Lisa's Rainbow Black Bean Salad

Lisa's Rainbow Black Bean Salad

I made this salad up based on the brightly colored rainbow peppers I found at the farm stand last week. After I served it at a bar-b-que Sunday night I had a few requests for the recipe so I thought I would post it here. If you can't find rainbow peppers, replace them with a mix of red, yellow and orange bell peppers. Cilantro would also be a nice addition here if you have it on hand.

Serves 4-6

15oz cooked black beans (or 1 can rinsed well)

2 small rainbow peppers, diced small

½ small onion, diced small

1 large handful blanched string beans, chopped into 1-inch pieces

1 large scallion - green and white part, chopped

fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped course

Juice of one lime

1 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon ground cumin

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon honey

⅛-¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 

fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped course

Whisk the lime juice, oil, cumin, salt, honey, and cayenne pepper in a large bowl

Add the remaining ingredients and toss to combine.

Refrigerate at least one hour to let the flavors combine.

Salad will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator.

Not my best idea.

If you had been in my kitchen last week, when I was grating up a zucchini, you probably would have said "Hey, putting zucchini in your chocolate chip cookies is not one of the best ideas you've ever had", and you know what? You would have been right. However, I had a lot of zucchini to use up when I stumbled across this recipe from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (not one of the best books I've read either). The idea seemed interesting and I did want to get rid of that zucchini. She swears it's completely undetectable and even kid tested. I don't know what kids she's been feeding these to because, I have a high tolerance for odd, healthy things in my baked goods and I certainly taste the zucchini. That being said, I don't really mind it. It tastes like chocolate chip zucchini bread in the form of cookies. In fact, even the texture is fairly similar; A little too soft and cake-y for my taste (although some people like soft cake-y cookies so that's not necessarily bad). 

Would I make them again? Probably not. I don't actually like zucchini bread all that much. If zucchini bread is your favorite summer cake - these cookies were made for you. If you prefer to keep your vegetables out of your dessert, try making my favorite chocolate chip cookies and click here for an easy way to use up that zucchini.

Lucky for me, I have the best friends in the world (aka. hungry boys who will eat anything that fits the criteria 'free' and 'homemade' and most things that don't). Either they really did like them, or they are just good at being supportive because they ate every last one.

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

From Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Makes about two dozen

1 egg, beaten

1⁄2 cup butter, softened

1⁄2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup honey

1 tbsp. vanilla extract 

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1⁄2 tsp baking soda 

1⁄4 tsp salt 

1⁄4 tsp cinnamon

1⁄4 tsp nutmeg

1 cup finely shredded zucchini 

12 oz chocolate chips Stir these into other ingredients, mix well. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350°, 10 to 15 minutes.

I. Am. Never. Leaving.

Don't try to talk me out of it.

I'm trading in my return flight for an apartment.

And some Hungarian language lessons.

I. am. never. leaving.

(I'll be home by 7pm New York time).

That's right, there's cereal in my cookies.

When you're moving cities it's important to eat all the things you are going to miss when you're gone. 

Wings from the Dugout... 

Ice Cream and Chicken from the Big Dipper...

It's important to go with friends... 

It's important to use up all the stray baking ingredients hiding in your kitchen...

It's important to do so by making absolutely delicious compost cookies... 

I'm a little late jumping on the compost cookie bandwagon but better late than never, right? I threw in chocolate, white chocolate, dried fruit, and cereal. That's right, there's cereal in my cookies. I also threw in cornmeal in place of some of the flour just because I could. Basically, if a cowboy cookie and a Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookie had a child, it would turn out like this. I called them compostin' cowboy cookies because of their mixed breed but really, all that matters is how they taste.

I actually wasn't expecting such a delicious result, because I usually like my cookies simpler, but I was pleasantly surprised. The crispy brown rice cereal gives an unexpected chewy crunch and you really can't go wrong with both dark and white chocolate. The raisins and dried cherries are good but you could easily replace them with nuts if dried fruit isn't your thing. 

Compostin' Cowboy Cookies 

Typically compost cookies have potato chips in them but I don't think potato chips really have much place in this world outside bars, BBQs and football games - plus I didn't have any at home. Pretzels on the other hand would definitely go over well because salty and sweet might just be the best combination out there. Feel free to throw in whatever you have on hand, salty, sweet, crunchy, chewy, whatever. I listed a few variations at the bottom. 

Makes about 27 large cookies 

225 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

250g turbinado sugar 

180g sucanat 

1 tbsp honey 

1 tsp vanilla extract 

2 eggs 

300g whole wheat pastry flour 

115g stone ground cornmeal 

2 tsp kosher salt 

1 tsk baking soda 

2 tsp baking powder 

200g dark chocolate chips 

200g white chocolate chips 

150g crispy brown rice cereal 

200g mixed raisins and dried cherries 

Stand mixer or electric hand mixer is must for these cookies. 

Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and syrup for three minutes until fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs and beat for ten minutes. It will be very thick, and fluffy. 

Mix flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in a separate bowl, and add this to the cookie batter. 

