This coconut quinoa granola was supposed to have been posted last week. Then I ate it all before I had a chance to take any photos.
You've been warned. It's that addictive.
So here it is the second time around, tweaked and perfected. I've been making granola at home for a while, but hadn't tried using quinoa until now, even though it's a pantry staple for lunch and dinner around here. Now I think I prefer it to granola made just with oats. First off, it's crunchy but not overly crunchy, without the big hard pieces that you sometimes get with all-oat granola, homemade or store-bought. And second, think of all that iron, protein, and other nutrients you'll get just from a small bowl at breakfast!
A few years ago I spent two weeks traveling through Vietnam and became hooked on a drink called sinh to bo, or Vietnamese avocado shake. When I got back to the US, I experimented with recreating the shake and wrote a recipe for my other blog Appetite for China.
Traditionally, Vietnamese avocado shake is made by mixing together mainly avocados and sweetened coconut, sometimes with a bit of ice and coconut milk added. As good as it tastes, the shake is also pretty thick and sweet, more of a spoonable dessert than a refreshing sip. So yesterday I decided to make lighter version of the avocado shake I loved from that summer.
I thought that I had gotten through the cold-weather season without catching the flu. Or any of the bad viruses that were going around. After all, I was prepared: I had drank a ridiculous amount of orange juice and eaten yogurt everyday. Then recently, during a stressful work period, I stopped consuming the oj and yogurt, slept too little, and boom! I got sick. Really really sick.
And I got every single symptom under the sun (I'll spare you the details.) For over a week, even getting myself up from bed has been a challenge. I'd try to do work but would find myself a short time later on the couch, shivering and wrapped up in a blanket. And I ordered too much takeout food. Soup, banh mi, noodles. I tried to go as healthy as I could, but pretty soon, I just got sick of the sodium, heavy sauces, and spending too much $$$ for subpar food.
When I first received The Little Paris Kitchen in the mail, I spent a good hour just sitting on the couch and flipping through the pages. All those photos of bistros, Parisian markets, dinner parties on adorable little balconies...it all sounds so cliché, but I thisclose to booking a plane ticket to Paris. (That's the power of photography!)
And then there are the recipes: very simple, nonfussy French comfort food, pretty much food I crave everyday.
Over the weekend I made the lemon and lavender chicken, a nice twist on the simple roast chicken. What could be more spring-like than lavender? If I can't jet off to Paris and drive down to the lavender fields of Provence, at the very least I can roast some chicken.
What do you do with a big bag of blood oranges hauled back from the market?
The choices are endless. With their sweet flavor with hints of berries and cherries, blood oranges naturally lend themselves to sweet and savory recipes. I could make a pound cake or muffins or a salad or sauce for chicken. But there's something to be said for just squeezing the heck out of them for a tall glass of juice. Or any refreshing drink.
"Good dark chocolate has bitter and acidic elements, as does good bread. In the kitchen, they are drawn to each other. They also couldn't be easier to combine, especially in this recipe, where the four ingredients — bread, chocolate, olive oil, and salt — are left in their raw state, with just a dash of heat to encourage them to mingle." - Amanda Hesser, The Essential New York Times Cookbook.
I had been wanting to try this recipe for ages but kept putting it off. It seemed a bit too decadent to make for breakfast. And too austere for a dessert after a big home-cooked meal. And whenever I buy a baguette, I usually just polish it off with way too much cheese.
Then curiosity got the better of me. I mean, they're just so simple. In the recipe's headnotes in The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Amanda Hesser recalls eating these toasts at a tapas bar in Barcelona, "warmed until the chocolate was as soft as cream." They're also similar to an old-fashioned way for making pain au chocolate in France, just tucking a bar of chocolate into a baguette.
Some days, when I get back home after a long day of prepping for and teaching a class at night, I just want to collapse on the couch with a glass of wine. And inevitably of course, some days I get back home and realize I don't actually have any wine around the house.
Yesterday was one of those days. I got back home close to 10pm with a slice of pizza and just didn't feel like trekking back out again, especially in the wind and snow. So I did the next best thing: make myself a gin cocktail.