#!vegetarian

[midgarmunchies-blog]

HONEY MUFFIN - a traditional Midlander cake made with a generous portion of honey.

ingrediants:

2 cups flour

1/2 sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder 

1 cup milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup honey 

1 egg

I love muffins! But I’ve never been a baker .. and from what I know of baking, everything must be accurate .. or else!!! Well, not really, but you do need a recipe. Unlike cooking, you can’t just add something to a recipe all willy-nilly and expect it to work. So for me, this was a step outside of the box for me. Despite that, these muffins are pretty simple and simply delicious as well!

Before beginning, set your oven to 400 degrees!

First, you’ll need a couple bowls. In your first bowl, pour your flour and sugar and then whisk it together until it’s a nice, fine powder. You shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; like so:

Next, in another bowl, put your butter in and microwave for about 15 seconds until its melted. Then add your egg, milk and honey. Whisk together until, again, the mixture is one and there is no separation of ingredients!

 Once you have your two bowls, combine your wet ingredients with your dry. You can do this one of two ways: the first is to fold them together gently with a rubber spatula (like the one shown) until it is a nice smooth mixture with no air bubbles. This will take longer, but it will allow less air to form in your muffin batter. You can also use a hand mixer or mixing bowl, but you’ll need to mix it on low to medium speed to prevent air pockets from forming. I used a hand mixer on lower settings! Luckily, mine is fairly simple to use and only has three settings but modern mixers have a variety of settings that could cause air pockets or separation of ingredients if mixed too quickly. 

If you are worried, use the spatula method!

Notice how smooth our batter is? Now grab a muffin tin! Spray it with cooking spray, or use a paper towel to spread butter onto the muffin tin. Then pour the batter into each indent until it’s about half full. Remember, the muffins will rise and so if you fill your tin too high, they will explode and could burn! We don’t want burnt muffins, do we?

Of course not!!!

Your oven should be nice and hot by now, so put your tins in the oven and set for 15 to 20 minutes. Once the time goes off, take out the tins and stick with a toothpick or small fork. if it comes out clean, you’re perfect! If not, they may need an extra 3 - 5 minutes of baking. 

They’re hot and ready to serve!! Nothing tastes better with these sweet treats than some butter and more honey! Heck, you can probably even add some whipped cream to them to make an even sweeter treat! You can also serve these alongside some hearty meals. Considering the holidays are coming up soon, maybe try these on the side instead of traditional rolls! I’m sure your family, friends and other guests will love them!

Until next time ~ ! And don’t forget to share with me your kitchen adventures!!

[midgarmunchies-blog]

POPOTO PANCAKES - a pancake dish made of ground Dalamud popotoes, served with puréed mirror apples.

ingrediants:

2 potoatos

1 whole white onion

two eggs

4 tablespoons flour

salt and pepper

OPTIONAL: 5 cloves garlic (or 1 whole elephant garlic)

Gods, do I LOOOOVE popoto pancakes!! Growing up, this was my favorite dish to eat no matter what. But since my family celebrates Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, this food has been a staple in my household forever. Normally we make it out of a box, but nothing quite beats it being made fresh!

First off we’ll need to grate our potato and onions. I have a small hand garter which is perfect for me! But if you have a larger one, feel free to use it ~ ! I also added garlic to my pancake mix because I like things a little more savory. You can also peel your potatos if you’d like but I keep my skins on because there’s a lot of great vitamins in the skin. You’ll also need to give them a VERY light wash. 

Once your potatoes and onions are all grated, take two paper towels and place your mix on top of them. Go the the sink and squeeze out ALL the liquid. The wetter your mixture is, the worse it’ll hold up when we’re trying to fry the pancakes. The potatoes and onions must be dry before adding our eggs and flour. Rule of thumb here is for every potato, you add one more egg. That way there’s an even amount of potato and egg so the mixture, again, doesn’t become over saturated. Once the eggs are added, you can add your flour and mix together until thick. If your mixture is too liquidy you can add a number of things to fix it: add 2 more tablespoons of flour, or add half a cup of cornmeal, or grate half a potato. Be sure to add your salt and pepper at this time as well.

Now comes the fun part -- frying!! Grab your frying pan and make sure the bottom is completely covered in oil. Once its hot enough, you can add your potato mixture in medium sized dollops to the pan. Before they get too hot though, flatter them. This what they’ll cook easier AND they are pancakes after all .. !

Make sure to get your pancakes nice and crispy! You have to ensure that the middle of the cake is cooked as well because we are using raw egg here and, well, raw potato doesn’t really taste good either ..

Once your cakes are nice and crispy and cooked, set them aside to drain the excess oil. If you have more batter, use this time to cook up the rest of your pancakes so you have enough for everyone! Once they are all fried and ready, feel free to serve them with applesauce, butter, or in my case .. tomato sauce! The nice thing about potato pancakes is that they can pretty much hold up a lot of different flavors. Plus, if you want something extra sweet, use sweet potatos instead of regular and top with powdered sugar! Yum ~ ! 

In any case, I hope you enjoy!! If you have any questions or concerns, please send me a message and happy new year everyone! שנה טובה!!

[midgarmunchies-blog]

TOMATO SAUCE -  a tangy sauce made from stewed tomatoes.

ingrediants:

5 garlic cloves

1/2 white onion (or 1 whole shallot)

1 can tomato paste

1/2 can tomato sauce (I used Newman’s Own brand)

1 1/2 teaspoons sriacha

1 table spoon sun-dried tomato’s (or 1 cup halved cherry tomatos)

1 teaspoon chili powder

salt and pepper to taste

OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup chicken or vegtable stock

I know I haven’t been around for a bit and I do apologize for burdening everyone, but I’m back and ready to go again! And to get started with some rebooting, I decided to start with something a little simple but also deceptively tricky! Plus, tomato sauce is a base for a LOT of recipes in Eorzea! Most of them I LOVE -- so you’ll be seeing this sauce a lot. You’ll need a couple things before we start though -- a blender or food processor and either a slow cooker (as you know, one of my favorite things!) or a large, heat conducting pot. I have made the sauce in both a pot and a slow cooker and both work perfectly fine. For this time I made with a slow cooker ~

First off, chop your garlic and onions and add to a hot sauce pan with olive oil, salt and pepper to crisp it up. While that’s caramelizing, add your other ingredients to your pot or slow cooker. If you are using cherry tomato’s instead of sun dired tomato’s as I did add those to your onions and garlic to soften them a bit. When everything is crispy, then add the garlic and onion to your sauce.

It should look a little like this before we start cooking. In this instance I added a little bit of chicken stock just so that the sauce has a little more moisture to prevent burning. You can use vegetable stock or omit all together if you have a cooker that has custom temperatures or a sturdy enough pot. A burnt tomato sauce will make chef’s everywhere cry though! Plus the little burst of flavor the broth adds will add another depth of flavor to your sauce. Set your stove and cooker to LOW and a timer for 4 1/2 hours and let the flavors run wild!

Look at how smooth the sauce is looking now! But it could be smoother .. remember how smooth the sauce was for our mole loaf? We want it to be like that! So put it in the blender and give it a nice little blend for about 30 seconds while its still hot and we should come out with a nice silky smooth sauce like so .. ...

Now either smother whatever your cooking in this deliciousness or store for later, as I’m doing here! You can pair this with many easy recipes such as a simple pasta or again, the mole loaf I’ve made for you before and many more! If you have any questions, concerns or comments, please let me know and as usual .. happy cooking!!