Roast Tomato Tartine

I don't know about you, but I would rather eat several little meals than one or two big meals a day. This roast tomato tartine is one of my favorites- a couple of these with a glass of red wine is a perfect dinner for me. I use a cast iron skillet to roast the tomatoes with garlic, rosemary and olives. I like the olives to get a little crunchy and the tomatoes to char a bit. All the flavors come together and the olive oil left in the pot with the little bits of black pepper and salt is amazing to dip bread in. I have made this as an appetizer which in reality is what it is, but when cooking for myself this is my entree. The recipe as I have written it yields about 8 tartines, whatever I have leftover is always delicious the next day as well. If you want to make more, it doubles easily- just be sure to use a large enough pan so that everything touches the bottom of the skillet.

I use French Goat Feta which I purchase at Whole Foods, any mild goat cheese will work very well. The olives are seasoned pitted cerignolas or whatever green seasoned olives I have on hand, use your favorite olives, oil cured olives would be great too. For the bread, I use sourdough slices, but French bread would be great as well. I do not peel the garlic before roasting so it doesn't burn, I squeeze it out of it's shell once cooked and spread it on the bread. Oh, one last thing...you can skip the bread and toss with angel hair pasta- yum!



Roast Tomato Tartine

1 pint mixed cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup seasoned green olives
8 garlic gloves (not peeled)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 large sprigs fresh Rosemary (fresh Thyme can be substituted)
freshly ground black pepper
Coarse sea salt

4 oz. french Goat Feta
8 thin slices sourdough bread

1. preheat oven to 450 F.

2. In a cast iron skillet, toss tomatoes, olives, garlic and Rosemary with olive oil. Generously season with salt and pepper. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring once half way through.

3. Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees, place bread slices on top rack and bake for 2 minutes, flip bread over and bake 2 minutes more.

4. Spread goat cheese on toasted bread slices. Squeeze one garlic clove on top of goat cheese and top with roasted tomatoes and olives. Garnish with additional rosemary or Thyme.

Mardi Gras Cream Cheese filled King Cake

This is a post from 2008... so yes, since I'm not posting right now- I am recycling! I thought it might be of current interest.

Stemming back to the 1700's, King Cakes are the traditional celebratory cake of Mardi Gras. Originally king cakes were served at Mardi Gras Parties and the king cake held a bean inside instead of a plastic baby. When served, the "lucky" person having the bean on their plate was named the king or queen of the party, and was then responsible for holding the next Mardi gras party which would include all the guests present at the party where the bean was found.

Living in South Louisiana, I have eaten more than my fair share of King cake. The bakeries make them in just about every flavor imaginable. The most popular are Praline and cream cheese, which is my favorite. Up until today I had not made my own king cake, but a few days ago I stumbled across this Swedish Ring at Tartelette and knew it would be perfect for my cake. I used the dough portion of her recipe and adapted it to make my king cake, then filled it with cream cheese.

I am not an avid yeast user, so making bread which uses yeast as it's leavening always makes me a little nervous. I followed her directions exactly, but the first batch of dough turned out a bit dry. I made a second batch with less flour and it was perfect. We emailed back and forth and she confirmed it was the flour, she had forgotten to write to add the flour in stages. Since the first I made this I have learned to add  flour slowly- you can always add more, but can never take it away.



Cream Cheese filled King Cake

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast or 1 package instant yeast
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter softened (1/2 stick)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon nutmeg
grated zest of one lemon (1 tablespoon)
2 1/2 cups flour

Filling:
10 oz. cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla

Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
colored sugars (green, purple and yellow)

1. Heat milk to 105-110 degrees in a small saucepan over low heat. Place milk in the bowl of a standing mixer, add yeast and stir to combine. Allow milk mixture to rest for about 10 minutes or until frothy.

2. Beat the egg in a small bowl and add to milk mixture. Then add 2 1/2 cups flour, butter, sugar, salt, nutmeg and lemon zest. With the dough hook on low speed, mix until dough comes together. The dough will be slightly sticky, not too wet. If the dough seems very moist you may add up to 1/2 cup additional flour 1 tablespoon at a time. (having made my dough twice using both amounts of flour, I found less flour worked best as I incorporated a little extra flour when kneading it by hand).

3. Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for a few minutes until dough is soft and smooth. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a towel or plastic wrap. Allow dough to rise in a warm and draft-free place for about an hour, or until doubled in size. (Since it is quite a cold day today and my house is a little drafty I turned on the oven and sat the bowl on the range).

4. Make filling by beating the cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar together with a mixer until fluffy then set aside.

