Ardency

Posted by Heidi Swanson

https://www.101cookbooks.com/strawberry-scones/

https://www.101cookbooks.com/?p=17412

There are some things to know before you jump into making these strawberry scones. First, the foundation of a great scone is a good recipe and cold ingredients. The cold ingredients will make the dough much easier to work with. Second, let your scones bake long enough, really keep an eye on things. For the scone style you see here, you don’t want pale. Much of the flavor happens as the sugars, and butter, and edges of each scone brown. Lastly, scones made with fresh fruit are best warm from the oven. Bake just before you want to enjoy them whenever possible. Or do a quick reheat.

Strawberry Scones: The Ingredients

A few words about the ingredients I use here and why.

• Flours: Most scone recipes use all-purpose flour exclusively. But I find that adding a percentage of whole wheat flour can really anchor a scone and bring flavor dimension. Don’t worry, you won’t run into any dreaded whole-wheat dryness with these. The whole wheat flour really lends rustic farmhouse vibes in the best way possible with a tender crumb. Now when I go back to tasting more conventional scones, they end up tasting too one-dimensional to me.
• Sugar: I’ve baked these scones with a rotating cast of sugars over the years. Different amounts, different types. I feel like this recipe needs the sharp edge of white sugar to balance the other ingredients in these scones – for example, the tangy buttermilk or sour cream. Just sweet enough is what I was after here, and for whatever reason the brown sugar tend to get lost. And a blend didn’t do the job either.
  
• Other: I use quite a bit less baking powder and baking soda than other scone recipes. You don’t really need more than the amount in this recipe, and the buttermilk neutralizes any residual off flavor from the leavening agents.

Variations:

The recipe below is for classic strawberry scones with a bit of zest. Aside from the zest, they’re straight-forward, direct, a good scone foundation. That said, I often switch them up with one or two of the following:

• citrus: zest of one lemon  or lime (mix into wet ingredients)
• rosemary: I love the combination of strawberry and rosemary. Finely chop 2 five-inch sprigs of rosemary – 1 1/2 teaspoons or so. (Add to dry ingredients)
• black pepper: black pepper and strawberry are a classic combination. Add scant 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper to dry ingredients. Adjust with more in future batches if you love it.
• poppy seeds: add 1/3 cup to dry ingredients.
• toasted almonds: be sure they’ve cooled completely. (Add to dry ingredients)
• crystalized ginger: adds jolts of chewy ginger sugar. Chop it small and add it along with the wet ingredients.
• icing: lot of people like an iced drizzle over their scones. If you would rather have a drizzle top, here’s the plan. Use lemon zest in place of the orange zest called for in the recipe. Skip the sugar sprinkle, but do the egg wash. Allow scones to cool completely after baking, and use the salted lemon glaze from this glazed lemon cake recipe. Or do half and half so you can enjoy the sugar-topped scones warm.

Making Strawberry Scones By Hand

The recipe below assumes you have an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, but making them by hand is also possible and will save you some dishes! To make these scones by hand, watch the above video and reference these instructions:

1. Mix the dry ingredients well and then turn out into a pile on your counter top. Sprinkle the cold butter across the flour mixture and use your hands to rub the butter into the flour until it is evenly distributed throughout. You can use a dough scraper (or pastry cutter) to chop through the pile a bit and break up any butter lumps. You want the mixture to be sandy, with tiny pebbles.
2. Shape: Wrangle the flour mixture back into a pile with a dough scraper and make a well in the middle (the way you do when making homemade pasta). Pour the wet ingredients into the well and use your dough scraper to fold and mix the flour into the wet ingredients. Keep going until there is no dry flour left and a dough has started to form. At this point sprinkle the berries across the top, and fold them into the mixture as well.
   
