mostly breads

Sicilian Scroll

2011-09-11T21:48:00.001-07:00

Yum!

Cranberry Bread

2010-11-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

Mark made this bread on the weekend before thanksgiving:

As good as it may look, I can't say it was a total success: the cranberries are so sour! However, sprinkling a bit of powdered sugar on top helps a lot. The bread itself was deliciously sweet. We will try it with some other fruit next time.

Nutty Bread

2010-11-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

This bread was made by following a recipe for Pain aux Noix from The World Encyclopedia of Bread and Bread Making - the book Mark uses most often when not baking his own invention.

It's hearty, healthy, and nutty. In one word: delicious!
And it goes really well with Danish blue cheese.

Artichoke, roasted bell peppers, and goat cheese pizza

2010-09-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

It's so nice that I can call home from work and ask Mark to make pizza! By the time I get home, the dough is rising. But we don't have tomato sauce, so he can't make his regular tomatoey-cheesy pizza, so I have to come up with one of my gross pizza toppings. We had goat cheese, so I image-googled "goat cheese pizza", and one of the more appealing pizza was topped with artichokes (we just got a couple!) and roasted bell pepper (we just had one in the garden that was of a reasonable size [=not ridiculously small])! The only problem was, these veggies were completely raw, and I had no idea how to prepare them. Thank god to web instructions! I successfully roasted the red bell pepper on our gas stove, and learned how to prepare the artichoke hearts following these useful videos.
Next I sliced the roasted pepper to strips, and cooked the artichoke hearts in water. I drizzled some olive and balsamic vinegar on the cooked artichoke hearts after thinly slicing them, spread some salt, and let them sit for a while and absorb the flavors.
I also also reduced some balsamic vinegar and drizzled it on top of the topped pizza, just to make it perfect. And perfect it was!

Falafel in Pita

2010-09-06T13:43:00.001-07:00

Because that's the right way to eat it!

I didn't make the falafel from scratch, but used the excellent Tarazi falafel mix. The great thing about it, is that you can easily bake the falafel instead of frying them - it says so on the box! What it doesn't say is how long to bake and at what temperature, which I had to look for online. I found that 375 degrees F and 15 minutes work.

Besides the falafel, there's a simple cucumber-tomato salad (all from our garden!) dressed with some olive oil and lemon juice, homemade hummus*, and tahini.

The pitas were of course made from scratch! They are nothing like the store bought pitas. I'm always amazed at how bad pitas here are. Even when you buy them from middle eastern stores. Pitas in Israel (mostly those made by Palestinians) are so much better!! Well, by baking them yourself**, you can have a taste of real pitas.

---------------------------------------------
*If you follow the hummus recipe, it's worthwhile reading the first comment, which is actually an update by the recipe author.

**There are a lot of pita recipes online, and they all look pretty much the same. Give one of them a try! Mark just mixed and matched recipes to the point he was comfortable with it. I like the directions in this recipe.

The Real Whole Wheat Bread

2010-06-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

I think Mark was inspired by the sunflower bread* he made earlier when he decided to bake bread with wheat berries in it. He cooked the berries first, and mixed them into a whole wheat bread dough. The result? Delicious!

We topped these delectable slices with olive-walnut spread, Balsamic tomatoes, and fried eggs.

------------------------------
* I neglected to dedicate a post to the sunflower bread. Here's a picture:

Mmmm... sunflower seeds...

Bread Soup

2010-04-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

The cold days and nights that descended upon us in the past week have prompted me to desire a nice warm soup. I got a nice HOT soup! [Maybe I should have put slightly less crushed red peppers in it.]
I stumbled upon this recipe accidentally, and it fitted my plans for the cold night precisely. It is fairly easy to make, quite quick, too, and it is warm, delicious, and filling.
I made two separate batches, mine had fennel in it! From our garden! Mark didn't want fennel in his, because "it's gross". I had his version tonight, and indeed, both were good, even though both didn't have celery, and both were equally HOT.

My soup. Yes, the spinach is also fresh from the garden!

Mark's soup - sans fennel

I used the insides of the bread bowls Mark made ages ago, but any old bread will do, I believe.

Okay, here are the directions:

On medium-high heat with 1 T olive oil, saute:

1/2 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 stalk celery, diced (optional)

When onion is translucent, add:

crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper, to taste
1 bulb of fennel, sliced (optional)

Saute for a few seconds, then add:

4 c vegetable broth
1 small can of diced tomatoes

Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes. Then add:

cubed bread (about 1/2 of a small loaf)
a bunch of spinach, cut to manageable pieces

When bread is spongy and spinach is wilted, stir in:

2 T Parmesan (or Romano) cheese

Serve immediately with some more cheese on top, if you wish, and enjoy!

Xmas Pizza

2009-12-29T23:03:00.001-08:00

It is our tradition (2 years old, but tradition nonetheless) to have a green and red pizza for Christmas. It didn't happen this year, because we were invited to over to Mark's brother's. But we did have it the day after:

Thick honey crust, red tomato sauce and green bell peppers, and very thinly-sliced onion (no color, but lots of flavor) - what a nice tradition :)

Pop-Overs

2009-12-26T18:21:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a great holiday! If only because of the days off and the gifts! We got an ebelskiver pan from the CrazyLikeThat lady, along with a recipe book for all kinds of filled pancakes and other ebelskivian goodies. I couldn't wait to make something, and the healthiest-looking recipe (we had way too many unhealthy-but-delicious food all day) was that of pop-overs, which we ate alongside some pomegranate-pecan salad (with greens from our garden, of course):

I can't wait to try some of the more luscious-looking, savory or sweet, recipes in the cookbook!

Potatonion Bread

2009-12-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

This is such a moist (from the potato) and flavorful (from the onion) bread! It is delicious by itself, and it tremendously improved the lentil-mustard greens soup when dipped in it.

Bread Bowls with Lentil-Mustard Greens Soup

2009-12-21T20:49:00.000-08:00

Last night we put the mustard greens from our garden in a lentil soup, and served it on yummy, fluffy bread bowls that Mark experimented with (he used all-purpose flour and some wheat gluten instead of bread flour).
The bread was delicious, and the soup was pretty good too, for a simple lentil soup.

To make the soup, I followed this recipe:

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb lentils
10 cups veggie broth
a bunch of mustard greens, cut to large strips

Cook onion in some olive oil in a large pot, until soft and golden-brown. Add garlic, then 10 cups of veggie broth. Add lentils and bring to a boil. Simmer with tilted lid for 20 minutes or so, till lentils are soft. Mash some of the lentils and return to the pot. Add the mustard greens, 1 T of soy sauce, black pepper, a bit of MSG, ground celery seed, 2 T lemon juice, and whatever other flavors you might want to add.

Onion Garlic Sicilian Pizza

2009-12-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

Thick honey crust, roasted garlic, and onion. A nice accompaniment to this citrus salad.

