“All sorrows are less with bread.”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Is it just me, or does time really seem to crawl when you want life to get back to normal? Japan is still battling its worse ever crisis, the world looks on with fingers crossed, living in hope that things will get better. Hope rests on unlikely heroes, a band of brothers who work tirelessly round the clock with strength and resilience, reflecting the true spirit of the nation they belong to. The Fukushima 50, the bravest of the brave, put their lives on hold while they battle radiation risks to save impending disaster. The world salutes your spirit!As my mind is overtaken by thoughts of Japan, the bread I post today is simple yet comforting, a good classic bread with deep taste. A few days ago, I had this obsessive desire to bake bread. The weather here is changing, warming up rather quickly, an indication that bread baking days are back again.Often I forget to begin the bread process the previous evening; just don’t plan right. It’s such a bother! I’d had focaccia on my mind for a few days. That morning, leafing through my cookbooks and recipes {including Ottolenghi & Peter Reinhart}, figured I was late for the poolish again. Poolish is like a starter, a mother dough, and is also referred to as a pre-ferment or biga. Yet, bread I HAD to bake! The insane idea didn’t want to leave my head, so it was back to the net, proving for the infinite time that net dependency is something that isn’t easy to shake off! One of the first matches for ‘same day focaccia‘ led me to Pease-Pudding! What’s not to love about the name? One step into the delicious blog and it was time to bookmark. Pease-Pudding is hosted by a North English lass who lives in New Zealand. She loves peas and she loves pudding, has a passion for desserts, hence the name.Of the bread she said on her post, “I have made the bread three times now and each time it turns out perfect. The difference with this dough is that it is more like a wet ‘poolish‘ and not one you knead.” We absolutely loved the focaccia. The crust and texture of both the inside and the outside were addictive. It was obvious why she had made it thrice in a week. I would too!! A handsome splash of extra virgin olive oil, a couple of heads of roasted garlic in the dough, a sprinkling of fresh oregano, sea salt & more garlic on top. I couldn’t have asked for better, more comforting bread! It’s simple, is ready to bake in a couple of hours, and the olive oil lavished on top gives it a beautiful crust. Not sure if the addition of vital gluten had anything to do with it, but the insides were airy, light and delightfully chewy.
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Recipe:Roasted Garlic Focaccia
By Deeba @ PAB
Published: 2011/03/19
One of the best breads I’ve made recently. I found the recipe at yet another wonderful blog from Down Under, NZ actually, while searching for for a ‘same day focaccia recipe‘.
Ingredients
500g plain flour
3 tbsp vital gluten
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 ½ teaspoon dry yeast
1 head roasted garlic, mashed with a fork
1 ½tsp teaspoon salt
500 ml luke warm water
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil Topping:
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
2-3 cloves garlic, sliced fine
Fresh oregano leaves
“The time has come the walrus said to talk of other things,
of sauce and chips and sealing jars,
red chilies and their sting!”
It’s the end of a cold blistery winter on the plains of North India, and now is the best part of the year. Spring is in the air, albeit for just a clutch of days, and is a celebration of flower beds bursting with colour, birds, butterflies, vibrant fresh produce, making the atmosphere ideal for all things creative. This is the time to make the most of the few good days before the searing summer heat descends on us. The bazaars are bursting with farm fresh vegetables and the overladen baskets of ripe red tomatoes {prices at ridiculous as Rs 4 a kilo in Hyderabad, 1$=Rs44}, bell peppers and red chilies tempt you to do something with them. For long I’ve wanted to make a Sriracha style sauceposted on White on Rice’s beautiful blog. Have searched high and low for tiny hot Thai red chillies, but it’s proved futile as they remain elusive here … Then one day, to my rescue came my knight in shining armour – as always, good old Twitter! A tweet for ‘an alternative to Thai red chilies’ had the super talented & lovely Leela @ She Simmers suggest I could use red jalapeños. Now why did I never think of that? A quick check of the red chilies at the local vendor gave me hope, lots of it. Cross checking with a few vendors I was able to confirm that the heat element in the local red chili peppers is far greater than that in the green ones. I was soon back armed with 250gms of the prettiest red chilies priced at a ridiculous Rs 15 {30cents}.This post is written with Sana in mind, a sweet reader of my blog, who writes to me often for advice, with feedback, with appreciation and makes me believe that I have made a difference to her culinary happiness. She asked me the other day if I could post something with the local red chilies that are flooding the market, something other than red chili pickle she asked! This dipping sauce is for her, and she’s offered to send me her MILs stuffed red chili pickle recipe.Who would ever imagine that life can be so fulfilling & delicious. Who was to know that a few red chilies can make a difference!!IMHO, you can live with Sriracha, but you can’t live without it!! I had longed to make this delicious dipping sauce, a sauce which works well with seafood of course, but also beautifully with other batter fried foods, Indian pakoras/fritters, batter fried onion rings {my son’s fave}, olive oil crackers {the daughters fave}, fried fish/chicken, buttermilk breaded chicken, to give mayonnaise or a marinade a chili kick, in a sandwich, with burgers, lavished in a chicken/cottage cheese roll. It offersAsian fusion at its best!! Though an Asian sauce, it works beautifully with most cuisines; after all what’s not to love about chili-garlic-sweet? Did I forget French fries with sweet chili spiked tomato sauce?With thanks to Todd & Diane for the several inspired posts of Asian foods and sauces, I stopped on the recipe page of sweet chili dipping sauce in my Thermomix recipe book. With basic ingredients that can be found on shelves in every home, this is a great accompaniment to spice up your platter. Use the recipe as a guide and play around with quantities to suit your palette.
