Honey Date Pine Nut Muffins #MuffinMonday

Honey Date Pine Nut Muffins are beautiful, with the most tender crumb inside and a lovely sticky muffin tops, even before the extra honey.

One of the best parts of living all over the world is being able to learn about and experience not only traditions and practices of other cultures and religions, but also to be introduced to the special foods that are an integral part of those traditions.  As I sat down to write this post, I started counting up the many countries I’ve lived in and, out of the 13, five have them have been Muslim majority nations.  So, while I am no expert in any way, I have come to know a little bit about their celebrations over the years. 

This ninth month on the Islamic calendar is the month of Ramadan during which Muslims observe a complete fast from food or drink (and other carnal activities like smoking or sexual intercourse) from sunrise to sunset.   The act of fasting is supposed to help the person focus on the spiritual, rather than the worldly things, and teach self-sacrifice and empathy for others.  While traditional dishes vary from country to country, one thing seems standard.  The fast is broken first by eating three dates and perhaps some water.  There is often yogurt or a yogurt drink to follow.  And then the feast, called iftar in this part of the world, truly begins and continues on into the night!

When I received the email with this week’s Muffin Monday recipe, I was delighted by the two main ingredients, pine nuts and honey because they are everywhere in the shops right now. Ramadan markets have sprung up all over with fruits and nuts and all manner of sweet treats. 

I knew these muffins would be perfect to send home with my lovely lady who helps me around the house a few days a week.  She is the sweetest person and we adore her.  Especially the Boxer dog, who greets her effusively every time she comes.  Bless her, she loves him back!  I decided to add chopped dates and ground pine nuts, and replace half of the milk with yogurt in the batter, in order to make these delightful muffins even more iftar friendly.  If that’s a thing.   I also added more sugar because folks here like things sweet.  

Honey Date Pine Nut Muffins

Perfect for Ramadan or anytime you need a treat that is not super sweet, these muffins go well with a cup of coffee or hot tea. This recipe has been adapted from this post at Caffeiiina which came originally from this recipe at Taste of Home.  

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups or 190g flour

1/2 cup or 60g pine nuts (plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling before baking)

3/4 cup or 170g sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/2 cup or 120ml milk

Scant 1/2 cup or 110g yogurt

1/4 cup or 60g butter, melted

1/4 cup or 60ml honey plus extra for drizzling on baked muffins

4 1/2 oz or 125g unpitted dates (I used 11 dates, if you are counting.)

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Grease or line your muffin tin with paper cups.

Grind your pine nuts in a food processor or blender.  Either way, you may have to keep shaking the machine so the grinding nuts fall back towards the blades.  They tend to blow up against the sides and out of the reach of the blades.  Grind them as finely as you can without making pine nut butter.

The ground pine nuts clump together but, not to worry!
We will mash the clumps when we mix this with the flour and sugar.

Using a sharp knife, cut the seeds out of the dates.  Chop them up into little pieces.  They stick together (and don’t bother trying to make them not, because you can’t and it doesn’t matter) so it’s hard to see how small they are getting but just keep after it for a few minutes until you feel the pieces are as small or smaller than, say, raisins.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, ground pine nuts, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Use a spoon to mash out all the soft pine nut lumps that are clinging together.

In a small bowl, beat together the egg, milk, yogurt, melted butter and honey.  

Add in the chopped dates to the liquid bowl.  Use your whisk to break up the sticky dates into their individual pieces.  

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and fold gently until just mixed through. 

Spoon into your prepared muffin tin and sprinkle the top of the batter with the extra pine nuts.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Remove from the pan and let them cool on a wire rack.

Once they have cooled for a few minutes but are still slightly warm, drizzle lightly with some honey.

And to all my Muslim friends, Ramadan Kareem!  Enjoy!

Cheater Curry Puffs

Weekends are funny things.  Until I moved to Abu Dhabi, back in 1987, to me weekends were undeniably Saturday and Sunday.  And Friday night was a great night to go out because you had two days of lounging around recovering before school or work began again on Monday.  I was surprised to learn that weekends were Thursday afternoon and all day Friday in the United Arab Emirates.  It’s not like I had led a sheltered life, and I had even lived in a Muslim majority nation before (Indonesia) but it had just never occurred to me that weekends might mean other days of the week to someone else around the world.   Years later, when I moved to Malaysia, I discovered that there many people also worked five and a half days a week, but their weekend was Saturday afternoon and Sunday.  Even my cleaning lady came in on Saturday mornings.  And she would bring me fried potato curry puffs.  With their tender flakey crust and spicy potato filling, boy, howdy, they were tasty!

After making and eating potato curry the other evening, the thought suddenly jumped into my head that what I had were not leftovers, but curry puff filling!  Rather than making pastry and frying them, I decided to use puff pastry squares and make them into little pillows of curry puff to bake.  This is hardly a recipe since it’s almost all method but here’s how I did it.   

Ingredients

Leftover curry – you could use beef or chicken but potato is my favorite for curry puffs

Small puff pastry squares - about 4 in or 10cm – one for every two to three tablespoons of leftover curry

Method

Take your puff pastry squares out of the freezer and allow them time to thaw.  Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.   Line a cookie tray with parchment paper. 

Cut the potatoes in your leftover curry into much smaller pieces.  This will make it easier to wrap the puff pastry around the filling.  (If you are using a meat curry, do the same to all the chunks in your curry.)

Dampen your countertop and stick a piece of cling film down.