Bread and Soup

2009-12-05T18:28:00.001-08:00

If that's what prisoners would get in prisons, people would commit crimes just to get in :)

Despite the fact that our oven is standing in the middle of the kitchen again, Mark baked this delicious loaf of bread, and we ate it with a hot soup loaded with vegetables: onion, celery, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and corn. It was good on a night with below-freezing temperatures!

Dulce de Leche Cupcakes

2009-10-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

We still don't have a kitchen (but we're almost there!), yet I had to bake some cupcakes for Vanessa's birthday. I decided to go with the Dulce sin Leche cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, of course, because the have some brown sugar in them (yum!), but the lack of kitchen sink and dishes forced me to make them with real dulce de leche. Everything else is vegan. The came out very cute with their little swirls of milky caramel:

But I covered them with some more dulce de leche, and topped with some crushed toasted walnuts:

The girls in the office loved them, but they weren't Mark's favorites.

Yeast Cake

2009-05-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

For my birthday I requested an Yeast Cake filled with meringue. Yeast Cake is the literal translation of the Hebrew term for sweet breads.

Since it's shaped like roses, we call specifically call this type of sweet bread "rose cake".
It is very good. The only problem is, the instructions I gave Mark weren't very good. I have no real idea how to make something like that. I assumed it would be just like making cinnamon rolls, but instead of cinnamon, put meringue inside. Turned out the dough rose while baking and pushed all the filling out. :) It was still good. I think that next time I will ask my sister how she does it, though.

Vegan Potato Pizza

2009-05-08T23:53:00.000-07:00

If you can't see why it's called a potato pizza, it's because the potatoes are inside the crust - that's right - just like potato bread! Yummy crust. Yummy toppings too: roasted garlic, corn kernels, broccoli, mushrooms, onion, and a little bit of rosemary. Vegan cheddar - not so yummy.
We found it at Sunflower Farmers Market for sale - Vegan Rella - it's discontinued - and figured we should try. We didn't like it at all - it doesn't have much flavor and it is best in sticking to every single part of your mouth.
Oh well, it was an interesting experience :)

Another Whey Bread

2009-04-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

This time with whole wheat and sunflower seeds.

MMMYUM!

Whey Better

2009-04-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

Making cheese like ricotta or paneer leaves you with about a gallon of whey. We heard that substituting it for water in bread recipes results in delicious, soft bread. It is very true!

Don't they look lovely?

Calzone From Scratch

2009-04-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Made with our own home-made ricotta!

'
Just like in the lasagna, the ricotta was so good in the calzone! Mmmm! 'Nuf said!

Bitter Beer Bread

2009-04-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

This bread really should not be bitter. It's so easy to make, and has so much potential, that it's really a shame I used the kind of beer that's perfect for cake, but not so good for bread.
Seriously, doesn't it look good?

Ok, maybe not so much on the outside, but look inside:

And, as I said - SO easy to make!

Through the beer bitterness I could taste the sweetness I remembered from the amazing beer bread I had in some bar in Indianapolis or Cincinnati. I believe using a lighter beer (i.e., not EXTRA STOUT!!) would have made my bread taste exactly the same. Too bad, I still have 4 bottles of this beer. I guess I will just have to make more cakes and cupcakes with it.

BTW, since I couldn't finish all of the bread on the same night, I noticed that the bitterness subsided with time. The sweetness was more pronounced, so it wasn't all that bad :)

Greek Pizza

2009-03-19T19:52:00.001-07:00

This is SO good. Next time you're making pizza, try these toppings:
Fresh spinach
sun dried tomatoes
olives
garlic
goat cheese

De-Li-Cious!

Midnight Oil

2009-01-25T19:18:00.000-08:00

I am already used to the fact that when Mark makes dinner, we end up eating really late. That's especially true when he bakes breads. Last night was not an exception. Except maybe to the fact that we ended up eating even later than usual. I guess we broke our own record and started eating at half past midnight. How appropriate that it was slices of olive bread dipped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil!

The olives featured in the bread are the ones we made ourselves! We picked them a few months ago, got all the bitterness out of them and then marinated them. They turned out pretty good! We used a lot of olives for this bread, but we still have a lot more, so come and try some, if you like!

Aren't they pretty?

Yammy Bread #3

2008-12-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

It's the orange kind again! This time Mark forgot to put eggs, which we got specifically for that! It was yammy nonetheless!

Happy Hanukah

2008-12-24T18:10:00.001-08:00

I never know how to correctly spell the name of that holiday. But I do like to celebrate it: it has the best food! Doughnuts, latkes, cheese pancakes...

I made the "Chardonukiyah", as Mark named it :)

The doughnut was made by my aunt. It was very good and filled with strawberry jam. I wanted to make something with sweet potatoes, but I didn't want to make the regular latkes, so I decided to use this recipe, substituting the pumpkin with sweet potatoes.

I made some with white sweet potato, and they were slightly sweeter.

Don't they look nice? They're also easy to make, make very little mess, and are healthy - a good addition a night filled with deep-fried goods.

Spinaroom Pizza

2008-12-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

We wanted to have pizza, but also use up some spinach and mushrooms we had, so I found this recipe and decided to follow it, using, of course, Mark's very own pizza crust.

We did follow the advice of several reviewers, and added some garlic on top of the oil. It was good - I liked the sesame oil effect. It wasn't so good reheated, though, which is unusual for pizzas. I think the spinach just became too liquidy. The crust was still yummy, though :)

Cherry Bread

2008-12-14T21:21:00.001-08:00

Thanks For The Bread(s)

2008-12-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was celebrated at our place with lots of bread.
We had a turkey made out of wheat gluten, bread stuffing and pumpkin bread pudding for dessert. Celiac patients would have really suffered.

So here's our dinner not including the dessert:

As you can see, I made the turkey look like he's alive. Which made it rather difficult for us to carve it.

Yay! It's stuffed!

But we had immense pleasure picking his Swiss-cheese-and-olive-eyes out and eating them. Mind you - these are home-cured olives! Delicious!

The cranberry sauce was a treat to make: the little fruit change color and pop, it's just so much fun!

If someone told me 3 years ago that I would eat (fake) meat, stuffing, gravy and (sweet!) sauce all assembled together on my fork, I would not have believed it. But it's really yummy!

For dessert:

I took the recipe from here, and smothered it with my very own Super-Easy caramel sauce:
Mixing evaporated milk (about 1/3 can) and brown sugar (4-5 T) and heating it gently over medium-low heat. A little butter would have probably made it shinier, but it wasn't lacking in flavor at all.
We topped it with some vanilla ice cream. YUM!

Yammy Bread in White

2008-11-24T17:13:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again! Hurray! Sweet potato season makes for very yammy breads. Last year it was with an orange sweet potato. This year it was with white.

I was surprised (probably for no good reason) to find out that the sweet potatoes are very similar in flavor. The bread came out a bit lighter, but I think it's mostly because Mark didn't write down the recipe last year, so he had to reinvent it. It was so good to eat it straight out of the oven with just butter spread on it. Mmm... melting in the mouth...

