Cranberry and Orange Buckwheat Porridge
Why make oatmeal when you can make buckwheat porridge?
My latest recipe for Adventure Journal is sweetened with honey, studded with dried cranberries and orange peel and a perfect addition to any outdoor morning ritual. You can snag the full recipe here.
Make These Chocolate Covered Figs with Almond Paste
These chocolate covered figs have become a favorite holiday recipe of mine. I just recently posted the recipe over on Foodie Underground and I thought I would share it here too. If you’re willing to spend some time in front of a bowl of melted chocolate dipping in dried figs, then making your own decadent holiday treats is totally doable. Don’t have figs? This recipe is also good with dried apricots.
Chocolate Covered Figs with Almond Paste
Ingredients:
About 50 dried figs (I prefer Black Mission figs)
7 ounces (200 grams) bittersweet dark chocolate
Turbinado sugar for garnish
For the almond paste:
1 cup raw almonds, blanched
1/4 cup (1.75 ounces, 50 grams) natural cane sugar
1 tablespoon whiskey (optional)
Other:
Parchment paper
Preparation:
Begin by preparing the almond paste. To blanch the almonds, place them in a bowl and cover them with hot/boiling water. Let sit for a few minutes until you can put your hand in the water. The skins should be loose and you should be easily able to pop the almonds out of them. Place the skins in one bowl and the blanched almonds in another.
Compost the almond skins and pour off any water that is in the bowl of blanched almonds. Place the blanched almonds in a food processor with the sugar and whiskey and mix until well blended. The mixture should be sticky and moldable.
Lay out a piece of parchment paper on your countertop. Take a small amount of almond paste and mold it around the bottom two thirds of each fig (approximately). They will look like this – complete with terrible lighting if you make these at night like I did!
Melt the chocolate by placing it in a heat-proof bowl inside of a saucepan with hot water. Dip the figs covered in almond paste into the melted chocolate, so that the chocolate covers the almond paste, and place on the parchment paper.
Sprinkle with turbinado sugar and leave to dry until the chocolate has hardened.
Store in an airtight container, out of direct sunlight (for example, in a cupboard). If you want to give some away – if you manage not to eat them all yourself that is – a nice way to gift them is to place them in a sealable glass jar.
Read the full post on Foodie Underground
Holiday Gift Pack – Signed Copy of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break + The Culinary Cyclist
I’ve put two of my books together as a holiday gift pack: you can snag a signed copy of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break AND The Culinary Cyclist for only $25.
Here are some of the recipes you’ll be able to make with these two books:
Cinnamon and Cardamom Buns
Oat Crisp Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
Hazelnut Cake with Coffee
Raw Walnut Butter
Dutch Apple Pie with Cardamom
Five Seed Crackers with Olive Tapenade
Doesn’t that all sound good? You can purchase from the Foodie Underground shop. There’s only a limited amount of books, so if you want them, be sure to snag soon!
Paris Coffee Revolution: Buy the Book
What makes an “artisan” an “artisan”? What does it look like when you try to do business not as usual? What happens when you challenge the status quo? What does a “passion job” look like?
These are some of the questions that we tried to answer in the book Paris Coffee Revolution, which was just released in October. It’s a book telling the story of the growth of the Paris specialty coffee scene through profiles of some of the city’s main “coffee revolutionaries” who helped to kickstart that growth.
Celebrate Lucia Day with Swedish Saffron Buns (or a Cake)
December 13th marks the celebration of Lucia Day, an essential tradition on the Swedish holiday calendar. This is where all of the photos of children dressed in long white dresses with red sashes and wreaths in their hair come from. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of light – which is no surprise given the dark, Swedish winter – and whoever is crowned Lucia wears a wreath of candles in her hair.
The traditional treat served on Lucia Day is saffron buns. Bright yellow from the spice, these sweet, yeasted buns are formed into a variety of shapes (some of which are pictured in this vintage illustration) and served with a cup of coffee or mug of glögg.
Want to celebrate Lucia Day yourself? Here are a few recipes to help:
Swedish Saffron Buns – This is the classic recipe, complete with a few more illustrations of different forms that you can make.
