Pear Multigrain Muffins

I've been on a muffin baking kick lately. Initially I was motivated by the trivial reason that I wanted to use up a bag of Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal I'd been gifted, but then having a supply of not-too-cloyingly-sweet, freshly baked indulgences became a reason in itself. I experimented with the recipe on the Bob's Red Mill bag, a multigrain muffin recipe from Blue Sky Bakery via smitten kitchen, and a leftover oatmeal recipe from Orangette. Julia Moskins also had plenty to say about not too sweet muffins in this week's New York Times. Along the way, I've learned to hydrate coarsely cut grains with the wet ingredients or to use cooked grains like hot cereal or millet. I found that diced pears make a lovely complement to hearty grains. And I discovered that my new favorite fermented dairy product, kefir, makes a delicious muffin.

Baking all these muffins reminded me of the first day of the Bread 101 class I co-taught. We asked the students to share an early, formative bread memory. To our surprise, many of them responded with memories of baking muffins. We realized that our first order of business in this course was to define the concept of bread as a food of sustenance, distinct from baked indulgences. Some of the confusion we uncovered among our students that day came from their limited experience with bread, but also I would argue from our culture's imprecise language around baking. For one, the word muffin, a uniquely American concept, is an obfuscation and a euphemism for the word cake. Also the production of these distinct baked goods is conflated in the single English word of bakery. In contrast, in France breads and cakes are separated by the shops at which they are procure, the first at a boulangerie and the second at a patisserie. These terms would be useful for describing changes in the neighborhood. Last May we lost the much beloved Eugene City Bakery and the building has stood abandoned for months, a depressing eye sore. Construction has finally picked up on the replacement establishment, Sweet Life. While they will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood, they are certainly not a replacement for a source of daily bread. I've been feeding my bread starter, to get back into the routine of baking my own bread. In the meantime, below is the recipe for the muffins I've been making, to be eaten as a treat.

Pear Multigrain Muffins

Adapted from these blue sky bran muffins from smitten kitchen

Yield: 12 standard muffins

1 cup (245 ml) buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt thinned with a little milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup (70 ml) oil (such as coconut, vegetable, safflower, canola, or mild olive oil)
1/4 cup (50 grams) lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, a little citrus zest (optional flavorings to add)
1 cup cooked millet (135 grams) or 1 cup 10-grain cereal mix (90 grams)
1/2 cup (60 grams) cornmeal, buckwheat, or whole wheat flour
1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder (preferably aluminum-free)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoons raw turbinado sugar, divided
3/4 to 1 cup chopped pears or other fruit such as apple or frozen berries

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F and coat a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick spray or oil or use liners.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk buttermilk or kefir or yogurt, eggs, oil, brown sugar, vanilla, and cooked millet or grain cereal mix and cornmeal if using. In a large bowl, mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir wet mixture into dry until just combined.

3. Spoon two 2 tablespoons of batter into each prepared muffin cup. Add about 2 teaspoons fruit to each (dividing it evenly) and sprinkling the fruit with one of the teaspoons of raw sugar. Spoon remaining batter (about 1 tablespoon each) over fruit and sprinkle tops of muffins with remaining teaspoon of raw sugar.

4. Bake muffins for a total of 16 to 18 minutes, rotating pan once midway through baking time for even browning, until a toothpick inserted into the center of muffins comes out with just a few crumbs attached. Do not overbake. Let muffins cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from tin.

Do ahead: Muffins keep for 3 days at room temperature, longer in the freezer.

Cutting Celery in Soup and Salad

This Sunday at the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market you can look forward to the following offerings from Sweetwater Farm, Fair Valley Farm, and Tiger Lily Art Company:

heirloom tomatoes, romas, and tomato deals: 10 lbs/$18, $20 lbs/$30 (try this soup)

blackberries and cantaloupes (great with pancakes)
peaches and Bartlett pears from the Columbia Gorge
corn (add to fish soup)

pepperoncini, poblanos, red hot cherries, anaheim chiles, and assorted pepper bargain bags

eggplants, fresh spring garlic, and onions (add to pasta sauce)

cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, and kohlrabi (toppings for peanut sauce noodles)
cutting celery (add to soups and salads, see below)

new potatoes and beets (build a battery) 

assorted herbs including Italian parsley and 1 lb bags of basil (make pesto)

bietola, kale, chard, and a variety of lettuces including iceberg (try bietola gomae)

dried beans and grains from Camus Country Mill (make some lentils with parsley)

jams, salsa, and pickles from Sweet Creek Foods

pastured chickens from Fair Valley Farm (make chicken and rice)

floral arrangements from Tiger Lily Art Company

I'm so grateful to the Fairmount Market farmers who weathered last Sunday's showers to bring us food and flowers that brighten our kitchens and broaden our minds. I'd never tasted cutting celery (or leaf celery or smallage) before, but was eager to try this wild celery variant that is more leaf than stalk. We headed home from the market a little damper than we had started. To warm us up, I cooked some rain drenched tomatoes into a quick pot of creamy tomato soup that tasted perfect for the impending start of the school year. As an afterthought, I chopped up a pesto garnish of cutting celery and walnuts, which added a burst of bright flavor to the silky soup and reminded us that it's still summer vacation. 

