Not Your Average Meatball

Above: Our Finnish-inspired spread and below, the meatballs cooking as the sour cream sauce reduces.
This past Friday, I made a lovely recipe with a couple of friends- Finnish Meatballs with Allspice, Sour Cream and Lingonberries from Tessa Kiros' newly released cookbook Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes.  The author's Finnish mother provided this recipe and this style of meatballs is apparently widely enjoyed in all of Finland. We were all intrigued by the combination of flavors that we did not usually associate with meatballs. If you have ever browsed through the food aisles at IKEA, you may be familiar with lingonberry jam, made with the little tart red berries in the cranberry family that grow wild in Scandinavia, Russia, Canada and Maine. We were not as familiar with allspice however. After some brief Googling, we discovered that it's name is misleading in that it is not a spice blend but indeed its own distinct spice. Since we did not have it stocked, we decided to use a blend of cinnamon and nutmeg to flavor our meatballs since allspice is said to taste like both. The resulting dish is a flavorful meatball with a creamy sauce that retains a light quality. We ate them with simple boiled potatoes and a salad, swiping a dab of lingonberry jam with each bite for a sweet-tart addition. Along with the Chocolate Stout Cupcakes I made last quarter, these meatballs place in my top favorite recipes I've made since starting the blog because of their novelty and crowd-pleasing results- everyone went back for seconds!

Vegan Treat Worth Trying

Top to bottom: A nice snack of Chocolate Banana Oat Bars, images from Easter Sunday: Coconut Cupcakes on an antique cake tray, Deviled Eggs with Italian Seasoned Salt on a heirloom egg tray.
The recipe I'm giving you today defies categorization and expectations as it works double-duty as a breakfast bar and dessert treat and is vegan and at the same time sinfully delicious. What sort of dish could fill this multi-task bill? These Chocolate Banana Oat Bars from Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini blog do indeed. The batter doesn't even require a mixer, and so with a few rounds with a wooden spoon and a pat down in a square pan, these bars are ready to bake and eat. Their texture is super moist due to the bananas and the chunks of melty chocolate deceive your taste buds into believing you are indulging in something quite decadent when actually these bars are quite healthy. I was only initially turned off by the recipe because of having to buy some ingredients that weren't already in my pantry, such as almond meal and grated coconut, but once these items are bought, anytime you have ripe bananas becomes a great excuse to treat yourself at any time of day with this yummy recipe. I hope you have fun with it!

Wholesome Banana Chocolate Breakfast Bars

- 200 grams (2 cups) rolled oats or mixed rolled grains
- 60 grams (2/3 cup) ground almonds, a.k.a. almond meal
- 30 grams (1/3 cup) dried, unsweetened grated coconut
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 120 grams (4 1/4 ounces) good-quality bittersweet chocolate
- 4 very ripe, medium bananas, about 400 grams (14 ounces) when peeled
- 1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) whole almond butter (substitute olive oil, or slightly warmed coconut oil)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a medium baking dish with vegetable oil.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oats, ground almonds, coconut, and salt. Set aside. Chop the chocolate so the largest pieces are about the size of a chocolate chip. Set aside.

In another medium mixing bowl, combine the bananas, vanilla, and almond butter, and mash thoroughly using a potato masher. Add the oats mixture and mix well. Fold the chocolate in gently.

Pour into the prepared baking dish, level the surface, and slip into the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until the top is set and golden-brown. Let cool completely before slicing into bars. If you're not serving all the bars at once, I suggest you cut out only what you need. Cover the rest with foil and keep at room temperature.

*From the French/English Zucchini and Chocolate blog http://chocolateandzucchini.com/

*I've used the olive oil suggested as a substitute for the almond butter, and the bars maintained a pleasant consistency and good taste.

A Passion for "Picoteando" and a Happy Thai New Year!

Above starting from bottom: The resultant fruit & cheese plate inspired by Village Pub, Carmen's take on Vicoise salad deconstructed to be more picotear-friendly, fast food quality pad thai and orange BBQ chicken, cute Thai iced teas, a stack of mango boxes at the booth that provided our amazing sticky rice- fresh mango combo. that the apartment is determined to recreate.

Picotear, a Spanish verb meaning to graze or nibble, perfectly describes the tradition of tapas, or small plates, that come free with a drink in Granada. This taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that and making it a meal is the philosophy behind the fruit and cheese plate that I posted in my last post. Subsequently, I made my own version the other night out of English Shropshire Blue cheese, fruit and nut crackers spread with blinberry jam, candied almonds and sliced organic Washington apples. Delicious! Last night I took a page out of Carmen's (the lady who I stayed with during my semester abroad) repertoire- a quick version of Nicoise salad. Usually she would mix up some lettuce, tuna, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and sometimes some potatoes for dinner. I added some green beans and omitted the lettuce and tomatoes, converting this salad into a kind of "picotear plate." It's easy and a nice change of pace from the usual version of meat-starch-vegetable dishes that populate my weekday rotations. On a busy day, these are the easily adaptable and customizable kind of dishes I turn to. 

On another note, my roommates and I found ourselves immersed in a crush of humanity down at the Thai New Year Festival on Sunset this afternoon. Within about 3 blocks, a plethora of booths with cooks in the back sweating over small temporary grills emanated glorious smells. A raised boxing ring and performance stage were the only interruptions to this makeshift line-up for a couple of blocks. We had been anticipating curry, and I had been hoping for something that seemed more authentic than the profusion of pad thai, orange chicken and teriyaki beef on offer. However, among the misses (my pad thai with an electric orange sauce was questionable and the lobster balls were most likely made with something other than lobster), we struck upon a few items that were worthy of gushing over, such as a plate of fresh mango with sticky rice and some Thai iced tea which was refreshing on an early summer day in L.A. In any case, it offered some of the best people watching I've seen in a long time and an excuse to visit Thai Town!