When this recipe was posted a few weeks ago on King Arthur Flour, it definitely registered on my radar. I’ve never attempted a baguette, but the main reason was really that every time I thought of making one, I thought of it too late and didn’t have the time to do a starter the night before. This one has a pretty involved night-before preparation routine, but I this time I thought of making it in time. It was both easy and involved in different ways, but it definitely turned out a nice loaf of bread.

Ingredient wise, it’s extremely simple: flour, yeast, salt and water. Because there’s no oil in this, the loaves won’t keep as long, but you get three or so loaves out of this dough and you can leave it in your fridge for up to a week, so it’s pretty easy to just bake one loaf at a time as you need them. I actually used three kinds of flour in this one because I was out of all-purpose: 2 cups of whole wheat, 2 cups of european artisan flour, and 4 cups of bread flour.

They actually have you just mix this in the dough rising bucket, which is pretty genius, and I wish I had thought of it before. You need a pretty large dough rising bucket for this, but I just happened to have the exact 6-quart bucket that they sell on King Arthur.

This dough is really wet, and it doesn’t take much to bring it together.

A couple of minutes with the dough hooks, and the dough looks just about as smooth as it’s going to get. Between the slackness and the whole wheat flour, this is a pretty shaggy dough.

After spending the night in the fridge, the dough has developed some nice gluten. Here you can see where I stuck my fingers in it and pulled it away from the side of the bucket.

I made two loaves at once, and I had enough for a third loaf later on in the week. I pulled two similar-sized lumps out of the bucket and let them rest and come closer to room temperature for 15 minutes.

The way to shape these into logs is not to just roll them out but to fold them in half along their long axes. After you fold it twice it’s elongated itself pretty much to its complete length, and then you can just roll it a bit to smooth it. Here’s one loaf finished, and one after one fold.

My shaping isn’t great, but these don’t have to be beauty queens. If you use enough flour, you’ll get a nice flour coating on the outside that keeps it from sticking to everything and helps it rise better.

Slashed, spritzed and baked. Clearly I didn’t slash the top baguette adequately enough, because you can see where it expanded along the edge. All in all, though, it came out well.

Like I said, it came out well. The crumb was pretty tight in general, interspersed with holes. The crumb was probably a little denser than a baguette in general, but it was good for sandwiches, where a too-loose crumb could mean leaking and falling apart. The flavor was very good, and the crust was slightly chewy but not crisp or crunchy; I’m not sure what it is about my crusts but I cannot get a crunchy crust to save my life. I didn’t try too hard with this one, because honestly the softer crust is better for sandwiches. Eventually I’ll probably figure it out. This split well horizontally for small sandwiches, and a slightly smaller loaf would probably be perfect for a larger sub.

No-Knead Whole Wheat Baguette (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon table salt or 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon instant yeast

Directions

1. Find a large (6-quart) bowl or bucket, for dough storage in the fridge. Lightly grease the bowl or bucket.
2. Place the water directly into the bowl or or other large container.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the water, and stir to combine. Mix until there are no dry spots; the texture of the dough should be fairly soft.
4. Knead for 1 or 2 minutes in a stand mixer. Cover the container, and let the dough rest at room temperature for 2 hours.
5. Refrigerate overnight, or for up to 7 days.
6. To bake bread: Scoop out a scant 1 pound of dough (about ¼ of the batch, about 14 ½ ounces). Place on a well-floured work surface.
7. Shape the dough into a rough, slightly flattened oval, cover with greased plastic wrap, and let rest for 15 minutes.
8. Fold the dough in half lengthwise, and seal the edges with the heel of your hand. Flatten slightly, and fold lengthwise and seal again.
9. With the seam side down, cup your fingers and gently roll the of dough into a 15″ log.
10. Place the log seam-side down onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, or into the well of a baguette pan.
11. Cover and allow the baguette to rise till it’s very puffy, about 1 1/2 hours. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 450°F.
12. Slash the baguette three or four times on the diagonal.
13. Spritz the baguette heavily with warm water, and bake until a very deep golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

I’m not really a macaroni salad person. Its probably the goopy mayonnaise that coats most macaroni salads, the limp vegetables, the inability to taste anything except a not-that-appealing sauce. Nevertheless, when I saw this recipe on the Kitchn, I knew I had to try it. To me, barbecue sauce is pretty much the ultimate condiment. I could put barbecue sauce on almost anything that wasn’t a dessert. Lucky for me, not too long after I found this recipe, I was invited to a pot-luck, end-of-summer pool party. Perfect.