The next day, when the sun was shining again, I made a delicious late summer salad of astringent cutting celery leaves and sweet Asian pears, softened with cubes of creamy feta cheese. In soup and salad, these leaves pack a vibrant punch and they are definitely worth walking through the rain to procure. 

Creamy Tomato Soup with Cutting Celery Pesto

serves four

for the soup
12 roma tomatoes
2 Tbsp butter
1 large shallot or small onion
1 clove garlic
1 cup water or stock
1/2 cup milk, half and half, or cream
salt and pepper to taste

for the pesto
1 handful cutting celery leaves 
1 handful walnuts
pinch of salt
1 Tbsp olive oil

1. Peel and dice the onion and garlic. If you like, peel the tomatoes by coring them, scoring them with an "X" at the back end, and blanching them in boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skin. Chop the tomatoes into 6 to 8 pieces. Set a kettle with 1 cup of water and start warming a soup pot over medium heat. 

2. Melt the butter in the soup pot and add the shallot or onion. Cook until soft, then add the garlic, cook a couple minutes longer, then add the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Simmer until the tomatoes have cooked down into a paste, about 15 minutes. Add the water or stock and simmer for 5 more minutes.

3. Blend the soup until smooth in a blender or using and immersion blender. Return to the pot, add the milk or cream, and warm (but don't allow to boil). Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

4. Meanwhile, chop the celery leaves and walnuts together into a coarse pesto and stir together with a pinch of salt and 1 Tbsp of olive oil.

5. Serve the soup warm with a dollop of celery leaf pesto.

Cutting Celery and Asian Pear Salad

2 large handfuls cutting celery leaves
2 Asian pears
juice from 1 lemon
4 ounces feta cheese, cubed
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt and plenty of fresh black pepper

Core and slice the Asian pears and toss them in a salad bowl with the lemon juice to prevent then from browning. Toss in the celery leaves and feta cheese. Whisk together the vinegar and olive oil and pour over the salad. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Swedish Oatmeal Pancakes

Some recipes have a wonderful way of following you around like a tenacious honeybee. This is one I clipped from the San Jose Mercury News during graduate school, thinking it might be a hit with my then boyfriend, now husband, because of its reputed Swedish origin. We even made them for his parents, who doubted the providence but loved the pancakes. Then somehow the clipping went missing. Several years later, when we departed the Bay Area to start our jobs in Oregon, my best friend gave us a book of San Francisco recipes, and flipping through I discovered the recipe again, from Town's End Restaurant and Bakery in the Embarcadero. Now in our permanent library, these pancakes have become a signature dish for us. I shared the recipe with my friend Renee, who wrote about how they made her a little more tolerant of combining fruit into baked goods in her great blog Every Pot and Pan.

When our Lonesome Whistle Farm bean and grain CSA came with a bag of Scottish oats, I wanted to see if I could use them in this recipes. The original recipe calls for soaking uncooked rolled oats in buttermilk, but I thought these would need a little more softening up, so I mixed in a small amount of boiling water, and then warmed up the buttermilk before soaking (I discovered that microwaved buttermilk separates out, but you can simply stir it back together). This treatment worked great and the final pancakes had just enough bite inside with a lacy, butter crust and delicious toasted pear and almond finish.

Swedish Oatmeal Pancakes with Almonds and Pears
From Town's End Restaurant and Bakery
(makes about 32 pancakes)

2 cups Scottish oats

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup flour (I used Red Fife Wheat Flour from Lonesome Whistle Farm)

2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 Tbsp melted butter

1 or 2 pears sliced

sliced almonds

1. The night before, put the oats in a large bowl and pour over the boiling water. Mix well. Microwave the buttermilk until warm (it will separate) and add this to the oats. Cover the mixture and let stand until it has cooled, the leave it overnight. If using rolled oars, omit the boiling water step and simply soak the oats in cold buttermilk for 30 minutes or overnight.

2. The next morning , stir the eggs and then the melted butter into the oats.

3. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into oats.  You can thin with a Tbsp or two of buttermilk if necessary.

4. Heat a skillet and butter lightly. Use a soup spoon to ladle out pancakes, sprinkling first side with almonds and placing sliced pears on top. Let the pancakes cook until bubble on the edges are stable and they have lost their pale, raw batter appearance. Flip them and cook on second side until the pears have browned. Serve warm with maple syrup.

