Apple Snitz is everywhere this time of the year.  The apples are harvested in the fall and over winter the slices dry. Apple Snitz or Schnitz, is a Pennsylvania German (Pa Dutch) term for dried apple slices. Last Saturday I took my mom to Central Market in Lancaster and we stocked up on local produce, enjoyed lunch at a middle eastern stand, and enjoyed each other's company. I picked up two bags of apple snitz, one from tart apples the other sweet apples, two large acorn squash, spring onions, red potatoes, dried beans, rolled oats, and more.

While the season is still cold this early March, I thought I'd enjoy one last winter meal  before spring begins. This recipe combines the sweet flavors of dried apples, sugared dried ginger, with the nutty flavors in the bulgur and squash.

Stuffed Acorn Squash with Bulgur, Apple Snitz, and Ginger
Serves 2 as a main dish

1 large acorn squash, halved, seeds removed
1 cup bulgur
2 cups water
1/4 generous cup roughly chopped low sugar dried ginger
1/4 generous cup roughly chopped tart apple snitz
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped
drizzle of your favorite nut oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add bulgur and cover. Reduce heat. While bulgur is cooking chop ginger and apple snitz. Near to the very end of cooking add chopped ginger, apple snitz, and chipotle pepper to the bulgur. Cover for approximately 5 minutes, stir and fluff with a fork. Reserve to the side. Place squash with their flesh facing towards you in an oven safe pan and using a spoon fill the centers with the bulgur mixture. Fill the bottom of the pan with 1" of water to surround the squash, careful not to splash. Drizzle the smallest amount of walnut oil on top of the filled squash, then cover. Bake for approximately 50 mins or until the squash is fork tender. Remove from oven and serve. 

Heidi Swanson, author of www.101cookbooks.com and one of my favorite cookbooks, Super Natural Cooking, had these two recipes on her website. I made both of these after work on day before going to a Halloween gathering. I'll share with you my variations.

Warm Red Cabbage Salad
Swanson's recipe for Warm Red Cabbage Salad originally comes from the Tassajara Cookbook. This is another cookbook from the Tassajara Zen Buddhist retreat center in California. Their cuisine is vegetarian.  My variations on Swanson's adaptation include using goat cheese rather than feta and adding extra raisins; I love the sweetness of goat cheese. If you choose to use goat cheese rather than feta, make sure the salad has cooled a bit, as the goat cheese will melt and the salad will become creamy. Only put in extra raisins if you feel your company would enjoy them, I noticed a few folks picked out the raisins and onions. The ingredients are: sunflower seeds, onions, garlic, red cabbage, fresh rosemary, raisins, balsamic vinegar and goat cheese. The cabbage is cooked till tender with the sauteed garlic and onions but not so much that it collapses, you don't want soft cabbage. Swanson's recipe can be found on her website. It is quite good and a great way to use the fresh red cabbage available this time of year.


Roasted Pumpkin Salad
Swanson's Roasted Pumpkin Recipe is another quite delicious warm salad. I plan on making adaptations of this recipe in the future by using a variety of grains and vegetables. The salad is made with a wild rice medley, folded with roasted pumpkin and red onions. The dressing is a blend of wildflower honey, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and lime juice. Fresh chopped cilantro is folded in. Use a butternut squash or a similar squash that will hold its' shape as a sugar pumpkin will have the tendency to break down when you fold it in. Swanson calls for lemon juice but I had lime juice readily available; lime and cilantro is a good combination. The purple hues in the wild rice are a nice contrast to the orange squash and work well with the red onions. Leave the onions in circles, and they'll lay nicely in the serving bowl as you'll see in Swanson's beautiful photo.   

   

I've been baking through Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day, and finding recipes to use the refrigerated dough, the same dough that I mixed to make their variation on Brötchen. Here, I cut off the refrigerated dough I needed to make two pizzas and a fougasse.

