Category Archives: Bread

Basil bread

Posted on November 7, 2011 | 17 Comments

If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.
~ Robert Browning

When you go home on sick leave, everyone always drowns your ears in an ocean chorus of “go home and lie down! Feel better soon!”… but there are certain kinds of Sick that do not get cured by you lying down for hours. I mean the sort of Sick where panadol and manuka honey do zilch and leave you feeling like a burdened donkey (not well enough to concentrate and do a good job at work, but not sick enough to die yet, either).

I had a good rest at home, chatted on the phone with a friend in Wellington, cooked and ate my breakfast at 4pm:

- Chicken + mustard + garlic + lemon + basil

- Silverbeet + red pepper + oyster mushrooms + muscovado + salt + a pat of butter + sundried tomatoes + anchovy (yes, I had a “creative moment” and just went nuts).

It was a random meal, but I felt better after that.

Then, just ‘cos I could, I decided to try making some basil bread. The scent of basil certainly did my sore head a lot of good.

Sometimes I think that scaling flour mountains helps me think of ways to move the mountains in my own life. I know that sounds ridiculous, but… well, I do it. :-)

The yeast drove me nuts! Four failed attempts later (at making it activate), I got it to foam/bubble at least a little and I think I now have a better idea of what “lukewarm” water should feel like.

If you try making this bread (I adapted this recipe), you may want to use a bowl or make sure you have a very wide bench. The centre of the well has a tendency to gush.

Keep going with those sticky fingers and you’ll get some good-looking, good-smelling dough flecked with green.

It takes some waiting around.. but not too long. Just keep reading and singing while the dough plays its rising game.

I’ve only baked bread a few times in my life, and each time I enjoy it immensely even when parts of the process (read: fussy yeast, flour-showered pants, etc) drive me a little batty.

It fills the house with good smells…

Crusty, soft, warm…

I’m not sure if this violates any informal code of conduct re eating bread, but I really enjoyed having salt and butter and a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar on this bread. I ate a warm roll as the sun gave my window a goodbye hug.

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Home is sweet indeed

Posted on December 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

I didn’t think I would want to hug the first Kiwi I saw upon disembarking from my flight, but I did. I really, really did. Except I didn’t think it would be appropriate etiquette, even in front of very friendly New Zealand airport staff.

(By no means is this a complaint about people I encountered in Spain, Morocco, Portugal, London, Paris and Singapore – I met many lovely folk there too. It’s just this thing called homesickness that hits you even when you have travelled or lived overseas before, that is rather difficult to explain.)

It’s good to be back with my flatmates too – and lookies at what Matt and I had for dinner tonight: makeshift pizza! Good bread with tomato paste, broccoli, ham slices, pineapple cubes, feta cheese, with dollops of freshly grated cheese on top – baked to crisp perfection. Yum yum!

It’s an easy, warm and meltingly delicious thing to make for yourself – all you need is nice bread, toppings of your choice, a tray and a working oven! Make it all pretty and bake at 180 degrees C till it is nicely toasted and the cheese is running helplessly across everything (takes less than half an hour). Serve immediately.

PS. I was slightly aghast to find that I am now so slow with using a simple knife after just four weeks away. Ahh!

PPS. After watching an episode of “Delicious Miss Dahl” on the plane, I found that my heart ached for my kitchen… so we did have a beautiful reunion today. :-)

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Oven-baked French Toast (or pudding?)

Posted on August 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
~ Eartha Kitt

Someone I know through work recently emailed me this: “I have just recently come to understand the journey is just as important as the destination.” How I love that. We were discussing the mysteries of life, but I am so reminded of his wise words as I write this post now!

I decided to invite a few friends around for brunch in the weekend – so on Friday, I went to buy ingredients for Oven-Baked French Toast and spent a glorious half hour preparing it.

It was the most beautiful night. Honestly. Listening to the pitter-patter of rain falling outside while slicing bread, zesting an orange, sprinkling raisins and almonds, whisking milk with eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and a tiny amount of Baileys… It felt like a dream, and I was so looking forward to sharing perfect French Toast with my friends the next morning.

