Saturday, October 25, 2008

dreaming of feta

I'm too tired this morning for too much in the way of flowery language, at least most likely. I've been averaging about six hours of sleep a night, which has actually been just fine until today. It's been relatively easy to fall asleep (around 1, usually) and wake up (usually around 7), and I haven't felt particularly tired or cranky. But this morning, my brain is a little slow, and I'm thinking tomorrow is the morning to sleep in until 8 or even (gasp) 9 and hope it doesn't throw my whole schedule off again. This is actually almost exactly what my high school sleep schedule was like, and that gives me less faith in the wisdom of sleeping in than I'd like to have.
Anyway...
Last night Madeleine came over in the rain and bearing a lovely bottle of red wine, and we made a slew of new recipes. Here's the menu:
Green salad with lemon dressing (lemon juice, olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of sugar)
Basil-feta-pine nut muffins
Spaghetti squash with red sauce, walnuts, and mozzarella
Lemon tofu pie with raspberry coulis (made from raspberries I picked in Michigan!)
And happily, even with all of the new recipes, everything turned out well. I was, however, particularly pleased with the muffins, because I modified a recipe and was completely happy with the results.
When I was in Alaska, I bought a pesto pine nut muffin (or something like that) and was kind of disappointed by how dry it was. (Sorry, Black Bear. But my muffins kicked your muffins' asses.) But I'd been scheming ever since and finally decided to give it a shot. I found a recipe online for sundried tomato muffins that could be modified, so I messed with it and here's the result.

Basil-Feta-Pine Nut Muffins

1/2 cup plain cottage cheese
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1/4 cup flour (this can be made with soy flour for gluten reasons, but I just used all-purpose)
1 cup almonds, very finely ground (I used almond flour, but you can apparently just whizz up some almonds in the blender)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup basil, finely chopped
1/4 cup water
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt

Just mix it all together and bake in a pre-heated 400-degree oven for 30-35 minutes until set and golden on top. Makes nine muffins. Let them cool before eating. So moist and delicious and tangy! I'm definitely going to try this base with other ingredients.

3 comments:

Rosiecat24 said...

Your muffins sound like little cheesy crustless quiches! I've been into quiche and other other eggy things lately. I'm putting your recipe on my list of things to make :-) Now, I know that I just wrote about how out of control my recipe list is, but I've decided to prune it, so perhaps your muffins (this recipe and the pineapple-cornmeal ones) will get their chance in my kitchen after all.

Happy Hump Day ;-)

a said...

They weren't too eggy to taste, which was good for me as that's something that can easily make me dislike something. (Eggs are one of my last vegan holdouts; they just don't taste good to me anymore, for the most part.) But these were so yummy! I seem to be on a muffin kick lately...

Anonymous said...

Hurrah, here's the tasty muffin recipe! Thanks again for dinner!