The recipe starts out by brining chicken thighs for a couple of hours. I went with the lesser amount of chicken because I split off part of the recipe to make a vegetarian option, but if I was making the full recipe I would definitely go for the full 1.5 pounds. I unfortunately didn’t snag a picture of the setup before the chicken went into the broiler, but the chicken gets basted and basically broiler grilled by putting it on a wire rack.

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up the veggies for the salad. The red onions get soaked for 15 minutes to cut out some of their pungency since they’re raw in the salad.

The sauce is a mix of barbecue sauce and mayo, with a little bit of vinegar. I ended up going for only a 1/4 cup of mayo and more than a 1/2 cup of barbecue sauce, but you can adjust to taste.

Here’s all the chopped veggies mixed in with the cooked macaroni. This was the first recipe I cooked after my previous roommate moved out and took 90% of the pans in the house with her, so I had to cook the macaroni in a large saute pan. An interesting experience.

Once the chicken is cooked, it gets chopped up into small pieces. You can see I pretty heavily basted the chicken with barbecue sauce because you can never have too much barbecue sauce.

The chicken is added to the macaroni and the veggies.

The sauce is poured and mixed in thoroughly to coat everything. This makes a great macaroni salad; the barbecue gives it that different taste that you don’t usually get with macaroni salad, and the chicken gives it a little more heft and makes it a heartier side dish or even a meal. I think the chicken, with it’s cooked-on barbecue sauce, really makes it and adds that other dimension to the dish, but even the vegetarian version was tasty (and, to me, preferable to a standard macaroni salad). This was a great dish for a summer potluck.

Barbecue Chicken Macaroni Salad (from the Kitchn)

Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 1 quart warm water
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 – 1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (3-4 individual breasts)
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

For the macaroni salad:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (about 2 cups)
• 1 red or green pepper, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced and soaked in cool water for 15 minutes
• 3-4 stalks celery, diced
• 1 tomato, seeded and chopped small
• barbecue chicken, cooked and diced as described above
• 2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
• Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Combine the water, salt, and sugar in a shallow baking dish, stirring gently until the salt and the sugar are completely dissolved. Add the chicken to the brine. It should be completely covered by the brine. Add more warm water if necessary. Brine the chicken for 1/2 – 2 hours.
2. When you’re ready to cook, turn on the oven broiler and position an oven rack about 5 inches below the broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and set a wire rack on top.
3. Remove the chicken from the brine and discard the brining liquid. Pat the chicken dry and coat each side with some of the barbecue sauce. Arrange the chicken on the rack over the baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Flip the breasts, baste them with a little more barbecue sauce, and cook for another 5-7 minutes, until they’re completely cooked through.
4. Let the chicken breasts cool and then dice them into bite-sized chunks.
5. Cook the macaroni in a large amount of salted, boiling water until it is cooked a little beyond al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
6. In a large bowl, combine the cooked macaroni, all the vegetables, and the chicken. In a small bowl, combine the cider vinegar, 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, and 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce. Stir this into the salad mix. Taste, season with salt and plenty of black pepper, and add more mayonnaise or barbecue sauce as desired.
7. This salad will keep unrefrigerated for 4 hours, or up to a week refrigerated.

Wraps are one of those things that I always figured would be difficult to make at home. I thought that they would be impossible to get thin enough, that they would not stay flexible, that they would just not work as well for sandwiches. Despite this, I decided to try them out because it was way too hot to even consider turning on the oven, and cooking our lunch bread on the stovetop was very appealing. King Arthur has a fairly large variety of wrap recipes on their site, but I went with one that makes a flavored wrap like the ones that are so common in the stores. I had my misgivings, but it turns out I was completely wrong.

The dry ingredients consist of bread flour and potato flour, or potato flakes. I haven’t come across potato flour in my local stores, so I purchased the least-offensive box of potato flakes (i.e., one whose ingredients look relatively natural) for the King Arthur bread recipes that call for them, which is quite a few when you really dive into their list. I went ahead and added the salt and yeast to the dry goods as well, since all the dry stuff should go together, and in hindsight this was a good idea. This recipe has a very small amount of yeast, and it shows; I’m not sure exactly what the yeast does, as this bread doesn’t have a rising period really. But it clearly does something, since it’s in there, be it in a minute quantity.

