Favorite Granola

Hot oatmeal doesn’t appeal on muggy summer mornings. Looks like this is the time for dry cereal (or what some folks call cold cereal). Even the simplest flakes or o’s aren’t very appealing when we read the label’s nutritional details, knowing they leave us feeling hungry in a couple of hours. I’d like to recommend enhancing dry cereal, with sprinklings of nuts, berries or diced fruits and the good crunch of granola. Here’s a sound summer breakfast that will carry you though the morning.

Most of us don’t realize that granola, almost as common today as corn flakes, grew out of a nineteenth century religious fervor for healthy living, to prepare for The Rapture. Sylvester Graham, Presbyterian minister, promoted graham flour, a stone-ground whole-wheat flour (hence graham crackers). James C. Jackson, founder of The Home on the Hill water cure spa and a Seventh Day Adventist advocating vegetarianism, baked the moistened graham flour in sheets, ground it into granules and suggested this granula as a new breakfast food. John Harvey Kellogg, also an Adventist and sanitarium director, copied the granula, got into a lawsuit, and named his version granola. Charles W. Post copied Kellogg’s cereal but named his Grape Nuts. Even my grandmother’s Dunker Brethren Inglenook cookbook published in 1915 has a graham flour recipe for Granula. Granola then faded into the wings until the hippie movement of the 1960s dusted it off, substituted oats for the graham flour, and the product became a wild success.

The granola recipe I keep going back to is one from the 60s. I came to it through a circle of Quaker friends who cooked with whole grains. It’s sweetened with a puree of dates and brown sugar. Brown sugar doesn’t burn as fast as honey used in most recipes, so this granola easily bakes slowly into crisp clumps, making it perfect to eat out of hand as well as to sprinkle on cereals, fruit or yogurt. It toasts best in a low oven over a period of a few hours, but it doesn’t demand a lot of stirring. It can be half cooked one day and finished off the next. Basically it’s foolproof unless you forget it’s in your oven. During a rainy weekend or a quiet evening, a low oven won’t pump out much heat, and the tantalizing aroma of toasting granola will waft through the whole house. Airtight in glass jars, granola will keep for weeks.

Date Granola

 ½ lb. pitted dates, sliced

½ lb. brown sugar (l cup plus 2 tablespoons)

¾ cup oil (pure olive, canola or sunflower)

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

1 ½ lbs. old fashioned rolled oats (8 ½ cups)

1 ½ cups raw wheat germ or ground flax or a mixture of both

1 ¼ cups dry, unsweetened grated coconut (or coconut powder)

1 ½ cups raw natural almonds coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

Press the dates into a glass measure and add just enough water to barely cover. Soak overnight or microwave briefly until dates are softened. Combine dates, soaking water, brown sugar, oil and vanilla in food processor. Blitz to make a thick puree.

Preheat oven to 250°. Combine oats, wheat germ and/or ground flax, coconut, almonds, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Pour over the date puree. Scrape the processor clean and mix the puree into the oats with your hands, coating all dry ingredients with the puree. Divide the mix between two rimmed baking sheets, patting it out evenly and scrape your hands clean. Bake the granola for an hour, stirring every half hour; then reduce the heat to 200 and continue to bake 3-4 hours or until the granola reaches the desired toastiness. Turn off oven and allow to cool in the oven. Granola will crisp as it cools. Store air tight. Makes 4 lbs.

Mary Jo’s Cookbook available on Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tortilla Pizza

A grand table lined with trays of bite-sized holiday fare looks like easy entertaining. Though the cook may tremble at tedious finger-food work, larger baked sweets or savories that may be cut in pieces save the day.

Along with shallow quiche cut in squares, appetizer pizzas have been one of my mainstays. I divide a batch of pizza dough into five-ounce lumps, and stretch seven-to-eight inch pizza circles that may be topped, baked, frozen, reheated, and cut into six or eight mini-wedges. All’s fine until I’m asked to include a few gluten-free items. Since most of the powdery, gf flours don’t stretch well or have much flavor, I opt for corn tortillas. Corn tortillas work into the same routine as the regular pizzas and offer gf folks crisp, savory bites.

