The City Market, Zucchini Noodles, and the Green Bronx Machine

Do teachers work in the summer? Ask a teacher: yes. Ask my husband: meh. My answer for me: yes and no. I like to pack as much reading as possible into my summer (which I feel like is part of my job description as an English teacher), but I also do my fair share of lounging in the sun or on my couch. I typically use June to read and recharge and July to start planning the coming year. This month I’ve been to two conferences already. 

Let me tell you about the BIE Project Based Learning conference (PBL World) in Napa. Yes, Napa Valley, California. (Another reason why my answer is “yes and no!”)

The weather alone (no humidity!) was enough to make me want to stay. It was absolutely beautiful, and being a wine lover, I was in heaven. We worked hard and played hard and were awed by the educators we met—one of whom was Stephen Ritz. He and his students make up the Green Bronx Machine. This guy has unbelievable energy and has empowered his students through gardening to take back their neighborhood and turn it green. He grows people. They’re celebrities in my world. Watch this:

And his TED talk if you're really intrigued:

Oh yeah, and he let me wear his hat!

I knew I wanted to do a blog post inspired by Napa, and this was it. I’d use fresh from the garden food like what Ritz’s students grow and sell—any excuse to spread his good word. In KC, that means the mother of all farmers’ markets: The City Market. There are so many places in this post (like right here) where I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you my wordiness. Just make it a point to visit The City Market soon if, like me, you haven’t been in a while. It’s one of Kansas City’s gems.

Here were my rules: make a meal using only what I purchased from the market, with the exception of staples. I actually ended up making 2 meals, and I did use some red onion and chicken breasts that I had in my freezer.

Here’s my haul:

(P.S. The limes and peppers are for later meals and the pineapple sriracha jam is just because.)

I kind of flew by the seat of my pants here, and this is what I got! Don't expect a lot of precision cooking from these recipes (you'll see what I mean), and I would encourage you to try cooking the same way sometime. 

Garlic Chive Pappardelle with Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes

(Did you know the word pappardelle comes from the verb “to gobble up?”)

Any pasta for 2 (Pappardelle)

Onion (1/2 a red onion)

A few cloves of garlic (3), diced or minced

White wine  (eyeball a ¼ cup)

A pint of cherry tomatoes, halved

Parsley

Basil

Other herbs and seasonings (red chili flakes, S+P)

Get your pasta water started (don’t forget to salt it), and start cooking your pasta as you normally would. If you have all of your ingredients prepped (your mise en place), this next part takes about the same amount of time as the pasta does to cook. 

Drizzle about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, put it on medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the onions for about 5 minutes, then add in the garlic for a minute. Pour in the wine to deglaze the pan (scrape all the good bits from the bottom), and start reducing the wine. This won’t take long, so add the tomatoes and all of the herbs and seasonings about now-ish (save a little basil for adding once you plate everything up). Let things come together for a few minutes, but not too long so you don’t completely turn your tomatoes to mush. Toss pasta in with everything, plate, add a bit of basil, and serve.

Gobble away, we did.

Chicken and Portobello Mushrooms with Zucchini Noodles

(If you’re wondering, there’s no wine in this one because I dran— er . . . used it all on the last recipe.)

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Onion (1/2 a red onion)

A few cloves of garlic (3), diced or minced

2 portobello mushrooms

1 medium to large sized zucchini

Parsley

Basil

Other herbs and seasonings (“Italian seasoning,” S+P)

This starts very much the same. Season the chicken breasts with salt, pepper, and whatever random "Italian seasoning" you have. Add a little olive oil to a pan, place it on medium heat, and when it’s hot, add the chicken. It will only need a few minutes on each side, but I also use a meat thermometer if I’m unsure of the doneness. (These pieces of chicken were measly though, so no worries.) When the chicken is done, set it aside on plates. 

As with the last recipe, add your onions for about 5 minutes, followed by garlic and this time mushrooms as well. Don’t wash your mushrooms, just wipe the with a damp paper towel, get rid of the stems if you want, and slice them. This ended up being light on chicken and heavy on mushrooms, so adapt the proportions as needed; I’m a mushroom kind of girl. 

This counts as a superfood right?

It won’t take long for the mushrooms to cook down—a few minutes. Add in herbs and seasoning at this time as well (don’t forget to save a little basil for fancy-pants presentation). As I was overseeing this whole operation, I had my husband be my sous chef and slice up my zucchini noodles.

Time out for zucchini noodles—they are delicious and will be a regular pasta substitution in our house form now on. They’d also be great in stir-fries or as lo mein noodles. My mom told me about zucchini noodles (thanks Mom!) and suggested I buy a julienne slicer, which they had at the grocery store. This thing looks like a wide potato peeler and you use it in much the same way until you get to the seeds of the zucchini. (Green Bronx Machine would suggest you compost the “core.”)