I had tomato paste concentrate on hand, so I mixed a couple of tablespoons of that up with a little more water than originally called for. The wraps weren’t exceptionally tomato-y, but I find that most “tomato” wraps aren’t especially tomato-y, and are instead identifiable as tomato solely by their orange color. These were definitely orange. But I’m sure you could really up the tomato paste content if you wanted more tomato flavor.

Here’s why I said that it was a good thing I added the yeast and the salt early: after mixing in the liquids with a dough whisk, the dough consisted mainly of crumbles. If I had tried, at this point, to mix in yeast and salt, they would have never been distributed evenly throughout the dough.

I actually “kneaded” this dough (not really like kneading since the dough isn’t very elastic) in the bowl itself, and once I started kneading it, it came together beautifully. The recipe asks you to turn it out onto a well floured surface to knead it, but I’m pretty sure that would be a disaster: no amount of stirring was going to turn the dough into a ball without getting your hands in there, and any more flour would be way too much. The dough wasn’t hardly sticky at all, and no extra flour was needed at all, either in this step or later in the rolling out. Those white pieces sticking out are the potato flakes; at this point I was wondering if I shouldn’t have crushed them a bit first, but they disappeared completely in the finished product.

The dough is refrigerated for an hour (or overnight), then cut into 8 to 10 equal pieces. Eight yields larger wraps, ten gets us through a week of lunches. I went ten.

You have to roll them out very thin, which makes rolling them into circles somewhat difficult. This one happens to resemble a duck foot more than a circle; as long as it wraps around sandwich filling, it’s ok with me.

This one was a little more circular. They got cooked on a medium-hot ungreased, nonstick griddle for about 2 minutes on each side, or until they looked done. I mostly just eyeballed this based on how browned each side had gotten.

Here is the same wrap that has been flipped; you can see the browned portions where the wrap had bubbled. Most of my wraps didn’t really inflate like they can apparently do, but if they do inflate, they’ll deflate upon cooling. The last four wraps I cooked went crazy with the inflation, and I suspect it is because I let them sit in the refrigerator for a few days before cooking them, giving the yeast a bit more time to work its magic. While they were still tasty, the prettier wraps were the ones I made right off the bat.

Once I cooked the wraps I was afraid that I hadn’t rolled the thin enough, and that they wouldn’t stay flexible enough to wrap a sandwich up. It seemed like they would harden up overnight, and if they didn’t do it immediately then after a day they would be stiff. While I thought the fresh made wraps would probably be tastier than the store bought ones, I doubted the ability of them to stay soft without the preservatives they put in premade wraps. I don’t know what it was about them, but I was definitely, and thankfully, wrong. Not only were they limber enough the next day, they stayed flexible for several days. There were one or two that I did roll a little thick, and they were flexible, just not big enough for a complete wrap, so they became like sandwich tacos. This was definitely a recipe I came into as a skeptic, but I was pleasantly surprised by the success of the wraps. Most of all, they’re just a very easy recipe, and a perfect summertime one when you just can’t bear turning on the oven. I know they’ll probably have a regular spot in my bread repertoire.

Tomato Wraps (adapted from King Arthur)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (8 1/4 ounces) potato flour OR 1/2 cup potato flakes
• 3 cups (12 3/4 ounces) unbleached bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1/2 cup (4 ounces) water
• 1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste mixed with 1/4 cup water

Directions

1. Whisk together the dry ingredients (potato and bread flours, salt and yeast). Mix the liquid ingredients together and stir into the dry ingredients; dough will be dry and crumbly.
2. Use your hands to form the dough into a ball and knead it until it is smooth, only a couple minutes.
3. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour (or overnight).
4. Work on a very smooth surface so that the dough does not stick. If necessary, flour or oil it lightly. Divide it into eight to ten equal pieces. Working with one piece at a time, round the dough into a ball, then roll it till it’s very thin, about 1/8-inch thick.
5. Dry-fry the dough rounds on a medium hot, ungreased griddle for about 2 minutes on each side. The dough may puff a little, but will become flat again as it cools. As each bread finishes cooking, transfer it to a wire rack to cool, stacking one bread atop the other to keep them soft and pliable. Store in a ziploc bag with all the air removed to keep them fresh.