Saffron Cake with Hazelnut and Whiskey Filling – I always like making a cake out of the saffron bun dough, and filling it with almond paste. This year I did something a little different and made the filling out of hazelnuts. With a dash of whiskey for good holiday cheer!
Saffron Bun Cookies – A gluten-free recipe, inspired by the traditional saffron buns. The cookies are made with rice flour and ground almonds, then twisted into the classic saffron bun shapes.
Glad Lucia!
Images: Anna Brones, Viriditas
The Wonderful World of Yeast
Ever since starting to brew my own kombucha, I have been fascinated with wild yeast. Most of us think of yeast as packets of little brown granules that we buy at the supermarket, but yeast is (quite literally) all around us.
It’s thanks to yeast that we can enjoy some of our favorite foods and drinks, like beer, wine and bread. It’s how the beautiful loaf of sourdough rye bread pictured above came to be. We need yeast to keep us healthy.
I tackled the topic of yeast in this month’s Wild Culture column over on Paste Magazine, and I took some time to get the input of journalist Simran Sethi. Sethi just released her new book Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love, in which yeast appears as a very important character. As Sethi says, “Microbes, including yeast, are everything. Not just in beer, but in life. The study of yeast is the study of us.”
You can read the column all about yeast, and my interview with Sethi, here.
How to Pair Pumpkin Pie and Coffee
Just in time for Thanksgiving, my latest column on The Kitchn is devoted to learning about pairing coffee and pumpkin pie. Coffee pairing essentials include: complimenting, contrasting and layering. So think about what flavors you love in pumpkin pie (the spices!) and what flavors in coffee you can either contrast, compliment or layer with those.
Because chances are, you’re going to make a damn fine pie, and you want a damn fine cup of coffee to go with it, don’t you?
Read the full column here.
At Last You’ve Learned How to Make a Perfect Cup of Coffee
“What makes you so happy this morning, George!”
“Because at last you’ve learned how to make a perfect cup of coffee. This is delicious!”
“Oh, it isn’t me, it’s the brand. This is the Sultana!”
I have a thing for vintage coffee ads, and this one via the Boston Public Library is rather hilarious. Certainly indicative of gender roles at the time – we all know that women shouldn’t be the sole ones responsible for the kitchen, cooking and coffee brewing duties – as well as the increasing interest, and obsession, with coffee.
Wild Culture: A New Column Devoted to Fermentation
I am excited to be launching a new column over on Paste Magazine, all about one of my favorite subjects: fermentation!
The first column is devoted to the subject of SCOBYs, the gelatinous looking organism that you have to have in order to brew kombucha at home. Amongst those who brew their own kombucha, I have found that many people have stories about their SCOBYs, as well as a sense of emotional attachment to them. One friend of mine even named his.
An excerpt:
Today we have a renewed appreciation for this old tradition, and people are taking to fermentation with fervor. Some of us get into baking sourdough with a starter and others launch into the world of pickling. But whatever kind of fermentation you do, there’s a high chance that you’re adamant about it.
Kombucha is the perfect example.
For many, kombucha has become a gateway drug into the world of fermentation. Fueled by an increasing interest in the health benefits of probiotics, the sales of kombucha have grown exponentially. Kombucha sales for 2015 are projected to be upwards of $500 million. But at one point or another we realize that our addiction to the bottles at the grocery store is becoming an expensive habit, and it’s high time that we brewed our own. This is the moment that we turn from kombucha fan to kombucha fanatic.
You can read the column here.
Image: Iris
Preorder a Copy of the Book ‘Paris Coffee Revolution’
For the last two years I have been covering the specialty coffee scene in Paris. For a long time, Paris was a place that was known for bad quality coffee and not much else. But in the last few years, this has changed, and nowadays there are a handful of local specialty roasters and a long list of cafes where you’re sure to get served a good cup.
Last year photographer Jeff Hargrove reached out to me. He had been bitten by the coffee bug and as a portrait photographer, he wanted to self-publish a book with portraits of the “coffee entrepreneurs” in Paris – the people who helped to change the coffee scene. But he wanted more than portraits, he wanted a story. And so I came along to help write that story: Paris Coffee Revolution.
blog.annabrones.com 