I arranged everything in the baking dish, glad-wrapped it and left the bread to soak in custard heaven while I slept…

Nothing could go wrong, right? Nothing. I awoke on Saturday morning with a smile on my face, and the French Toast still looked good as I slipped it into the oven. I even had time to toss 4 plates in the oven to warm them while the French Toast was baking. I had juice and coffee prepared. My friends arrived on time. Cutlery was on the table.

Within minutes, I smelled the awful smell none of us like at all – the odour of something burning. Gah, stupid raisins!! I really should’ve made a double-layered French Toast after all.

Worse still, in my haste to save the raisins, I put a layer of foil on the whole thing and baked it some more.

For Saturday brunch, we had soggy pudding with scorched raisins. My friends finished everything on their plates. A firm reminder of them being WONDERFUL people – and friends.

Well. This wasn’t so fun to eat, but it was a very fun journey (part of it anyway!) and the road to perfecting a delicious brunch continues…!

Things I can think of to make a more pleasurable oven-baked French Toast in future: try a different bread (a soft loaf, perhaps?) and form two layers of it with the raisins hidden in the middle. Aluminium foil should not be allowed to interfere with the cooking process either.

Does anyone have oven-baked French Toast tips to share? ;-)

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Tofutastic

Posted on August 13, 2010 | 2 Comments

Midnight Espresso does these funky tofu burgers…

Midnight Espresso – 178 Cuba Street, Wellington – Phone: 04 384 7014

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Surprise banana bread

Posted on August 1, 2010 | 7 Comments

Hay que destacar bien la melodía [You have to bring out the melody]
~ Emilio Pujol, Catalán guitarist

I have rewritten my first paragraph of this post about 10 times now, and it’s still not coming together. I guess I don’t know what to write. There has been so much going on inside of and around me, and I can’t even tell if I’m happy or if I’m sad… and right now… I’m just tired.

I think I know why babies cry all the time – it’s easier, when you don’t know how to make sense of things. Lately, I’ve been doing so much of that. Crying when I’m happy, tired, inspired, grieving – my feelings have been parading through my being like a carnival, gushing like a fountain from deep within my soul. I’ll admit that right now, as I type this, I’m kind of crying. I know, it’s utterly ridiculous. If I didn’t have a deeper feeling that this is the final burst of heavy rain before the sunshine, I’d be freaking out even more.

Who knows what it really is. I don’t know the answers. I’m just in a process of growing, learning and being stretched, and I don’t want to fight it – I want to learn, discover and sit calm while a million different things stir within and burst out of me, because I have a strange feeling that the season after this crazy time will be clearer and better.

Well, that’s enough for now about feelings. I don’t really want to lose all my readers right now (as you read with fear and suspicion at my apparent craziness, widen your eyes and delete me from your blogroll!), so moving on…

It’s been a busy few days, and I haven’t had the chance to blog about everything I’ve wanted to write about, so the rest of this post will be a little jumbled and random.

1. I miss Nish very much. Not just because she and Claire celebrated my birthday with me at Le Canard the other day… but now that she’s left, she leaves behind an empty Nish-shaped vacuum that can’t be filled by anyone. So I am thoroughly happy & excited for her as she leaves on a jetplane to pursue her dreams & further studies… but still, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll just have to contend with using the phone/email to stay in touch for now. Woe…!

2. One of the sweetest and most memorable giftwraps EVER for me is this one: my dear friend Haidee wrapped my birthday gift in a printout of one of my blog entries! Oh, my…

3. Last night, to celebrate Paul’s visit this weekend – we all had lamb with lemon, mascarpone and herb sauce, with carrots & broccoli roasted with orange juice & spices. THEN we sat next to the heat pump and played Spy Alley, yes a real actual board game… amusement!

4. This morning, Paul & I had our customary breakfast which I don’t really eat with anyone else – indomee! Salty, savoury, spicy, unhealthy instant noodles topped with fried eggs. :-) That, coupled with humorous, snort-inducing conversation is one of my favourite things to do with Paul!