King Arthur says that this bread is basically the one that appeared on the back of flour packages as “The Easiest Bread You’ll Ever Bake.” They’re probably right; although it’s not as easy as, say, a no-knead recipe, it’s certainly one of the nicest and easiest to work with doughs I’ve ever made. I substituted the final bits of my 12-grain flour blend and some semolina to give it some more heft, and divided into individual rolls for sandwiches throughout the week; the recipe divided well into twelve sandwich sized rolls.

The recipe is written originally for active dry yeast, so it has built in activation time at the beginning of the recipe. I use instant yeast, so I didn’t really need that step, but I kept it in anyway.

Instead of waiting for things to dissolve, I just whisked everything together and the sugar dissolved well enough. The yeast really broke up as well from their clumps and the whole liquid became kind of milky.

In goes the flour; the original recipe called for 5 1/2 to 6 cups, depending on how humid your environment is, I suppose. 5 1/2 cups was plenty for me and turned the dough into a very workable, only slightly sticky dough.

I mixed it up a bit with my hand mixer, but then I just kneaded it by hand for the most part. Like I said, this has got to be the easiest dough I’ve worked with, very pleasant to knead.

After rising you can see just how pretty this dough ball is. At least, it’s pretty to me. Nice and smooth and easy to work with, you don’t have to worry about this one welding itself to your hand as you try to shape it.

Shaping these little guys was really easy too: just tuck in the bottom all the way around until you have a smooth surface on one side, then put the bottom down on a baking sheet covered in cornmeal.

After the buns rise another time, brush or spray them with cold water and slash them. They go into the oven with a pan of water that has been preheating; this is meant to create steam and result in a crustier loaf, but I even though I did this and let them cool in the oven with the door slightly propped (also supposed to create a crustier loaf), the crust softened like it does in all my breads. Oh well, it’s probably better for sandwiches that way. To be fair, the crust was more robust than in my previous loaves. The crumb was light and the semolina and the whole grain flour added a nice tooth to the bread. While not strictly the absolute easiest bread I’ve ever made, it was certainly one of the nicest in the making process.

Easy Whole Wheat Hearth Bread (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon (1 packet) instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 cups warm water (not over 110°F)
• 1/2 cup 12-grain flour blend
• 1 cup semolina
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• cornmeal

Directions

1. Mix together the first four ingredients. Let this stand until the yeastt, sugar and salt are dissolved. Gradually add the flour to the liquid and mix thoroughly until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
2. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface to knead. Knead for 5 minutes, sprinkling only enough flour on your kneading surface to prevent sticking. Let the dough rest while you scrape out and grease the mixing bowl. Knead the dough again for 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Return the dough to the bowl and turn it over once to grease the top. Cover with greased plastic wrap and keep warm until the dough doubles in bulk, about 1 to 2 hours.
4. Punch down the dough with your fist and briefly knead out any air bubbles. Divide the dough into as many pieces as you want rolls (I chose 12). Place the rolls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and generously sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover the rolls and let rise for 45 minutes.
5. Lightly slash the tops of the loaves 3 or more times diagonally and brush them with cold water.
6. Preheat the oven and roasting pan with water to 500°F for 15 minutes. Brush the loaves with cold water, place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 400°F and bake for 15 to 20 more minutes, until the rolls are golden brown.

Clafouti is a eggy French custard that is usually served as a dessert, and is most often made with cherries. While looking for something unique to bring to a potluck brunch, I happened across a recipe on Serious Eats for a “Brunch Clafouti“, which is really no different from any other clafouti recipe. Even traditional dessert clafoutis fit in well for breakfast with their eggy, fruity flavors. It’s sweet but not too sweet, and it need no other adornment than a dusting of powdered sugar. While I considered going with the traditional cherries, or other berries which are also popular, I’ve been really taken lately with fresh figs, which have shown up in the grocery store in the last few weeks. The figs wouldn’t really work with the recipe from Serious Eats, but I found a recipe as part of an NPR story from last year for just the thing I was looking for. It happens to be based on the clafouti from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is experiencing a great upswing in popularity thanks to the movie Julie and Julia. My selection of this had nothing to do with this revival, but you can consider this my obligatory food blog contribution.