3. Gather the dough into a ball and proceed with the recipe as written – slicing the dough into wedges and so forth.

More Scone Recipes

• Blackberry Ricotta Scones
• all baking recipes

More Scone Recipes

• Blackberry Ricotta Scones
• Rangpur Lime Scones
• all baking recipes

More Strawberry Recipes

• Roasted Strawberries
• Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble
• Homemade Strawberry Almond Milk
• Red Fruit Salad
• Berry Swirl Ice Cream
• all strawberry recipes

Continue reading Strawberry Scones on 101 Cookbooks

https://www.101cookbooks.com/strawberry-scones/

https://www.101cookbooks.com/?p=17412

Posted by Heidi Swanson

https://www.101cookbooks.com/feel-good-lunch-ideas/

https://www.101cookbooks.com/?p=13972

Coming up with inspired lunch ideas takes some effort. One of the things I’ve been trying to be better about is lunches on-the-go. Often times, let’s be honest, it’s re-marketing leftovers. Too often, if we’re not going to be home for the day, we just wing it. And I’m nearly always sorry we didn’t make the effort to pack a good lunch. This is especially true if we’re on some sort of trip, towing the Airstream. Because on those days parking dictates where you’re lunching. And just thinking about it is making me cringe. So yeah, we’re trying to do better over here and I thought I’d share some recent wins.

Lunch Ideas #1 

These lunch boxes (above) came together pretty quickly. Nearly everything was a leftover, or component of a previous meal. To pull it together I peeled and chile-dusted the hard boiled eggs, sliced the avocado and sliced the mandarin.

1. Spicy Sesame Coleslaw: You’ve seen it before, you’ll see it again. Lol. It’s my favorite coleslaw, and I’ll basically tuck in anywhere. Feathery green and red cabbages along with carrots, apples, and scallions tossed with a spicy, creamy sesame dressing.

2. Pickled Cauliflower: The pop of color you need in your lunch. This quick pickled cauliflower delivers a good amount of tang and crunch in the midst of less structured components. I make mine with chiles, mustard seeds and slivered onion, but you can play around.

3. Chile-dusted Hard-boiled Egg: Here’s how to make these. Combine equal parts chile powder and MDH chana masala powder in a small bowl. I like to use this Kashmiri chillie powder, but use what you have (and like). Hard boil eggs, peel them, rinse, dab each egg a bit on a clean towel to take off excess water, then roll them around in the spice mixture until completely covered. Slice and serve, or pack into lunch.

4. Turmeric-Scallion Tofu Spread: This is actually leftover wonton filling from my last round of wonton soup. But it’s also great as a lettuce wrap filling, cracker and sandwich spread, and on its own. Here, I nestle it into a stack of 2-3 little gem leaves. Get the recipe – it’s the first part of the recipe on this page, minus the wrappers.

5. Red-spiced Edamame: I’ll write this up as its own recipe soon, it’s a homemade spice blend made by crushing Kashmiri chillies, smoked paprika, brown sugar, sesame, dried onion flakes, salt, and a kiss of cardamom together. Sprinkle generously. There are a lot of other spice blend ideas in the Spice / Herb / Flower / Zest PDF that members get. Just about any of those are great here. Experiment!

6. Pepita & Curry Leaf Tadka: I’ve definitely over-stripped my young curry tree making this lately. Toast a cup of pepitas and set aside. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stir in 50-ish fresh curry leaves. Continue to stir and when the leaves begin to crisp up add 2 teaspoons black mustard seeds. Keep stirring and when the seeds have toasted a bit and stopped popping, add 1/2 teaspoon chile powder. Pour this over your pepitas, toss well, and salt to taste. good on everything, Including the soba in the next lunch.

Also: purple rice, sliced avocado, mandarin wedge, nutritional yeast kale chips

Lunch Ideas #2 

The one component of the lunch boxes (above) that wasn’t made ahead of time, was the soba noodles. I boiled them, and ran them under cold water just before packing up. 

6+. Soba with Pepita & Curry Leaf Tadka:  The same pepitas as above (lunch ideas #1), this time tangled with cold soba.

7. Vegan Tamagoyaki: This is a vegan version of tamagoyaki, the much-loved Japanese rolled omelette. I like to make chickpea-tofu version, and this one is lined with nori and seasoned with scallions and herbs. They’re fantastic lunchbox heroes because you can make and roll them ahead of time. They’ll keep for a few day so you can slice and go.

