Bread Baking Babes - Asparagus Bread. Little. Green. Different.

This month's Bread Baking Babe's bread was chosen for us by Lien. Lien chose a very flavorful bread for us - Asparagus Bread with Parmesan Cheese and Walnuts.


Here is the recipe, courtesy of Lien and Jan Hedh -

Asparagus Bread

125 g green asparagus (if you can't find them, use p.e. spring onions, ramps, ...)
25-30 g rocket
50 g walnuts,
50 g freshly grated parmesan cheese
450 g strong bread flour (you can also use half whole wheat and half white or white whole wheat if you can get that)
12 g fresh yeast or 1 1/4 tsp dry instant yeast
250-270 g water
25 g olive oil
10 g (sea) salt

* Boil 3/4 liter of water with a pinch of (sea) salt. Clean the asparagus, set two of them aside, cut the rest into 4 pieces. Boil these pieces for 2 minutes in the water, scoop them out (so you can use the water for the rocket as well) and rinse under cold water (to stop them cooking). If you use p.e. spring onion, I personally would grill them or just sautée them in a little oil until they start to brown lightly, but other ideas on this are very welcome too!

* Put the rocket in the boiling water for a few seconds (until wilted), drain and rinse under cold water and drain again.
Press the water our of the rocket, chop it coarsely and but the asparagus into 1/4 inch (± 1 cm) long pieces, set aside.

* Crush the walnuts coarsely and grate the parmesan.

* Measure the flour and yeast in a large bowl, mix in most of the water and knead for a few minutes (on low speed), add the olive oil and knead for 10-12 minutes. Add the salt and knead on medium speed for 5 minutes until very elastic.

* Let the dough rest for 10 minutes. Work the asparagus pieces, rocket, walnuts and parmesan in with care so that they're evenly distributed.

* Place the dough in a greased container, cover and let rise for about 2 hrs.

* Divide the dough into 2 equal parts.
Make round balls, cover with a tea towel and let rest for 10 minutes.

* Flatten the balls and fold into taut breads with slightly tapering ends. Lay one asparagus in lengthwise in the middle of the bread and press in slightly. Sprinkle with wheat flour and cover to rise for 70 minutes or until doubled. Before baking you can sprinkle a little grated cheese on the bread if you like (optional).

* Preheat the oven (preferably with stone) to 250ºC.

* Place the loaves directly on the stone. Spray with water (or poor some hot water in a metal container on the bottom of the oven that you preheated to create steam)
Lower the temperature after 5 minutes to 200ºC. Open the door after another 10 minutes to let some air in. Repeat twice during baking. (I forgot about opening doors myself to be honest)

* Bake for 40-45 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

(adapted from: "Artisan Bread" -Jan Hedh)


Pretty straightforward, EXCEPT for the adding of the asparagus, walnuts, cheese and rocket (I used spinach).


It was messy and awkward and there was stuff flying everywhere. The extra stuff basically ripped the dough apart, much like the Sukerbolle we made last Fall.


I gave up after a point and tossed out the asparagus pieces that hadn't been incorporated, maybe about 1/3rd.


The bread, which I made with 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 white flour, smelled wonderful while baking. The taste is really interesting, there's a lot of flavors going on in there. The asparagus and cheese give it a strong, but not in an unpleasant way, flavor.

Thanks Lien for a lovely seasonal and unusual bread!

Interested in being a Bread Baking Buddy? Visit Lien for all the info.

Garden

Summer arrived with a vengeance at the end of May while we were on holidays, and we've had hot sunny days ever since. Which is great for sitting in the yard, going for walks, and the garden, but the forests are so dry that now we are hoping for a couple of days of rain to dampen everything up. The weather forecasters, they lie and keep saying we'll get rain but we don't. The trees need it, as well as my poor brown lawn. And always the garden.

I had larger grander plans for the garden this year but I've hit a wall. I've got some seed potatos to plant this weekend (hopefully it's not too late) and I think that will be it. Maybe next year we'll get a little bigger.

We'll start our tour with the lettuce - red and green. The sun and heat fried them pretty bad a couple of weeks ago, but they bounced back.


The rhubarb. It looked so awful at the end of last year I didn't think it would come back. Looks nice and healthy.


Scott bought some small broccoli plants last month and so far they are doing very well. (we think the small plants popping up around them are sunflowers, so we're leaving them alone for now.)