Clafouti batter is very thin, composed of milk, sugar, eggs, and a bit of flour. The one thing I added to this recipe that I took from the Serious Eats recipe was a little almond extract, which added a subtle almond flavor to the final project as well as the standard vanilla extract.

I don’t have a very functional blender, so instead of whirling the batter in that to blend it smoothly I used my hand mixer and beaters on a high setting. It worked sufficiently well, and though I could still see a few tiny clumps of flour left, it was not a big deal.

Mmmm, fresh ripe figs. They get quartered for this recipe. They do not need to be peeled, just washed; the skin is perfectly edible and part of their delicious flavor and texture.

The batter goes in the well greased pie pan, then the figs are placed fairly evenly around. French cooking has this reputation for being complicated, but this is one of the simplest recipes ever.

It inflates in the oven, and when you first take it out it’s still pretty puffy, but you can see it’s already starting to sink a bit.

Here it’s pretty much fallen completely. This is how clafoutis are: browned and slightly chewy on the perimeter and eggy, fluffy and custardy in the center.

It looks pretty dusted with powdered sugar. It is usually served warm, but it would probably be pretty tasty cold as well. As long as you greased the pan well enough, the slices should come right out. The taste of the figs and how they meld with the custard is probably pretty different from the berries or cherries in the original, but I think they make a great breakfast with their light, fresh flavor. I’d definitely make this again, for a dessert or a breakfast.

Fresh Fig Clafouti (adapted from NPR, adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup milk (low-fat or regular)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 6 figs, trimmed and quartered
• 1 tablespoon raw sugar such as turbinado (granulated may be substituted)
• Powdered sugar, for serving

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and coat a 9-inch cast iron skillet or pie plate generously with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Add the milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, almond, salt and flour to a blender in that order so the flour does not cake onto the blade. Blend on high for 30 seconds. Scrape down any flour adhering to the sides and blend for 30 seconds more, or until smooth. Pour into the skillet.
3. Scatter the figs over the batter and sprinkle the raw sugar (or granulated, if substituting) on top.
4. Bake in the center of the oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until clafouti is puffed and edges are golden brown. A thin knife inserted in the center should come out clean. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes (clafouti will collapse), sift powdered sugar over the top and serve warm.

Over the last weekend my boyfriend was out of town, so I decided to experiment with light meals that might not be enough for him to eat for dinner, but would be fine for me. Namely, I had saved a few recipes of grain-based “salads” that would be quick, cheap and at least moderately healthy. One of them was a couscous recipe from Serious Eats (from their “Healthy & Delicious” series, natch). I substituted a lot of different things in this recipe, but the backbone is still there; in fact, you could argue that the recipe itself is like a template that can easily be adapted for various ingredients. To call this a salad is really kind of a misnomer; it’s a salad in the same way that any mix of vegetables and grains can be considered a salad. This dish can be served hot or cold, as a main course or a side, and it’s dead simple, with few, low cost ingredients.

First, sauté some garlic in oil until it is browned. This recipe doesn’t actually have any onion in it, which is surprising for me because I don’t know when the last time was that I made a stew-type recipe without onions. But it’s just garlic here!

In goes the diced tomatoes, chickpeas, basil (mine was fresh purple basil from my garden) and some paprika. For whatever reason I don’t have crushed red pepper in my spice cabinet, and in hindsight I should have probably added more paprika, or some cayenne too, if I wanted any kick from this. But it was tasty and full flavored without the spice anyway.

The original calls for couscous; I went with the harvest grains blend from Trader Joe’s, which includes Israeli couscous, red and green orzo, split dried garbanzo beans, and red quinoa. It’s a great blend, and it worked spectacularly in this dish. However, wanted to make sure it cooked through, so instead of taking the pan of the stove and letting the couscous cook from just the residual heat and moisture, I cooked this for the time listed on the bag (10 minutes) and then took it off the stove.

Once everything is cooked, chopped scallions and some crumbled feta or goat cheese get stirred in. The presentation looks pretty good here, and you could probably serve it just like this without mixing everything in (or maybe mix in the scallions but leave the goat cheese on top). Served like this, you would likely have larger hunks of goat cheese populating the dish, unless you stirred it up really well.