Two rather large sweet potatoes make a lot of bread. Mark baked one of them - the long one - in the ceramic bread pan, and the other in a small glass loaf pan. It stuck terribly to the glass and was very difficult to remove. The bread was slightly damaged, but it was still yummy!

Southwestern Waffles

2008-11-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

This one came from the Vegetarian Times Magazine. Mark was skeptical, and loyal to his initial reluctance, he decided that he didn't like them so much, but "they're ok". *I* thought they're GOOD! But I like savory waffles. Especially with sweet corn kernels and yummy Hoffman super-sharp cheddar cheese inside.

They were topped with beans, corn and salsa, and then some sour cream. Delicioso!

Indian Feast

2008-11-11T17:44:00.000-08:00

We got an Opo squash the other day, and the oracle said we should make an Indian dish called OLAN out of it. So that's what I did 2 nights ago. Of course, Mark had to bake bread for it, so he made some naan. It turned out delicious! The sweetness of the acorn and the sofness of the naan complemented each other wonderfully!

To make the olan, follow the recipe, but just note that Opo squash is VERY similar to zucchini, so if you don't feel like going to the Asian market just for the former, just use the latter. The acorn squash, in my opinion, deserves the most credit for the deliciousness of this dish, as does the coconut milk. Also, I did not have coconut oil, so I just use 1 T of vegetable oil. Also, I did not have green beans. I can't see how omitting them would harm when you already have such a delicious vegetable as acorn squash. Yumm!
I found that cooking halved acorn squash in the microwave (in a covered bowl with a bit of water) for 5 minutes or so makes it softer and much easier to dice. It also saves some over-the-stove time.

We had leftovers for last night, but not enough for a whole meal. So I added some traditional chickpea dish that my mom taught me, and mark made some crisp and delicious chapati that turned out almost the same as the one my mom makes (she usually doesn't use whole wheat)!

Making Southern Indian dishes is really simple once you have a few essential ingredients, and most of them use pretty much the same technique - the only thing that changes is the vegetable. I think it's worthwhile investing a little in those special ingredients, especially since they are not expensive and they can last a long time.
The essential ingredients are:

Mustard seeds (can get at Asian markets)
Curry leaves (available at Asian markets, and keeps in the fridge. They dry out and are usable for at least a few months).
Dried red pepper (available at Asian or Mexican stores)

To make the chickpea dish you will need:

1 T vegetable oil
1 t mustard seeds
1/2 T chopped (or crumbled, if the leaves are dry) curry leaves
3-4 dried red peppers, crushed (less if you want less spicy)
1 15 oz can of chickpeas, drained
salt to taste
cumin, turmeric and paprika (a little of each goes a long way!)

Directions:

Heat the oil in a small-medium pan.
When the oil is fairly hot, add the mustard seeds and cover immediately. A few seconds later the seeds will pop. Reduce heat to medium.
When the seeds stop popping, uncover and add the onion, pepper, and curry leaves.
Cook until onion is golden-brown.
Add chickpeas and spices and stir for a few minutes.

You can substitute chickpeas with either cooked diced potatoes or cooked red lentils for variation. It's highly recommended to turn the over-the-stove fan on HIGH or else you and your surroundings will smell very Indian...

For dessert, we had a sweet snack that my mom sent me:

I don't really know what's inside, but it's really good and probably not very healthy :)

Four Loaves

2008-09-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

Rainbow Steamed Cake

2008-09-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

That's what I made for lab meeting:

Isn't it pretty? I decided to make it when I was looking for a cake recipe for Adrian's birthday. I did it the same way I look for everything: I google-imaged it. That search led me to this recipe. I didn't make this cake back then, but it looked so intriguing, that I couldn't just pass it over. I think it's made mostly by people in Hong Kong, where they use different measurements and weird ingredients so I will translate the ingredients here.
:)

500g (1 lb) egg white
60g (2 oz) evaporated milk
1 tbsp vanilla essence (You can use butter oil or sweetcorn oil also)
150g (5 oz, I used 1 stick) melted butter
225g (1 cup) castor sugar
300g (2.5 cups all-purpose) top flour
1 tbsp ovalette/sponge cake stabilizer (I have no idea what this might be. Didn't use it at all)
3 colours (red, green and yellow), 1/2 tsp for each colour (I used just a few drops for each)
1 tbsp chocolate emulco (didn't use that one either)
a pinch of salt

I also didn't have the pan they were using, so I just steamed it in the rice bowl of a steamer.

It was very eggy, not surprisingly, and also oily. But it doesn't heat the house, and it sure was fun to make!

Wholey Pizza!

2008-08-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Yay, I finally convinced Mark to make a whole wheat pizza crust! Of course, it was very good, and you get the added healthy feeling which makes you think it's even better!

Rye Bread

2008-07-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

Don't really have anything to say about it, but it turned out very good and pretty:

We ate it with (veggie) ham and Swiss, as is the custom (or so I was told).

Chocodoodles

2008-07-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

Since I was to have my own room in the suite we were going to stay at in Pacific Grove, CA, while the four guys will squeeze themselves into two beds in a single room, I thought it would be only fair if I make them some cookies. I decided to go with this interesting creation, and I think they liked it!

The termite collection trip went fabulously, and we got so many termites, I will have to spend the next month or so moving them into their new homes in the lab :(

Summer Pizza

2008-06-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

There's a holiday in Israel that's dedicated to love. On that day, it is said, young ladies in biblical times used to dress in white dresses and go to the meadows, so that young men can chase them in some sort of a courtship game. This holiday is not supposed to happen yet (I think in around 3 weeks) but it is a symbol of summer. The white pizza we had last night reminded me of it.

It filled the house with wonderful scents of oregano and thyme...

Another Game

2008-06-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Madcap Cupcake has some nice ideas for games... Here's another one:

1. Post the rules of the game at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog (OR do what I and my fellows before me did instead…see end of meme)
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?

I was in Raleigh, NC, finishing the first year of my PhD.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1) Feed the ants.
2) Pick up ceramics pieces from the studio.
3) Cook something for dinner.
4) Watch a movie.
5) Read "The Hatchback of Notre Dame" (difficult task!)

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1) Pecan-stuffed dates.
2) Watermelon sorbet (or any kind).
3) Ants on a log.
4) Matza with Nutella and raspberry jam.
5) Think Thin bars (if I'm exercising later).

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1) Pay off family debts (there's a lot of that, unfortunately...)
2) I've always wanted to open a rehabilitation center for drug addicts. It would be in the mountains (because exercising helps release opiates I would take them mountain-climbing) and they would grow their own food and take care of abandoned animals.
3) I could do something similar for general homeless and battered wives.
4) Buy a small yacht and operate it as a tour yacht in the Galapagos - I will also be the guide! It will only accommodate up to 8 tourists at a time.
5) Convince world leaders to try peace and equality for a change (they should listen to me when I'm a billionaire, shouldn't they?)

