Low Probability Events

The problem with "berry" muffins is that the berries tend to dry out -- their juice cooks out into the main body of the muffin. In these muffins, the juice stays inside the pomegranate "arils" -- the little individual seed packets. When you bite into them, you get a little explosion of juice in your mouth.

Dry:

• 2 cups (270g) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅓ cup minced crystallized ginger¹
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1 ¼ cup pomegranate arils^{2, 3} (one medium pomegranate)

Wet:

• 1 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• ½ cups honey or ⅔ cups sugar
• ¼ cup oil

In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in crystallized ginger, lemon peel, and pomegranate arils. Make a well in the center.

In another bowl, blend milk, egg, honey, and oil. Add any juice from extracting the arils. Pour all the liquid into the well. Stir just until the batter is moistened; it will be lumpy. Spoon batter into 12 (2 ½ inch wide) or 24 (1 ¾ inch wide) buttered muffin cups, filling each almost to the rim. Sprinkle each with 1-2 teaspoons sugar.

Bake in a 425°F oven until lightly browned (about 16 minutes for large muffins, 13 minutes for small). Remove the muffins from the pan at once. Serve hot, or set on a rack and serve warm or cool.

1. Crystallized ginger is wonderful stuff, but it tends to be pricey. Trader Joe's has "uncrystallized ginger", which is just as good, for a reasonable price.
2. "Arils" are the individual pomegranate "seeds" -- the seed itself, the layer of juice, and the membrane that holds the juice in.
3. Getting the arils out of the fruit can be a bit of a challenge. Try to use brute force and you'll end up looking like an extra in a slasher movie -- the juice stains. There are helpful videos on YouTube, of course. Some of them even work. The way I do it:
   1. Cut around the equator of the fruit, just deeply enough to get through the rind.
   2. Pry the two hemispheres apart
   3. Gently pull the rind apart, loosening the arils
   4. Hold the hemisphere over a bowl, cut side down.
   5. Whack it vigorously with a heavy wooden spoon. Ideally, the arils will just fall out.
   6. Pick out any of the white membrane that finds its way into the bowl.
   7. Repeat with the other hemisphere.
   Here's a YouTube video of the process.

Original recipe

• 185 grams (1 3/8 cup) unbleached white flour
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 stick unsalted butter ¹
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed ²
• 1 egg

• 3 tbs white sugar
• 1 tbs ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Cream the butter and brown sugar until smooth.
3. Add the egg and continue to whomp.
4. Sift the flour, salt, and soda together
5. Add the flour mixture to the dough a little at a time; continue to whomp until smooth.
6. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes or so.
7. Mix the white sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.³
8. Form the dough into 1" balls ⁴
9. Roll the balls in the cinnamon-sugar mixture
10. Put them on a sheet of parchment paper ⁵ on a cookie sheet.  Squish them down a bit.
11. Cook for 12-14 minutes, until brown.
12. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

Notes:

1. Most recipes use half butter and half vegetable shortening (Crisco).  I don't use vegetable shortening for anything;  near as I can tell, it's one of the most unhealthy substances in your kitchen.  Lard is actually better for you.
2. The original uses white sugar here.  Bland!
3. This gives rather too much cinnamon-and-sugar mixture.  I put it in a shaker bottle and put it on warm buttered bread.
4. I'm starting to appreciate "dishers"
5. I'm becoming a big fan of parchment paper.  The bottoms come out nice and evenly brown and using it means you don't have to wash the cookie sheet.

Costco had these dried shiitake mushrooms, reasonably cheap.  The obvious thing to do with them was to put them over some chicken:

• 1 skinless boneless chicken breast
• Handful of dried shiitake mushrooms
• white wine
• couple of dashes balsamic vinegar^[1]
• Olive oil, preferably extra-virgin
• 2 cloves garlic, mashed and chopped
• Couple of pinches of Herbes de Provence
• Pepper or other seasoning, to taste

Soak the mushrooms in the wine and balsamic vinegar for 10-20 minutes. ^[2]

Slice the chicken breast in two "the hard way", making two cutlets^[3]. Put in a microwave-safe dish with a tight-fitting lid. Thinly coat with olive oil and add garlic & herbs^[4]. Add some of the wine/balsamic mixture. Spread the mushrooms evenly over the cutlets.

Put the lid on tightly and microwave for 2.5 minutes, or until the cutlets are done.^[5]

Notes

1. If I were doing it again, I'd leave the balsamic vinegar out of the mushroom marinade and put it directly onto the chicken.  Or, perhaps, I'd substitute juice of half a lime.
2. They'll hydrate faster if you microwave them for ~20 seconds. Go easy on this; the idea is to get them warm, not to cook them.
3. This way of slicing chicken breasts is also called "butterflying".  If you want to be fancy, you can cover the breast cutlets with plastic wrap and pound them out to a uniform thickness; I usually don't bother.  I don't have a special chicken-pounding hammer; I use a cast iron skillet.
4. Go easy on the seasonings.  The lid is on tight to keep flavors from escaping; herbs will be a lot stronger than you expect.
5. If I wanted to get fancy and take longer, I'd wrap them in foil or parchment paper and cook in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes or so instead of microwaving.