Actual broccoli!


Our 2 tomato plants. The one at the front is called a Super Fantastic, and I bought it for the name alone. Frankly, it doesn't look so super right now. I think the back one is a cherry tomato.


We brought our rosemary inside last fall and it did quite well over the winter. It's not looking good now though, I don't think it likes being outside.


2 kinds of mint.

Dill, sage, and thyme.


Parsley, which was also a surprise comeback.


Onions.


2 kinds of squash. One is a hubbard, one is an acorn.


Raspberries.


Peas. If you enlarge the photo, I have helpfully circled the little buggers.


How's your garden?

Quick and Ugly Chocolate Rum Parfait

The photo below is hideous, even by my standards, but I can't resist sharing this cute little treat with you.

Just before we moved from Calgary I was taken out to Brunch at a swanky restaurant, and I wrote about how they served the desserts in shot glasses. Such a cute idea. There's a restaurant here too that serves a trio of desserts in shot glasses. Cute!


I picked up a set of cheap shot glasses last month and waited for inspiration to strike. It only took a week or so until I found a recipe in a 70's cookbook for vanilla pudding and whipped cream layered together in parfait glasses. That didn't appeal to me but when I found a chocolate pudding cup in the pantry I decided to make some my own shot glass parfaits on the fly.

This recipe probably could not be more processed, but what the hell. How much pudding and cool whip can you fit in a shot glass? Not much really. The amounts below made 4 small shot glass parfaits, but it would have made 3 nice full ones. Oh well, next time.


Chocolate Rum Parfait

1/2 cup cool whip (I used 95% fat free, left over from recipe testing)
1 tsp rum extract (feel free to substitute real rum if you're wild and crazy)
1 chocolate pudding cup
chocolate covered almonds, preferably bought for a good cause

Stir the whip topping and rum extract together in a small bowl. Divide the pudding in half and divide one half of the pudding between 3 or 4 shot glasses. Top with half the whip topping. Layer with the remaining pudding and topping. (I didn't do a good job of layering and the cool whip covered the top layer of pudding, but there are 2 layers of pud in there. Promise.) Chill until ready to eat.

Top each shot with a chocolate covered almond. Mine were purchased from a teenager raising money for his church group to go to South America. That means there are no calories or fat in the almonds and if I happen to eat the rest of the box while Scott is not looking, nothing bad will happen to me.

I have never felt more like Paula Deen than I do right now.

You'd assume that a recipe that starts off the ingredient list with bacon and butter must come from Miss Deen y'all, but not this one.


These yummy bacon cookies - yeah I said bacon cookie - are weirdly wonderful and come from Cookin' in the 'Cuse. If you're feeling wacky and have a half pound of bacon sitting around, give these a try.

Presto Pasta - Vietnamese Pork and Noodles

You guys. Oh, you guys. I had a big intro to this post planned, talking about the differences (for me) between big city and smaller city living. What I miss about Calgary, including certain restaurants and cuisines. About how I have gone from eating Vietnamese food once or more a week to having it only once (ONCE!) in the past year and a half. sob. How I haven't wanted to try making Vietnamese food at home cause I've been afraid of messing it up, but that I found a recipe I'd saved in my del.icio.us that sounded so good and easy I had to try it.

I was going to write all about that stuff, but then I had the first bite of my dinner and damn, my brain is fried mush with the deliciousness of it all.

Here's what I did to make a (in my opinion, and Scott's opinion too) mind blowing - yummy - pretty close to our favorite restaurant dish - Vietnamese Pork and Noodles.

First prepare your pork. The pork recipe comes from Waterlily at Group Recipes. I made a couple of small changes.

1 tablespoon molasses
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 shallot, finely chopped (substitute 1/2 small mild onion, if necessary)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 pound boneless pork loin, chopped fine (I pulsed mine in the food processor)

Whisk together the molasses, soy sauce, garlic, shallots and sugar. Mix into the pork and mix well. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours, or overnight.

You'll also need -

rice noodles
lettuce
green onions
bean sprouts
spring roll sauce
hoisin sauce

When you're ready to cook, start by preparing your rice noodles according to the package directions. What I did for mine was to bring a pot of water to the boil, then add the noodles and cook and stir for 2 minutes. Then I removed them from the heat, covered, and let them sit until I was ready to plate.