In almost every corner of Chicagoland from strip mall tiendas to chain supermarkets, El Milagro’s fresh corn tortillas have a regular spot. Actually, they’re better than many tortillas I’ve had in Mexico and worth a place in every home freezer or fridge. Even for a snack or lunch, a corn tortilla quickly toasted over a gas flame or softened in a toaster and spread with peanut butter, drizzled with olive oil and salt or rolled around a morsel of cheese offers nutritious, satisfying flavor.

Whether you need to add some gf items to your holiday party table, or you’d just like a delicious corn tortilla pizza yourself, here’s the plan:

Corn Tortilla Pizza

fresh corn tortillas

olive oil

tomato sauce for pizza (homemade if possible) thick enough

to mound in a spoon

grated cheese—stringy pizza cheese plus grated Parmesan

or a mixture of grated Swiss, white cheddar, Jack or

whatever cheese you have

crumbled goat cheese (optional)

toppings: slivered bacon or pepperoni, diced roasted peppers, halved olives, caramelized onions, sliced canned artichoke hearts

dry oregano, and crushed red pepper

Place tortilla on baking sheet; brush with few drops olive oil. Cover with smear of tomato sauce; sprinkle with grated cheese. Top with second tortilla and press down. Brush the second tortilla with oil, smear with sauce and sprinkle with cheese before topping with any of the listed items, so it looks like a pizza. Lightly sprinkle with crumbled dry oregano and crushed red pepper. Bake in a 450° oven 8-10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the tortilla is crisp. Use a baking stone if you are doing other baking at the time to merit the long heat-up. Tortilla pizzas also bake easily in a toaster oven. Use right away or freeze for handy gf party food. When ready to serve, cut each pizza into sixths or quarters with a chef’s knife.

Mary Jo’s Cookbook available on Amazon

 

 

 

 

Homemade Granola Bars

Before I was old enough to know about calories and waistlines, I dreamed of coming home from school to find an iced chocolate cake waiting under a glass dome. More likely I would scratch up some graham crackers, a glass of milk and a couple peaches. I was blessed with abundant homegrown produce, but like any kid I wished for the bakery.

Now we’ve learned too much: we shouldn’t be having the sugars and white stuff. We think every snack should be healthy, yet we’re still looking for ways to make nutritious tidbits tempt our children as much as chocolate chip cookies.

When I thought about my grandchildren munching our homemade granola, I began to work the formula into a bar cookie that could go into a school lunchbox. Yes, there’s some sugar, and I found the best flavor from cones of unrefined, caramely Mexican raw sugar (piloncillo) now available along with packaged dry chilis in supermarkets. A little honey will add to the crunch while minimal butter and olive oil will give the bar rich flavor. Whole grain oatmeal and flax along with some dried fruit and optional nuts or seeds round out this cookie that’s far more nourishing than a bowl of Cheerios.

Homemade Granola Bars

3 oz. brown sugar (3 1-oz. cones piloncillo or ½ cup brown sugar)

1/3 cup water

2 tablespoons honey

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ oz. butter (3 tablespoons)

3 tablespoons pure olive oil

8 oz. dry ingredients including old-fashioned rolled oats, 1 oz. ground flax and a handful of sunflower seeds or chopped almonds (total generous 2 cups)

½ oz. dry unsweetened coconut (¼ cup)

6 oz. dry fruit such as sliced dates, raisins, dried cranberries (one packed cup)

If using piloncillo, place cones in saucepan with water, cover and simmer until sugar has dissolved and formed a thin syrup. If using brown sugar, boil the sugar and water to form a syrup.

To the hot syrup add honey, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, butter and oil. Stir in the oatmeal mixture, coconut and dry fruit. Spread evenly into a buttered 8-inch square tin. Cut through the mixture with a bench scraper or small sharp knife to form 16 squares. Bake the bars in a 325 oven for 30–40 minutes or until deeply golden.

Cut through the score marks again before the bars cool. If bars do not seem crisp enough, return to the turned-off oven and allow them to dry and crisp further as the oven cools. Makes 16 bars and extra crumbs to sprinkle on breakfast cereal.

Mary Jo’s cookbook is available at Amazon.com    http://amzn.to/9lOnZv