5. Lay dough on lightly floured surface, punch down and roll into a 20" by 10" rectangle. Spread cream cheese mixture evenly on one half of the dough, then fold other half over to cover. Pinch dough together to seal in cream cheese. Make a ring and pinch ends together, the ring can be a circle or oval. Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rose for 45 minutes.

6. In 375 degree oven bake king cake for 20 minutes or until slightly browned. Remove from oven and set a side to cool. I add the bean at this point by making a small slit underneath the cake with a paring knife.

7. Mix icing ingredients together and whisk until smooth. Drizzle icing heavily over king cake, and while still wet, sprinkle with colored sugars.

Happy Mardi Gras!!

Recipe: Easy Banana Bread

Passing on my love for food, baking and cooking is something I hope to do for my very picky little eater, Jack. I am trying a new approach to get him to try new foods, with the thought that if he gets excited about something we cook together he will then want to also eat it. I figured we would start with something he is sure to please him, banana bread. I also wanted Jack to be able to prepare it from start to finish without much intervention from me, so this was a great easy recipe.

I used to not be a big fan of banana bread, I found them to sometimes be too soggy, heavy and not 'cakey' enough for me. This particular version is still moist, but has a bit more crumb to it than previous versions. I have made this as a cake in 2 - 9" pans and iced it with cream cheese icing, it makes for a nice banana layer cake as well. You can also add in nuts or chocolate chips.

Easy One Bowl Banana Bread

4 cups mashed banana (about 5-6 bananas)

1/4 lb. butter, melted

2 cups sugar

3 cups flour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2- 9" loaf pans, greased.

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees

1. Blend all ingredients together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon.

2. Evenly distribute batter between the loaf pans and bake 50-60 minutes or until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

Recipe: Healthy Banana Bran Muffins

I live in Louisiana and while there are many reasons to make this a great place to live, the climate is not one of them. Specially on this day as we all await the arrival of hurricane Gustav. Yesterday I had lunch with friends- ok...drinks with friends while all the men where at the football game- yes on the eve of this category 5 storm LSU is still playing football at 10 am in the morning (insane!). That's the south for you- sort of the the last hurrah before the storm. We were all talking about what provisions we needed to compile for the weeks ahead since it is pretty much unknown what the effect of the storm will be. The funny thing was that every single one of our provision lists began with wine or beer...I guess we all know we will soon be stranded and having house parties will be our only source of entertainment.

So this morning I set out to get gas, wine, bread and water. The only bread available at the store was raisin bread, water was a plenty and wine was not sold until after 11 am!!! I still don't understand the reasoning behind that law. After spending half the day in a frenzy doing all this- gas was available but gas cans were not...not so good for my generator situation- maybe this is why I should have done all this on Thursday. Anyhow, now I'm home baking...the stress reliever, it's not actually the storm I'm stressed about though. Yesterday I had an abrupt career change- yup am sort of jobless and amazingly enough not too worried about it. I tend to land on my feet and do have the comfort of knowing that things in my life do tend to work themselves out for the best.

Now to the point of the post- the banana muffins. After all this is a food blog. They are the healthy version, quite moist due to the ratio of bananas and full of whole grains and bran. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Banana Bran Muffins

1 cup unprocessed wheat bran
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1- 3/4 cups mashed banana (about 4-5 small bananas)
1-1/2 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Mix bran, flours, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and stir with a whisk to combine.

2. In a medium bowl combine buttermilk, sugar, egg, canola oil, mashed bananas and vanilla. Whisk well until thoroughly combined.

3. Pour buttermilk mixture into bowl with flour and stir with a spoon gently- only to barely combine. Do not over mix- that is what makes muffins tough!

Spoon into muffin tins filling to the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Daring Baker Challenge: Julia Child's French Bread

This month the Daring Baker's challenge was Julia Child's French bread. I joined this baking group for one reason- to challenge my baking skills and learn in the process. Well, I sure did both of those things this month. Being not so fond of baking bread (as a result of my numerous less than perfect results) it forced me to dive into one of the most difficult breads of all- French Bread. The recipe was a little overwhelming at first sight- 16 pages, but after reading it a few times I found that it really was not all that complicated (ha-or so I thought). I set out to make my bread last Sunday, everything seemed to be working fine and even my husband who has made plenty of bread in his time helped a little. So we prepared the oven, got it all nice and steamy and put the bread in- The result was a crunchy crusty brick! I had to laugh, because after working on this recipe for most of the day (8 hours), I expected my bread to be gloriously good and what I created was far from it.