When your noodles are sitting, form your pork mixture into small patties. Heat a large pan over medium heat with a bit of vegetable oil. Cook the patties, turning once or twice, until brown and cooked through.

While the patties are cooking, finely chop your green onions and shred your lettuce into long thing strands. When the patties are done, drain your noodles.

To plate, start by placing a handful or so of shredded lettuce in the bottom of each bowl. Then top with some noodles.

Place your pork patty on top, then scatter your chopped green onions and your bean sprouts. I took the final photo at this stage, because what I do next to my own dish isn't pretty.

The dish that is like this that I order in restaurants comes with sliced spring rolls on top and a side of dipping sauce. What I like to do is eat the spring rolls first, then pour the rest of the dipping sauce over the bowl and mix it all up. What I did here was to use my fork to chop the pork patty into pieces, then drizzle the dish with spring roll sauce and hoisin sauce, and mix it all together. Looks horrible, tastes divine. I had planned to make my own sauce, like this one, but we were late to start dinner so I used a bottled spring roll sauce instead.

This was GOOD. The pork makes enough to feed at least 4 people, and I just winged it on amounts for the rest of the ingredients. We were both surprised at how great this was and were a little piggy about how much we ate. But I'm sure the lettuce, onions and bean sprouts make up for that, right?

Since this dish is fully of noodle-y goodness, I'm sending it to Ruth for her Presto Pasta Nights. Ruth is hosting this week, so make sure you get your pasta posts to her by Friday.

(Original pork recipe here)

Sweets for the Sweet : Baklava with Mary

It's been half a year or more since these pictures were taken and I don't know why it's taken me this long to share them, but here they are now.

For many many reasons I am truly lucky to have Mary as a close friend. In addition to all the help she's given me in the kitchen, she's just a swell person. I adore her. From time to time she and I meet online on weekend mornings for cooking projects. Most of the time it's bread, but we've done some other stuff too, including our King Cakes and this Baklava.

I'd taken the book The Olive and The Caper out from the library and fallen in love with 3/4's of the recipes. The recipe and variations of the baklava interested me - the only history I have with the sweet is buying the occasional piece from the Middle Eastern market we stopped at once in a while when we lived in Calgary. But it sounded like fun and not too hard, and Mary thought the same so in the fall we made baklava together - her on the East coast of the US, me on the West coast of Canada.


Below is the ground walnuts and almonds mixed with cinnamon and melted butter.


The filo is brushed with melted butter and stacked in the baking dish, then layered with the ground nuts. I'm pretty sure I cheated and did fewer layers than I was supposed to so I wouldn't have to go buy more filo.


After the layering is complete, use a sharp knife to cut the dish into diamonds.


And then bake until golden and crisp. But don't taste yet, it's not done! You have to make your syrup to pour over the top. I made the coffee syrup from the book as it has no alcohol and some of my co-workers don't drink. I think Mary made her syrup with orange liqueur.


Then you must wait at least a couple of hours to allow the syrup to soak into the layers.


I was pleasantly surprised at how...authentic this tasted. And it wasn't difficult either. I took some to work to share the next day and it was gone within minutes. A couple of people even asked what store I'd bought it at!


Gorgeous, gorgeous. Make sure you really love Baklava or have lots of people to share with, this will get soggy within a few days.

Bread Baking Babes - Italian Knot Bread

May is Ilva's month in Bread Baking Babe land. The recipe she chose for us is an Italian roll called Pane di Pasta Tenera Condita, or Italian Knot Bread. This is a pretty straightforward bread, and though the list of ingredients is a little long, it's easy to make. The twist (heh) on this dough is that the buns are formed into knots. A technique I had a tough time wrapping my head around.


The dough starts with a biga - a preferment made the day before. I was a little nervous because the recipe didn't specify if the biga should be soft or firm. Mine was very firm and I worried that it wasn't right. Saturday afternoon I finished the dough and left it to rise. If it didn't rise I'd have to bow out this month.

It rose.

I cut and weighed the dough into 125g-ish pieces then attempted to knot them following Ilva's instructions. It didn't go that well, but they turned out pretty ok.

I left some plain and sprinkled some with salt before baking. They are just lovely little knots, so tender on the inside. We've dunked them in soup, made them into sandwiches, warmed them and slathered them with butter. So, so wonderful.

