Savoury muffins
I was recently gifted a huge bucket of Kristen Allen’s incredibly delicious buttermilk ricotta that is sold at the Country Valley stall at the Capital Region Farmers Market. As such, I’ve been trying to come up with a range of ways to use said ricotta. I do believe this recipe is my favourite of those I’ve worked so far. It’s been a long time since I had a really good muffin, and longer still for a savoury one. I came up with the idea when my house mate bought more spinach that she could use.
While I suspect the superiority of these muffins comes from the quality of the ingredients I used, I expect they would turn out very well with the fresh ingredients you have at hand. I think the spinach and green onion provide freshness, the white part of the onion and sweetcorn provide sweetness, and the ham a deep savoury smokiness. All the flavourings make for well rounded flavour in the finished product.
If you don’t eat pork, you could substitute the ham with smoked salmon. If you’re vegetarian, you could leave it out entirely. But I do find it adds a lovely savoury smokiness to the muffins so if you happened to have smoked salt use that, or perhaps and smoked garlic if you had it. Or you could add semi-dried tomatoes for umami and remove the sweet corn.
I use the Tupperware muffin pan which is slightly taller and thinner than standard, but the muffins popped out beautifully.
Makes 12 muffins
Base muffin
| 1 | free range egg | |
| 1/3 | cup | olive oil |
| 1/3 | cup | milk |
| 1 | cup | ricotta |
| ½ | teaspoon | salt |
| ½ | teaspoon | ground pepper |
| 1 1/3 | cup | self-raising flour |
Flavourings (all approx. measurements)
| 2 | green onions | |
| ½ | English spinach, well washed | |
| 150 | grams | free range ham |
| ½ – 1 | cup | sweet corn kernels |
| 1 | cup | grated vintage cheddar |
Preheat the oven to 180oC.
Whisk the egg in a medium sized bowl. Add the ricotta, milk, oil, salt and pepper and blend.
Finely slice the green onions (including the white part, but discarding the roots) and spinach. Dice the ham. Strain the corn if it’s from a can. Add all these ingredients to the wet ingredients.
Add the self-raising flour and stir till barely combined.
Divide the batter into the holes for 12 muffins.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown. Tip the muffins onto a cooling rack. Arrange them upright to cool completely.
Goat ricotta?!!! How wonderful! I use a lot of canned goat milk as a replacement for milk/cream, just for the flavor, so this sounds like a great product to order! Thanks.