English Muffin Bread

For the last post of this year, I will end with bread. This time an English Muffin Bread with a recipe from my Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. This bread comes to us from a small bakery in Oregon. It has the addition of baking soda after the first rising which I presume account for its name, since that gives it a texture close to English Muffins. Very light and soft batter. The top is a bit wrinkly since the wax paper stuck to the top during the second rising and I had to tear it off. Great toasted and fine on its own with both savory and sweet toppings. The addition of baking soda is what is supposed to give it a bit of a marbled look.

Buckwheat Bread

Always up for trying something new to me, I've been up for trying to make a Buckwheat Bread. Pretty strait forward recipe, but not too much rise, especially the second rise.

As to taste, well then, what can I use to describe it? Bitter, and not pleasant to my taste buds. I'm not sure if its just the buckwheat or the combination with molasses in the recipe that I don't like.

Buckwheat is not a grain at all, but is a plant related to rhubarb. Its the seeds that are used in a variety of cuisines to make porridge, blinis, pancakes and the like. Its often used in breads too for those with gluten allergies. It is one of the healthiest grain substitutes out there. That being said, I do not like the taste of this bread!

Brioche

It was time to try one of the classics: brioche. What self respecting bread baker can call herself that without attempting this all time favorite. Funny thing is that I've only ever had brioche before when I was travelling in France many, many years ago.

Very rich dough requiring the use of up to 6 eggs, plus one for the wash prior to baking and one half pound of butter. I searched through my cookbooks and found a number of recipes for brioche, including American and French versions. They were all a bit different in terms of relative quantities of ingredients. The French versions all included a fermentation stage in the fridge overnight. I ended up using Craig Claiborne's version from the New York Times Cookbook. It also had an initial step requiring using 1 cup of flour, added to the yeast softened in lukewarm water. This is mixed until smooth and than placed in a bowl and covered with lukewarm water and left to sit till the ball floats. This ball is then added to the rest of the flour and other ingredients. I've since discovered that this is a very old fashioned way of slowing down the fermentation time and help develop the gluten strands. Quite neat.

Once I kneaded the bread and let it rise the first time, it was punched down and put in a bowl and left in the refrigerator over night for the fermentation stage. The following morning I found the dough to have doubled in size and very easy to cut up and form each of the individual brioche. Another rise and bake  I do not have proper fluted brioche pans so I used muffin tins. I am quite pleased with the results!! And they are quite yummy to boot.

Chinese Pork with Jicama

According to my old 365 Ways to Cook Chinese, they love jicama once it was introduced to them, because of its crunchiness. Who knew? I've been looking for new recipes to be able to use this vegetable, now that I've been introduced. So here we have a dish using fast fry pork, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, with a dash of sesame oil at the end. Pork and jicama cut into strips. I decided it needed some colour, so I added pepper to the mix. Lovely texture and nice zing to the taste.

Persimmon Jam

Being high on trying new ( to me) fruits and vegetables, I spotted persimmon in the grocery store just before Christmas. Now I may have had them before but not that I remember. Not sure why. Decided to try some and make them into jam. A little research showed that they were often used in jam and in cookies and puddings in the past, so I'm guessing that they were more readily grown and available in the past. More checking showed that persimmons have a lot of anti-oxidants. low in calories and high in fiber. What's not to like. Jam is nice, a bit tart, taste of the fruit a bit delicate. I must get some more and let them ripen more to have uncooked. I did try some before I cooked it for jam, and I found it bland.

Carrot and Date Pudding with Cardamom Sticky Sauce

What is Christmas dinner without a pudding! I found a recipe for this Halwa style Carrot and Date Pudding with a variation of a Sticky Cardamom Sauce in the most recent LCBO Winter magazine. Seemed interesting and appropriate. Easy recipe made in muffin pans. Heat in microwave and serve with just made sauce. Quite light and lovely.

Lobster Bisque

New tradition? Maybe, maybe not. For many years now, its been our tradition to have a light supper on Christmas Eve. For many years that has been Clam Chowder. This year I decided I needed to make a different soup, with more of a pureed  or creme base. Mostly because my 100 year old mom has a hard time  with "bits" in her soup!