Sriracha is the name for a Thai hot sauce named after the coastal city of Si Racha, in the Chonburi Province of central Thailand, where it was first produced for dishes served at local seafood restaurants. It is a paste of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt. Sriracha is a common condiment in many Asian restaurants and increasingly found in American and European homes. Traditional Thai Sriracha tends to be tangier, sweeter, and thicker in texture (higher viscosity) than non-Thai. In Thailand, Sriracha is frequently used as a dipping sauce.
Keep the seeds in if you like it hot, or deseed the red chili peppers to make the sauce milder. Taste as you go seems to be the mantra as with most sauces. I’ve made this a couple of times. The first time I found it to be a little runny, so I thickened it with some cornflour mixed in water, and cooked it till it got to the right consistency. Not sure if this was the right or the purists way of doing it, but it worked fine for me. The next time I just simmered it over low heat till it looked right. I do love the pretty colour it has, vibrant and exciting.
“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”
G.K. Chesterton
Desperate times call for desperate measures! Even though the magnitude of my troubles was minuscule, 3 days of no internet reduced me to tears. Silly how addicted and dependent we can be on the internet. Sometime back, sweet Joy from Gourmeted tweeted about Lemon Curd & Shortbread Bars. I had a small jar of left over lemon curd in the freezer and this recipe called my name. Saved the link as the net is just a heartbeat away; well almost always…Little did I know!! We have massive roadworks being carried out for rain harvesting which have meant underground telephone cables being cut pretty often. The cable company always has them up and running the same day; not this time though as the damage was extensive. Oh the untold anguish and the feeling of being cut-off…These wedges were something born out of desperation as I finally gave up and decided to bake ‘anything shortbread’ with the lemon curd and strawberries. Cookbooks yielded nothing, so I eventually put together a basic shortbread recipe for the base, topped it with the lemon curd, and then threw on some strawberries to add colour and taste. Slivered almonds on top for crunch seemed to crown these well. My love for fruit in baking continues unabated. I managed to get a neat stash of strawberries the other day at a really good price. The challenge of course was to use them judiciously and deliciously so they wouldn’t disappoint! Froze some, made some strawberry muffins {recipe to be blogged}, and then made this shortbread.’twas soon time to tempt the teen out of her diet, and these had her eating out of my hand, no fuss, nothing! Ah the power of food, always A M A Z I N G!! I enjoyed making these. Loved the different textures, the colours, and the burst of flavours from the rather buttery unsweetened shortbread to the sweet tart lemon curd, the strawberries lending their ever promising magic to the wedges. Bye bye diet, hello happiness!!It’s always handy to have lemon curd on hand. Have you tried making your own? I use a simple home made lemon curd recipe from Ju @ Little Teochew. It freezes beautifully too, and am contemplating doing a batch of orange lemon curd once before the season bids us adieu.
Strawberry & Lemon Curd Shortbread Delicious and light, the crisp buttery shortbread base is complimented beautifully by simple homemade lemon curd – the flavours tart & sweet. Strawberries add a unique dimension to this indulgent dessert.