The little strands peel apart.

Back to the recipe. Once the mushrooms look done after a few minutes, throw in the zucchini noodles. These only need to cook for a minute or so—not long! Then you’re ready to plate it up next to your chicken.

Those noodles . . . Mmmm.

Enjoy and be green!

-Madison

P.S. If you’re looking for my wine recommendation, I used Conundrum’s white wine for this post. While I didn’t taste it in Napa, I did visit Caymus Vineyard, which is part of a family of wines that produces the label Conundrum. It’s a good taste of Napa for “budget conscious.”  

Swedish Coffee and Semlor

If you’ve read a few posts, you might notice that I try not just to share a few recipes, but also share a little bit about myself—where I’m from, who my family is, what I do.  New tidbit: I love traveling. Dane and I have been lucky enough to do a fair amount of traveling together. Our latest trip was to Chicago to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. 

I could make this post all about Chicago—it was beyond words—but oh my goodness. The food. Let’s talk about the food. I am a type A planner, so not only did I study maps, research attractions, and create itineraries, but I also scoured the internet and grilled friends for the best places to eat. Yes, we had a food itinerary as well. (You can follow me on instagram @engquistm if you want to see all of the great food we ate.)

One of my favorite breakfast experiences was Ann Sather, a Swedish diner known for their cinnamon rolls (they have their recipes online). Dane’s family is full of proud Swedes, so I was excited to take him there.

These are a side dish!

The cinnamon rolls were divine. But that Swedish coffee. This was best coffee I’ve ever had in my life.

Heavenly.

We also loved Ann Sather because it reminded us of another trip we’d taken.  In 2009, Dane and I were college kids traveling through Europe while I studied abroad. We went to Sweden, which is where we got engaged, and have loved that country ever since.

Way back in 2009!

The Swedes love coffee, and the coffee break is a sacred time of day when people relax, socialize, and of course drink coffee. They even have a word for this ritual: fika. (I think Americans should adopt this practice.) While we were in Sweden drinking coffee (or other libations), we discovered semlor (semla in the singular)—cardamom rolls filled with an almond paste mixture and whipped cream.

When we first discovered semlor.

So I’m recreating Swedish Coffee from Chicago’s Ann Sather and Semlor from Stockholm’s many coffee houses.

Swedish Coffee

If you Google "Swedish coffee," you will find egg coffee. Don't do this. I tried to make this just for posterity's sake, and it was not worth the effort. To make Swedish coffee, just brew your normal roast. Since Dane used to work at Starbucks, we are coffee snobs and stick to Starbuck's espresso roast.

To taste, stir in a sprinkling of cinnamon, cardamom, and brown sugar (light or dark). You can also add a dash of vanilla.

Spice is nice.

I mixed cinnamon, cardamom, and various sugars together to keep in a jar for whenever I feel like adding a bit to my morning coffee. If you do this, go sparingly on the cinnamon and cardamom--they bring the spice. You'll need at least twice as much sugar. I did not realize this, so I still have to add another 1 tsp (ish) of brown sugar to every 1 tsp of spice mix.

Sooooo good.

The crowning glory is homemade whipped cream. I don't normally have heavy whipping cream on tap, so you could easily make a more "everyday" version by just adding half and half to your coffee (which I do always have on tap).

Semlor (Semla)

These look elaborate, but they’re not. I follow this recipe. It makes about 16 schmedium (ha) buns. However, when it comes to almond paste, it was easier to make my own (using this recipe) than to find it in the grocery store. 

The dough is pretty simple--just mixing ingredients, but the dough is sticky, so while every recipe cautions against using too much flour, I found I needed plenty to keep it from sticking to everything.

The hardest part is waiting for it to rise.

For sizing purposes. This is before they rise.

You end up sawing the tops off of the buns and hollowing them out. The inners are used to make the filling (so don't let yourself, your husband, dogs, children, or anyone else eat them all #thestruggleisreal). 

This is a good job for your kitchen helpers.

I used my food processor for the whole almond paste process (first blending the almonds into meal, then adding sugar and warmed milk). My paste was a little soupy, but once I moved to the next step adding in the bread from the rolls, it thickened up. The original recipe calls for you to add milk to the almond paste, but I found mine didn't need that much milk added.

Almond paste before adding the bread and extra milk.

All that's left is to fill the rolls--first with the almond mixture, then the whipped cream--then put their tops on, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. 

And of course make a mess. 

Enjoy! (How could you not?!)