Stir as little as possible to combine them. 

Add your mix-ins and stir just to combine. 

Shape large balls -I used my 3 tablespoon cookie scoop - and place on greased baking sheets, leaving a lot of room in between. I fit five cookies per sheet. 

Bake immediately or refrigerate until ready to use. 

Bake at 350°F for 9-11 minutes. 

Important note: Let them cool completely on the sheet or they will fall apart. 

Other Variations: 

-Replace the cornmeal with additional whole wheat pastry flour 

-Replace the cornmeal with rye flour 

-Replace the sucanat with dark or light brown sugar (cookies will be sweeter with dark) 

-Replace the sucanat with dark or light muscovado sugar (cookies will be sweeter with dark) 

-Replace the turbinado sugar with white sugar or another refined or unrefined sugar 

-Replace the chocolate, white chocolate, cereal and dried fruit with 500-600g of whatever mix-ins you have on hand. Traditional Momofuku Compost cookies have some combination of potato chips, pretzels, and chocolate. Pecans, walnuts and/or mac nuts would be good. 

-Add 100-200g of shredded unsweetened coconut 

-More mix-in suggestions: Peanut butter chips, heath bar bits, m&m's, peanut m&m's, butterscotch chips, mini Rolos, mini peanut butter cups

Gluten-Free Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

I think I need to take a computer course. Isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t my generation supposed to be naturally computer savvy?

Unfortunately I seem to have missed out on the “computer genius” gene and I’ve been struggling with uploading pictures off my camera (among other things). The program just shuts down every time I plug in the camera. I feel like I spend at least 75% of my day troubleshooting cursing at my computer and it makes me want to unplug it, toss it out the window, and move to the country. 

Am I crazy or are there other people out there who feel like technology is sometimes frequently more trouble than it's worth? I feel really old and crabby saying that but it's true, I hate computers.

I'm very frustrated because I had this great post planned for you guys; with some pictures from my race on Saturday (my boat placed second), a few scenes from opening day at the farmer’s market (I bought 5lbs of honey), and these delicious cookies I made for my rowers. I've been putting off posting about these things since Saturday because I can't seem to get the pictures off my camera. At this point I didn't want to wait any longer to share these cookies with you, so I've decided to post without pictures and update when I'm finally able to load them.
Edit: I was able to get pictures of the cookies off my camera but now I'm having trouble again so no market pictures.

Gluten-Free Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Elana's Pantry. Yields about 24 Cookies.

I'm not allergic to gluten, nor are any of the guys who I made these cookies for but I’ve been wanting to try baking almond meal for a while. Unfortunately, the only company available in Binghamton is Bob’s Red Mill and I’ve read only bad reviews about it (dry, crumbly etc) – plus it’s about  $10 a pound. The Trader Joe’s* brand, however, is significantly cheaper and has a much better texture. It is a meal and not a flour so its not very finely ground but it adds great texture to cookies or a sturdier cake – just don’t try to make angel food cake with it.

These have a softer chewier texture, more like an oatmeal cookie. I received nothing but positive feedback on them but I want to cut down on the fat content - 10g per cookie is a bit high for me but that's due to the almonds. Since I'm not concerned with keeping them gluten-free, I'm going to try replacing a small portion of the almond meal with whole wheat flour. If you want to maintain the gluten-free properties but still want to cut down on fat, I suspect oat flour would do the trick nicely. However, If you want to replace more than 1 cup of the almond meal, you'll also need to increase the oil to replace the fat lost from the almonds.

These cookies are only slightly sweet so if you prefer yours sweeter I would suggest using maple syrup instead of honey or even half syrup, half honey. The syrup will add a slightly different almost caramelized flavor.

2 ½ cups almond meal**

1/2 teaspoon baking soda


1/2 teaspoon salt


1/2 cup honey (see headnotes)

1/2 cup light olive oil

1 tablespoon vanilla extract


1/2 cup extra dark chocolate chips***

Preheat oven to 350F

Combine all ingredients, except the chocolate chips, in a medium bowl. Mix well. Mix in chocolate chips and refrigerate for 20 minutes. On parchment-lined baking sheet, drop round (generous) tablespoonfuls of dough, spacing 2 inches apart. If dough seems dry and rigid, flatten a bit. If you like ultra chewy cookies, flatten dough into discs before baking.

Bake for 7-9 minutes, until lightly golden (If you like crisper cookies, bake 9-10 minutes.). It's important to let them cool on baking sheet for a full 10-20 minutes to set, otherwise they will just fall apart.

Notes

*The last time I was on Long Island I got a little carried away at Trader Joe's since we don't have one in Binghamton - I think I bought something like 9 pounds of almond meal. Oops.

**Be sure to store an opened bag of almond meal in the fridge or even the freezer so that it does not go rancid from the fat.

***I've been hearing a lot of good reviews on Guittard chocolate so I bought a bag of their extra dark chocolate chips. The result? They were good, but i prefer the larger size and flatter shape of my usual Ghirardelli 60% Dark chips.