Mummy tore a recipe for grilled naan out of the Oregonian a few weeks ago and, the day before I left for camp, Dad and I made a half batch. The dough is super easy to make and if you can’t find whole milk yogurt (which I couldn’t) just use whatever plain yogurt you have lying around (lazy, lazy yogurt). Once you’ve got your easy dough done you get to fill it with some cilantro and mint (although some chicken, curry or just about anything else would be equally tasty) and then you just pop it onto a hot grill for a few minutes and you’re done! It winds up tasting a little bit like an un-fried samosa. The bread is warm, a little smokey, and has a nice layer of tangy, herby bits in the middle. They were pretty good this time, and I think I can raise them to the “hella good” level next time.

I only did a half batch and wound up making four fairly large breads (about 8 inches across). I could only finish one, and Dad ambitiously broke into one and a half, so these are hefty little guys once they’re all done and baked. I’d definitely cut back on the cilantro next time, even to the point of doing the naan plain without any filling. I added some lemon rind and juice to the filling, and I didn’t have any cashews so I did chopped almonds instead and I couldn’t find any fresh ginger to save my life… so powdered it was. I also tossed in some cardamom to the mixture. If anything, this should show you how totally flexible this recipe is. You can go anywhere from just a little thin filling that just adds a hint of something something to the bread, or you can go all out and fill it with savory things like meat and curry to turn it into something like a calzone. Or you can just take the bread recipe and make yourself some more traditional naan… or as traditional as you can get.

Grilled Cilantro-Mint Naan

From the Oregonian Food Day

-MAKES 10 BREADS -

Ta dah! Very tasty, especially when you pair it with asparagus from the farmer’s market.

My family has made Dutch Baby Pancake for as long as I can remember. There was even a little bit of time there when I would make one and eat it all on my own right out of the baking dish (oh yeah, those were the days). I can’t imagine why it would be called “Dutch Baby”… your guess is as good as mine, although my guess aren’t very pleasant. It’s ridiculously easy to make and the dough warps into some amazing shapes (think puffy clouds/funny hats). It is a slightly sweet, eggy, pancake that is perfect for a quick, easy weekend breakfast. Dutch Baby Pancake

Serves: 4

1 C. flour

1 T. sugar

1 1/4 C. milk

2 eggs

1/4 t. salt

1 T. butter (melted)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine wet ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Whisk in flour until well combined. Pour into a greased pie pan with high sides (the pancake likes rise very high so the higher the edges are to contain it, the better) the one in the photo has three inch sides. Bake for 30 minutes or until sides are browned and middle is beginning to brown. This pancake has a tendency to deflate very quickly, don’t worry, it’s still extremely tasty. You can add fresh fruit, maple syrup or powdered sugar to the top.

I’ve had a craving for lavender lately. Not only is allrecipes.com a veritable wasteland when it comes to the flower so are all of the other cooking blogs I cruise through. After a bit of digging I found a Lavender Tea Bread on allrecipes and after a little pondering I decided to make it into cupcakes and, with a little lemon zest, the idea started to make my mouth water. These turned out so puffy, soft and smelled so good! I can’t get enough of them. The flowers were a little disconcerting in the dough, but by the time everything had baked I didn’t notice them anymore, they’re just pretty purple specks.

Lavender Tea Bread Recipe

Via: allrecipes.com (My alterations will be in the parenthesis)

Makes 12 cupcakes or one 5 x 9 loaf.

• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh lavender (I used dried flowers with the same results)
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs (I used one very very large local egg, equivalent to two from a regular store)
• (zest from 1 lemon)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. (Grease muffin tins for 12 cupcakes or one 5 x 9 inch pan).
2. Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat, and allow to cool slightly.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg until the mixture is light and fluffy. (Add zest) Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk and lavender until just blended. Pour into pan (or cupcake tins until 2/3 full).
   
4. Bake for 50 minutes in pan or 25 minutes in cupcake tins in the preheated oven, or until a wooden pick inserted comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
   

Alex and Casey came over for a little dinner party with Ben and I so the three of us(Ben was on the phone with his mamarama so Alex, Casey, and I cooked) made Pad Thai. I found the recipe by googling “Pad Thai recipe” and came up with one from Alton Brown(you may know him from his Food Network show or from Iron Chef). The recipe can be found here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pad-thai-recipe/index.html

And I’ll copy and paste for convenience

• Yield 2 servings

Ingredients

• 1-ounce tamarind paste
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 4 ounces rice stick noodles
• 6 ounces Marinated Tofu, recipe follows
• 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 cup chopped scallions, divided
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 2 whole eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons salted cabbage
• 1 tablespoon dried shrimp
• 3 ounces bean sprouts, divided
• 1/2 cup roasted salted peanuts, chopped, divided
• Freshly ground dried red chile peppers, to taste
• 1 lime, cut into wedges

Directions

Place the tamarind paste in the boiling water and set aside while preparing the other ingredients.

