Sweet Focaccia

I have this cookbook, from the little shop around the corner from my grandfather's place in London, called Ottoloenghi: The cookbook. I've made a couple of the salads, and they've been pretty delicious, so I thought I'd try something from a section other than the salad section. Paging through to the back, the baking section had some really pretty pictures of focaccia. That seemed like a good idea, and reading about the grape and fennel seed topping, that seemed like something different enough that I'd never come up with it on my own. May as well try it! It sounded like it would make a sweet bread, something you could eat for breakfast, or almost as dessert, but I wasn't too daunted (although Ed said it sounded pretty gross). This being an English cookbook, they were talking about grams and milliliters, luckily I have the google to help me figure out conversions.

The end result was addictingly delicious. The dough was chewy yet soft, with a crunch on the top and bottom, and a beautiful mix of sweet and savory and salty. I couldn't stop until I got halfway through the first loaf. So, as weird a combination as this sounds - try it! It's worth it. It passed the Ed-rating, despite his initial reluctance.

Grape and Fennel Seed Focaccia
Made two round flat loaves

Starter:
1.5C flour
1.75C warm water
1.5 tsp yeast

Dough:
1.5-2C flour
1 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs kosher salt

Topping:
~1C red grapes, halved
2tsp fennel seeds
1/4C granulated sugar
1tsp kosher salt

You'll need a lot of resting time for this recipe - it was 6 hours total of rising time, so be sure to plan that in. The starter has to rise for two hours, and then the dough has to rise for 2 hours, and then after shaping it, it has to rise for another hour.

To make the start, mix together the water, yeast, and flour, cover with a damp cloth, and let it sit somewhere warm for two hours, until it's doubled in size. It'll be pretty cool-looking, with bubbles that are sort of moving, like it's alive...

Add the rest of the dough ingredients to the starter, and mix that around. I found this too slack to work by hand, even with the extra half cup of flour, so I stirred with a solid spoon for as long as I had the strength to do so, and then let it sit for another two hours. By the end of that, it had doubled in bulk again, and was very loosey goosey. I dumped the dough out onto a floured surface, cut it in half, and tried to stretch each half out into a circle. I wasn't that great at making a circle, and then it stretched again when I transferred it. I lined each baking pan with coarse corn meal, and plopped on the lopsided circles of dough.


This then has to sit and relax and rise for another hour.

Then, I poked down with my fingers, to make it ridge-y and knobbly. Mix together the sugar, salt, and fennel seeds. Brush on some olive oil, dot with grapes (cut length-wise), and sprinkle on the sugar-salt -fennel seed mixture.


Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 375 and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Thai beef salad

I bought some beef the other day, top round. It came in three long strips, and I figured it would be perfect for putting on top of a salad. And then I realized that it would be even perfecter on a thai-flavored salad! The bed was rice noodles, and there were random delicious things on top. Cilantro, fried mushrooms, cucumbers, mint, basil. The dressing was a mix of lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, mirin, and spiciness. You can play with those flavors - sweet/salty/sour/hot - and anything will be delicious.
The beef was marinating in a similar sauce, but with miso paste in it. Miso, mirin, fish sauce, lime, rice wine vinegar, fresh ginger.

First I cooked the mushrooms - oyster mushrooms. Cooked in butter, with kosher salt. The best way to do mushrooms.
mmmm cilantro!

Cooked the beef for about two minutes to a side, until it was just rare-medium rare inside.
Sliced it up, threw it on top of the rice noodles, poured the dressing over everything, and voila! salad. yum.

Mango shrimp spring rolls

I wanted to make dinner one night this week, as I'm staying with Peter and Gail, and they keep feeding me, so I thought I'd make spring rolls. These turned out alright, but were too big, I need to learn how to roll the little ones. You need the squishy noodles inside to make it so that they don't break, although some of them broke anyway, but there were just too many squishy noodles, and not enough other delicious things. These flavors maybe would have worked better as a salad. Or maybe wrapping them more loosely would keep the ends of the avocados from poking holes?

Anyway, for three people we had 7 rolls, which was enough to fill us up (testament to their size), when combined with a salad thanks to Gail. I bought 12 large shrimp, and that worked well for the rolls, but if I were going to do it again in salad form, I think you'd want more shrimps. Maybe.