So this year I decided to try Lobster Bisque. After looking at a number of recipes I settled on the one in the New York Times Cookbook, with a couple of variations. I added some celery and horse radish, as well as a bit of my spice mixture with its cayenne base. Had a kick, pleasant flavour, but not too special. Maybe next year I'll try something different again.

Tulband

What with Christmas baking, I have become somewhat nostalgic about growing up in a bakery. Well not literally, but close enough. We had an apartment above the bakery and by the time I was 10 or 11, it was help out after school. By the age of 14 I was helping with the baking itself.

This venture in baking and more adventurous cooking, has also led me to recollect about traditional pastries and cakes that my father made every year for special events like Christmas. One of these was a very light type of fruitcake, baked in a bundt pan. I could not for the life of me remember what it was called. I seemed to remember " moskovisch" being part of the name. Doing some research I came to realize that Tulband is what I remembered. I did find a recipe, but not among my dad's old recipe books, but on line from someone who found the recipe in a very old cookbook from the 1950s. That would fit in that our bakery was opened in 1954. It was often referred to as Moskovisch Tulband that  being a reference to what may have been a Russian source for the original.

I followed the recipe and while good, its not quite the texture or flavour I remember. It asked for 3 eggs separated, with the whites beaten to stiff peaks. The yolks were just to be mixed with sugar. Then a little bit of flour with some butter mixed in, and raisins and peel, all folded in together. I baked it in my dad's old tulband pans and even used to little one to form the top.

The result is tasty but not quite as I remember. Less airy and not quite as much of a zing in taste.  While going through the recipe, it seemed to me that the yolks should have been beaten till light and airy as well, and that it needed some grated lemon or orange rind for flavour. Will do that next time when I experiment with my own version of the recipe. maybe I will even find my dad's.

Rapini Soup with Lime

I love rapini, or broccoli rabe as it is sometimes called, because it has such a strong flavour . Jolts our jaded palate. The bonus is its reported cancer fighting properties, keeps bones strong and helps fight heart disease, as well as acting as a detox agent, according to a variety of sources. And who can't use a little detoxing help around Christmas!!

I usually serve the small heads that look like broccoli, as a vegetable but what to do with the stems and the leaves? Well, soup of course. Add onions, garlic and potato. Little bit of chili pepper and lime juice and here we have it.

Bay Scallops with Lemon, Chili and Coriander Sauce

I have been looking for scallops and finally found some. Not sure why they have been in short supply. Tried a new recipe using a variation of a Piri Piri Sauce. Served with lemongrass rice and spinach. A hit. Sauce had a bit of bite with the tartness of the lemon.

Dutch Butter Cookies

I've made fewer "new" cookies than I had planned. The old favourites must be available! But then lately I've been trying to remember a number of cookies and baking that my dad made for our bakery. Mom only eats pale coloured cookies these days. She leaves darker varieties behind for some reason. I think the paler ones stand out more. And they can't be hard. So I remembered  Boter Biesjes and tried to find a recipe I can use. My dad's recipes are ingredients only and for large quantities. I found  a number of likely recipes on line, but this one is the closest. The only credit is that they are called Dan's Dutch Butter Cookies. Turned out to be crisp and buttery and good!

Five Spice Pork with Aubergine and Zucchini

I've been feeling less than inspired to try new recipes lately. The season must have something to do with that, plus mom is becoming more of a challenge. However, today I did try this recipe for pork with Chinese Five Spice powder, which I have. The recipe, from my 365 Ways to Cook Chinese, called for asparagus but I used the thin and narrow oriental eggplant or aubergine, plus a zucchini I had in the bottom of my vegie drawer. Decided to make the sauce a bit hotter by adding fresh ginger and Chinese chili sauce. The result tasted great with rice and  aside dish of steamed bok choy.

Kerstol

Nostalgia time. Memories of working with my dad in the bakery from the time I was 11 or 12. Especially memories of baking Dutch special items for Christmas or Kerstmis. Especially Kerststol. Now I have tried this before, but that was probably 20 years or more ago, and then I used a German  style recipe, not the Dutch yeast variety.

Found a couple of appropriate recipes on line and decided to use one from The Dutch Table website. Soaked the fruit overnight, and made the bread, quite the way my dad might, although I do not remember him adding egg and melted butter to his dough. The results tastes fine, but is closer to the German Style than I would like to recreate. Also, I ended up use almond paste that I bought. It was not a grainy as the paste usually found in Kerstol, closer to marzipan. Mistake, since the higher sugar content means that it starts to melt and run out as the bread is baking. Not all of course, but it does provide that roll of almond paste in the finished bread that you can spread on a slice. Oh well, next time, I will have to make almond paste from scratch.