-Madison

Blog Posts That Never Were: Cake Pops and Ultimate Cookie Cake

It’s the first blog post of the summer! If you don’t know me personally, I’m a teacher, so this is a momentous occasion.

I’ve been a little preoccupied for the past 2 months, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking up ideas for posts (ha, #sorrynotsorry about the pun).  So rather than just abandon these half-baked posts (and again), I’m resurrecting them. These two treats come from the last days of school.  It’s fairly entertaining to read back over my writing and see what I would say differently now. From here on out, my original bits are bolded and interspersed with present-day-me. 

So during the absolute busiest part of my year, I find myself making cake pops—something totally new to me and in my mind, utterly complicated. But also exciting, because these aren’t just any cake pops—they are superhero themed. One of my students who is a budding chef has repeatedly challenged me to a cook-off, and I have repeatedly told her, “Maybe at the end of the semester.” Well. It’s here. The end of the semester. (Thank goodness).  Being the competitive kid she is (we wouldn’t know anyone like that would we?) we decided to 1) make something totally new to the both of us and 2) make a themed food—Cupcake Wars style.

I give you: Marvel’s Black Widow Cake Pop. Of course thinking in my head “teachable moment!” (or soapbox moment?), I declared that I’d be choosing a female superhero, because duh, feminist.

Black Widow Cake Pops start with a red velvet cake with traditional red velvet icing (not the heavy cream cheese stuff—this is a bajillion times better, promise), then are dipped in dark chocolate, and finally are decorated with black sugar sprinkles and a red icing Black Widow mark.

Ha. What actually happened? Dipping cake pops in melted chocolate results in a gloppy cake pop, and it takes a ton of chocolate.  I had to finesse the chocolate with a spoon to get a smooth, even coating. It's quite possible I needed to thin out the chocolate to get a coating that would smooth out and which I'd easily be able to tap off the excess chocolate. Also, my black sugar sprinkles turned everyone’s mouths black, and the red gel icing I bought didn’t even show up, so I ditched it. However, they were a hit.

Here is the recipe. Ree’s sheet cake (which I will definitely make on its own sometime—was very quick and easy) makes about 52 cake balls. You will only use about ½ of the icing (I suggest eating the other half with graham crackers).

Yep, I have already made the sheet cake again.

Here is my process, which I totally researched and borrowed thanks to this blog. 

1. Crumble up the cooled sheet cake in a food processor. It will look like this.

Makes me want to snort this cake like crack.

2. Hand mix the icing in until you get this consistency. You don’t want it too wet.

This is what it should look like if you press your thumb into a ball of the dough.

3. Refrigerate the balls at least 3 hours. Store them on paper towels instead of wax paper so any oil is soaked up.  

4. When I was ready to go, I took a few out of the fridge at a time. Dip your stick in chocolate before pushing it into a cake ball. After you dip your pop, stick it in a Styrofoam block to dry. Store in the fridge.

This is what my little stations looked like. Dip, sprinkle, stick.

I didn’t dip all of my cake balls, so I froze them. They held up well, except for some of the larger ones which were a little weird and oily. I thawed them overnight in the fridge, and this time, I used Wilton Candy Melts to dip them in (dipped a little better than the chocolate, but generally the same notes). Recreated, they look like this:

I got a little adventurous and tried to decorate them. . . 

Some turned out better than others.

But wait, there’s more. I don’t want to let cake pops steal the show. As good as they were, what I typically make for my students at the end of the semester is cookie cake. Chocolate chip cookie recipes are not hard to come by, but you have not lived until you’ve had this precise cookie cake.

If I may say so, Mrs. E makes the bomb cookie cake, and the kids know it.

You guessed it, I forgot to take pictures, but I have pictures from last year, when the cookie cake made its debut at school for my grammar and composition class (which had a whopping 8 kids in it, including my TA).

Evolution of the colon.

Also I’m a nerd. (A proud nerd.)

I make this cookie cake in a round or square pan, either 8 or 9 inches. I usually end up needing to bake it about 5 minutes longer than the recipe suggests. In a square pan, you can get away with cutting it into 16 pieces. I usually don’t ice it, even though I did above.

Three things make this cookie cake ultimate. The cookies have a richer, more caramel-y sweetness thanks to the dark brown sugar, and the cornstarch and small pan mean a thicker and chewier cookie cake. Seriously you guys.

By request, the recipe for Mrs. E's cookie cake #lastpiece #nomnomnom http://t.co/lJBC74fYNQ pic.twitter.com/Ts302VrxFV

— Madison Engquist (@MrsEngquist) May 19, 2015

Seriously.

I love cooking, but I love teaching (read: getting to be a part of these kids’ lives, even if in the smallest ways) more.

Yep, that part stands as is.

Enjoy your summer! 

-Madison