What are five of your bad habits?

1) I tend to kill plants (not intentionally).
2) I’m a terrible driver.
3) Man I’m stubborn.
4) Inventing silly recipes (like banana quesadilla).
5) Sweet tooth. Big time.

What are five places where you have lived?

1) Dier al-Balah, the Gaza Strip
2) Jerusalem, Israel
3) Rehovot, Israel
4) Raleigh, NC
5) Tempe, AZ

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1) Night shift meal preparer in a 24-hr coffee shop/restaurant
2) Passport inspector
3) Translator (articles for students)
4) Assistant librarian
5) Stable cleaner

Five people I tag:

I'll just do what the madcap cupcake did:- so you are tagged if you want to be and…

1) You ate a cookie today (or at least craved one).
2) Your name starts with D.
3) You love the scent of a freshly opened container of coffee.
4) You think it's hot in Pheonix.
5) You live with one or more pets (or did in the past).

Validation

2008-06-18T13:05:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Mark and I went looking at a house for rent. The house was nice, but it had a few problems. The biggest of which was its small oven. He mentioned that to the landlady, and she asked: Why? Do you cook?
Yes, he replied.
You're a treasure, said she, most people don't like to cook at all, they just eat out! (Maybe by "most people" she meant herself?)
What do you like to cook?
Breads, mostly, he said.
If that's not a validation, I don't know what is :)

Hair of Angels

2008-06-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

This pasta was made by Mark (from scratch, of course!) on Thursday night, but I forgot to post it on Friday, being busy with work and that kind of silly stuff. So here it is - better late than never?

It's just semolina flour and water, from what I understand. It was my job to cook it, and I'm afraid I overdid it. It was still good. The best thing about fresh homemade pasta is that leftovers are never dry - even if you just warm them up in the microwave (as we did on the weekend), they still taste just as fresh as on the first day!

On a different note, I was thinking of starting a new blog, for all the foods we make that are not breads. I realized that there's a lot of things we make that look really colorful and appetizing, and it seems such a shame they don't get to have their picture taken. Besides, with summer beginning and the AZ heat, baking may not be such a good idea...

So maybe this blog belongs there rather than here. :)

Not Related to Baking At All...

2008-06-13T19:02:00.001-07:00

That's an interesting game I found in this blog. To see what it's about, you may click here.

Medovnik

2008-06-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

It was my turn to bake a birthday cake for the lab: Adrian's belated birthday celebration; so I google-imaged "cake recipe" and found this Czech honey cake that looked extremely intriguing. Everybody on the web praised the cake as if it's something completely surreal and unimaginably delicious. Then I saw a blog post titled "yucky honey cake" describing the baking of the same cake following the exact same recipe. ** Sigh ** After considerable debate I decided I had to try it. "Worst case", I though, "I'd get a store-cake". I didn't have to! I couldn't tell exactly what it would taste like based on the crumbs-dipped-in-cream I tasted, but I could definitely tell that it's not going to be completely yucky.

Making it involved a bit of muscle work: a lot of stirring of dough that got progressively tougher as more flour was added. And then the eggy cream had to be constantly stirred so it won't get all chunky.

The cake had to sit for at least 8 hours, and I didn't know how that sitting would affect it exactly, so I was a bit anxious to see and hear people's reactions to it. Turns out sitting made the cake layers soft and smooth and the flavors all merged. It sliced beautifully, exhibiting nice layers (which are not easily seen in this fuzzy picture).
People liked it! I thought it was pretty good, though a bit too sweet for my taste (and I do have a sweet tooth!).
I wouldn't call it the best cake ever, but it was an interesting thing to try. Now I have to go to Prague and taste the real thing!

Green Pasta, Herbed Pizza and a Pizza Pretzel

2008-06-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

Mark finally got his pasta machine. It was a long and frustrating story, which I will make short here, in favor of pictures. He got one at a World Market store back in NC, which was a cheap piece of crap that broke even before you we used it. Then we ordered one online as a wedding gift to ourselves, thinking it was the good kind. But when we opened the box, we found it was the same cheap piece of crap and had to return it. Apparently the vendor didn't know that the wrong one was shipped. Anyway, Mark finally ordered another one online, this time making sure that what we get is the one that's made in Italy and not in China (even though the Chinese were the ones to invent pasta!). And when it got here he anxiously opened the box, afraid of being disappointed again. The machine was lighter than it should be (indicating possible cheaper materials), but it was still made in Italy. He tried it on, and it seems to be working well!

So we had homemade pasta for dinner!

We had some leftover spinach, but no ricotta, so instead of spinach ravioli, we had some green fettuccine.

One is supposed to chop the pasta in a food processor, which we don't have, so the consistency of the pasta is a bit chunky. Mark thought it tasted too eggy, so next time he will try to make it with less eggs.

The day after he made pretzels - his specialty! I decided that I wanted to have a pizza-style pretzel, so I topped it with tomato sauce, basil and cheese:

They're very good as-is, of course!

And last night we had to use some leftover yogurt pizza dough, but we didn't have any spinach, and we didn't have fresh mozzarella cheese, so I suggested a herb pizza with goat cheese:

Mmmm... the thyme and oregano scents that filled the house!

Corn Blues

2008-06-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

We got a lot of blue cornmeal, thinking we'd have lots of piki...
Instead, Mark made some blue buttermilk cornbread which turned out just perfect! Soft on the inside - not at all dry, and a bit crusty on the outside, and the yellow corn kernels (for lack of blue ones) add sweetness and juiciness. Great accompaniment to the leftover chili!

Mmm... It looks more blue in real life...

Two Birthday Cakes

2008-06-02T17:06:00.000-07:00

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but that didn't stop me from celebrating it today and yesterday :)
I was in Israel during my real birthday, and celebrated someone else's birthday instead (my cousin's son's Bar-Mitzva). Although another cousin of mine, Tally, baked me one of my favorite cakes (sweet bread with lots of chocolate), which was extremely nice of her, it was hardly a birthday celebration. It was a crazy day that started at 5:30 am with the Bar Mitzva party, continued with a trip to the desert and a visit to my cousin's, and ended at 11 pm, after a dinner with my uncles.
So Mark and I decided to celebrate it properly this past weekend, with a nice brunch at the Mandala Tearoom, a visit to the museum, and a cake baked especially for me by Mark.
It was hard to decide what to bake, but I finally decided he should make cinnamon rolls and peanut-butter-and-chocolate rolls. He made them using his regular cinnamon rolls recipe for the dough, but with buttermilk this time, which made the dough very soft and fluffy.

Yummilicious!

And today, we celebrated my birthday in the lab :)
Dani baked me a luscious mixed berry pie:

Can you see the ant?

It was a very nice birthday gathering, complete with singing candle that refuses to sing, a happy birthday song (which was weird for me not to join in) and presentations of travel pictures made by Kevin (a trip to France) and me.