5. In a bit of a spontaneous mood this morning, I made banana bread without much method to my madness… throwing things together without measuring them properly. Fork-mashed bananas, a squeeze of mascarpone, dribbles of cream and milk, some eggs, slivers of leftover chocolate & almonds, a splash of vanilla galliano…

…and to my surprise, it worked!!

This bread had a slightly crispy crust, which gave way to a light yet hearty loaf with just the right amount of sweet chocolate and almond bits scattered throughout. I feel this loaf had balance, combining the sensible nature of bread with the warm, indulgent feel of cake. Very, very good if you ask me – especially with a cup of tea!

(I’m omitting the recipe in this post as I really don’t know the exact quantities of ingredients used!)

6. Paul then patiently attempted to teach me some basic merengue dance steps in the kitchen; oh, it was hilarious! I could hardly move in a straight line from laughing so much. I’m so proud of how far he has come in his dancing though… it was inspirational and fantastic to watch, and that short time of getting up to dance again made me yearn to start dancing regularly again.

It’s joy, to feel the music, sense the rhythms, and yield to it all with movement. I can’t describe it. It’s like a revelation, a beautiful thing, a reason to live.

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Tartine Poireaux-Oeufs Brouillés

Posted on July 9, 2010 | 3 Comments

Food is, of course, a social thing, one of the most positive, primal ways of spending time with people, but eating alone is also an affirmation. It’s a way of enjoying me.
~ Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life

With half a leek, some eggs, two small fennel bulbs, and the house to myself this morning – I hopped on to one of my favourite blogs, Orangette…

I cooked the fennel separately, following Molly’s recipe for braised fennel as closely as I could without using our awful chicken stock cubes at home. It was delicate and lovely, but I don’t want to write about that now… because the other thing I had for breakfast was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that I got distracted by the smell while it was cooking and forgot to add in the sour cream (my substitute for crème fraîche)…

And the best thing is, even sans crème fraîche, the Tartine Poireaux-Oeufs Brouillés (French-Style Open-Faced Sandwich with Leeks and Soft-Scrambled Eggs) was bloody good. The eggs were soft and comforting, like a hug from a trusted friend; the leeks were tender, fragrant and almost caramel-scented with the muscovado and salt. The toasted bread provided a lovely hearty base for all of this goodness. The only thing that could’ve made it better would probably be the addition of crème fraîche!

I’m going to post the recipe below, with my changes (mainly to do with leek amount, one substitution of olive oil for butter and my accidental omission of crème fraîche). Please visit Molly’s blog for the original recipe (link below) which, followed exactly, will likely yield results even more delicious than what I had today, if such a thing is possible!

    Ingredients:
    1/2 a big leek
    A nub of butter
    1 tsp muscovado sugar
    A pinch of salt
    Olive oil
    2 large eggs
    2 tsp water
    1/8 tsp salt
    A large slice of country-style crusty bread, toasted
    Salt
    Freshly ground pepper
    Method:
    Begin by preparing the leeks: trim the root end off each leek, and slice them across their width into roughly ¼-inch-thick coins. Use a salad spinner to wash them if you have one; I don’t, so I just washed them carefully and shook the excess water off them.
    In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the leeks, the sugar, and the salt, and stir to mix. Cover the skillet to allow the leeks to begin to sweat a bit, and, stirring occasionally and adjusting the heat as necessary if they begin to cook too quickly, allow the leeks to cook for about 15 minutes, until they are fragrant, soft, and almost melting. [Here is where you add the crème fraîche if you aren't distracted like me, and cook the leeks for another minute or so!] Set the skillet aside.
    In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, water and salt. In a small saucepan, heat a dribble of olive oil over low heat. Pour the egg mixture in and whisk constantly (I used a wooden fish slice). When the mixture begins to coagulate ever so slightly and form tiny oatmeal-like lumps, begin a little dance of removing the pot from the heat and replacing it so that the eggs don’t cook too quickly, and reach all over the corners and bottom of the pot with your whisk. The eggs are ready when they resemble loose oatmeal; the process should take between 5 and 9 minutes.
    Place the slice of toasted bread on a plate, and spoon the scrambled eggs on top of it. Top the eggs with a layer of leeks. Serve immediately, with salt and pepper as needed.
    Serves one, with leftover leek.