Other recipes for locally grown grains

Creamy Barley Risotto with Dandelion Greens
Barley Risotto with Grilled Vegetables

Buckwheat Blini

Buckwheat Crepes

Gluten-Free Waffles

Quinoa Salad with Roasted Beets and Kale

Swedish Rye Cookies

Swedish Rye Knäckebröt

Teff Grain and Ricotta Pancakes with Apple Topping

Wheatberry Tabbouleh with Green Beans and Feta

Wheatberries with Snap Peas

Glazed Pear and Kale Pesto Pizza

Sunday October 30th will be the last official market of the season for the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market, but if the weather is nice in November, the farmers may hold some additional impromptu markets. You can check back at this site for further updates. This Sunday you can expect the following produce from SLO Farm, Sweetwater Farm, and Songbird Farm: 

• apples, pears, Asian pears, and quince
• the last of the season's tomatoes and peppers
• cucumbers, summer squash, and eggplants
• pie pumpkins and winter squash
• root vegetables including carrots, beets, and potatoes
• greens including kale and romaine lettuce
• garlic and onions
• eggs

This attractive combination of SLO Farm's pears, Sweetwater Farm's onions, and Songbird Farm's kale inspired me to create an autumn pizza in honor of the end of the harvest season.

For the base of the pizza I made a raw kale pesto with walnuts, which I tempered with creamy ricotta.

For the topping, I seared onions and pear slices and finished them with a splash of balsamic vinegar. 

And then I assembled everything on a cornmeal-fortified pizza dough with a sprinkle of gorgonzola. All these components melded together into delicious celebration of the flavors of autumn, and, it occurred to me, served as a taste metaphor for the teamwork that contributed to the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market's second successful season. Many thanks to the dedicated vendors who brought us their delicious food all summer long, the support of neighborhood's businesses Sun Automotive and Eugene City Bakery, and the patronage of the market's loyal customers. 

Glazed Pear and Kale Pesto Pizza

makes 1 large or 2 small pizzas

for the pizza dough
1 1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup medium ground corn meal
1/4 cup coarse ground corn meal (polenta)
3/4 cups flour such as Camas Country Mill Hard red spring wheat flour

2 cups white flour
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

for the toppings

3-4 kale leaves
1/4 cup walnut pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided use
1/2 cup ricotta
1 large or 2 small ripe but firm pear
1 medium or 2 small red onion
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
freshly ground pepper
2 ounces gorgonzola cheese

1.  At least two and a half hours ahead, prepare the pizza dough. In a large mixing bowl, mix the yeast and 1/4 cup warm water and allow to sit for a few minutes until it foams up. Mix in the remaining ingredients, alternating between the flour and water. You may need a little more or less of the water or flour, depending on ambient moisture. When combined, turn the dough onto a work surface (I like to use a large silicone mat for easy clean up) and knead for several minutes until the dough is satisfyingly elastic. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, or if using, loosely wrap the dough in the silicone mat and transfer it right back into the dough mixing bowl. Allow the dough to rise until it has doubled in bulk for a coupe of hours. You can also make this dough in the morning and let it rise in the refrigerator during the day and it will be ready at dinnertime.

2. Prepare the kale pesto. In a toaster oven or on the stovetop in a dry skillet, toast the walnut pieces until fragrant. Remove the kale leaves from the stems and put them in the bowl of a food processor with the walnuts. Pulse until coarsely chopped. Add 2 Tbsp olive oil, the ricotta, and a generous pinch of salt. Process until you have a fairly smooth, bright green paste. Reserve.

3. Prepare the glazed onions and pears. Peal the onion and slice into 1/4 inch slices. Half and core the pear and slice into 1/4 inch slices. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 Tbsp olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and pear slices in a single layer and allow to cook a few minutes until they start to brown on one side. Flip the pieces and drizzle the balsamic vinegar over them, as well as a pinch of salt and grind of black pepper. Cook briefly to let the vinegar cook down into a syrup, and then remove the slices to a plate, pouring over any remaining vinegar.

4. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and insert a pizza stone if you wish. Roll out the pizza dough into a thin sheet, approximately 15 inches in diameter (or you could make two smaller pizzas). Sprinkle a pizza peel or baking sheet with polenta and place the dough on top. Spread the kale pesto in a thin layer over the dough. Layer the glazed pears and onions over the kale pesto. Crumble the gorgonzola and sprinkle on top. If using a pizza stone, carefully slide the pizza from the peel onto the stone. Bake the pizza for about 16 minutes until the crust sounds hard when tapped and the ricotta in the kale pesto has cooked through and lightened in color. Serve at once.