwest, and coming from a household where the only thing we ever really "fried" was fresh fish, it has remained on my periphery all these years.  Until this week, when there were green tomatoes in my Los Poblanos produce box.  So I thought I would give them a try in the form of a ramped-up BLT.

I've never gotten a good look at a sliced green tomato and they were beautiful!

Making the fried green tomatoes themselves are pretty easy.  Since I was making bacon anyway, I cooked the bacon and saved the drippings in the pan and cooked the tomatoes in there.  Cooking oil can be used, too, but the bacon fat really added some great flavor to the tomatoes.

Bacon, Lettuce and (fried green) Tomato Sandwich

Green tomatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick
Bacon, cooked and drained
Leaf lettuce, washed and patted dry
Rustic Bread (I used a sourdough loaf)
Herbed mayonaise or dressing (I made a chipotle ranch dressing)

To fry the tomatoes, slice them 1/4 inch thick.  Salt and pepper them lightly.
Set up three shallow bowls with the following ingredients, in order:

1. Flour.  I use Western Star Seasoned Flour for this.
2. Buttermilk with a few generous shakes of hot sauce.
3. A half and half mixture of cornmeal and Panko bread crumbs.

Heat your pan with the bacon fat (or oil, if you prefer) to medium high.  Coat the tomatoes in the flour, buttermilk and crumbs, in order, and fry until golden brown, about 3 minutes each side.  Drain on paper towels and use to assemble your sandwich.

The sandwich was a delightful blend of textures and flavors.  The tartness of the tomatoes was tempered by the saltiness of the bacon, the chipotle ranch added a bit of zing and it was all cooled off a bit by the lettuce. My husband (AKA the test kitchen) gave me one of those looks when I told him we were having green tomato sandwiches for dinner but he was completely sold. I can't wait for more of them to come my way!

fresh fig jam

I get a wonderful box of organic produce each week from Los Poblanos , a local farm that delivers the best locally grown produce, either from their farm or from neighboring farms to the people of Albuquerque.  It's wonderful--a way to eat local and organic, and a way for me to use things I normally wouldn't use.

In this week's box was a pint of figs.  I like figs, fresh from the box but no one else in my family was really eating them up so I thought I would do something different today and decided on a refrigerator jam. The recipes I found were for pounds and pounds of them, so I cut it all down to what I had: a pint of figs.  It weighed a little less than one pound, probably because I had already eaten some.

Fresh Fig Jam

1 pint of figs, stemmed and quartered
1/2 cup sugar
1 TB lemon juice
2 TB Orange Liqueur (I used triple sec)
1 pinch kosher salt

Put all the ingredients in a bowl, stir and let sit for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put in a nonreactive pot and cook about 25 minutes until the figs are soft.  Adjust the sugar if needed.  Remove from heat and process with an immersion blender (or mash finely by hand) until the skins are finely pureed.

Since it is a small batch, I plan to use is quickly and just put it in a jar in the refrigerator. 

The jam itself is wonderful...bright and deep red, not that brown stuff I was expecting.  Sweet but not overpowering, with the texture of the seeds in it.