Head over to Ilva's for the recipe, then head over to the blogs of the rest of the Babes to check out their knotty breads.

Fix It and Enjoy It Healthy Cookbook

We've been trying for a long while to improve our eating habits and overall health. We have good times and bad times with that, as I'm sure a lot of people do. The things I find are most helpful for me are recipes that are fast and/or can be prepared in advance, and recipes that supply nutritional information. For me not only does having the nutritional information stop me from making poor choices (sometimes), but it also guides me towards trying recipes I might not normally.

If you wonder if Fix It and Enjoy It Healthy Cookbook delivers, take a look at the back of the book - "Yes, it is possible to combine tasty, quick and healthy!". And it does. 400 recipes. All relatively fast (5 minutes to 2 hours cooking time), all with nutritional information, and more variety than I could have expected. 55 salad recipes. 24 appetizer/snacks. 56 soups.

Each recipe includes full nutritional information, prep and cooking times, and a graphic showing how the dish fares on the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid. There are no photos in the book but the dishes are all solid familiar meals that don't inspire fear without photos.

I tried a variety of recipes from the Main Dishes, Vegetables, Breakfast and Snacks/Appetizers. All of them came out very well and all of them were prepared/cooked within the time frame given in the recipe, something I often find doesn't happen. I enjoyed everything I made and I've got to tell you, this book is worth buying for the baked sweet potato fries (pg 136 - and 56 calories per serving!) and the fat free strawberry yogurt dip (pg 243) alone.

Seattle and Strawberry Soup

Well it's been something like 7 months since I was there, so I guess it's time to share some Seattle photos with you.








It was torture to be somewhere so fun with such wonderful foods and not being able to buy all the stuff that just looked so good. But it was very very fun to walk around and look at all the vendors and their ware and people watch. Knowing there was a weight limit on my suitcase when I flew back to Canada I wisely but sadly stayed away from all the book shops and kitchen stores.

 Pike Place Chowder.

Pictured is the clam chowder (voted Nations Best!) and the crab roll, and the vegan chowder and the curried chicken roll. It was all fabulous, but the vegan chowder rocked.


So what does this have to do with Strawberry Soup? On the ship I had my first ever fruit soup - blueberry. It was wonderfully light and refreshing. My parents had gone on a cruise earlier last year and were now huge fans of fruit soups themselves. We had my parents over for Mother's Day brunch last weekend, and for my Dad (and the rest of us) I made Strawberry Soup.

This soup is ridiculously easy to make, fast, pretty and elegant. I made this with Costco strawberries, part of the 123456789 Mile Diet. I am looking forward to varying this in the summer with fresh sweet BC fruit.

Chilled Strawberry Soup
Simply in Season
Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert

serves 6

1 cup apple juice
3/4 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves

Combine in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. (Or microwave in a glass bowl until boiling.) Remove from heat. Cool. I cool the syrup in a bowl placed in a larger bowl of ice - very fast.

3 cups strawberries
1/4 cup water

Puree until smooth in a blender. Pour into a large bowl. I leave in the blender and finish the soup in the blender.

2 cups plain yogurt (low or nonfat is good)
1 tsp vanilla
2 drops red food coloring (I do not use)

Add to pureed strawberries with apple juice mixture. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled. Garnish with additional strawberry halves (optional). The soup freezes well and is especially good with small ice crystals left in.

mmmmmmm......Migas!

Migas. Do you know it? I didn't, until a couple of days ago and all I can say is - where have you been my whole life?

Migas is a Tex-Mex egg dish made with torn up corn tortillas. A kicked up scrambled egg. Scott borrowed Rachel Ray's Big Orange Book for me from the library last weekend. I know, say what you will about her but we have cooked some mighty fine recipes out of her books and magazines. Beergaritas, pulled pork, asparagus popover....all healthy and nutritious fare. Anyhoo, the other morning I was looking for something to make for dinner because I completely forgot to make a menu plan for the week and the book practically fell open to page 106......Mighty Migas.

Does anyone know how to say Migas correctly? I've been saying MEE-gas. Is that right?