Mango shrimp spring rolls
Made 7 rolls
rice paper
rice noodles
12 large shrimp (raw)
1 mango
1 avocado
2 limes
~1tbs brown sugar
~1tbs soy sauce
~1/2C cilantro, roughly chopped. Mint and basil would also work. Or all three.
~1/2C bean sprouts
Red chili flakes, to taste
1/4tsp salt

Combine the juice of one of the limes, half a tablespoon of brown sugar, some red chili flakes, and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Mix it up and taste - this is the dressing for your shrimp. Adjust as necessary. Soak the shrimp in the marinade as you prepare other stuff.

For the rice noodles, boil them for 5 minutes, then drain, and toss with the juice of the other lime, the salt, and the other half tablespoon of sugar.

Slice the mango and avocado into strips.

Fry the shrimp in some oil, until they're done. It's about two minutes a side, although I suppose it depends on the size of the shrimp.

Soak the rice paper in hot water for a minute or two, one piece at a time. Once it's flexible, spread it on a plate. Put down the colorful things first, because you'll see those those through the wrapper. A piece or two of mango, a slice of avocado, one and a half shrimps, some cilantro, some sprouts, and a small handful of rice noodles. Then attempt to roll the thing up - fold in the sides, first, then roll away from you, using fingers to keep it taut.

The rice paper dries out quickly if you don't eat it immediately, so cover the finished rolls with a damp towel while you finish making the other ones.

We had a ginger-soy dipping sauce with these, that was delicious.

Will I make these again? Probably, but I'm going to try for a higher ratio of yummy-stuff-to-noodles.

Mojitos

I had oodles of leftover mint from something the other day, so we emailed Tiffany to see if she wanted to hang out and make mojitos. It seemed like a really logical thing to do. Naturally, she thought this was an excellent idea, so we got to go hang out with a friend we don't see nearly often enough, and a good time was had by all (to use an old Colby Outing Club saying. "There were no tears, and a good time was had by all" is the way you finished every trip report. Unless of course there were tears, and some people did not actually have a good time). We improvised a muddler, using a rubber band to hold together a bunch of chopsticks - it worked pretty well.



Mojitos
For each glass:
Fill about 3/4 with fresh mint leaves. Add some simple syrup, maybe 1-2 tablespoons of it. Muddle the leaves. Add about a shot of rum, preferably good rum. Pour in the juice of a lime. Fill to the top with bubble water. Stir it around with your make-shift muddler. Garnish with a lime wedge, and an optional raspberry (it's pretty!).

Greek-ish pasta salad

A while ago, Sam and Ross fed us a deliciously tasty Greek-themed salad, with barley and chicken. I was overwhelmed by the deliciousness of the lemon and olives and sweet cherry tomatoes, so set out to make the same thing last week for Ali and myself, as I was staying out there. But, being me, I naturally didn't go to look up the recipe, and sort of did a cross between tabouleh and that Greek salad and a random salad. It was delicious anyway, but I think that's just because I love olives and lemon and feta cheese. Also, having neither barley nor enough time to cook it, I used orzo, which worked really well also, and basically turned this into a pasta salad. So be it. Anyway, I recommend this one for a hot evening when you don't want to cook anything. The only time you have to apply heat is for about 20 minutes to boil water and cook the pasta, then it's back to no heating devices turned on.


Greek-inspired pasta salad
Made enough for 2 very hungry people, with a bit left over for lunch. Would probably feed 4 normal people, or 6 as a side dish
1 can chickpeas, rinsed
1/2lb orzo, cooked and cooled
~1C halved kalamata olives (or another flavorful black olive)
1C halved cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2C chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs chopped fresh mint
1/2 onion, diced
1 cloves garlic, minced
1/2C feta cheese, crumbled
2 small pickling cucumbers, chopped
1/2 orange pepper, chopped
Anything else you have in the fridge that you want to use up

Dressing:
Zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
about an equal portion of olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste.

Put everything in a bowl. Mix it around. Toss with the dressing. If you let it sit, it only gets better as the dressing sinks in and the flavors all meld.

Lamb Gyros

Coming back from Team Trials, Ian's car-ful of people stopped at a diner, somewhere along I-84, and I had some delicious gyros. So delicious that I decided that I had to make some for myself. We stole Ross for the evening, since Sam had a retirement party to attend, and fed him lamb gyros and pitas and we were all pretty happy with how they'd turned out. I made the lamb mixture earlier in the day, and kneaded dough for the pitas. Then when we all got home from the Park-O, it was pretty quick to fry some lamb patties and bake the pitas. We also had fresh greek yogurt from the Greek place, and olives, and feta, all delicious stuff.