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Cooking time: 45 mins | Servings: 6 | Meal type: High tea / Dessert Biscuit Crust:
100g butter, chilled, cut into cubes
3/4 cup plain flour Topping:
2/3 cup easy homemade lemon curd
100g fresh strawberries, diced
1/4 cup slivered almonds Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease a loose bottomed 7″ round tart pan.
Run the flour and butter in blender until you get a breadcrumb like mix. Press into the bottom of a removable base 7″ round tart pan.
Bake at 180C for 10-15 minutes, until light brown Take out of oven, top with lemon curd followed by strawberries. Sprinkle the slivered almonds over.
Return to oven and continue to bake at 180C for 25-30 minutes till the edges begin to get light brown.
Cool on rack, cut into wedges and refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with unsweetened whipped cream.
Variations
You can use other seasonal fruit like blueberries, raspberries etc.
I have a winner for the CSN giveaway… It’s Michelle @ Big Black Dog who said, “I know exactly what I want at CNS, a pizelle maker!”. Congrats Michelle. Mailing you soon!!
“A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed.”
George Rosenbaum
Today, I write with passion about bagels, one of my all time favourite savoury bites, yet something I’ve never tried making at home. I have a very strange connect with bagels, NY and a song called Winds of Change by the Scorpions, the lyrics celebrate the political changes in Eastern Europe around 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall etc. Have you heard the song? {The current pro-democratic Jasmine Revolution might inspire similar haunting melodies…}
I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
The whistling and lyrics of the song have been a favourite for years. Each time I hear the words ‘Gorky Park‘, for some insane reason I get transported to the streets of NY, sitting in a cafe munching a savoury bagel! It’s a very strange connect, maybe a reminder of Central Park in NY … hmmm!
When I got a mail the other day from the Bagel Spice folk asking if I’d be interested in reviewing one of their spice blends, my heart skipped a beat. Did they know that bagels had been on my list of things to make forever and ever? Yes please! Soon we had our old drunk postie flinging a parcel over the gate. The spice blends were here!Bagel Spice, a scrumptious blend of premium spices inspired by the “Everything Bagel”. It’s a delicious accompaniment to a variety of savory dishes. sprinkle it on spreads like butter, cream cheese and hummus. Shake it over fried eggs, lox and tuna, or mix it with mashed potatoes, egg and potato salads for a delightful flavour”.Everything I tried with their spice blend came out excellent and full of flavour. My first attempt was bagels of course, next as part of a marinade, a broccoli stir fry and even olive oil crackers!
A bagel is a bread product, traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, which is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked.The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior. Bagels are often topped with seeds baked on the outer crust, with the traditional ones being poppy or sesame seeds. Some also may have salt sprinkled on their surface, and there are also a number of different dough types such as whole-grain or rye.
I had a recipe in mind, one bookmarked off The Sophisticated Gourmet, which had me making imaginary New York style bagels as I read the post. To quote the young and very talented Kamran, “Heck, this bagel recipe is so good that you’ll be bowing down to the bagel god after you take a nice bite out of one of these freshly made bagels. This recipe is a same day recipe and doesn’t require two days of dedication. You hear that impatient bakers? ONE DAY bagels!“Man these bagels were good. One bite into these beauties and we were transported to bagel heaven. Bow to the bagel god!! I was slightly underconfident making them, coz it was a first for me and I found the boiling etc a little daunting. But fear not. This is as easy a process as it can possibly be. I think most of the hard work is in the kneading, that’s been taken over by the Thermomix now, and the shaping. I did try the 9″ rope shaping, but found TSG’s way of rolling into a ball, pushing a hole through the centre and shaping them much easier and better looking.Used some of the bagel spices as part of an olive oil marinade for fish fingers and for a char grilled broccoli side. Excellent!! As if I hadn’t had my savoury fill, it was once again time for my weekly rolling out of Ottolenghi’s Olive Oil Crackers {I use some whole wheat in mine too, recipe here}. This afternoon, I sprinkled some bagel spices on top of these delightful crisp low fat crackers … YUM!! So many wonderful ways to use these great blends! Check out some more exciting recipes on the Bagel Spice blog!
NY Bagel Recipe adapted minimally from The Sophisticated Gourmet Recipe modified from Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferrigno Makes 8-9 medium-sized bagels
2 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 ½ tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 ¼ cups of warm water {you may need ± ¼ cup more}
450g plain flour {will need extra for kneading}
50g vital wheat gluten
1 ½ teaspoons of salt
Toppings: Bagel spices from bagelspice.com Method:
In ½ cup of the warm water, pour in the sugar and yeast. Do not stir. Let it sit for five minutes, and then stir the yeast and sugar mixture, until it all dissolves in the water.
