Lavender Chocolate Chip Biscotti

I may have found my calling.  I  imagine life in a small coastal Italian town where biscotti abounds and people come to my shop to taste my latest biscotti creations!  A girl can dream, right?   I'm currently on a biscotti baking bender!  Not those hard tooth breaking kind where a cup of coffee or glass of milk is a requirement for dunking (softening).  My biscotti are crunchy on the outside but chewy till the last bite.

As you know I like to cook or bake with secret ingredients.  This time I sprinkled a bit of culinary lavender into the batter.  What a pleasant surprise!   Now, to figure a way to market them.  Yes, they were that good!  Stay tuned for more flavors and variations of my "Beloved Biscotti".

This recipe makes between 40-50 biscotti. (2 loaves cut roughly into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices)  I made both with lavender but only one had the addition of blueberry craisins.  Both were quite wonderful.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts (toasted or not)

1 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

2 cups + 2 Tbsp flour

1 1/2 tsp culinary lavender, crushed

1/2 cup chocolate chips or small chunks

2 large eggs, for batter

2 Tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup blueberry flavored craisins (optional)

2 Tbsp water (depending on dough consistency)

1 egg, beaten for brushing the tops

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl hand mix the hazelnuts, sugar, baking powder, flour, lavender and chocolate chips.  

In a smaller bowl stir in the 2 eggs and vanilla.  Add to the flour mixture along with the blueberry craisins, if using.  Flour your hands and use a well floured surface (bread board) to start working with the dough.  It will be VERY sticky and will look like a mistake.  Persevere!  It will come together.  If it's too dry, add some of the water.  If it's too wet add a bit of flour.  Form a ball and cut in half.

On the floured surface roll each piece into a log shape approximately 12 inches long, 3 inches wide and only 3/4 inch high.  Do the same with the other loaf.  Arrange on a parchment covered cookie sheet.  Brush with the beaten egg.

Bake for 40 minutes, turning the baking sheet around halfway through.  The loaves should be golden colored.  Remove and cool for 20 minutes before slicing.  Resist the urge to eat them.

After cooling slide them onto a cutting surface.  Using a serrated knife cut into 3/4 inch slices.

At this point you have a BIG decision to make.  For traditional biscotti (harder), reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees.  Place the cut biscotti onto the same parchment covered cookie sheet.  Bake for an additional 20 minutes.  I like my biscotti softer so I either don't do the second baking or only bake the second time for 10 minutes.  You can choose.  Remove when done, cool and store in an airtight container.

Here are the chocolate lavender blueberry biscotti!

Homemade Gourmet Croutons

Why would anyone go through the trouble of making their own croutons?  Isn't it easier to just pluck them from the grocery store shelf?  It may be more convenient, but, have you read the back of the label, lately?  What's that sodium content?  And what were you going to do with that days old french bread, anyway?  Toss it?   Would you throw away a dollar bill?  Didn't think so!

It only takes a few minutes to create your own gourmet croutons.  I'm SURE you have the ingredients handy waiting for the bread to get hard.  Try this at home.

Home Made Croutons

1 1/2  cups of French bread, cut into cubes, crust and all

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp butter

salt and pepper

seasoning of your choice (garlic, rosemary, herb de Provence are my favorites)  I usually use 1/2 to a full teaspoon of herb sprinkled in.

Melt the oil and butter in a skillet.  Throw in the bread cubes stirring briskly.  When they begin to brown add the salt and pepper and seasoning of your choice.  Done!  If you like them really crunchy , lay them out on a cookie sheet and place in the oven on very low heat for a bit.  Pop one in your mouth to test.  You be the judge!

Use for soups or salads.  They are so much better than packaged "salt cubes"!  This recipe can be easily doubled, do the math.

Here's a label of a best selling packaged crouton, if you're curious.

Ingredients:

Enriched Wheat Flour [Flour, Barley Malt, Ferrous Sulfate (Iron), B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid)], Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Garlic Powder, Salt, Romano CheesePowder (Pasteurized Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes, Sodium Phosphate). Contains 2% or Less of: Onion Powder, Yeast, Blue Cheese Powder (Pasteurized Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes, Sodium Phosphate), Spices, Whey, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Anchovy Powder, Autolyzed Yeast, Dehydrated Parsley, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Vinegar Powder, Citric Acid, Dough Conditioners (Calcium Iodate, Calcium Dioxide), Calcium Sulfate.

WHAT IS THIS!

Lessons in Gardening and Culinary Herbs

In my recent post about the Margarita Shrimp Scampi, I listed one of the ingredients as lemon balm, which was wrong.  I used lemon verbena!  (I've changed the post).  I still get these two herbs mixed up, but no longer.  I did my research and I'm happy to say that if you made the scampi already with lemon balm you weren't too far off from the flavor.  Verbena and balm are similar in fragrance and flavor.  Verbena is not as hardy and thrives in climate zone 9 and I'm in zone 4-5.   Needless to say, my lemon verbena plant will be coming indoors for the Winter.  At least I'll give it a try.  Hopefully, it's compatible with "chewy the indoor cat".

After doing the research, I yearn, once again, for a place in the Mediterranean.  The lemon verbena plant is a perennial (comes back every year) and actually grows to almost 10 feet in those sun drenched areas!  I realize that's not too exciting for some of you, but it's enough to float my gondola!

So, how does my garden grow this season?  Not well!  On a positive note my cherry tomatoes were abundant, while my early girl tomatoes were a delicacy for the rabbits.  The quail didn't let a little fencing get in their way.  They joined right in to harvest what they could.  The arugula was plentiful as was the spinach.  The zucchini is slowly producing.  My mantra when it comes to the garden in these parts is, "There's always next year".

abundant cherry tomatoes

Quail...helping themselves

I learned quite a bit, as I do every year, unfortunately by trial and error.  My prized tomatillo with tons of blossoms was severely yanked from the ground after I read that I should have bought two or more for pollination.  A horticulturist, I'm not.  And the Japanese eggplants that showed some promise,   shriveled up and were shadowed by the giant early girl tomato plant.   The beets were eaten, not by humans, and the mint was lackluster!   I'll get this right!  I already have "BIG" plans for next year's garden lineup.

Ricotta stuffed zucchini blossoms

On the subject of food, I've had numerous salads with arugula and spinach, zucchini blossoms, stuffed with ricotta cheese or scrambled into eggs.  I even made a chocolate zucchini cake the other day.  So, while I may sound ungrateful for a not so good growing season,  I'm thankful that I had what mother nature tried her best to provide, sunny beautiful weather.   And besides, "I BUILT MY GARDEN" myself" and it gives me great pleasure to start something from seed, nurture and watch it grow to help feed my family.  Hope your harvest is bountiful!