Place one square of puff pastry on the cling film and, using a rolling pin, gently enlarge it by at least an inch or 2cm.

Place your filling in the center of the puff pastry.  

Fold the far corner over, creating a triangle.  Press the sides of the pastry together around the filling, making sure to get all the air out. 

Using a pastry brush, dampen the pastry with water.  Fold the two sides in, then fold the bottom up. 

Pinch the corners to help make sure you have good seals.  I also just like the way that looks.

Place the finished curry puffs on a plate, which has been covered with cling film.  (The cling film helps them not stick to the plate.)  Cover the curry puffs with a dampened towel or paper towels until they are all done or until you are ready to bake them.

Place the curry puffs on your prepared cookie sheet.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the pastry is golden and puffy. 

Don't worry if they aren't so pretty now.  It won't matter when they have baked!

Serve with fresh raita, if desired.  I make mine like this.  I added chopped tomatoes this time too though.  I took these as an appetizer to a dinner party so I didn't get a photo of the curry puffs on a small plate.  Imagine one puff, with a spoon or two of raita on the side.  Pretty and delicious. 

By the way, here in Egypt, folks work a five-day week but their weekend is Friday and Saturday.  Who knew?  What days are your weekend?

Enjoy!

Spicy Potato Curry

My own fusion Burmese and Indian potato curry with tomatoes and lovely spices. It's my younger daughter's favorite! I hope it will be yours as well.

While I grew up eating curry, having lived in Trinidad as a child, Trinidadian curries tend to use a single curry powder, premixed from a variety of ground spices, so I was unfamiliar with the myriad of spices used in Indian curries.  

In the early days of catalog shopping, I came across a boxed set of Indian spices from Penzeys that came along with a delightful little paperback book called Spice Kitchen by Madhur Jaffrey that not only explained what each spice was (with illustrations!) but included great recipes for all of the author’s childhood favorites. You know I had to order it.  

This was before the days of internet so I faxed my order north and one of my husband’s accommodating rig hands brought it to me in Brazil, where we were living at the time and where Indian spices were never found in the stores. That little book is one of the most used, stained up, well-loved books in my cookbook collection. And I have saved the beautiful spice containers though their spices have long been used up.

One of my personal favorites from that book is Bazaar Potatoes. They are spicy and peppery and delicious and also beautiful to look at with their sprinkling of brown mustard seeds, kalonji, cumin, fennel and fenugreek cooked with bright red ripe tomatoes.  My only regret is that there is hardly any sauce. When it comes to curry, in fact for most dishes, the sauce or gravy is my favorite part. 

So I like to mash up (in the musical sense) two recipes to come out with a potato curry that still has all the color and spice of the original Bazaar Potatoes but also has a wonderful aromatic curry sauce that is perfect for pouring over rice or dipping your naan or chapati in.

Spicy Potato Curry

I usually have Burmese curry paste on hand because my original recipe makes enough for three pots of curry and it keeps beautifully in the freezer.  (Head over there and have a look.  It's not hard with a blender.)  I spoon about two good serving spoons worth and put it aside.  Then I follow Ms. Jaffery’s instructions until it is time to add the potatoes to the spices. And I add in the Burmese curry paste, and then the potatoes and a goodly amount water. The result is a lovely saucy potato curry.  Follow along with me.  

Ingredients

Approximately 4 oz or 100g Burmese curry paste from this recipe here.

6 medium, waxy potatoes (about 1.3 lbs or 600g)

3 tablespoons olive oil

8 fenugreek seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/4 teaspoon kalonji

1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seeds

1 bay leaf

3 medium-sized tomatoes

1 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

 (The original recipe also called for a small amount of fresh ginger and garlic but I omit these since I am adding both with the Burmese curry paste.  I also leave out the dried chilies since the paste has a generous helping of cayenne.)

Method

Give your potatoes a good scrub but don't peel them.  Then, in a large pot with ample water, put them on to boil.  

With a sharp knife, cut an X into the bottom of your three tomatoes and put them in a narrow heatproof bowl.

Meanwhile, when your potatoes are cooked, drain the boiling water into a heatproof bowl holding your three tomatoes.   Give them a few minutes to loosen the peels and drain the water off the tomatoes too. 

Allow them both to cool enough to hold and peel them.  I use a fork and a sharp knife when mine are still quite hot because I think tomatoes and potatoes are easier to peel when still hot.  Also, this is how my maternal grandmother always peeled potatoes for her famous potato salad with homemade mayonnaise and I like to think about her sitting at her usual place at the kitchen table while I do it.  I miss her.

Break the potatoes into pieces with your hands.  You can cut them but breaking them gives rougher edges to absorb the spices and I think it looks nicer too.   Set aside.

As for the tomatoes, cut them in half and remove their seeds.  Chop the halves further into large pieces.

In a pot that is going to be large enough for your potatoes with room for stirring, heat a little olive oil.   Throw in the rest of the seasoning and the bay leaf.  Let those sizzle for a couple of minutes, then add in the curry paste.  Give it all a good stir.

Now add in the tomatoes and stir. 

Add in the cooled potatoes and season to taste with sea salt.  At this point, I also add enough water to make a goodly amount of sauce, about 2 cups or 500ml. 

Cook over a slow fire for about 10-15 minutes or until the tomato chunks are starting to melt into the sauce.  You do not want them to disappear completely.  

Serve with rice or fresh naan or chapatis. 

Enjoy!

(If you have leftover potato curry, click here!  I used mine to make curry puffs.  So easy and delicious!)