Mix the flour, vital gluten and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast and sugar mixture.
Pour half of the remaining warm water into the well. Mix and stir in the rest of the water as needed. Depending on where you live, you may need to add anywhere from a couple tablespoons to about ¼ cup of water. You want to result in a moist and firm dough after you have mixed it.
On a floured countertop, knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Try working in as much flour as possible to form a firm and stiff dough.
{Thermomix Recipe
Place all ingredients in TM Bowl, and run on speed 5 for 7-8 seconds.
Put knob to closed position, and run on interval speed for 2 minutes. {Do not leave TM unattended in interval mode.}
Turn out dough, knead briefly to bring into a neat ball for 30 seconds and proceed…}
Lightly brush a large bowl with oil and turn the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp dish towel. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in size. Punch the dough down, and let it rest for another 10 minutes.
Carefully divide the dough into 8-9 pieces. Shape each piece into a round. Now, take a dough ball, and press it gently against the countertop moving your hand and the ball in a circular motion pulling the dough into itself while reducing the pressure on top of the dough slightly until a perfect dough ball forms. Repeat with the other dough rounds.
Coat a finger in flour, and gently press your finger into the center of each dough ball to form a ring. Stretch the ring to about ⅓ the diameter of the bagel and place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Repeat the same step with the remaining dough.
After shaping the dough rounds and placing them on the cookie sheet, cover with a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 220ºC.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Reduce the heat. Use a slotted spoon or skimmer to lower the bagels into the water. Boil as many as you are comfortable with boiling. Once the bagels are in, it shouldn’t take too long for them to float to the top {a couple seconds}. Let them sit there for 1 minute, and them flip them over to boil for another minute. Extend the boiling times to 2 minutes each, if you’d prefer a chewier bagel {results will give you a more New York Style bagel with this option}.
After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, and then place the seed side up onto the baking tray.
Once all the bagels have boiled and have been topped with the bagel spice, transfer them to a lightly oiled baking sheet.
Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.”
Oscar Wilde
As usual a fight to the finish! Another month almost gone; one would think the New Year had just begun!MacTweets time again. Over at our mac-obsessed kitchen, it’s time to share some special mac love . Jamieand I called for just that this February to honour St Valentine. Even though I’ve had loads of mac luck the past few months, this time the feet proved elusive.
Mac Attack #16 – MACS ARE IN THE AIR …With Chet Baker crooning My Funny Valentine, take your romantic heart and scurry into your kitchen and bake a batch of French macarons for that special someone, the lover, the spouse, the best friend, the children, the one whom you want to offer up something special, the one whom you want to make smile.
Create something new, something exciting, something wildly romantic! Nothing says I Love You like a sweet little something, the size of a kiss, the flavor of your wildest desire, the macaron.
My black sesame valentine macarons struggled at high sea, after 2 batches of failure, I managed one with a little success. My fault as I tried stupid tricks. Thermomix experiments with 1 egg white=FAIL. Sesame and almond meal with lofty dreams also failed, well almost. Thankfully got a few feet in a tray, the pop macs didn’t work, so I had to be happy with 2 pairs! I think I overworked the sesame seeds while grinding.My mac experiments coincided with another experiment, an attempted fast track dessert. The teens diet has had severe repercussions on our sweet life. Desserts have been reduced to pitiable levels and the lad is whining all the time. Couldn’t take his pressure the other day, and in a hurry whipped up some eggless chocolate mousse of some sort. While Mr PAB enjoyed it oodles, the kids were a little iffy as in some parts the melted chocolate became grainy as I didn’t whisk it in too fast.I had some left and decided to redo it for the starving dwarfs.Mousse-a-cotta or panna-mousse is what eventually found its way back into the goblets, and found its way into the dwarfs tummies at express speed too! They loved the second fast track attempt, one that I added a dash of espresso to as well. I served them with my pair of precious feet, the failed ones vainly trying to fly the flag on sticks! Posting these now, with hope for a brighter mac future!
Do you want to join us making MACARONS?
If you do, you are most welcome to join us for this challenge, or the next. You can find all the information at our dedicated macaron blog MacTweets. We generally post the round-up by the end of every month, following which a new challenge is posted!