As it was, I stirred everything in at once. The goat cheese quickly melted and left me with a cheesy, creamy sauce. It was really two different dishes; with the goat cheese on the top, the flavors are all more separate, and you get the thinner tomato-y sauce covering the grains with larger, stronger chunks of goat cheese. With the goat cheese mixed in, the flavors mellow out more and everything melds together (in a good way). The goat cheese flavor is still present, but not concentrated and it mingles well with the tomatoes. As I said before, this dish is tasty and filling as a main course, but it also works well as a side; when my boyfriend got home, we used it as a side to a grilled steak along with some fresh sliced jicama in lime juice. The recipe makes a fairly large batch, so it will keep you going for a while.

Harvest Grains Salad (adapted from Serious Eats)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 1/4 cups water, divided
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 (16-ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup uncooked Harvest Grains blend
• 1 cup coarsely chopped green onions (about a bunch)
• 1 cup crumbled feta or goat cheese

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently until browned.
2. Stir in 1/2 cup water, basil, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Simmer over medium-low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Add 1 3/4 cups water and salt and bring to a boil. Stir in Harvest Grains blend and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until grains are cooked.
4. Stir in onions and cheese. Serve hot or cool.

Some weekends, you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to mess with starters, or kneading, or shaping, or letting the bread rise twice. Those weekends, it’s time for Blitz Bread, which is basically the easiest foccacia ever. It can be used like any foccacia, accompanying a meal, or on it’s own with some oil and herbs, but it’s just the right hight to be split horizontally and make a fantastic sandwich bread, too.

It really just starts out with all the basics: all-purpose flour, yeast and salt.

In goes some water and good olive oil. Yes, my olive oil really is that green; it’s Greek olive oil (specifically Minerva brand), the only olive oil I’ll use anymore after living in Greece for a few months. It’s somewhat fruitier than Italian olive oil, and to my tastes richer and more flavorful. In any case, it’s worth it to use a good olive oil for this recipe, whatever kind you like best.

It all comes together easily with the dough whisk. Like most no-knead or barely-knead breads, this dough is pretty wet.

This recipe is basically no-knead, but I give the bread a good beating with my hand mixer and dough hooks for a couple of minutes, and it really smooths out and comes together well.

Pan prep. The pan needs to be sprayed with non-stick spray and olive oil drizzled in. Don’t drizzle too much, just a tablespoon or two, or else you’ll end up with soggy bread.

Scoop the dough into the pan, grease your hands well, and spread it out until it fills up the pan (mostly). This process benefits from giving it a few minutes to rest every once in a while, because the dough is very springy and doesn’t really want to go where you push it.

Let the dough rise for about an hour, or until it puffs up a lot and basically fills the pan. Then poke it a few times with a well greased index finger, sprinkle some Italian herbs on it (basil and oregano mostly), drizzle it with a little more olive oil (now you see why the quality is important!), and stick it in the oven. It will deflate a bit when you poke it, but it will spring back up in the oven.

When it comes out of the oven you should immediately remove it from the pan (again, the consequences are soggy bread). This is most easily done if you have two long cooling racks; place upside down on the top of the baking pan, flip the bread over so it pops out (which it should do easily if you greased it enough), then place the other rack upside down on the bottom of the bread and flip it back over so that it’s rightside up.

The flavor on this bread is great, and it has a fantastic crumb. It’s light and a bit holey without much of a crust at all, though the edges are thicker and chewier. Like I said, it makes great sandwich bread, and is probably the least work-intensive bread out there.

Blitz Bread (from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) warm water
• 3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) olive oil (plus additional for drizzling)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 1/2 cups (14 ¾ ounces) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 tablespoon instant yeast

Directions

1. Lightly grease a 9″ x 13″ pan, and drizzle 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil in the bottom.
2. Combine all of the ingredients, and beat at high speed with an electric mixer for 60 seconds.
3. Scoop the sticky batter into the prepared pan, cover the pan, and let it rise at room temperature for 60 minutes, till it’s become puffy.
4. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 375°F.
5. Gently poke the dough all over with your oiled index finger.
6. Drizzle it lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle with the dried herbs of your choice, if desired.
7. Bake the bread till it’s golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes.
8. Remove it from the oven, wait 5 minutes, then turn it out of the pan onto a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Last weekend we almost found ourselves grilling in the rain again, but at the last minute the sun came out and the grilling gods smiled upon us. It was a good thing, too, because it allowed us to make this amazing Adobo Chicken recipe from the NY Times. The chicken is basically cooked twice which imparts a full, rich flavor throughout the meat and keeps it moist and delicious throughout.

