Carrot-Zucchini Bread

This is the kind of recipe I live for. It reminds me of those really good bran muffins you find at local coffee shops, with the nutty, wholesome flavors and tops that crust around the edges and never are perfectly round. It's got a more well-defined crumb than carrot kugel, but it's not as sweet as carrot cake, and grated zucchini lends it sophistication. Not that this is a snobby loaf -- just the opposite. It takes about 5 minutes to mix together, and the 80-minute baking time lets you actually get something else done while you wait. I brought it to our pre-Yom Kippur meal on Sunday afternoon, but it'd make a phenomenal breakfast or afternoon snack.

special thanks to reader Catherine for pointing out that I failed to mention the eggs in the ingredient list. Sorry everyone! Three eggs.

Carrot Bread adapted loosely from Bon Appetit

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp. baking soda 1/4 tsp. baking powder 1/2 cup brown sugar 3/4 cup cane sugar 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup applesauce 3 eggs 2 cups grated carrot 1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. Sift first 6 ingredients into medium bowl. Beat sugar, oil, eggs, applesauce, and vanilla to blend in large bowl. Mix in zucchini and carrot. Add dry ingredients and stir well.

Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 20 minutes. Cool bread in pan on rack 15 minutes. Cut around bread to loosen. Turn out onto rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Wrap in foil and let stand at room temperature.)

Pickles!

Folks, I'm finding it hard to contain my excitement about NDP's second-ever guest post. Guess who wrote it? MY MOM!

That's right: in the post below, NDP Ima tells you all about easy-to-make, hard-to-stop-eating pickles. You'll see from her intro paragraph where I got my taste buds. These pickles are salty, tangy, and really bright from the addition of fresh dill. So read up -- then go make some pickles!

I am really not a salt lover. I don’t use much when I cook, and in restaurants great food that’s well-seasoned is often too salty for my taste. I don’t care for chips or french fries, and I prefer nuts spicy or au naturel. Nonetheless, I do love briny salty things – olives, capers, and sour pickles. So when I was leaving town for a long weekend and had a lot of small cucumbers that wouldn’t last until my return, I decided to try my hand at some pickles. I wanted spicy, garlicky, dill pickles that would make themselves in the refrigerator while I was gone. I remembered the ones a family friend used to make with cucumbers from his garden and my dad’s. He didn’t use shortcuts, though – he put his pickles in huge crocks of brine and alum in the basement for weeks.

I cut the cukes into thick, chunky slices and placed them in a quart jar with pickling spices and garlic. I didn’t have any fresh dill, so my first batch just had dill seed from the pickling spice, but it still tasted authentic. I prepared the vinegar brine and filled the jar, leaving it upside down on the counter overnight. The next morning, before rushing to the airport, I put the jar in the frig. When I returned four nights later, the pickles were done to perfection!

The recipe below is really more of a method – you can vary the ingredients, and the size of your jars and your cucumbers will determine your quantities. As long as you maintain the proportions of ¾ cup of vinegar and ¼ cup of kosher salt per quart of boiled and cooled water, your brine will work and you’ll have great pickles in a matter of days. Try this with green tomatoes if you have them in your garden, with blanched cauliflower, small sweet peppers, or blanched pearl onions. Add onions or hot peppers for extra kick. I used just one hot pepper to enhance the spicy flavor. I made a second batch with fresh dill sprigs, blanched carrots, and a few kalamata olives in addition to the cukes. They’re not quite finished as a I write this, but they look so good I can’t wait to sample them!

If you like sweet pickles instead of sour, substitute sweet pickling spices, cloves, and allspice, use cider vinegar instead of white vinegar, and add sugar (1/2 cup to ¾ cup) to your brine.

Your pickles will keep about four months in the refrigerator. If you seal your finished pickle jars with a canning process, they will keep on the shelf indefinitely. Open jars should be refrigerated.