Black Sesame Macarons with Nutella
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup powdered almonds
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
1 large egg white, at room temperature
2 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp egg white powder Method:
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and sesame seeds so there are no lumps; use a blender or food processor since almond meal that you buy isn’t quite fine enough.
In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm, about 2 minutes.
Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding.
Using a teaspoon, or piping bag, drop / pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1″ circles evenly spaced one-inch apart.
Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then rest for about an hour.
Preheat oven to 140C. Bake them for 15-18 minutes.
Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet. Sandwich with Nutella. Mousse-a-cotta
Serves 4
250ml low-fat cream
100gm dark chocolate
1/2 tsp espresso powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 sheet of gelatin Method:
Soak gelatin sheet in cold water for 5 minutes, until soft.
Put cream, espresso powder, sugar and chocolate in a pan and simmer for 5-7 minutes until the chocolate has melted.
Squeeze out the gelatin sheet and stir into hot cream mixture. Take off heat and stir till the sheet is completely dissolved. {Don’t let the cream come to a boil}
Cool slightly and pour into goblets. Chill for at least 4 hours. Serve chilled.
“Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being.”
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
As a CSN Preferred Blogger, I was offered the option of another product review or giveaway. I chose the latter which I’d like to pass to my US/Canada readers. The giveaway is valid for US and Canada residents only, as CSN can only ship for free there, though if you have a US/Canada address or would like to gift something to a friend or relative there, do feel free to enter. CSN’s product categories cover everything from cookware, office furniture, bunk bed-office combinations and fitness equipment to gaming chairs, grills, greenhouses and much much more.
To win this ‘One-time-use $75 Gift Certificate’ all you need to do is to visit CSN Stores and tell me which product you would buy if you won this giveaway. Do leave a valid email address in your comment before midnight 01 March 2011. The winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced thereafter. He/she will have 48 hours to respond, else a new one will be drawn.
Now, back to writing about what I like best, BAKING!! Was baking chocolate granola for the nth time the other day, and the teen suggested using blueberries. Something went TING in my head, and I suddenly remembered my stash of dried blueberries that had arrived from the UK not so long ago. It was cake baking day too, so I decided to bake my fave recipe buttermilk pound cake with a twist of lime and blueberries.Blueberries & lime – a combination made in heaven, makes for beautiful pairing.The buttermilk in the pound cake gives it a beautiful, light crumb. The cake tastes very nice warm, and is great the next day as well. The dried blueberries rehydrate with the lime and buttermilk and add glory to the cake. This is one basic cake I make ALL the time, the recipe lives in my head.It’s an amazingly versatile recipe and takes any number of flavour combinations willingly. Versions I’ve tried before include lime buttermilk cake with a lime glazing, orange chocolate-chip, coffee chocolate-chip, plain chocolate, and even a chocolate-vanilla marble cake. See, I told you I make this very often, or at least used to until the teen began dieting…… She now checks the ingredients before taking a bite, and exhales a loud “ewwww!!!” if she as much as hears the word b u t t e r ! Drama in everyday life, so it’s been a while since I made this … 2-3 weeks actually. I did a tangerine yogurt cake yesterday {read low fat, oil not butter}, and will hopefully post that soon.
Blueberries Lime Buttermilk Pound Cake
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour {or 100% plain flour for a lighter crumb}
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup vanilla sugar
2 eggs
100ml buttermilk {or substitute recipe below}
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Juice of 2 limes {or 1 lemon}
Zest of 2 limes {or 1 lemon}
2/3 cup dried blueberries To make buttermilk substitute at home:
Take 100ml milk at room temperature and add 1 tsp of white vinegar. Let it stand 5-10 minutes. When it curdles, it’s ready to use. Method:
Grease and flour the sides of a 8″ ring tin, or a 6″ round tin. Line the bottom. { I play safe line the sides too}.
Preheat the oven to 170C.
Mix the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl with a whisk. Reserve.
Beat the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat in eggs, followed by the vanilla extract, lime juice and zest.
With the beater on low speed, add the flour mix and buttermilk alternately in three lots. Gently fold in the dried blueberries.
Bake for 50-60 minutes till golden brown on top, and the tester comes out clean.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥
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As I write this post, my heart and thoughts are with the people of New Zealand which has been devastated by the most horrific earthquake. It just seems to unfair, so tragic … the scale of loss unbelievable.