The chicken is poached first in a mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar and a few spices: garlic, bay leaves, black pepper and a diced chipotle pepper. The recipe called for a dried chipotle, but not being able to find one I substituted a couple of small canned chipotles in—what else—adobo sauce. I figured it would be an acceptable addition.

You want to poach the thighs in a pot where they can fit in one layer, but the liquid doesn’t have to cover them. Just flip them throughout the cooking so that they are cooked evenly on both sides. The recipe called 1 whole cut up 3–4 pound chicken or 2 pounds of bone-in thighs; I’m not sure how that math really adds up, but I do know (now) that 2 pounds of thighs doesn’t really yield 4 servings. Oh well.

The poached chicken is brown and cooked through. It’ll go on the grill to get a nice caramelized and somewhat crisp exterior.

After the chicken is removed the remaining liquid should be cooked down to about a cup. It won’t be thick like gravy, but it will be a very tasty sauce that is spooned over the grilled chicken and onto the rice or mashed potatoes used as a side.

Once grilled, the chicken becomes a darker, more rich shade of brown. It has all the benefits of being grilled (slightly charred exterior, flavor from the charcoal), as well as the benefits of being braised for a while (exceedingly tender and juicy). The grilling also helps to seal up the juices inside.

Like I mentioned before, this only supplied us with one dinner, not two like we usually shoot for. We did, however, have a ton of sauce left over. A few days later, I diluted what was left with a cup of water and braised some more chicken legs in it until the meat was pretty much falling off the bone. This I shredded and used for filling for tacos, and along with some freshly made salsa that incorporated some of the leftover chipotle peppers, made for another fantastic meal.

Adobo Chicken (from the NY Times)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup white or rice vinegar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 dried chipotle pepper or two small canned chipotles in a little of their sauce, chopped up
• 1 whole (3- to 4-pound) chicken, cut up (with legs separated from thighs); or use 2 pounds bone-in thighs or leg/ thigh pieces cut in two.

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a covered pot large enough to hold the chicken in one layer. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce the heat to medium-low or low (you want a slow simmer, nothing more). Cook, covered, about 30 minutes, turning once or twice, until chicken is cooked through. (You may prepare the recipe in advance up to this point; refrigerate the chicken, in the liquid, for up to a day before proceeding.)
2. When you are ready to grill the chicken, start a charcoal or wood fire or preheat a gas grill or broiler. The fire need not be too hot, but place the rack just 3 or 4 inches from the heat source.
3. Remove chicken, and dry it gently with paper or cloth towels. Boil liquid over high heat until it is reduced to about 1 cup; discard bay leaves and chipotle; keep sauce warm.
4. Grill or broil chicken until brown and crisp, 5 minutes per side. Serve chicken with sauce and white rice or potatoes.

A couple of weeks ago, it got uncomfortably hot. Not hot like it gets in the southern river valley where I grew up, and not even that hot for some other more northern climates, but hot enough for me in my un-air conditioned apartment. So instead of baking for desserts, I decided to put my ice cream maker to good use. One of the ingredients I’ve been thinking about for a while is the prickly pear fruits that my local grocer carries. There are few recipes I had been considering, but I decided to slightly improvise a sorbet based on this Lime Mango Sorbet from Simply Recipes.

First, the prickly pear fruits need to be juiced, and this procedure I learned also at Simply Recipes. The ones I bought at the store had already been cleaned of their fuzzy needles and were perfectly safe to handle with my bare hands.

First, the ends get cut off.

One longitudinal slice down the end, and the skin gets pried/sliced partly off to start. Once you get it started, you can pull it the rest of the way off pretty easily.

Once they’ve been skinned, they take a quick spin in the food processor.

It didn’t take long at all to reduce the prickly pears to juice. It is at this point that most recipes launch; the prickly pear juice (after straining the seeds out) can be used in baking, added to cocktails or lemonade, or made into sorbet!

All the sorbet recipes I found had a base that is just simple syrup. Stir your sugar and water until the water turns clear again.

The zest of one lime goes into the syrup to infuse it with lime flavor. I think at this point, before adding anything else, I would strain the zest back out. In the final product the zest clumped together oddly, and while though not horribly unpleasant, was a little too much lime in one bite.