The recipe is pretty easy and there weren't too many ingredients I needed to buy. I picked up everything at the store except they didn't have corn tortillas. The past few years I have really come to hate grocery shopping - I can never seem to find everything I need at one store and who has time to run from store to store all the time? I can't even stick to my pledge to buy my fruits and veggies from the local market store (until the farmers market really takes off) instead of the grocery store.

ANYWAY, I couldn't find corn tortillas so I'd just planned to make the dish without them. And then if we loved it and wanted to have it again I'd hunt down the corn tortillas. But then I remembered that down in the basement hidden away from us (me) were the leftover Halloween bags of Doritos. That's practically a corn tortilla right?



So I used that instead and wow, Migas are really good. I crumbled the chips fairly finely and didn't use a lot, so they really didn't play much of a part. But I could feel their texture in a few bites and will definitely make these again when I can get my hands on some corn tortillas.



Migas
adapted from The Big Orange Book

2 tb olive oil
1 (100-125 gram-ish) chorizo sausage, casing removed and diced
1 small onion diced
1/2 fresh jalapeno, seeds removed and finely diced (or more to your own taste)
3 garlic cloves minced
6 eggs, beaten
1 Halloween bag of Doritos (these have maybe 6 or 7 chips in them?)
1 tomato diced
1/2 cup shredded cheese (mozza or jack would be good, I only had gouda. It was tasty.)
1/2 avocado, diced, for garnish
sour cream for garnish

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium high heat. Add the chorizo and cook until the sausage starts to crisp. Add the diced onion, jalapeno and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onion is soft. Add the eggs to the pan, lower heat if necessary, and stir. Crumble in the doritos and add the diced tomatos. Stir until the eggs are almost set, then add the cheese. Cook until the eggs are scrambled to your liking. Spoon onto plates, top with a dollop of sour cream and some diced avocado, and serve.

Balsamic Glazed Carrots

When we went to the first Farmers Market of the year a few weeks ago the selection was slim as it always is in April, but perhaps even a little slimmer, with the horrible start we've had to spring. We bought a handful of things - some bread, dried apples, fall potatos from cold storage, and some beautiful cold storage carrots too, I think they were called Dragon Carrots, or maybe Red Dragon Carrots.

I quickly tired of grating them into salads and serving them steamed with butter. I wanted something new and different. To us, anyway. And perhaps something I'd want to make more than once, we've got a lot of carrots. That very afternoon we stopped by the Symphony book sale where I bought 3 cookbooks including The Inn Chef, Michael Smith's first book. I am a longtime fan of his, I love Chef at Home, his series on the food channel and all his recipes I've tried have been very good.

And in this particular book I found a recipe for Balsamic Glazed Carrots - oven roasted carrots finished with a drizzle of balsamic. Mmmmm!

Aren't these carrots crazy? I love them!


Balsamic Glazed Carrots
The Inn Chef

1 lb carrots, cut into 3 by 1/2 by 1/2 inch (I just cut them into sticks)
4 tb olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 tb the best balsamic vinegar you can find and afford (I think my bottle cost $4.)

Preheat oven to 400'.
In a roasting pan, toss the carrots with the oil and salt and pepper. Roast the carrots for 10 minutes, then shake the pan. Roast the carrots until caramelized, another 20 minutes, stirring them frequently.
Transfer the carrots to a bowl. Scrape the remaining bits and oil from the pan into the carrots. Add the vinegar and toss until the carrots are evenly coated. Reserve briefly or serve immediately.

Are you a food tv watcher? What's your favorite show/host? Who don't you like? Who do you miss?

Garden 2009 - first shots

I'm tired and completely uninspired by recipes and food lately. I've got a couple of things up my sleeve but none of them are fully formed and ready to share.

So it seems that Spring may finally be showing it's head around these parts.....about time! I noticed something in the garden a couple of weeks ago - thought it was a piece of garbage that had blown in with the wind, but to my delight it was my rhubarb plant coming out of hibernation! I was blown away, it looked so horrible last year we were sure it was not going to survive. Our parsley is also making a surprising comeback as well. And the mint, which looked awful last year too, it's popping up. Grape vine and raspberries aren't looking too good, but it is still early.




Scott bought me a couple of presents today - a sage plant, lemon thyme, and a broccoli. They won't be put in the ground yet, but soon my pretties........soon.

What are your garden plans for the year? Have you started working on it yet? What are you planting? What's your best producer every year?