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Posted in All, Bread, Breakfast, Eggs I love you!, Recipes included

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Dancing Babka

Posted on June 18, 2010 | 4 Comments

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
~ Martha Graham

The word ‘yeast’ is still a mental hurdle for me. Something about it sounds complicated, out of my depth, like it’s something for professionals (not me, anyway). My one direct encounter with it came earlier this year when I made some pitta bread at home for a flat dinner. I remember marvelling at it then; but subsequently, the old apprehension came back each time I glimpsed it in a recipe.

I’ve been reading a very inspirational book over the last few nights though, and somehow – I think that led to me walking out of New World with a bottle of active dry yeast last night.

I woke up early this morning, and decided to kick off my day off work with some babka baking from Tessa Kiros’ “Falling Cloudberries”:
#57 Bobba’s Babka – Page 246

I was apprehensive about the yeast. I mixed it with the oil and tepid milk and for two long minutes, nothing seemed to ‘activate’… and then, suddenly, it looked like something bad out of my old biology textbook? Alive, gurgling like a deep sea monster, ugh! – it was at once fascinating and very unappetizing…

I waited some more before I poured it doubtfully into the flour mixture, and then it looked like a mini volcanic snowstorm.

Actual bread making. I fell into a sort of happy/painful trance kneading the dough. It was reassuring, of course, to knead like mad while reading “the dough should be thick and a little difficult to mix, even with the mixer”. (although even if I had a mixer, I doubt I would use it in my first few instances of making bread – how else to get in touch with your food, to know it, touch it, sense it – own it??)…

When I added the egg and worked the sticky dough, it squelched like a pair of rain-drenched shoes the whole way and I really thought I would never get to the next stage, which was “so that it is still very sticky but not actually sticking to your hands.”

As it is, I got there, and as my fingers repelled the sticky, springy dough, I exclaimed and promptly forgot about my aching wrists. Wow! If Tessa Kiros had been here in person I would have knocked her over with a huge embrace. :-O As it is, she was spared on this occasion :-)

After 1.5 hours of being placed by the heatpump, it had enlarged to a giant puffy dough:

Muscovado sugar. Deep and luxurious, I measured it out carefully, trying not to spill any. Then I leaned over the cup and gazed at the rich colour, inhaled the delicious flavour… mmmm.

Even better smelling with the addition of cinnamon…

Butter on the other hand, I was much more lavish with today – I didn’t measured this, just dug my knife into the box and took out a random soft pile of it.

I rolled out the bread into two (near) rectangles, and spread the butter and muscovado on to them.

Finally, it was time to plait the bread.

The whole process of baking this was really… seductive. I’m not sure how else I could possibly describe it. My hands were gooey, and bread dough is hardly a sunset, a silk dress, or whatever your normal icons of romance might be – but the emerging flavours and feel of the process pretty much had me walking on air.

So much so that after I brushed egg yolk and milk on the babka and shoved the tray into the oven, I put on some music and danced on my toes. THE AIR SMELLED WONDERFUL.

Babka, done – I gave more than half of it away to a gleeful Malinda and retained the rest of it for my poor flatmates. :-)

PS. Haidee and I were at one of my favourite cafes today – and out popped a mouse! While I was a little concerned about the presence of a mouse in an eating place, I was temporarily distracted by this amusing thing: saying “oh! mouse!” and watching the women around me gasp, kind of shriek and scramble to get up and run. I mean, it’s just a mouse……?

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Garlic bread

Posted on April 11, 2010 | 7 Comments

My final, considered judgment is that the hardy bulb [garlic] blesses and ennobles everything it touches – with the possible exception of ice cream and pie.
~ Angelo Pellegrini, The Unprejudiced Palate

Having garlic breath may be evil, but starting your day by cooking with garlic, I assure you, is delicious. Garlic is strong, slightly spicy, moist and just so potent – unique and full of character. I think garlic is something remarkable.

