the millet files #2: a cookie riff + granola balls

still working on this 25 lb bag…

Hello everyone. It’s been a rough few days. Is anyone really that surprised though?

There has been lots of questioning about what our world will look like going forward. Lots of us are scared and angry, hoping that our worst nightmares are not about to become real life, on both personal and societal levels. So what do I and other food writers have to offer? The fact that nourishing ourselves through difficult times is important work. So today, we can take solace in what we can control, and we can (mostly) control what goes on in our kitchens.

---

Do you remember that 25-pound bag of millet that I accidentally bought over the summer? (Quick summary: I did not get black beans, like I thought I was going to.) So what am I doing with it? Like I wrote about in my first Millet Files issue, we have been eating a lot of millet porridge.

the millet files #1: a rude introduction

My love for this meal only grows. So versatile, so filling, so economical, so chic. But I can’t just write about all my variations on a millet porridge. There’s so much more to do with millet, and I’m just at the tip of the millet iceberg.

It’s a whole new world — of millet.

---

Millet is turning out to be a fantastic pantry item to have on hand, especially in the world of baking. When there isn’t quite enough of one ingredient, like oatmeal / chia seeds / hemp hearts / flaxseed / etc, you can almost always replace it with millet. But not entirely — millet is not quite a substitution ingredient, but an addition or ratio-changer for a quick change-up in texture and flavor. Therefore, the focus for today’s issue is on recipes that you can easily add millet to without sacrificing the inherent techniques needed to execute the original recipe correctly. Or how to throw the original recipe to the wind and make a quick pivot to another cooking technique to avoid food waste. 

First, I’ve adapted a fantastic recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. In the previous issue of this newsletter , I cited ATK’s Broccoli-Cheese Soup, but did not provide the recipe, as that would be a recipe copyright issue. (I really do love this tome of a cookbook.) But today, I have tweaked their Big + Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookie recipe to include millet. (I know that their online recipes are paywalled, but it is a worthy subscription to access their whole repertoire.)

I made just a couple of ingredient swaps for some major changes in texture. And my directions might be a bit paraphrased from the original recipe text. Thank you ATK for providing the main recipe — you know it’s a good one when you can sub a completely new ingredient in to change up the ratios and it’s still a successful cookie. 

Then, I have a recipe fail turned into a recipe success for you. I tried a new granola bar recipe that didn’t work so well for me. I’m not trying to throw anyone’s recipe under the bus here — I might have made a mistake, but I didn’t find that I followed any of the directions in a way that was different from what was written. But I want a granola bar that has more crunch than chew to it. I want something that’s somewhere between the weird bending abilities of a Chewy bar and the crumb-factory of a Nature’s Valley bar. This recipe that I made was practically goop. It was disappointing but delicious goop, but I wasn’t keen on the idea of throwing that goop away just because it didn’t work the way the recipe said it would. So I pivoted and made…can anyone guess?