Eggplant Flatbread Pizza
Serves 4-6

1 handful of refrigerated Brötchen dough (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe)
3/4 of an eggplant, cut into 1/4 round slices
3 shallots, peeled and sliced
1 fresh long holy mole pepper, rinsed and cut into medallions
1/2 of a large fresh mozzarella ball, cut into 1/4 chunks
Freshly ground pepper, salt,
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 350degrees. Drizzle eggplant slices with olive oil, sprinkle with grated salt and pepper and place into the oven. Partially bake for about 10-15 minutes. Do not completely cook or cook the entire way through. Remove from oven, cool.

Raise the heat of your oven to 450degrees and set your pizza stone inside your oven.

While eggplant is cooling and your pizza stone is warming, prepare to roll out your pizza dough on your counter. You'll need a little bit of flour to work the dough, but don't overwork it. Stretch it to fill the equivalent size of your pizza stone, or until your dough is about 1/8" thick. I roll it pretty thin and leave the edges thick. I roll and stretch my dough on parchment paper. The paper will move quite a bit, but it's easier to transfer the pie while still on the parchment paper to the heated stone in the oven.

Place eggplant, mozzarella, shallots, pepper, on the dough, leaving about 1" border on all sides. Drizzle with olive oil. Add salt, pepper to your liking. Pick up the flatbread by the parchment paper and lay it onto your hot pizza stone. Bake for about 25 minutes at 450 degrees. I like a crispy crust. Twice during baking I sprayed a fine mist of water into my oven. Due to my own oven's inconsistent way of baking, I usually rotate halfway through baking time. Remove and cool before serving.

Margherita Pizza with fresh pizza sauce
Serves 4-6

1 handful of refrigerated Brötchen dough (from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day)
3/4 of a cup of pizza sauce
1/2 of a large ball of fresh mozzarella
Fresh Basil and Oregano


Pizza sauce: (This is my staple. For those of you that need a recipe, here it is. You can do this to taste.)

1 quart of canned, whole, peeled tomatoes
1 tablespoon of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced.
1 palm full of fresh chopped herbs: oregano, basil
(I grow cuban oregano and hot and spicy oregano in my garden and cultivate a standard basil. If you must, you can used dried spices but once you've tasted the difference you'll never go back to dried spices.)

I make the pizza sauce before I even begin to prepare the pizza. I've used this sauce for many different recipes. I simmer the quart of tomatoes on low-medium heat with garlic and olive oil in a medium stockpot until the liquid is reduced by half. Break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon and rest the spoon nearby. Sometimes I've even added shallots or onions to the sauce. Stir frequently to ensure nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pan. Use a medium size stockpot or larger, so that you don't get burned by the occasional splatter. Time varies, it usually takes between a half hour to 45 minutes. I add the chopped herbs during the last 10 minutes. Taste once or twice to see if you need to add more spices and to ensure the texture is thick enough for sauce. Set the sauce to the side and use when needed.

Follow Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day's recipe for pizza, rolling thin for a crispy crust, and their baking directions. Place sauce on the dough, add mozzarella slices, and fresh herbs. Some Margherita pizza recipes call for placing whole basil leaves on the sauce, you can do that as well. It looks nice. Baking on a hot pizza stone really does make a crispy crust on the bottom, so don't miss out on that step.

Stuffed Fougasse with Butternut Squash and Pears
Serves 4, as an appetizer or side

1 portion of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day refrigerated Brötchen dough
1 medium butternut squash, cut into 1/2" cubes, partially boiled
2 bartlett pears, cored, peeled and sliced thin
2 stems of fresh rosemary, rinsed
Olive oil to brush

Follow Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe for Fougasse Stuffed with Roasted Red Pepper, found on page 154 of their text. Instead of stuffing the fougasse with roasted red peppers, I stuffed it with butternut squash, pears, and rosemary. I kept the baking time the same, around 25 minutes at 450degrees.  The squash and pears need to be about the same texture, so partially boil and cool the squash before layering it between the pear slices. (Raw squash will not cook completely during baking.) I had leftover pear and squash, as to not overstuff the fougasse. Make one row of squash, one row of pear across the dough surface, then lay the rosemary stems across them and lightly drizzle with olive oil before folding and sealing the edges. Bake on a pizza stone. The squash and pears will be soft, and the dough on the outside will be crisp.

Next time I might bake the fougasse with goat cheese, and brush the folded surface with egg white for a nice golden color.