I think I may have established this before, but just in case I have not- I am a perfectionist. A French brick just is not going to do, so I started all over again. After trying to figure out the error of my bread making ways, I gathered it was the amount of flour and the time allowed for rising. "One cannot be a slave to the clock in making bread" Julia Child says. But when one has no idea what to look for- that seems like the logical solution and I can tell you, the lady is right- my method did not work so well. The 16 page recipe did explain what to look for- but I must have a yeast impairment (yes, that's my valid excuse).



Batch number two- pictured above was much better, I do realize I do still have a lot to learn though. I changed several things between the two batches. The fist batch was made in the mixer, I have a powerful 450 watt Kitchenaid so I thought it could handle it; the recipe cautioned about mixers overheating and I knew that would not be an issue. But then, I learned this has nothing to do with power, it's all about how the dough feels and I had a hard time figuring that out when it wasn't in my hands. The first baguette was tough, looked anemic and could actually be used as a weapon it was so hard. So for now, I will leave the mixer out of the bread making.

Batch number two I made by hand- much better, I was careful with the flour additions (paranoid to be exact) and allowed the dough to rise for a much longer period of time. The bread is far from perfect but a marked improvement from the first batch. I made a baguette, a Boule, and pan d'epi - the cuts could have been much better, I found using a razor blade and making a smooth cut to be harder than I expected. But, I am going to try really hard to not get OCD about this, I will instead read up on bread making and yeast, the more I understand the chemical reactions in the process the better off I will be. If you have any good suggestions for a book from where I might gain this knowledge- please leave me a note in the comments. The bread turned out pretty well, having a decent crumb and crust. This was a great challenge, it pushed me to learn by doing things which were out of my comfort zone.



Up until now bread has been more of a vehicle to carry all sorts of yummy toppings- (mostly butter laced with fluer de sel), not the main attraction itself, but hopefully as I become a more experienced bread baker that will change. The recipe can be found here.

Moist and Light Blueberry Muffins

What can I make for a Saturday morning breakfast when there is only one lonely egg in the house? Blueberry muffins! These are my most favorite muffins- not too dense, not too sweet and full of fresh plump blueberries. I used almost all the eggs last night for the dogs dinner- yes, I cook for my babies every night. After the dog food scare last year, I just felt uneasy feeding them the store bought stuff. Since then, both the goldens have just blossomed, all the paw licking stopped (usually caused by allergies), their coats are shinnier and all around they seem more energetic and happy. I read up on all the do's and don'ts about dog food and have not looked back since.

Back to the muffins. I use cake flour because I find it makes the muffins lighter. I gave both the weight and measurement for the flour, if you have a scale use it- I find when measuring flour specially, it is essential. I have a small inexpensive one ($30 or less), it is the most used tool in my kitchen when I bake. The scale converts grams into ounces, which comes in quite handy when I make recipes found in European cookbooks or web sites. I coat the blueberries in a little (about a tablespoon) of flour mixture before adding them to the batter, I find that step keeps them all from sinking to the bottom.

When making muffins, do not overbeat the batter, I whisk the ingredients together separately then combine them and stir just a few times to incorporate the dry and wet ingredients together. After adding the dry ingredients to the flour, use a wooden spoon not a whisk to stir together briefly. Finish combining the ingredients once the blueberries are added- and I know I will sound a little nutty by telling you this, but you should not stir more than 15-20 strokes; it is more like folding than beating and doing this will keep the muffins light and moist. I use a topping of large sugar crystals, this makes the tops of the muffins a little crunchy. When I have it, I use vanilla infused sugar (see photo). I have also used regular sugar which has been infused with vanilla. To make vanilla sugar, fill a jar with sugar, insert a vanilla pod and let it infuse for at least a week; it's great for sweetening coffee too.



Blueberry Muffins

12-1/2 ounces cake flour (3 cups)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 cup sour cream (can be substituted with yogurt)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups blueberries, (1 pint)
1/4 cup vanilla sugar for sprinkling tops
paper liners or buttered muffin tins

Makes 18 muffins

Preheat oven to 350 F

1. Sift all dry ingredients into a large bowl and set aside. In a small bowl toss blueberries with about 1 tablespoon of flour mixture and set aside.

2. Whisk all wet ingredients together and mix well.

3. Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until just barely combined. add blueberries and mix lightly. Do not over mix.

4. With an ice cream scoop fill muffin pan almost all the way to the top. top with sugar generously and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove muffins from pan as soon as they are cool enough to handle. They will keep for 3-4 days covered at room temperature.

