Posts filed under 'bread'
Poor Amanda, who is expecting something quintessentially American is faced with something all British. A popover is simple a Yorkshire pudding made small and without meat.
I was having a problem with them for a while. I asked British food groups how they made theirs. I tried all the things they said. I still intermittently had problems. So, I dragged out my two really old American cookbooks and checked their recipes side by side. One, the one I had been using, said to mix the ingredients and beat them for 2 minutes. The other said to beat them only until they were smooth and that overbeating them would reduce volume.
Lightbulb. I did it the easy way and the above is what I got.
Popovers
1 cup flour
1 pinch salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 450°F or 220°C with the baking dishes inside.
Mix together and beat with a beater just until smooth. Allow to rest a few minutes then ladle into heated forms already in the oven with a generous amount of fat melted in them. What you see is individual soufflé dishes. Popovers are usually cooked to the point you see here, then stabbed to the very heart and left in the oven with the heat turned off to dry out a bit. I am far too impatient for that.
When I make a big one for Yorkshire pudding I use an iron frying pan preheated and with quite a lot of fat melted into it. It will puff, puff, slip and slide while you watch… what fun! The pudd is eaten as soon as it is big and brown.
April 2nd, 2008
March 23rd, 2008
but she is not and she is also not really a soup.
When something tastes this good and is this easy to make, looks shouldn’t count. I even threw a rosemary sprig at her, but it didn’t help, and I didn’t want to sprinkle something all over that would alter the flavor. This is a traditional dish of Sardinia again, and again it is just the kind of thing you need to know how to make if people come in for meals at intervals or at odd hours. It takes five or ten minutes to put it on the table if the ingredients are at hand.
I hope someone will try making it with lavash, because I think that will work but I can’t buy lavash here.
This is another dish made with Pane Carasau– see below. It sounds a bit unpromising, but once you have the box in the kitchen, you really do have to try all the ways to use it. Don’t you? It turns out that this first course vegetarian main dish is delicious enough to warrant buying the box in the first place. The most difficult part of making it was deciding which cheeses would work the best. The ones I used were terrific and I suspect that anything you choose may be terrific too. Recipe after the
Zuppa Gallurese
Pane Carasau, about 1 to 1-1/2 sheets for 2 portions
formaggio fresco/fresh cheese, anything from Kraft Philadelphia on up, about 2 ounces (60 g) for two
Pecorino not very aged, grated on the big holes of the grater (about 2 ounces for 2)
Pecorino stagionato quite aged and gratable like Parmigiano, or use any grana including Parmigiano– about 1 ounce or 30 g for two
a few leaves and sprigs of herbs, such as bay, rosemary, thyme or sage
boiling hot reduced broth or stock, enough to cover, about one pint for two.
In a pot that will hold the amount you want to make, make a layer of pieces of Pane Carasau on the bottom. Using a spoon, add a few dollops of the fresh cheese on top, then sprinkle with the grated soft cheese, then grate the hard cheese over that. Add a few pieces of herbs. Continue with another layer of everything, in the same order, but you must end up with a layer of the crispy bread.
Now pour boiling hot broth over it until it is just covered. Let it sit for a minute or so until it is moistened, then serve. This is the step that gives her her name. Soaking the dish in broth is to inzuppare, and so it is called zuppa even though as you can see, it is not soup. Black pepper is a very nice addition. You really won’t believe what this tastes like!
I gave you an estimated amount for two portions, but that could change if your pot were wider or narrower. My pot was about 7″ wide and I made 3 cheese layers surrounded with bread layers. By simply layering up more I could have made many more servings. In a 10″ pot I could easily have made servings for 10 people. I could have made it richer by using more cheese. I could have made it less rich by using stronger cheeses but less of them– although you do need the soft cheese to combine with the broth, so don’t alter that one. The broth both melts the cheeses and becomes milky itself, and that is why there are two fairly young cheeses in the dish. If you were to use more aged cheeses, that effect would lessen. It would probably still be mighty good, however. I don’t really see how it could ever fail as long as you use tasty cheeses.
I picked the herb bits out as I ate this. They definitely flavored the dish, so I would never leave them out, but all the herbs mentioned are woody and stemmy and I can’t see eating them. All in all, this is another surprising dish from Sardinia, a place that has a talent for surprising me in the nicest possible ways. Let’s see if we can surprise Ruth at Presto Pasta Night with it. 
March 16th, 2008
We begin with this. It’s an inconveniently large, flat box filled with thinnest and crispest stuff called Pane Carasau or Carta di Musica
or music paper. It’s from Sardinia and in Sardinia it’s used in so many ways I may never work my way to the end of them. For me the only problem is how to store it, because 500 grams, or about a pound, can last a long time. Once you’ve broken into the plastic covering it is vulnerable to humidity, dust and critters. Fortunately, most uses require that it be broken into pieces, so you can stick it into a big sealable bag if you do that.