Green Fridge Soup 3

It was that time again. Clean out the vegie drawer and make a soup. This time I had some fennel, asparagus spears, throw in an onion, some garlic and a potato, plus seasoning, and voila! Green Fridge Soup 3. Quite pale colour this time, and the fennel flavour shines through.

Julia Child's Herb Bisquits

I needed a recipe for biscuits to use up some herbs and buttermilk that I had in my fridge, to accompany a soup. Came across a recipe from Julia Child. Very soft biscuit dough. Almost to soft to handle to cut out biscuits. Also the recipe did not indicate the quantity. I was expecting to get about 12 to 15, instead I ended up with 35!!! We will be eating biscuits for some time. Good thing I can freeze them. And a good thing they are just wonderful. Very light, and very flavourful.

Chocolate Chunk Shortbread

Not much time today and this was a very easy recipe for shortbread. Usually I roll out shortbread, but this one when done seemed to fit being turned into drop cookies. So that's what these are.

Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch Cake

Bringing desert to a pot luck Christmas lunch. Decided to make a Hazelnut Meringue Torte, but my egg whites would not reach the right consistency! So now what? Decided to make cookies out of the soft meringue and hazelnut mixture, and use a eggless chocolate cake that I had in my freezer. Made the chocolate mousse whipped creme as per the original recipe, split the cake, added chopped hazelnut meringue cookies to the filling, as well as on top. Add some chocolate shavings and we are done! It tasted lovely and rich and was a hit.

Herb and Sun Dried Tomato Pull Apart Bread

I decided to try a "pull apart bread" to take to this Christmas pot Luck lunch. I found several recipes, but settled on one for a herb and garlic pull apart bread. Little change... drop the fresh garlic and add chopped sun dried tomatoes. Thought it might add the right colour. Not even close.

Nice recipe with an egg as well as oil for moisture. After the first rising, the bread is cup up into small pieces, rolled into  an olive oil infused with fresh chopped herbs etc and arranges into a pan. It called for a straight sided tube pan which I don't have so I used a pie pan with a small bundt pan in the centre. Well my pull apart bread became a fall apart bread even before it was baked. I can see why the tube pan.

Nice flavour, although I would skip the sun dried tomatoes, since they just became dark and crunchy. If I were to do this again, I would use a tube pan, or bake it in a square or rectangular baking dish.

Jamaican Pumpkin Soup

Picked up a chunk of Jamaican Pumpkin at the market and decided to do a soup. Found a recipe on line that was quite similar to squash soup using onions, garlic, bay leaf, thyme as well as a Scotch Bonnet pepper. Now I am more than a little leary of this pepper, plus I did not have any, so I substituted a Habanero pepper that I had in my garden. This pumpkin, which is obviously a type of squash, is very bright orange even after being cooked. Bit stringy, but because quite smooth when I put everything through the blender. I did remove the pepper before blending. Nice bite, and lovely flavour. Colour is very strong. Great winter soup. Warms one up both with the heat, and the sunny colour.

Baked Lemon Pudding

Rooting through my vegetable drawer, I found a couple of lemon that had been used for rind, and were now getting to look less than appetizing, at least on the outside. So what to make? Looking through old cookbooks, I came across a recipe in my Fannie Farmer Cookbook for a Baked Lemon Pudding. Just 3 eggs, plus 3/4 cup of sugar, lemon juice and tablespoon of rind plus 1 1/2 tbsp flour. I was able to scrape enough rind off the two lemon to make a tablespoon.  Easy. Bake in oven in water bath.

Result was a lovely thin moist cake like crust on top of a silky smooth sauce like pudding with a light lemon flavour. Quite nice. I will do this again.

Phipps Famous Shortbread

Years ago there was a bakery in Toronto that specialized in shortbread, and one time The Star ( I believe) published a recipe for their Famous Shortbread. I tried it and loved it because it had a nuttiness to it, because the recipe required roasting the flour under the broiler before using it. Quite different. So far, I've never seen another recipe like that. In any event, I had not made this type for many years and when I tried to find the clipping in my recipe binder, no luck. So I went on line and lo and behold a recipe, quite like how I remembered it.