Today, from Tessa Kiros’ “Falling Cloudberries”:
#48 Garlic Bread – Page 225

Making this sure took a longer time than I expected, leading to a mad rush at the end as I was getting dangerously close to being late for brunch with Haidee.

I also had to redo the butter step in the recipe. Tip: there is no place for impatience when softening butter in the microwave! Microwave it for a few seconds at a time to avoid getting melted butter instead of softened butter (I now have 150g of melted butter waiting to be channelled to another cause).

Tip on handling garlic: if, like me, you don’t want your hands to smell like garlic for days… use a tablespoon to scoop up the garlic from the chopping board or wear a plastic glove before handling it.

The result was an aromatic garlic butter paste – with lots left over for use with steak or more bread, perhaps… and the 2 little garlic baguette loaves are sitting in the freezer, ready for use sometime next week! I’ll write a short report on how it tastes then.

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Sandwich of your dreams

Posted on April 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Too few people understand a really good sandwich.
~ James Beard

Jono, Char, Matt and me ate sandwiches for lunch today. These weren’t your average ham and cheese sandwiches though……

These were voluminous, dripping, wholesome, hearty, delicious, fork-and-knife-or-burger-grip-required layers of whoomph!

Here’s how you can replicate our juicy lunch affair:

    Ingredients:
    2 flat breads, halved horizontally
    Cream cheese
    Spicy chutney
    A handful of crisp lettuce leaves, washed
    6 eggs
    2 avocados, sliced
    1 red capsicum, sliced
    4 bananas, halved vertically
    350g bacon
    Method:
    Grill bread halves on the barbeque. Spread a layer of cream cheese and chutney on them.
    On the barbeque, fry the eggs to runny-yolk-and-cooked-white-perfection and the bacon till it’s nice and crispy.
    Stack the lettuce leaves, capsicum slices, avocado slices, eggs, banana slices and bacon in layers on both bread ‘bottoms’, add desired salt and pepper, then put their ‘tops’ on. Do not worry if the egg yolks break, it’s so delicious when they do…
    Cut big sandwiches into halves – and you should have 4 nice hearty lunches, each sufficient even for a hungry 20-something boy. Serve with orange juice and earl grey tea (optional), in the style of continental breakfasts. Eat with fork and knife if you need to (I did). Tuck in!
    Serves 4.
    * If you don’t want to use the barbeque, fry the eggs and bananas in non-stick pans on the stove, and use the grill function in the oven for grilling bread and bacon.

Thanks Matt for cooking, Char for easter eggs, Jono for tea-making and table-setting!

After we worked our way through these (for yes, they required tedious happy chewing – not just eating!), we went for a quick shopping trip before climbing up to the top of Mt Victoria and back down again. Pretty views, the motion of walking (or moving one’s body really!) and the smell of fresh pine are always well worth the asthma-inducing efforts involved in climbing.

Went to Claire & Kristina’s birthday dinner party tonight, where we had Turkish food and enjoyed a belly dancing performance.

A full Saturday thus concluded, it is time for bed. Goodnight!

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Prego Rolls

Posted on March 16, 2010 | 1 Comment

Wine is bottled poetry.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It started off like a lyrical poem… a bath of red wine, lightly smashed garlic, rosemary (I used dried instead of fresh, to help lower this week’s grocery bills!). It smelled like – hmm, I don’t know, romance? Music? Something wonderful, anyway… I slipped the beef rump steak pieces in to marinade for awhile.

Recipe from Tessa Kiros’ “Falling Cloudberries”:
#37 Prego Rolls – Page 232

This was relatively easy to cook, and I served it with a salad, lemon wedge and a little chilli oil (see previous post for the latter).

Sadly… the chilli oil was not well-bodied (being given too little time to mature), the bread became a soft gluten-ey wine-soaked rag, the beef was too rare and had to be re-cooked, etc… oh what would I do without kind flatmates to make it better (and smilingly eat my cooking even when it’s terrible)!

Sigh! It was a fun experience cooking it nevertheless.

Even though I will probably not try making this again anytime soon.

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