Currant Scones and Lemon Curd

Did you think I forgot about the blog? I did not, far from it, but life gets in the way- actually not life...just work! But, do not misunderstand me, I feel ever so blessed and lucky to have the business I do, it's just at this time of the year I would rather be at home listening to Christmas carols and baking cookies! Sunday I have earmarked to do just that. In the meantime here is my scone and lemon curd recipe. I've been making it for quite a long time...it's from my tea room days and on Monday I had a catering which involved afternoon tea. The tea was lovely, made me miss serving tea for about 3 seconds- then I remembered why I stopped and got right on over it. The scones freeze very well, I actually make them to freeze, then pull them out as needed.

The lemon curd I made with the last of my Meyer lemons and it's very yummy. I was sort of sad I used the last of my home grown lemons, but I know where to get more. Turns out my dad thought that the citrus would spoil if the temperature got below freezing, (they don't- it has to be in the teens to spoil the fruit), so he cut all his lemons- and he had tons of them, juiced them and froze the juice. This is not something I would actually do, I like to look at the lemons just as much as consuming them, but it does sound like I need to raid his freezer- SOON!

CURRANT SCONES

4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling tops
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks butter (12 tablespoons)
1 1/2 cups dried currants
4 eggs, plus 1 extra for egg wash
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

makes 2 dz. large scones

Preheat oven to 400 F

1. In a large heavy mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt with a whisk. Add butter and mix with a pastry blender until crumbly and coarse. Mix in the currants.

2. in a small mixing bowl mix eggs and cream with a whisk. Add to flour mixture and stir until it just comes together...do not overmix. Place dough on a floured surface and knead a few times.
Roll out to 3/4" thickness and cut out shapes.

3. Place scones on a greased cookie sheet. Lightly beat additional egg and brush tops of scones. Generously sprinkle sugar over scones and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks, if freezing place in plastic bags when completely cool.

LEMON CURD

1/2 cup lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
6 egg yolks
2 tablespoons lemon zest
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 lb. butter (1 stick)

1. Combine all ingridients except for the butter in a non-reactive (stainless steel) heavy saucepan. Cook over medium low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk. for about 8- 10 minnutes or until mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat, whisk in butter. Transfer into a clean bowl and lay a piece of plastic wrap over top- this will avoid a skin from forming. Refrigerate up to 2 weeks.

p.s. This lemon curd can be used a filling for lemon tarts with meringue topping or fruit tarts.

Tender Potato Bread (Daring Bakers Challenge)

I am always driven by a challenge, it's what keeps me going! Once I have one, chances are you will have my full attention. Being motivated by a challenge is not always a good thing, I sometimes make more trouble for myself because of it...life can just be simple sometimes (ok- repeat to self 100 times!) The good news is, I am very excited to have found a new outlet for my challenges-- by joining The Daring Bakers. Every month brings a new baking challenge, everyone uses the same recipe and this month it was Potato Bread. I am not an experienced bread baker, so it was a challenge indeed. This month was a little busy, so the pressure was on as I baked it yesterday...the day before it was due! (this is so unlike me, as I'm more than a little OCD, but I procratinated early on, then later in the month I really did not have much of a choice).



The instructions were to follow the recipe exactly as it is written, which would normally be my first challenge, But since I am not an avid bread maker, that really wasn't much of a problem. I was more scared to make a mistake by not doing exactly as it said so I followed all directions. The shapping of the bread was left up to each baker, so I made a loaf, some rolls and foccacia.

I had most fun with the Foccacia, I layered it with olive oil, a very nice crumbled Parmegiano Romano, oven roasted grape tomatoes, black Cerignola olives, capers, Rosemary, and sauteed garlic; I then sprinkled sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. It made a very tasty Foccacia which will probably soon be served at the restaurant.





With the loaf, I made Serrano Ham sandwiches. Mixed a little roasted tomato chutney with home-made mayonnaise then put some slices of goat cheese Gouda and lettuce and tomato.

The rolls were very nice, but next time I will probably make them in a different shape, or in brioche pans. Once they were in the oven I thought they were a little too predictable, but it was too late. Nevertheless, they were quite good while still warm slathered with butter laced with Sal de Mer. After eating all this bread I now need to go for a very long and overdue run. After stuffing myself on Thanksgiving, we went for a walk on the golf course and my friend Ale, pointed out my new running shoes were so clean and white they glowed in the dark...I do believe it's time to put them to some use and dirty them up!

The recipe for the potato bread can be found here. I can't wait to find out what the Challenge is for December!