Made it yesterday. Quite nostalgic, crumbly  and rich, since it uses a pound of butter as well as fruit sugar and rice flour.

Corn, Bacon and Ham Chowder

One leek, couple of potatoes and a piece of left over ham. What better than a chowder for a winter night. Added some celery and corn and lots of seasoning. Whir with the hand blender to thicken. Added a small amount of cream at the end and served with the saffron buns. Very good and satisfying meal.

Coconut Black Rice Pudding

I discovered I had a container with some Thai black rice, so lets make a pudding. Found a recipe using coconut milk. Rather easy. Cook rice in water then add coconut milk and sugar and cook again until thick.

It was OK but nothing special. Maybe my rice was too old. Oh well.

Saffron Buns

Since I am to bring bread of some kind to a Christmas lunch next week, I thought I would first try out a recipe for buns with saffron. It was from The Art of Baking Cookbook, which is published in Britain. I've had some problems with conversions before when using recipes published in Britain. Everything looked great with the dough. Lovely yellow colour and quite elastic from kneading, but then it would not rise much at all, even though I extended the time a lot. I finally baked them and this is the visual result.

They have a very distinct saffron flavour, which goes quite nicely with soup, but the texture is a bit heavy and stiff. I might try this again.

Cauliflower Soup with Garam Masala

What to do with cauliflower. Always one of the more boring vegetables I feel, but it does provide some variety, and others like it. So now what to do with the remainder. Soup! I experimented with the basic recipe for cauliflower soup by adding some Garam Masala seasoning. Turned out alright. Still a bit too bland for my taste. Colour a bit odd too.

Chicken Piri Piri Stir Fry

Piri Piri sauce has a Portuguese source by way of Africa, where apparantly it is very popular. It has chilies, lemon juice and a variety of spices that make it very piquant. I've used it as a marinade before, but this time I decided to try it as a stir fry sauce with chicken carrots and okra. Served over red rice, it was a hit.

Pinwheel Cookies

What is this holiday season without cookies!!! So a-baking I will go. First up pinwheel butter cookies. Strange as it may seem, I've never made this type of cookie before. Very easy, except for the rolling part. Crisp and not too sweet.

Now that I've got two oven thermometers its so much easier to control the results. Since I've discovered that my oven gauge is off by 50 to 60 degrees, its easier to produce cookies without burning some edges.

Fresh Ginger, Cardamom Baked Applesauce

Grey rainy day, and I need to do something that infuses the soul with warmth from my kitchen. So what is better than baked applesauce, but with a bit of a change. I've done baked applesauce in the crock pot a number of times, using honey and cinnamon, but this time I decided to add fresh grated ginger and cardamom as well as a bit of honey. Smell was divine. Flavour was quite homey with a bit of  spice. Next time I would add a bit more of each.

Baked Coconut Custard

I had a lot of coconut milk, and eggs in my fridge, so lets make a custard! I decided to try to alter a recipe for baked custard in the crockpot, by substituting the coconut milk (which was quite thick) for a portion of the required milk. Turned out to be a bit bland I thought. Plus I think I left it to cook too long, since there were some rubbery bits on the bottom. Doing some research in a How to Bake book I downloaded from the Prepared Pantry website, and reading up on using eggs in baking, too long can produce that result. I had thought it was the coconut milk. Will try this again but following the timing properly

Another aha. I bought an oven thermometer, and have discovered that the temperature gauge on my oven is out (higher) by as much at 50 degrees Farenheit. I always knew the temperature was out, but I did not think it was out by so much. Live and learn.

Beer Bread

New month is started, so a new type of bread. A bread made with 2 cups of beer intrigued me. It also had molasses to give it flavour and colour, and cornmeal to give it crunch. The dough was hard to work with and it took at lot more bread flour than noted in the recipe,  to be able to knead it properly, but I did it all by hand. Good thing this help my arthritis in my thumbs. Dark crust and deep warm brown interior. Lovely smell and lusty flavour. A hit. I made this batch with a light cloured beer. I'm sure it would taste quite different with a dark beer, or a fruit beer. May try that the next time. This recipe is also from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, and was called Trudi's bread but no one knows who Trudi is anymore.