Refrigerator Dill Pickles

1 dozen or more pickling cucumbers or small English cucumbers

4-8 cloves garlic, peeled and cut in half

2-3 tablespoons pickling spice (the brand I used had dill seed, mustard seed, celery seed, coriander, ginger, black peppercorns, bay leaves, and red pepper)

A few sprigs of fresh dill

1 small dried hot pepper, or a fresh hot pepper cut in half and seeds removed (optional)

1 quart water boiled and cooled

¾ cup white vinegar

¼ cup salt (kosher salt works well, but sea salt or table salt are also fine)

A pinch of sugar (if desired – I omitted)

Use one or two quart jars or a gallon jar, depending on how your cucumbers fit into the jar. The amounts of spices are for one gallon jar or two quart jars, but you can modify this according to taste and the quantity of pickles you want to make. Place one tablespoon of pickling spice, half the dill and half the garlic in the bottom of the jar. If using slender or English cucumbers, you can cut them into thick chunks/slices and they will be ready in less time. If you use larger cucumbers, you can pickle them whole and cut them into lengthwise quarters when you serve them. Pack the cucumbers tightly into the jar(s). When you have added most of the cucumbers, add half of the remaining spices and garlic. When all the pickles are in the jar, add the last of the spices. If using the pepper, place it in the middle layer.

When the jar is full of cucumbers and spices, stir the salt into the vinegar. Pour the mixture into the boiled water and stir to finish dissolving the salt. The water does not have to reach room temperature, since it will continue to cool as you make the brine. Fill the jar to the brim with brine. Close the jar tightly with its lid. Invert the jar into a bowl and leave it outside the refrigerator. After one day, turn the jar upright. Check to see how pickled the cucumbers are. If you used the smaller, slender cukes, it is probably time to refrigerate the pickles. They will be completely done in another three or four days. If you used larger cucumbers, leave them out for another day or two. Check for doneness according to your preferences – if you prefer half-sour, they should be edible after just one-two days.

When the pickles are as done as you like them, you can pour out half the brine, leaving as many spices in the jar as possible. Replace the removed liquid with a mixture of plain boiled water and vinegar. For each cup of boiled, cooled water, add two tablespoons of white vinegar. Fill the jar to the top again and refrigerate. You can also remove the hot pepper if you don’t want the pickles to get spicier over time.

Sugar High Friday...Toasted!

Now that NDP is a whopping two years old, I think it's time she and I finally hosted a blogging event. I've been a sporadic participant in these sorts of things, mostly because between keeping up with my day job, getting bloggable food on the table, and taking decent pictures of said food, I can't find much time to keep up with the various blogging events out there. But one of my resolutions for this third year of blogging is to dip my foot into new networks of eaters, cooks, and bloggers. I'd like to be more in touch with folks who do what I do on this site. So here's my first attempt: I'm hosting October's Sugar High Friday.

Sugar High Friday (SHF) is a blogging event to satisfy the mother of all sweet-tooths (sweet teeth?). SHF was created by Jennifer Hamilton, i.e. The Domestic Goddess, and every month, SHF participants cook, photograph, and submit desserts on a theme. Past themes include desserts from your childhood, sweets containing alcohol, chilled desserts, and last month's edition, "locavore treats."

For the October 2009 edition of SHF, we'll be making desserts in which something (or everything) is toasted. Toasted almonds and toasted coconut come to mind, but it doesn't stop there: toasted spices can really perk up an ordinary recipe, toasted oats in fruit crisp add a lovely nutty flavor...I could go on. I've got something pretty unique planned for my entry, and I know you'll all submit some really interesting things as well. (Ahem, I mean you!)