Now I have no choice but to accept the fact that I'm a year older.
**sigh**

Tricky Piki

2008-06-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

About 6 months ago, inspired by a visit to the Heard Museum, we decided to try and make some piki, also known as Native Indian paper bread. Last night we finally realized that decision! We didn't want to eat it just by itself, so we looked for recipes that include any of the "three sisters": Corn, Beans, and Squash (CBS). I finally found one recipe that incorporated all three of them! So we set up for cooking, not realizing how challenging it might be!

Not that the chili was so hard to make - it was actually quite easy. I did omit the garbanzo beans, for authenticity, though.

It's the piki that gave us trouble. That simple paper thin bread, of all things!

First of all, the recipes we found online call for juniper ash. Now where the heck can you find something like that? Fortunately, it can be substituted with baking soda. But what's the exchange rate? One place said 2 tbs per cup of cornmeal but that was way too much. The batter tasted like, well, baking soda, and it created gigantic bubbles in the bread after you pour it onto the hot griddle, resulting in multiple little separated islands of baking-soda-tasting mush.
So we tried again, this time with only 1 tsp per cup. That worked much better.
The amount of water to use was also a matter of trial and error, but I think Mark finally got it right, more or less. Of course, we can't say for sure, since neither of us has ever had it. But at least it resembled a thin paper, albeit a rather holey one.

By itself it doesn't taste like much, but with the chili it was nice. And most importantly, as Mark said, it made us feel "Indian", which was nicely complimentary to our visit to the North Scottsdale branch of the Heard.

Basil

2008-06-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

Last week we got a new basil plant, of a fairly large size. Being realistic, I know it won't last very long with my methods of cultivation, so we decided to eat as much of it while it's still alive. The first thing we used it for was this yummy fresh mozzarella pizza on yogurt crust.

I didn't care much for the tomatoes - they weren't as sweet as they're supposed to be, will probably be better to use those little sweet cherry tomatoes. But it still was very good - the crust crusty as ever, and the fresh mozzarella, with its pleasant texture but bland flavor, allows for the basil to shine.

Kugelhopf

2008-05-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

We just came back from the holy land, and all we wanted to eat was bacon! Kosher bacon, of course! We had some BESTs for lunch (stands for: bacon, egg, spinach, and tomato), and then Kugelhopf for dinner. The Kugelhopf was of the savory variety and had bits of bacon in it, along with onions and walnuts.

It was a bit too bacony for my taste, and yet it seemed like there wasn't enough. If you're gonna have bacon and onion and nuts in your bread, you really should have a lot of it, such that you'll have them all in each and every bite. Instead it was just like eating regular bread with a bit of bacon and nuts every now and then. Well, that was my impression on the night it came out of the oven. Today when I had it for lunch it was very good! The crumb is very light and melts in your mouth, and the bacon bits and nuts add crunch to it. So I don't know anymore. Should we make it again - would it be better to make it the same way or add more onion/bacon/nuts to it?
I think I'd vote for adding more nuts, because you can never really have too many of them!

Simple Delicious Dinner

2008-05-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

If you ever want to have something quick and yummy - make some ravioli! All you need is a couple of ricotta cheese containers, some mozzarella, Parmesan or any other cheese to your liking, some spinach if you like, or mushrooms, or whatever! mix it all together and fill with it a bunch of egg roll wraps. We found that getting them instead of won ton wraps makes it much easier to fill: you cut them in half and fold them in half. (1.5 pk of ricotta left 5 big wraps unfilled, for a total of 30 ravioli.) Very quick and easy! Cook them in 2 minutes and top them with your favorite pasta sauce!

Of course, we had with freshly baked bread, spread with goat cheese and topped with marinated artichoke. Mmmm....yum!

Ladies Tea Party in the Park

2008-04-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

Stealing the theme from this blog, Rebecca, Dani, Andrea and I had one of our own. All dressed in our ladiest attire, we went to Kiwanis Park and had a nice picnic in the shade of some trees by the lake.

We sat there and ate fabulous food and drank a variety of ice teas and lemonade, while watching people go by with looks of surprise and envy on their faces as they saw us.
There was indeed a lot to be envious about: It was arguably a fairly hot day - but we had shade where it was very pleasant. We also had lots of ice teas to cool us down after the bike ride to the park. We had yummy food and desserts to eat with the teas. And to top it all up: we looked awesome!

Andrea's awesome quiche and bean salad and one of Rebecca's teas

Our desserts: Farmers Market bread with grapefruit curd that Dani made, strawberries and fortune tacos.

I attempted to make fortune cookies, but they turned out more like fortune tacos, as Rebecca suggested. Everybody enjoyed their fortunes nonetheless. I think it's extremely appropriate that Rebecca got the one that said: "You should get more exercise" after she already biked 48 miles that day, and just before going for a night hike in South Mountain...

Rebecca's cool bee napkins

A surrey ride around the lake

Two Cakes

2008-04-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Friday was Mark's birthday. He wanted a coconut cake. But since we planned to go to a vegan restaurant on his birthday, and expected to have yummy vegan cakes, I didn't bake his coconut cake until Saturday. And since Saturday was Passover, and we went over to my aunt and her family to celebrate, and I brought a Kosher for Passover cake with me, we didn't eat the coconut cake till Sunday night (which was actually Mark's birthday by his recently-discovered Hebrew date!).

We indeed had a yummy vegan blueberry cake at the vegan restaurant. No pictures, though, despite my carrying the camera with me at all times... It had a blueberry (vegan) cream cheese frosting that was simply delicious!

On Saturday I therefore baked two cakes. The first was made of a potato and absolutely no flour, oil or dairy (which qualified it as a kosher for passover, healthy, and kosher pareve, respectively). I would like to emphasize that it was made out of a real whole potato - not potato starch (a common substitute in Passover baking). My aunt and uncle were amazed with the cake almost as much as they were amazed by Mark's Hebrew capabilities.

Don't the strawberries simply look gorgeous?

The recipe for this cake is taken from the Vegetarian Times magazine. You can't see it from this angle, but this cake really holds itself - despite the lack of flour and leavening agents, it is quite tall! The original recipe says you should process the cooked potato, pecans and sugar till smooth in a food processor, which I don't have, so I just chopped the pecans by hand and so the result was not very smooth, but I think it gave the cake a nice crunchy bite.

The second cake of the day was the birthday coconut cake. I combined recipes because Mark wanted buttercream frosting and not egg white frosting, which is what most coconut cake recipes come with. So the cake recipe is taken from here and the frosting from here. Although I substitute coconut milk for the milk and added about twice as much of it than was required to make it taste more coconutty.

Oh, and since I didn't have 2 9" pans, I used 3 8" pans instead and got this 3 layer cake instead of two :)

Another One of Them Yummy Pizzas...

2008-04-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

Need I say anything?