I can buy it at any grocery store and I know it is available at a horrific price in the UK, but I’m not sure how widely available it is across the Atlantic. The various labeling on the back of my brand is in German, French, English and Spanish, so do look for it. Otherwise, I am convinced you can use lavash bread instead, and that really is widely distributed in the US. If you are very ambitious, you will find a recipe for making it from scratch at home at The Ingredient Store. Please let me know if you do that! N.B. I think a pasta roller could help you get this thin as paper and who cares if it’s round?
OK, so why would you want this product? For its extreme usefulness and flexibility, say I. It’s delicious and crunchy as a bread or cracker, really tasty with baba ghanouj and hummus, just nice tucked in among other breads. But even more, it makes a series of traditional Sardegnan dishes that are perfect for how a lot of people live nowadays. You can make them in moments of few ingredients and for as many diners as there are. It can even be used to make a lasagna.
Today’s dish is Pane Frattau or just Frattau. I’ve made it and eaten it three times this week because I could not convince myself that was all there was to it. (OK, also because my poached eggs kept coming out warped.) I used the recipe on the back of the package and I can’t wait to get to the rest of them now. Each time I varied the cheese a bit, or how much I poached the egg, but no matter what, I couldn’t ruin it. 
Jump to the recipe:
Pane Frattau
tomato sauce (purchased or homemade)
Pane Carasau in the amount you want to eat
about 1 ounce per person/30 g of grated Pecorino (because that’s what they make in Sardinia which is very far from Parma!)
1 poached egg per person (crack it into a cup or a small bowl at this point)
I shall give you a simple recipe for the tomato sauce I used below. Whatever sauce you will use, you must gently heat it while you do the rest of this.
Grate the cheese you’ll use and set it aside. Start a pot of water to boil for poaching the egg(s) and put salt and a little vinegar in it. Put some water into a large pot and put it onto the flame. Make sure to have a slotted spoon or spatula for removing things.
When the egg water boils, stir it into a whirlpool and slide the egg into the vortex. This is how I wrecked my eggs. I broke them from the shell and couldn’t aim them, so they didn’t go into the center and became sort of sea slug shaped. Let the water return to a simmer while you drop the pieces of carasau into the big pot of hot water, a few pieces at a time, immediately removing them with the slotted spoon to a serving plate. When they are all dipped and drained, your egg will probably be done just right, with a firm white and a liquid yolk.
Pour tomato sauce over the wet carasau pieces, toss the grated cheese over that, top it all with the poached egg. Done. Yummy, too.
Oh, and the cleanup report is super easy, because although there are three pans, two have only had water in them, and a quick wash and rinse is all it takes.
The Tomato Sauce I made is simple and quick.
1/2 cup finely minced onion, celery and carrot
2 cloves of garlic cut up
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
1 28 ounce can of peeled Roma tomatoes, or others you like
salt to taste
You may add oregano or basil or any herb you like, but you don’t have to every time.
Sauté the vegetables and garlic in the oil until they soften, then add the tomatoes, stirring them in. Using a stick blender, puree the sauce and then heat it, tasting to correct salt, for ten to 15 minutes. Once cooled it can be kept covered in the fridge for many days or frozen in portions for almost forever.
And now, let’s slide this past the folks at Presto Pasta Night and see if they buy this idea for “instant” pasta.
March 6th, 2008
The other day I was discussing the many traditional Carnevale and Lenten sweets that people make around me. I think they are supposed to quit making them once Lent starts, but they don’t. You almost can’t walk into a home this time of year without the perfume of hot oil and sugar winding around you and wrapping you up for the fat farm.
Everybody is making them and posting about them except me. I am cajoled and teased and blackmailed into tasting them constantly and I can’t bear to have them at home as well. I’m asking around for someone who is willing to be followed and photographed so I can publish it for you, but if you look around the blogging world for Cenci, Castagnole, Fiochi, Chiaccherare, and the hundreds of other words used to describe the hundreds of versions up and down the boot, you will definitely find them.
I remembered then that I loved a seasonal sweet traditional to my culture. The mighty Hot Cross Bun! I was immediately told that it is not the season until Good Friday. Uh! Something that good eaten only three days of the year? Not in my world! I decided that if I didn’t put the frosting crosses on until Good Friday I could have them right away and even take them to my hosts this weekend for an easy breakfast.
I looked at loads of recipes on line and in old cookbooks. The cookbook recipes were way too simplified for me. They wouldn’t produce what I remembered from decades ago. Delia of British fame has a good looking recipe, but my scale is broken so I needed a US recipe that doesn’t need weighing.
The recipe I used in the end was from Bella Online where they also have the nursery rhyme and the story behind this old fashioned sweet roll. If you agree that mine are prettier than theirs, it’s because I added an egg yolk wash before raising the formed buns. I think mine are a bit too big, too. I would make 16 of them from this recipe instead of 12.
