Ginger-Peach Oat Bran Muffins

Peaches are in season—hallelujah! And you know how it goes: You get a big mess of ’em, then soon discover that your strategy of “doling out” those precious, special gems isn’t working—you wake up a few mornings later to find they’re getting softer than they ought to.

And this is why people bake with fresh peaches. Otherwise, you would just suck them up raw, like you should’ve done in the first place!




And anyway, it’s time to share with you a new oat bran muffin recipe! Click here to see the ones I’ve posted so far.

Here’s why I’m addicted to oat bran muffins: They’re delicious, compact, and portable. They’re filling without being fattening (that is, they have lots of fiber), but they never make me feel, well, bloated. With all that fiber, it’s good for the, ah, digestion. And then there’s the whole oat-bran/cholesterol thing.

Also, I believe one or two oat bran muffins, plus some good, fresh fruit, makes an excellent breakfast for losing weight (kind of like “Slim Fast,” minus the spooky additives and outrageous price tag). Great for snacking, too.




Ginger-Peach Oat Bran Muffins

As I’ve mentioned before, the basic recipe’s a blank slate that can be taken in all sorts of flavorful directions, and I can make up mixes ahead of time, making a morning’s baking very easy.

Note that the basic recipe doesn’t include the egg yolks, and uses instead only two tablespoons of vegetable oil (or olive or canola—your choice). Additional liquid can be skim milk or 2 percent, or evaporated skim milk, or low-fat yogurt, or fruit juice . . . take your pick.

So, here’s the basic recipe (for convenience, I usually buy a big bag of oat bran at the bulk store, then make up several batches with the dry ingredients, then store in the fridge in zip bags):

(((Preheat oven at 425 degrees F)))

2 1/4 c. oat bran cereal
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 c. brown sugar

To the basic dry ingredients, I add these special flavors for this recipe:

--1/4 or 1/3 cup chopped candied ginger (see below)
--a small pinch of ground cloves (optional)

In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients:

--3 egg whites, or equivalent in egg substitute
--2 tbs. vegetable oil
--3 very ripe peaches, pitted, peeled, and mashed, including all their juices

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, then stir to combine. If necessary, add additional liquid (yogurt, milk, water, etc.); consistency should be similar to corn muffin batter.

Spoon into prepared muffin tins (use paper muffin cups or spray with Pam). (Makes 1 dozen.)

Bake for about 13 minutes and check; they might need to go for about 15 or 17 minutes total. Don’t overcook them. They’re done when they’re a little golden on top and a toothpick comes out clean.




About Candied Ginger

Oh, yum! If you haven’t yet “discovered” candied ginger, you’re in for a real treat! For baking, it’s a wonderful “secret weapon.” Baking tends to mellow its intensity and bring out its pure sweetness. I like to add chopped candied ginger to a pumpkin pie. Ooh, I bet it’d be good with cooked sweet potatoes or butternut squash, if you’re taking it in the “brown sugar/cinnamon” direction.

Also, I think it’s delicious as a zippy little snack—sweet and hot, very intense!—or as an addition to a really good cheese platter, just like you might include a few dried apricots or nice big golden raisins. A little goes a long way.

(Okay, now my mouth is watering!)

Where do you get candied ginger? Well, you can often buy little bitty jars of it in the “spices” section of a regular supermarket—for an arm and a leg! Seriously, that’s too dear for general cooking. Like cardamom, candied ginger is something worth going to an international grocery or bulk store for.

You can buy bulk candied ginger at Global Foods in St. Louis, for instance, or at the Dutch Bakery in Tipton. The price might vary widely, from three to five dollars a pound, but this is more or less like the price of dried apricots, so it’s not outrageous (and still better than buying it off a supermarket spice rack). Like raisins, candied ginger keeps well on a shelf, and it’s great to have on hand for any number of purposes, so I encourage you to try it out!

Cantaloupe Sorbet

Melons—Sweet juiciness in frosty pulp. The high water content of melons makes them the most refreshing of hot-weather fruits, but for the same reason they are not suitable for cooking into sauces or pies. Chill them in the refrigerator, in the creek, or in the shade. Cut out a thick crescent and bite in. Don’t you wish your mouth was bigger?

—Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (Boulder: Shambhala, 1973), 115.

Yesterday, my friends, I had occasion to drive out Highway 50 to Sedalia, and as I returned I stopped for provisions at the Dutch Bakery, a Mennonite-owned market in Tipton. My prime objective was to visit the bulk-grains aisle and replenish my stock of oat bran for my famous muffins.

Then I got sidetracked by the carts and carts of ripe local watermelons and cantaloupes. I leaned over and poked my nose down into the cantaloupes—inhaled—ahh, there we go! I had to buy one!

It was large, and there’s only two of us, so I decided to cut up half to eat “plain,” and then to “do something else” with the other half. . . . But what to do?

When I’m looking for interesting things to do with vegetables and fruits, I tend to consult two books: Tassajara Cooking, by Edward Espe Brown, and the much more recent Farmer’s John’s Cookbook, which I also love. (Remember the chilled cucumber-mint soup? What an awesome recipe!)

Both books offer fresh ideas for flavor combinations. Brown, in Tassajara Cooking, suggests the interesting combination of fresh cantaloupe drizzled with lemon juice and topped with a mound of cashew butter (“Cantaloupe Fancies,” p. 115).

I would have never thought of that, but although cashews aren’t my thing, I’ll bet this combination would send some people over the moon.

Farmer John offers recipes for a cantaloupe-and-tomato salad, for instance, and for “Cantaloupe and Cardamom,” which is fresh-cut cantaloupe jazzed up by ground cardamom, some fresh lime juice, a bit of black pepper, and chopped fresh cilantro (p. 214).

Again, I wouldn’t have come up with that combination on my own—but it is indeed very interesting; adding those flavors makes you “interpret” cantaloupe in a whole new way.

I landed on this cantaloupe sorbet recipe from Farmer John’s Cookbook. (I’ve been using the ice cream maker a lot recently!)




Below is essentially the same exact recipe as provided in—note the official, complete bibliographic citation—Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, with Lesley Littlefield Freeman, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2006), 214. I have made slight amendments, but quantities and ingredients are the same.

This sorbet is incredibly refreshing, and it lacks the strong, puckery-sweet quality that other sorbets usually have. The cantaloupe (not sugar) is unmistakably the star ingredient, and the ginger adds an addictive je ne sais quoi.

Farmer John’s Cookbook says this recipe serves 4—and it’s light enough you could eat a lot of it at a sitting—but I think it serves a lot more than four people, considering sorbet is usually served in little dabs.

Ginger Melon Sorbet

—approx. 4 cups cantaloupe, cut into cubes (about half of a large cantaloupe)
—1/2 cup sugar
—1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
—2 tbsp. grated ginger (see neat trick below!)
—garnish: mint leaves

Add all ingredients into food processor or blender and purée until smooth. Depending on capacity of food processor, you might have to work in batches.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Now, for your bonus cooking tip, check this out!

Convenient Grated Ginger

When I’m in a rush (which is most of the time), I have tended to avoid recipes calling for fresh-grated ginger because of the preparation ginger requires. And no matter what grater-gadget I used, I always scuffed my knuckles at the end, or else it seemed that I always had a nubbin of ginger in the fridge that I never used up.

But here’s a neat trick to make fresh ginger be more convenient. I learned this from the St. Louis mother-and-daughter “Punjabi Home Cooking” team of Aman and Gurcharan Aulakh. They use ginger a lot!

Peel a large bunch of ginger and chop it up (I recommend slicing it very thinly against the fibers), then pulse in a food processor to grind it up. Add some water if you need to. Transfer it to a zip bag (don't make it very thick), squeeze all the air out, and seal. Freeze. Then, when you need “fresh grated ginger,” it’s always on hand; just break off what you need (that's why it needs to be a rather thin layer, so you can break it). It’s not technically “fresh,” but it’s incredibly close, and the convenience rocks!

(You can also process and freeze fresh garlic, too; this comes in handy when you’re cooking Indian food and must start off nearly every dish with some garlic in the skillet!)