Philly Cheesesteak and Other Cheesy Things

2008-04-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Mark made pizza. We like to have pizza whenever he has time to bake one, the question is: which kind? There's Sicilian, pan, thin crust, Mexican, Swiss... I like having the thick crust and Sicilian, because they're really big and we always have leftovers. The thin crust are so thin we always finish them the same day. So Mark came up with a way to eat the eggs without breaking them: he made a double batch of thin crust pizza and refrigerated half of it for later use. It worked wonderfully!
So Friday we had this pizza:

And last night, all he had to do was to get the dough out of the fridge, shape it, wait a little, top it, et voila!

On Saturday Mark wanted to make loaves of bread for lunch sandwiches, and to my request he made it whole wheat. They turned out very nice:

But he didn't want to have them the same way he always does - so we decided on trying the philly-cheesesteak style. Neither of us had ever had that famous sandwich, not even the vegetarian version (which we did plan to have while in Philly, but because of a certain David Letterman we ended up not going there at all). So we had to look it up online and make the required modifications, all the time thinking that we have veggie steak strips. But then when we looked in the freezer, we were very disappointed.
However, resourceful Mark came up with another idea: using the veggie-roasted-without-the-beef slices, which should work fine since the steak needs to be sliced thin anyway, according to the original recipe.

Mmmm... caramelized onions...

AND - for dessert - we had some cream cheese pie: graham cracker crust, topped with chocolate, strawberries, all buried under cream cheese-sweetened condensed milk goodness.

Rolling a Pumpkin

2008-04-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Mark made a pumpkin roll. This is one of his favorite types of cake - he doesn't have many, so it's an honor just to be on the list.
It's filled with low-fat and fat-free cream cheese mixed with sugar and a bit of lemon juice.

On Sunday we made gnocchi again, this time with regular potatoes - and it was just yummy. I don't crave restaurant gnocchi anymore - they were never really good - at least, not as good as one can make at home - now that I know we can make it ourselves.

I was so hungry and impatient to try the sauce, that I completely forgot about taking a picture. So here are the leftovers, ready to be our lunches for the next day.

This time we decided to use the gorgonzola we had, before it gets any greener, for the sauce. But we never have cream or even half and half, and all the recipes for gorgonzola sauce recommend using cream. So how can you make a creamless creamy sauce? Here's the answer:

3/4 cup milk (we only have fat free)
1/4 cup white wine
2 tsp corn starch
gorgonzola (about the size of a small piece of cake), crumbled
salt & crushed peppercorn to taste

mix 3 first ingredients on medium heat, add cheese when liquid is warm, stir till it melts.
It's very yummy, although I'm sure not as rich as sauce with real cream. But I think the cheese is fatty and strongly-flavoured enough to make it a healthy-though-deliciuos choice.

Mexican Pizza

2008-03-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

With cornmeal crust, salsa, jalapenos, tomato, olives and corn, this pizza couldn't get more "south of the border".

My favorite topping is the corn kernels - they're so sweet and provide such a complimentary contrast to the spiciness of the salsa and jalapenos.

Mmmm... Homemade Yummies...

2008-03-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Though we still don't have a pasta maker (we got one from a store, but it was defective; then we got another one online, and they sent us the wrong kind) we decided that it shouldn't stop us from having homemade ravioli. So we got won-ton wraps and filled them with ricotta and spinach, and after 3 minutes of cooking we got these yummy creations:

Served with our homemade tomato sauce and a couple of slices of freshly made bread, spread with Gorgonzola, this was a real Sunday night treat.

On Friday Mark made this amazing peanut butter banana bread with a recipe taken from the Vegetarian Times. He, of course, omitted the oil and used more bananas, and the result was so good, even days later (I had a piece yesterday).

In between, we colored eggs for Easter:

That was fun!

Kolach, Ears and Rockin' Rolls!

2008-03-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

This past weekend included some new baked items. We started with Kolach, a Bulgarian type of bread that's very rich - the dough is made with eggs and yogurt. It reminded me a lot of Chalah, except it's a bit more sour.

We weren't quite sure what to eat it with. I figured an egg would be good, especially since we had some leftover from glazing the bread.

I spread it with cream cheese and topped with some greens. It was good!

A grad student got married over spring break, and so a couple of other grad students decided to have a little reception for him in the office. Then they decided that there are a couple of other people who got married recently, so they decided to add them to the celebration. One of them is myself. It was a bit weird to be congratulated for something that happened over 6 months ago, but I guess it's my fault for not telling anyone about it when it actually happened.
For the reception I decided to bring Hamantaschen, traditional Purim cookies. After all, Purim is just a few days away! In Hebrew they're called "the ears of Haman". Haman was the evil guy who tried to convince the king of Persia that the Jews are bad. I don't know why they decided to name the cookies after the guy's ears, though. As you can see from the photo, they don't really look like ears. Well, not human ones.

I used this recipe, but filled with raspberry jam because that's what I had. The dough kept opening during baking and I had to reseal them, which was kinda hot on my fingers. But the flavor was good.

And for dessert - buttermilk rolls with some veggie BBQ riblets!

Mmm... Molassessy!

Blueberry Yum-Yum

2008-03-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

In addition to the usual stuff that Mark keeps baking again and again (well, mostly because it's so good!), namely pizzas, calzones and muffins, he finally baked something new: a blueberry "any-fruit cake".

When we had it fresh out of the oven, the topping was so crispy, we wanted to finish it all up right then and there, thinking it will get soggy if we wait. But I found that covering it up with a paper towel helps it stay crispy and yummy and we can enjoy it for at least 3 to 4 days.

More Ceramics

2008-02-27T17:56:00.001-08:00

Our second ceramics technique was coiling. The instructor wanted us to build something big, so we'll get enough coiling experience, but I'm sure she didn't envision something quite as big as my toucan...

It was intended to be a pitcher, but no one can lift this thing with one hand. I think I will use it as an umbrella holder - it rains a lot here in the desert! We do need to get an umbrella!

Mark wanted to make an eyeball.

Ask anyone who ever tried their hands in coiling and they will tell you - it's hard to bring the clay to go in - but Mark did it. The pupil can be removed and the rest of the eyeball can serve as a pot, but I think we'll just keep it as an eyeball. We'll see ;)

Empanadas

2008-02-26T15:54:00.001-08:00

I should first explain that the reason you recently see more of my baking rather than Mark's is not because he's not baking. It's just that he's baking the same things that already got the spot light. On Friday he made a pizza that was just as great as the Christmas pizza, but without any toppings; and on Sunday, he baked a sandwich bread, which this time I ate with goat cheese, marinated artichoke, green olives, a slice of tomato and balsamic vinaigrette - it was delicious!

I've been wanting to make empanadas for quite some time now. I never ate meat empanadas until my friend's ex made them vegetarian style, and it was delicious! (Note for self: need to find synonyms for delicious). So I decided to try and make them. Of course, there's no way to ask my friend's ex for the recipe, so I used this one instead. Needless to say, I used ground meatless, and I also added olives, because I saw them in other recipes.
The dough was hard to work with, but my empanadas turned out pretty good:

Mark didn't like the cloves, so next time I'll omit it, but overall I think it was a success. I would like to try some with corn filling as well sometime.
Though I think I will have to go back to Chile if I want to eat those really good ones - steamed cheese empanadas - I got from the kids who came onto our bus as it was loaded onto a ferry, on the way to Chiloe.