8. Blistered Artichoke Hearts: Leftovers from dinner the previous night. I cooked these from frozen. So easy, so good. I wrote a long post about how to cook artichokes – both fresh and frozen. So, if you love artichokes, but think they’re too much work, read this. Same goes if you think the frozen ones are going to be bad. They aren’t and they’re great in scenarios like this one, quick pastas, casseroles, etc.

9. Fava Beans Tossed with Citrus Olive Oil: These are fava beans that have been shelled, boiled for a flash, shelled again, and then splashed with a bit of lemon olive oil, and tossed with a pinch of salt. From previous dinner. I do the same with edamame, but favas are in season and I they’re worth all the shelling and peeling drama.

10. Kale Chips: Some extra crushed kale chips tossed with the remaining pepitas. My method for epic kale chips is this: buy curly kale, make sure it’s dry if you recently washed it. Toss the kale with olive oil and scrunch it all up with your hands, be sure it’s all coated. Toss with a lot of nutritional yeast, get a good coating going. Season with salt and bake at until the chips at the edges start browning. Toss well. Continue to bake until crispy but still mostly green. Or have a look at this kale chip recipe.

Also: blood orange wedges for dessert.

A Couple Pro-tips

There’s actually just one main tip, but I’ll add more as I think of them. Line your bentos with parchment paper for easy clean-up (pictured below).  This isn’t as important with stainless steel containers, they clean up quite quickly. Bentos, often made of cedar, are a bit more fragile and take more care if you want them to last for many years. Also, clean up as soon as you get home. The reset is key to looking forward to your next special box lunch.

More Lunch Ideas: Salads!

Salads are another favorite lunch idea. For the best experience, keep the dressing on the side and toss just before eating. Also, pro-tip, leave a good amount of room or headspace in your salad vehicle, so tossing is contained and less messy. For to-go or desk salads, I love bringing the components for a Nicoise salad or Nicoise-ish salad. The lettuces and other ingredients can stand up to transportation and you get a great mix of protein, greens, and veggies all in one lunch. See photo below.

Favorite Lunchbox Containers

Bentos: I have (and love) my small collection of bento boxes. They’re beautifully crafted and fit the perfect amount of food. They often come with small dividers to create separation between food, but you can also use lettuce, or other small containers to divide things up. 

Tiffins (or dhabbas): These containers have long been used in India to enable healthful, homemade meals outside the home. I have a circular, triple-stack stainless steel version I love for a number of reasons including durability, compactness, and security. The tiers nestle tightly making spills and accidents unlikely. I have my eye on a rectangular version as well.

Both bentos and tiffins have a tradition of enabling meals made with care and love. And continuing this tradition is something I try to channel when I’m packing a lunch for myself or someone I care about.

I don’t mind mixing different types of lunch containers. And sometimes I’ll make an individual lunch for each person, each in its own container. But, other times I think it’s fine to load up a few family-style containers and do it that way. I think that works great for components that can be more communal, like edamame, or a bunch of dumplings, a stack of paratha, vegan sushi or quesadillas, quinoa patties, etc.

Hot Lunch!

Use a thermos to bring hot miso soup or tea or rasam or whatever else you can think of. This is always the icing on the cake and unfailingly makes me happy (or happier!) When I really have things lined up, I’ll bring green tea, miso soup, or soba tea and a durable glass or two wrapped in cloth. Simply rewrap when you’re finished.

I hope this provides a bit of inspiration! It’s really wonderful to take a bit of time to sit down to a thoughtfully prepared, healthful homemade lunch and I’m never sorry about making the extra effort (in the long run). Even if it can make a morning a bit more demanding than usual, I know when I do it, I’ll eat better, feel better, and get excited about sitting down to lunch. Enjoy! -h

More Lunch Ideas

• Vegetarian Lunch Ideas: One Sauce, Three Lunches
• 10 Lunch Ideas that Spark Joy
• Otsu
• Vegan Sushi
• Quinoa Patties
• Mushroom Hand Pies
• Black Sesame Otsu
• Macro Bowls

Continue reading Feel-good Lunch Ideas on 101 Cookbooks

https://www.101cookbooks.com/feel-good-lunch-ideas/

https://www.101cookbooks.com/?p=13972