Combine the fish sauce, palm sugar, and rice wine vinegar in a small bowl and set aside.

Place the rice stick noodles in a mixing bowl and cover with hot water. Set aside while you prepare the remaining ingredients. Once the other ingredients are measured out into separate bowls, drain the water from the noodles and set them aside. Cut the tofu into 1/2-inch wide strips, similar to French fries.

Press the tamarind paste through a fine mesh strainer and add to the sauce. Stir to combine.

Place a wok over high heat. Once hot, add 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil. Heat until it shimmers, then add the tofu. Cook the tofu until golden brown, moving constantly, for no longer than 1 minute. Remove the tofu from the pan to a small bowl and set aside.

If necessary, add some more peanut oil to the pan and heat until shimmering. Add 2/3 of the scallions and then the garlic, cook for 10 to 15 seconds. Add the eggs to the pan; once the eggs begin to set up, about 15 to 20 seconds, stir to scramble. Add the remaining ingredients in the following order and toss after each addition: noodles, sauce, cabbage, shrimp, and 2/3 of the bean sprouts and peanuts. Toss everything until heated through, but no longer than 1 to 2 minutes total. Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with the remaining scallions, bean sprouts, and peanuts. Serve immediately with the ground chile peppers and lime wedges.

*Notes: I doubled the recipe for the four of us and it was perfect; I used sushi rice vinegar which has a little bit of sugar in it, didn’t affect the flavor that I could tell; I did not marinate the tofu but it was still delicious; I used tamarind concentrate that came in a plastic jar and was liquidy, but followed the instructions anyway since I assumed it needs to be diluted; for “palm sugar” i just used organic evaporated cane juice(aka granulated sugar); and I used some crushed red pepper flakes and a bunch of Sriracha sauce for the spice.

Enjoy!

So. I spotted this 1/2 gallon of homogenized whole milk at Twelve Mile the other day and thought “Ah hah!” and immediately started dreaming of homemade ice cream and butter. It wasn’t until after I got it home that I realized ice cream and butter want heavy cream + whole milk. Darn. The milk was threatening to expire while I spotted this cheese recipe on Little House in the Suburbs (which is a great little blog to peruse through). It sounded good, easy and it was guaranteed to take this expired milk off of my hands and out of the fridge.

The cheese turned out…. well…. it’s cheese. I added salt and some agave to it to give it some sweetness. Dad described it as those little crumbles in cottage cheese without any of the liquid. That’s pretty accurate. I think that it even takes away some of the moisture in your mouth when you eat it it’s that dry. Oh well… live and learn, right? It was totally worth it for the experience.

After I added the vinegar and it was a-curddalin’. The dry cheese ball now resting peacefully in the fridge. I wonder if it would be good melted?

1/2 Gallon Whole Milk (Goat or Cow)
1/4 cup white vinegar or 1/4 cup Lemon juice
Salt to taste

1. Put milk into stainless steel pot and heat over medium until between 190 and 200 degrees.

2. Slowly stir in vinegar or lemon. Remove from heat and allow to curdle and cool until it’s not too hot to touch.

3. Pour cheese into cloth lined bowl. Pull together the 4 corners of cloth and twist around a spoon. Hang dripping cheese for a few hours.

4. Salt to taste and check consistency. I like a fairly hard cheese, so I hang it in the fridge overnight. That’s about the max.

5. Untie, (add any garlic or herbs or more salt, if you like) place in airtight container, and chill. Depending on how long you hung it, it should be about 12-16 oz of cheese.

Mummy and I picked up some semolina flour yesterday and then decided to make some pasta from scratch. I can remember her hanging pasta between the backs of two chairs when I was little… ah the good old days. These noodles are thick, chewy and a pretty buttery yellow color when they’re all done. They would work really well in a soup (I’m thinking chicken noodle soup… mmmm… without the chicken, that is. Oh how I miss chicken noodle soup.) or old school with a bit of pasta sauce. If you have a pasta machine, great! Crank it to about 6 and roll away! If you’re doing it by hand, make them as thin as possible, they’ll still be chewier than you think when they’re done cooking.

Twelve Mile Noodles

This recipe makes a lot of pasta (a few pounds of ravioli or enough noodles for about seven people) so make a half batch or refrigerate it if you’re not planning on feeding an army.