Burekas

2008-02-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

For Rebecca's Master party (Master Rower, that is) I decided to get frozen burekas from the store, so I will have enough time to make a card. Getting frozen burekas seemed like a great idea to me, because it would be super fast to make them, with minimum effort, AND everybody will like it because they've never had it before and it's completely unfamiliar to them - they might even think I made it myself! So I looked for a place that might sell such a thing, namely a Kosher grocery store, on the web, and found one that was right off the greenway, about 4-5 miles away. Perfect - I can ride my bike! I was on the bridge over Salt River when it suddenly occurred to me that a "Kosher" store might be closed on Saturday - you know - the holy day. When I lived in Raleigh, I could get such things from the Persians - they were open all the time. So I called Mark and asked him to call and see if they're open before I make it all the way to there. Sure enough - they're closed! And not only for Shabbath, but completely, since 2001!
Then I thought that maybe the Turkish grocery store would have something. It's only about a mile from our place, so I was off on my bike again. When I arrived I found a couple of people loading boxes of groceries on their van, parked right at the storefront. "Oh, they must be having a party or something," I thought. I walked in to find empty shelves and cleared floor. "Khalas, no more store," the owner told me.
Oh, no! What am I gonna do? Will I have to bake them myself?? I went to Food City to look for ingredients - butter and Feta cheese. Butter was too expensive, and they didn't have Feta. I'm doomed!
So I went back to the house, and google-mapped "Bulgarian grocery", because Bulgarians have the best burekas. The results included a middle eastern grocery store located too far for a bike ride (for me) but not too far by car. I went there and looked for frozen burekas. They didn't have them. They had filo filled with cheese and spinach (spanacopita?), but not burekas. But, they had Bulgarian Feta and puff-pastry leaves. I figured I can handle that - making the filling wouldn't take all that long, and I won't need to make the dough myself.
So here they are, in the container, on the way to Rebecca's party:

Indeed, it did not take long to make, and I still had time (despite spending hours just looking for a store!) to make the card (with a rowing leaf-cutter ant, of course).
The party was fun! I watched, yet again, "The Triplets of Belleville", and it was still good, and there was a lot of good vegetarian food. I think my burekas turned out pretty well. Well, at least they were pretty :)

Playing with mud and muffins

2008-02-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

I know that they're not edible, but still they are baked goods. I'm talking about ceramics, of course! Mark and I are taking a ceramics survey course (a.k.a a beginners class), and this is our first batch - the technique was pinch-potting - the very simple technique that kids use in 3rd grade. It was fun, nonetheless! Then we glazed our pieces, which gave some very surprising results - that stuff drips a lot more than you'd expect!
Well, here are our masterpieces:

We brought them home on Tuesday. Then Mark baked his staple muffins: banana-walnut-butterscotch muffins - yum!
They are so moist and good (the addition of butterscotch chips was my idea!) that the muffins I made for today's lab meeting (healthy low-fat banana-granola muffins) seemed, well, not-so-good. My muffins did get a good score by the food critics Dani and Rebecca, but that's only because they never had the banana-walnut-butterscotch muffins :)

No, they're not as good as they look - they're better!

Imagine We Are Greek

2008-02-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

This pizza is mostly Mark's invention. It all started when he made something out of the internet - we both completely forgot what it was - that had yogurt in the dough. He later experimented using the dough (or some modified version of it) as a base for spinach and feta, added some Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, and yasu - a great Greek-inspired pizza!

I really liked how the olive oil brushed new pizza pan made the crust really crispy!

Flotation and Levitation

2008-02-04T18:06:00.000-08:00

The weekend began with Mark's lemon poppy-seed scones. He made them using a lemon we picked from a tree by our place. The lemons were pretty high up and Mark had to jump in order to reach them. It was quite a treat to see him do that!

Of course, they were yummy - soft and fluffy on the inside, crispy on the outside.

On Saturday I decided that I should bake something. Although the ensaimadas were on Mark's "to bake" list, I decided the recipe looks simple enough for me to give it a try. This is how the turned out:

Nice, ha? I must say, they look much better in the picture than they did in real life. And I really had trouble getting the dough to rise. The recipe said to keep it in a warm place for an hour or until double in bulk. I waited more than an hour, and it still looked as if it hadn't risen at all. But when Mark lifted the dough, we saw air bubbles, so I guess it did rise a little bit, only not noticeably. I thought that maybe in the second rise, after the shaping, I would have a bit more luck, but no. It stayed exactly as it was before. But then they did rise in the oven (well, some of them).
Now Mark has to make them again sometime, so I can see what they really should be like!
They tasted good despite all the trouble they gave me :)

Last night I made these heavenly clouds. They have nothing to do with baking, but they look so nice, floating in a sea of vanilla custard, I had to put it in. It's some kind of a French dessert, I guess, made out of eggs and milk, and since Mark never finishes his cow milk before the expiration date, I figured I can use it up this way. I made it according to this recipe, except I cooked the clouds in warm milk (actually it was leftover fat free half 'n half).

We had a lot more clouds that didn't fit in the dish, so we could refill the dishes as we watched "An Unreasonable Man". The custard was a bit too sweet for me - I think that next time I'll put less than what the recipe calls for - but Mark liked it as it was.

In Italy Again...

2008-01-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we had two Italian baked goods: calzone and pizza. Calzone in Italian is "trouser" or "stocking", according to Wikipedia, and it's originally pronounced "kal-tso-nay". Ours was filled with loads of mozzarella and ricotta cheeses, spiced with roasted garlic and herbs, and topped with our homemade tomato sauce.

The calzone featured in this picture is the one we didn't eat yet - I was so ready to eat that I forgot to take a picture of the one with the sauce... We'll have this one sometime this week!

Last night we had Sicilian pizza again - and it was just as yummy as it was before!

But there were some differences - this time it was topped with onion and basil!
Mmm... we have some more of that as well!

Sandwiches

2008-01-25T17:32:00.000-08:00

Mark's last creation was a week ago, more or less. He wanted to make loaves of sandwich bread.
He likes to make sandwich bread that he can freeze and have for lunch later on, but ever since I joined him he has much less leftovers...
This one was made such that the skin would be thin enough to get it into your mouth easily, yet crisp enough to make a crunchy sound when you bite it.

My sandwich included cheddar cheese (only the best - Hoffman's extra sharp!), provolone, sliced tomato and lettuce, and spiced with onion and garlic powders, salt and oregano. Mark's included, in addition, some veggie salami and crushed red pepper.