The seeds of prickly pears are edible, but are very hard and are large enough be unmissable Since they would not be a pleasant addition to a sorbet, I strained them out. However, I did want the pulp. This would probably have been easier with a slightly larger grade strainer, but using a spoon to push everything but the seeds through worked ok.

This is what was left over when I called it quits. I got pretty much all the pulp out and into the bowl below. After juicing 5 smallish prickly pears, I got about a cup of liquid and pulp, which is what I was aiming for.

Adding liquor to the sorbet adds a bit of a kick, plus it keeps the sorbet from getting too icy. I chose a good rum to play on the tropical flavors in the sorbet.

Even after setting in the freezer for days, the alcohol kept the sorbet super soft. It melts quickly in the heat, but the texture is fantastic. And the combination of the sweet prickly pear, which is almost melon-like in taste, and the tart lime is delicious. The sorbet was ridiculously easy since all it is composed of is simple syrup and fruit, so there’s no cooking of a custard like in other ice creams. It’s one of those things that would be great to whip together on a whim, just as long as the ice cream maker was clean and ready!

Prickly Pear Lime Sorbet (adapted from Simply Recipes)

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• zest from one lime
• 1 cup prickly pear juice and pulp (about 5 small fruits)
• 1/2 cup of lime juice
• pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons rum

Directions

1. Heat the sugar, water, and lime zest in a medium saucepan until the sugar has completely dissolved. Set aside to cool and strain out lime zest.
2. Juice the prickly pears and separate the pulp and juice from the seeds.
3. Put the prickly pear juice, simple syrup, lime juice, and salt into a bowl and mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until completely chilled.
4. When ready to put the chilled mixture into your ice cream maker, mix in the rum. Process the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the ice cream maker directions. Transfer mixture to a plastic storage container and freezer in your freezer until firm, at least 6 hours.

Of all the things I’ve been grilling lately, I hadn’t gotten around to something like straight up hamburgers, which are really kind of the essential grilled food. Don’t get me wrong, I love hamburgers, particularly of the homemade variety. I guess I’ve been making somewhat more ambitious foods lately, so the simple hamburger was not really high on my list. When I did decide that I was in a hamburger mood, it had to be something different, and I was struck with the inspiration of using a recipe from The Taste of Africa for kofta meatballs, but obviously forming them into burgers instead of meatballs. I had made the kofta before and they were phenomenal, so I deduced the hamburgers would be awesome too. This mix of spices makes such a delicious and unique burger, I’m sure I’ll be making it often.

Everything in one large bowl. It’s not surprising that I like this mix so much because it includes some of my favorite spices. All the veggies get chopped up extra fine so that they blend in with the meat well. I like to press the extra moisture out of the onions, too, so that the patties don’t get too wet and fall apart. With the yogurt there’s plenty of moisture anyway.

You have to get in there and really mix everything up with your hands. It’s fun, in a getting-dirty kind of way. I got four medium-sized burgers out of this recipe. When they cooked up they were kind of small in diameter, but thick enough that they were plenty filling.

I stuck these in the fridge until the grill was ready. Cooking them from cold also has the benefit of helping them stick together. I didn’t really have any problems with these falling apart, so I must have done something right.

On the grill. I think I cooked these about 5–7 minutes on each side over medium-high heat, but I don’t really remember. They were well done, but definitely still plenty juicy.

Dressed with lettuce, tomato and onion, with a mild provolone cheese. I also added some ketchup, but I didn’t want anything with too strong of a flavor, since I wanted to spices of the meat to shine through. I wasn’t sure how strong the spices would be, or how the mix would turn out in hamburger form, but they were fantastic. The spices shone through really well and made for extremely tasty burgers.

Kofta Burgers (adapted from The Taste of Africa by Rosamund Grant and Josephine Bacon)

Ingredients

• 1 pound of ground beef
• 3 tablespoons finely minced onion
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon plain yogurt
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 fresh green chili, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• salt and ground black pepper

Directions

1. Put the beef into a large bowl, add all the remaining ingredients and mix well with your hands.
2. Roll into four large balls and flatten into patties 1/2–3/4″ thick. Refrigerate, separated by wax paper or plastic wrap, until the grill is ready.
3. Grill over medium heat, 5–7 minutes on each side, or until the burgers are done to your liking.
4. Serve on a bun with all the hamburger dressings you like.