Speaking of submissions, here are the guidelines for submitting an entry:

1. Cook and photograph something toasty!
2. If you have a blog, post about your toasted dessert. (If you don't have a blog, see below.
3. Email me at Rivka [at] Not Derby Pie [dot] com with "SHF-toasted" as the subject. Please include:
   • your name
   • the name of your blog
   • a link to the post about your submission
   • the name of your submission
   • any other info about why you made what you made
   • a thumbnail image of your creation. It should be no wider than 100 pixels, in jpg format, and should be named the same as your blog. For example, my image would be named notderbypie.jpg.
4. If you do not have a blog, please post your recipe, and a link to a photo if you'd like, in the comments section either here or in the round-up post.
5. Submissions must be in by midnight (EDT) on Monday, October 26th, or they will not be included in the round-up!

I’ll post the roundup on Friday of that week, so please do check back here to see everyone’s delicious creations!

Looking for inspiration? Check out these recipes, all of which rely on toasted ingredients:

• Cherry Almond Biscotti
• Granola with Tahini
• Awesome Almond Cookies

As always, thanks to Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess, who created the whole Sugar High Friday concept back in 2004. Now get cookin'!

Moroccan Chicken with Olives

Today was seriously busy -- fortunately for me, D's stepmom Terri came in a couple days early to help cook, finish up grocery shopping, and see to it that the house was clean. That last bit she takes more seriously than you can imagine; when D and I moved into our apt, in a 100-year old building, the stove was caked with some hard-core black stains that I assumed were there to stay. I tried a couple of times to get them out but made no headway whatsoever, so I just got used to them. Terri doesn't give up so easily; she's got a big back of tricks up her sleeve when it comes to cleaning things, and I could swear she also pulled some sort of voodoo hex thing while I wasn't looking, because folks, my stove is crystal clean. If you only knew the sort of filth I've been cooking with -- it's the sort that builds up over many many years -- I can't believe it's actually all gone. amazing!

Meanwhile, on the cooking front, today I made (among other things) a delicious chicken recipe that I've just gotta share with you all. It's a braised chicken dish with Moroccan flair. It starts with lots of onion that's been cooked to the point of soft, caramelized translucence; punchy green olives are then added along with preserved lemon, which is both uber-tart and floral from the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in which it's preserved. I was on the phone while I was cooking this dish, and after sampling a bit of the sauce, I added a splash of apple cider on a whim to cut all the salt, which worked very nicely. It's not in the recipe on which this is based, but it adds depth and balance so I'd recommend adding it. If you're looking for a chicken dish, I can assure you -- this is the one.

Meanwhile, I don't think I'll have a chance to post between now and the start of the holiday, so...

To all those celebrating Rosh Hashana, may you all have a sweet New Year, filled with joy, laughter, and wonderful eating. I feel lucky to have you all in my 'life,' and I hope that you'll continue to read, enjoy, and cook from NDP!

Also, though it's been a busy little month here, I don't want to overlook the fact that this weekend marks my 2-YEAR BLOGIVERSARY! That's right: exactly 2 years ago, I had the quirky little brainchild to hatch Not Derby Pie. I worried at the time that I'd be too bored to keep a blog, not talented enough to cook and photograph my way through it, and not lucky enough to draw readers; fortunately, I've made it thusfar! You're the best readers (and commiserators!) I could ask for, and I feel exceptionally lucky to have you all hangin' out around here. So cheers to all, happy birthday to NDP, and here's to many more years together!

Moroccan Chicken with Olives

8 wedges or slices preserved lemon*, rinsed 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 large onion, halved, thinly sliced 2 garlic cloves, pressed 1 tablespoon paprika 2 teaspoons ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground ginger 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth 1/2 cup apple cider 1 4 1/2-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces, skin removed 1/2 cup green olives

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and sprinkle with salt and pepper; sauté until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Add next 5 ingredients; stir 1 minute. Add broth; bring to boil. Sprinkle chicken with salt (if not kosher or brined) and pepper; add to skillet. Add preserved lemon and olives. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until chicken is cooked through, turning occasionally, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer chicken to platter. Add apple cider to skillet. Increase heat to high; boil uncovered to thicken slightly, about 5 minutes. Season with pepper. Add chicken back into sauce, and serve together. I guarantee people will lick their plates clean.