Pigs in Blankets

2008-01-14T18:03:00.000-08:00

It seems so appropriate that I make pigs in blanket, while reading the book Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver, that I just couldn't pass it. I made them last night, and, of course, something went wrong with the dough, and Mark had to fix it. But in the end, it turned out real nice. The recipe is taken from here, and I think it's really good - the dough is kinda sweet like a dinner roll, and it's really very simple to make. Don't be intimidated by my lack of success this time - it worked for me very nicely the first 3 times I made it!

Need I mention that this is a veggie hot dog?

Missing Memories from India

2008-01-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

I ate many different lentil dishes in India and in Indian restaurants, but I don't remember ever eating anything like what we had last night. At the same time, it seems familiar. It's probably because most Indian lentil dishes are pretty much the same - with the spices taking over the whole scene. We found this recipe here, but I'm not sure we used the same black lentils. The ones we used are Urud lentils, which are very similar to mung beans. We soaked them for more than 24 hours, and then cooked them for another 3 hours, and they were still not mushy. All in all, it wasn't bad. And the naan we had with it was delicious!

From what I remember, naan should not be so puffy, but it tasted really good, so who cares?

Pretzels, Stollen, and Rolls

2008-01-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

Another rather busy weekend... Mark started on Friday, with his world-famous pretzels. Last time he made them we realized - too late - that our oven is broken. So we had to bake them in the toaster oven. In addition to being extremely exhausting, the ones that went in late rose too much and got way too fat. They were still good, though.
This time we could bake them in the oven, which is much better suited for baking 16 to 24 of the beasts.

This is what they look like after they're brushed with butter and sprinkled with garlic powder.

The next day he made buttermilk rolls. These are our favorite rolls - we use them for Sloppy Joes, with burgers, hot dogs (all vegetarian, of course!), and eggs. Seems like every time they get even better!

Sunday we finally made Stollen, a traditional German bread made during the Christmas season. And I say "we" because I made the little baby Jesus that lies inside the colorful folded covers - out of almonds.

Jesus is barely visible in this picture - he seems to blend in pretty well with the blankets - but it's still very yummy. The dough is flavored with cinnamon and cardamom and rum-soaked raisins and dried fruit. The pineapple and cherries are my favorites!

Guh-No-Chee

2008-01-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

This is the way you're NOT suppose to pronounce it. We made them last weekend out of sweet potatoes and drowned them with creamy tomato sauce (as always, careful about fat and calories, we used fat free half-n-half!)

It was yammy! Just the way they should be - soft and melting in your mouth. Mark Made the dough, but this time I helped by shaping them.

Bolobies

2007-12-27T21:36:00.000-08:00

Real bolobies look like that:
http://www.elantar.de/galerie/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=0

Baking-Busy Christmas

2007-12-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

Mark wanted to use the days off for baking this Christmas - so we stayed home and baked, and it ended up being a lot of fun, and, well, very yummy!
First, we wanted to make bolobies, which is the name we gave to the khatchapuries, a traditional Georgian (as in former USSR Georgia, not on-my-mind Georgia) cheese-filled bread. It is one of my favorite foods ever. I recently found out that one of my friends in Israel also likes this dish very much, as she gets to eat it at the parents of her sister-in-laws', who came to Israel from Georgia. Small world, isn't it? We found this delightful bread in the book "The World Encyclopedia of Bread and Bread Making" by Christine Ingram and Jenni Shapter.
So Mark made them, of course, and, as usual - they turned out deliciously great!
This is what they look like from the outside:

And inside there's a rich mixture of cheeses:

I'm glad we have 2 more leftover - we're going to have them tonight!
Hooray!

Then Christmas came, and with it some unexpected gifts. Mark wouldn't let me open the gifts till Christmas Day. Where would you put the unopened gifts if you don't have a Christmas tree? On the Christmas chair, of course!
So I decorated the Christmas Chair and this is how it turned out:

Note the little star made out of a wrap of Crembo, a favorite Israeli snack.
Of course, a chair is not a bread, so you may ask - what is it doing in a bread blog?
Luckily, I used the word "mostly" in the title, which entitles me to add non-bread items occasionally. ha ha.

To go with the festive chair, we decided to build a gingerbread house. We had no idea how challenging this might be! We followed the very simple instructions in this website:
http://www.recipelink.com/cookbooks/2000/0688156797_1.html
and this is what we got:

Pretty traditional, don't you think? I like the pond in the back and the rosemary trees.
Unfortunately, I got the wrong kind of cereal: topped with vanilla creme icing, instead of just regular icing. Hence the dirty-colored snow on the roof...

We also added some untraditional items to the house, though:

Like a gigantic bluebird and an outhouse.
The back side of the house, however, is a complete craziness:

After the house was done Mark went on with the baking and made a veggie pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. He took care to use Christmas colors, with red and green peppers, red onion (although in reality it is purple), green olives and red tomatoes.
It was as scrumptious as it looks, if not more so: the crust was crispy and just as sweet as I like it, and the toppings added juiciness to nicely compliment the crispiness.

Mark also made an apple pie and 3-garlic pasta, but this entry is getting too long already.
All in all - it was a very busy and breadful extended weekend!

An Important Note

2007-12-21T11:36:00.001-08:00

One should credit others when they deserve it, and so should I. The salt 'n pepper shakers, featured in the yammy bread picture, were made by my very talented cousin, Orna. This is her website http://www.orna-pottery.com/news/. We use them as salt 'n salt shakers because we like our pepper freshly ground, and this way we don't have to fight over the salt.

Scents from Sicily

2007-12-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

Mark used the Sicilian half of his genome and made a very fragrant Sicilian pizza last night. The aromas of thyme, oregano and tomato filled the house, and it's unfortunate they cannot be posted on this blog.

The crust is sweet and crusty, although I like it with a bit more honey. Last time he made this pizza it was just PERFECT and now my standards are way too high.

Belated Thanksgiving

2007-12-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

Although we did celebrate thanksgiving this year - multiple times - we somehow ended up re-celebrating it this past weekend - with sweet potato bread and cranberry scones.
Mark tried this bread before, and although it was yummy the first time, it failed to cook all the way. This time it came out yummy-licious! Cooked all the way, but still moist and soft and melts in your mouth.
That's why I decided to call it Yammy Bread.

Sure, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing, but I really don't know which one we actually used - the store said that these are sweet potatoes, but they often use the terms interchangeably. Do you have any way of telling which is which?
I don't really think it matters. I like "yammy" for describing delicious orange tuber/root foods.

The cranberries for the scones were indeed Thanksgiving leftovers. I have to say - at first I was suspicious of baking with cranberries, but that was before I made my first cranberry sauce!
The scones are the same kind as our favorites: with walnuts and orange. But here Mark substituted the figs with cranberries. That's why it came out familiar, yet different: the sweetness of the sprinkled sugar on top and the meltiness of the butter remained (though it must be noted - they have much less butter than your normal scones), but the figs' chewiness and sweetness was replaced with the tangy-sour juiciness of the cranberries.