Lamb patties:
Made enough for three hungry people, might feed four regular folk
1/2lb lamb - if you can get it ground, great, if it's in chunks, that's fine too
1/4C bulgur wheat, cooked
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbs rosemary
2 tsp marjoram or oregano
Other tasty things are optional.

Slice the lamb chunks against the grain, and then slice those long pieces into little chunks. Put them in a food processor and process until it makes a paste. Put in a big bowl. Put the onion and garlic in a food processor, process that to a paste, and drain the water, squeezing with your hands. Add to the bowl. Add the other stuff. Mix it around. Take a tiny bit and cook in a frying pan, taste, and adjust seasoning.

Let the lamb mixture sit marinating for at least an hour. Then break off pieces with your hands and make little mini hamburgers. Smaller is better, for more texture of crust, but, that also takes longer. Fry in a frying pan, with some oil to lubricate things.

Pitas
Made 8
1-1/4C warm water
1 packet yeast
1tbs sugar
3.5C flour (and more as necessary)
2tsp salt
2 tbs olive oil

Put water and yeast and sugar in a bowl. Stir in flour one cup at a time. After the first cup, add olive oil and salt. Keep adding flour until it's bread-like. Knead for 5-10 minutes. Let it rise in a greased bowl for minimum 1.5hrs. Cut into 8 pieces, roll into round pitas, cook for 10-15min (?) at 400F. Take out of the oven before they get brown.

Tzatziki sauce
1C Greek yogurt
2 little salad cucumbers
salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste


Put pita, tzatziki sauce, lamb meatballs, chopped peppers, and crumbled feta in a stack. Roll up pita, and eat! Ed is looking pretty pleased with his gyro here.
As is Ross. You can't see the drool, but he can't wait to tear into this thing. It definitely got a good Ed-rating. Most delicious!

Roasted Chickpeas

I had a can of chickpeas lying around, and wanted to use it in a salad. But I also had the oven on, so figured I'd see what happened if I roasted the chickpeas first. I tossed them with olive oil, kosher salt, and stuck them on a baking sheet for 15 minutes, and the result was pretty delicious! They were crunchy on the outside, bean-y on the inside, and a perfect addition to a salad. Will make these again, for sure.

Apple Turnovers

The other day I had a hankering for apple turnovers. Knowing that we had a bunch of phyllo dough in the freezer, I figured turnovers were within my reach. I didn't count on them taking forever to make, so naturally, they took forever. First you have to make the apple filling, then you have to mess around with the phyllo dough, finally you bake the darn things. They were quite delicious, but I'm not sure they were worth the trouble, given that you can just buy puff pastry and it's the same end result.

I did sort of follow a recipe, but really that was just to get the proportions remotely close to right. My reference recipe was this one, but I only had four apples. They were big apples, though.

First, melt the butter with the sugar and the cornstarch and other stuff.

Peel, core, and chop your apples; stir them into the goopy stuff.

Then it's time to play with phyllo dough. Mine was not sealed - apparently Ed used some a while ago, and so the sheets had dried out in the freezer. They broke into thirds, pretty much immediately. Not one to be put off by uncooperative phyllo dough, I figured that instead of folding them in half and stuff, I'd just layer a couple pieces and roll them up. It worked. Between every layer (I had 3-4 layers for each turnover, which may have been too much, as they had lots of crust and I thought they needed more apples), brush on some melted butter. This takes lots of butter, but that's what makes it so delicious!


Plop about 2-3 tbs of apple filling on one end of the phyllo. Keep the other sheets covered with a damp cloth.

Fold the dough over the apples, to make a triangle. Roll up triangularly, like a flag.

Don't be afraid to use your fingers to push the apples back into their pocket - you want lots of apples inside. They are tasty.






Then, brush the top with more butter, sprinkle with sugar if you want, and bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes.


And then do your best to not eat them all at once when they come out of the oven. Because they have an entire stick of butter in them, and Ed might want some, too.

These were quite delicious, but next time, I'm buying puff pastry. I imagine it'll be easier to work with. But they did get an approving Ed-rating, so worth it this time!