The above is how they look in the very welcome sunshine that is pouring over my counters today. I have already eaten two and given one to Olga. We are agreed that these are the best we’ve ever had– mind you she’s never had them before.
February 7th, 2008
OK, it is two days later and there was, of course, some spoonbread left over. Today I made a chicken gravy with some stock made from trimmings, heated in it some slices of leftover roast chicken and served it over slices of the spoonbread heated over very low heat in a bit of butter. It was really good! Not that much like grilled or fried polenta. Lighter, fluffier. Not at all lacking in great taste and it had a very pleasant texture. Some linginberry jam from Ikea took the place of cranberry sauce.
I wonder why no one seems to make spoonbread any more? Even I, known for digging out dishes whose day is long past, haven’t made it in more than a decade. It’s so creamy, warm, smooth and it loves butter or sauces.
I made this one just a few minutes ago. This is the quick and easy version, and it isn’t as luxurious as the more complicated version. It is, however, ready in less than 30 minutes from the thought.
Preheat the oven to 200°C or 400°F. Put a 1 quart/liter baking dish in to warm.
1 egg
3/4 cup cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon soda
1-1/2 cups of buttermilk, or if you are an expat, 6 tablespoons of buttermilk powder and 1-1/2 cups skim milk
1 tablespoon of butter melted in a heated 1 quart/1 liter baking dish
Using a whisk, beat the egg in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix them thoroughly. Carefully scrape all of the batter into the pre-heated baking dish and cook for 20-25 minutes or until it is just set.
Spoon out servings topped with melting butter.
I actually ate my piece with chili, but those photos were even worse than these. The camera focuses on everything but the bread.
January 14th, 2008
Sugarplum loaf
December 7th, 2007
Saturday I went to town, both for the market and because I needed to pry myself from my mousehole, to which I had become far too adapted when I wasn’t feeling so well. I lost an entire size in a week! I don’t recommend the method, however. Still, when my jeans wouldn’t stay where I put them, and I pulled out that tight, black pair and zipped them on, it was pretty interesting from my point of view.
Everybody was bundled up. Except me. It was cool and I was wearing this knit jacket, but they were wearing down jackets, all black but one. 
As the day wore on it got hot, but they only unzipped their jackets. Why do Italians feel the cold so much?
I visited friends here and there. I made an appointment and got a haircut. I lunched on ravioli ai porcini and it was splendid, the simplest rendition I have ever had and my favorite waitress in the world was right to recommend not using the cheese on it. I only ate half, so she proposed next time she’d give me a half portion. Oh, and they’ve added flavored ciabatte to the bread basket, which is a brilliant move in a place where the local bread is salt free! They make it in house, too, and the onion one was great. I drank my first glass of wine in over a week. Good.
The haircut is good as usual, but figlio Andrea was given the styling and made it so crazy I rinsed my hair when I got home. What gets into those two kids? Sister does that too, although Mata at least uses something flexible rather than what seems to be Elmer’s Glue-all. That family is one of the best things in Italy. Mum offered me homemade pastry as well as an espresso. I wish I could have eaten it.
So, I returned home with two tiny artichokes, a kilo of Pugliese tomatoes (in spite of Jeffo’s objections, they still truck them up here from Foggia,) a big bunch of white grapes that make my lips curl up into a smile, and two very small eggplant/aubergine. And 4 belts, all looking as if they might have come off Marc Jacobs’ runway, given me by a woman in Patrizia’s shop because I was the only one they fit. Three years ago I searched all over for a 24″ belt and never found a one. Now I have four, all in shades of red, red/brown and ranging from glazed leather to suede. The buckles are very nice indeed.
I need to get out more.
October 29th, 2007
The peach mostarda from this summer: you must break open the chilies before cooking, enough to release the flavor. Just crack them before putting them into the peaches.
Smoked pecorino from Sardegna: it is not called Fiore Sardo. The website where I got that information is incorrect. Fiore Sardo is a great cheese, but not smoked. Ask for smoked Sardegnan (Sardinian) pecorino, or Pecorino affumicato Sardo. I just bought 700 grams of it at the Mercato Centrale at Florence, so now I can try to copy some of the recipes I ate at Terra Terra.
The sloppy dough bread was made twice. Both times were different. The secrets seem to be 1) making it wetter than regular bread dough, 2) allowing it to rise very slowly, cool, many hours and 3) cooking the bread in a heavy, covered pot for the first half hour, then uncovering it to finish. Rather than translate the recipe measures, I just used Italian measures, because the yeast comes in packets that raise 500 grams of flour. Both versions worked, and that’s the important part.
I am off to a town near Rome today for an expat gathering, and will post something new when I get back… so see you later.
October 20th, 2007