3 c. Semolina Flour

1 c. All purpose flour

2/3 c. water

3 eggs

2 T. oil

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients and combine thoroughly (I find that making a little well in the center of the dry ingredients and then pouring the liquid into the center and slowly combining the two, working my way from the center outwards works well if you’re hand mixing).

Make a large ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Let it rest for an hour, or refrigerate overnight (if you refrigerate, let it rest and warm up to room temperature for at least an hour before you roll it out).

After an hour, divide into six sections. Roll out each section as thin as you can into a long, narrow rectangle. Thoroughly dust with semolina and then, roll the dough up, beginning on a narrow side so that you have a narrow, thick roll (like a cinnamon roll).

Carefully slice the dough into 1/8 inch sections. Unroll each slice and hang to dry for about 30 minutes. Toss into boiling water for four minutes or refrigerate for up to three days or so (once it’s completely dry). Makes enough for about seven hearty servings of pasta.

This bread recipe made it’s way to me from the NY Times a while ago and I just got around to making it yesterday. The reason it took me so long is that it prefers to be baked on a baking/pizza stone (you don’t have to, but I wanted to) and that just seemed like alot of effort… booorrriinnnggg! But that’s the only other white bread recipe I had hanging out in my links folder so I decided to give it a whirl anyway.

It should really be called the “No kneed chewy inside/crunchy outside bread” because that’s essentially what it is. The dough is SUPER loose when you stirr it together… more like an incredibly sticky blob which later grows to be an enormous blob. You don’t kneed it so you can’t really ever get it under control. It stays messy and sticky the whole time until it’s safely out of the oven, baked into a hard shell. Ok, so here’s essentially how easy it is. You mix together the four ingredients (wow, I know, FOUR whole ingredients!? How will you ever manage? Heehee..) and let them hang out in a warm place for two hours, then you take 1/4 or 1/2 (I just made two larger loaves instead of the four the recipe wanted me to make) and kind of roll it into a ball between your hands, let it rest another 40 minutes then pop it onto a preheated pizza stone for 30 minutes with a bucket of water sitting in the bottom of the oven. While I’m writing this, it sounds to me like this dough is going to a baking spa with an itinerary something like: 10:00- get stirred 10:15-12:15- rest in warm place 12:15- get rolled and patted down with flour 12:30-1:45- rest in warm place again 1:45-2:15- loll around on hot stone and GET BAKED! Baking spas sound like my kind of deal… bake and relax…

Recipe: Simple Crusty Bread

Recipe from NY Times

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

I’m glad I only did a small handful! Any more and they would have turned into the Hulk and busted their way out of the jar.

Bob’s Red Mill. Check it out if you don’t know about this company. I love their 5 and 10 grain blends so when I spotted their Baking Book on sale at Powell’s this weekend I snapped it up. It’s two whole pounds of healthy, grain-based recipes. I don’t have many of their fancy flours (chickpea, soy, amaranth flour, etc.) but I do have whole wheat, unbleached all purpose and some almond meal I dug up from the depths of the pantry.

It was moderately difficult to find a recipe that just called for these goodies and didn’t throw in a fancy curve ball at the end like malted barley flour. One of these days I’ll get my hands on all of these, one at a time and experiment, but not today.

Finally I found a cracker recipe that seemed fairly simple in both the baking process and the ingredients list. These turned out to be something along the lines of really really flat biscuits (which is also exactly what they look like). I have a feeling that homemade crackers will tend to be more on the chewy side than I like, and this was one of them. Even though about 1/3 the dry ingredients was almond meal they don’t taste like it, just whole wheaty. So, if you’re looking for a chewy cracker with a whole wheaty taste… this is it! They taste great with some cream cheese, jam or hummus on top and they’re really good warm from the oven.

Almond Flatbread Crackers

from Bob’s Red Mill

1/3 c. almond meal
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
2 T. softened, unsalted butter
1/3 c. plain yogurt or sour cream

Preheat to 400. Mix together dry ingredients in a medium/large bowl. Mix together butter and yogurt/sour cream and then combine with dry ingredients. Knead dough for about 30 seconds and then seperate into 2 pieces. Roll each piece until very thin. Cut into squares or any shape you want (about 2 inches in size). Bake crackers on an ungreased baking sheet for 6 minutes, or until just beginning to brown. Cool on wire rack.

I’m an impulsive baker. The only time I’ve ever planned to bake something before I started mixing things together was Thanksgiving when I had to plan around a huge hank of meat that would be taking over the oven for hours. Anyway, my point is that for baking they always tell you to use softened butter. Most people soften it either by sticking it on the counter for an hour (boooorrriinngggg) or nuking it for 20 seconds (which never works well, it always gets melty in places). I found this quick way to soften butter via Craftzine.

Images and instructions courtesy of elise.com.