I’ve been wanting to get involved in the Royal Foodie Joust* (see the Foodie Blogroll thing on the right) for awhile but before this month either the ingredients were too precious for me to play around with or I just didn’t have the time. 
And I almost didn’t have the time this month – I forgot about it until 2 weeks ago, but we were busy preparing for a family trip, and then when we returned we were so busy catching back up on work that the week just flew past – but it kept floating around in the back of my mind, so I decided to try anyway, even if I couldn’t actually enter the contest. Luckily for me, the deadline was extended a few days, so today I gathered up my ingredients and all of the random possibilities that had been parading through my mind. The result totally surprised me!
The three ingredients that had to be included in the dish were honey, turmeric, and banana.
I started off by thinking of what might go with the individual ingredients. I came up with all kinds of things that could go with honey or banana but was rather stumped on the turmeric so I kind of ignored it until I absolutely had to deal with it.
But the one that I really latched onto was honey. I used to work in a cafe that make oat groats as an alternative to oatmeal for breakfast. The chewiness and nuttiness of the groats is a perfect accompaniment to the gentle, almost tangy sweetness of clover honey. From there, the concept grew as I worked…
I also dragged out all of the spices I thought might work in the dish so that I would have them on hand right then. Some, I had to smell or taste to remember what they were like, but I came up with a pretty good selection.
- 1 cup of water
- 1/2 cup of oat groats (other groats might work nicely too if you want to try them)
uncooked oat groats
Bring the water to a boil. Pour in the groats and make sure they are completely covered by the water. Simmer, covered, stirring occasionally. If you need to, you can add a little more hot water so that they don’t burn but typically they should be done when the water is mostly gone. This takes about 10-15 minutes in my experience. The goal was to get them chewy.
Once they were cooked, I added
- 1 tspn of butter
- 4 tspns of clover honey
- 1 tspn of cornstarch
- 1/2 tspn of turmeric
- 2 Tbspns of wheat flour
Since my idea was to make a sort of crust similar to a graham cracker crust on a cheesecake, but the groats aren’t small enough to clump together on their own, I had to add the cornstarch and wheat flour. The turmeric really caused problems here, since it cut into the sweet flavor of the honey and left a weird (not good) aftertaste. So I put a little of the mixture into a tiny bowl and started testing some of my potential spices on it. From reading the side of my turmeric bottle, I learned that it is a member of the ginger family, so after a few bad attempts, I put in some ginger.
It was lovely, but still didn’t take away enough of the turmeric aftertaste. I knew nutmeg would go with ginger, and sure enough it did. I added a little cinnamon to round out the classic trio of pie spices:
- 1/4-1/2 tspn of ginger
- 1/2 tspn of freshly ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tspn of cinnamon
Finally, it tasted right, strong but exactly what I was looking for. I sprayed my silicone muffin cups with some butter Pam and carefully spread the mixture across the bottom. Then I heated the oven to 425F and baked the groat crust for about 10 minutes. It came out like a little chewy, bendy, spicy cookie – delicious!
While that was cooking, I started to throw together some other ingredients without any clear idea of how they would work together but hoping that whatever it was would be creamy and subtle.
- 1/2 cup of egg whites from a carton
- 1/4 tspn of lemon peel
- 2 tspns of white sugar
- 3 Tbspns of ricotta cheese
- 1 Tbspn of coconut milk
- 1 mashed-up, overripe banana
- 1 tspn of cornstarch
- 1/4 tspn of baking powder
First, I beat the egg whites, lemon peel, and white sugar until it was frothy. I thought it would be fun if I could manage to make a meringue but was perfectly satisfied with the indestructibly foamy mixture that I got instead. In another bowl, I whisked the ricotta and coconut milk together, then added it into the foamy mixture and whisked again. Then I mashed the banana as much as I could (which wasn’t hard since I had defrosted it from the freezer and they are very soft and slimy that way) and mixed that into everything else. A little concerned about how liquid it was and whether or not it would hold together, I added the cornstarch. The baking powder, I hoped, would help it stay fluffy.
When all of this was mixed together, I poured it into the muffin cups that still held the groat crust. There were two crusts that I didn’t have anything to put over so I took them out. Then I baked the whole thing for 15 minutes at 400F; I knew they were done when the tops got slightly brown spots and a fork through the middle came out clean.
I let them cool a little bit, then pulled one out – which required a little work around the edges and under the crust to keep the crust and the top from separating – and took a bite. It was perfect!
Though I think they’re delicious just like this, Brad wanted some brown sugar sprinkled on the top of his. We even burnt some sugar on, since we’d just found a little culinary torch today while going through our house trying to find stuff to put in his grandma’s garage sale next weekend. The caramelization was wonderful, too.
I am so excited about my wonderful little invention, and I hope the directions I have here aren’t too confusing so that you can replicate them if you want to.
*The Royal Foodie Joust is run by The Leftover Queen from her very awesome forums, where you should go and vote for me!
