Salted Watermelon, Monday, Magic.

I can explain. Remember how I put salt on the Pear tarts that my bog title alludes to? Remember how it was delicious? This watermelon is no different. It' s sweet, it's lovely, and it wants salt. My friend Dale put this idea in my head. Dale knows his food so we're gonna trust him on this one. Another thing about Dale, is that he is not fond of circular things. In an ideal world, Dale would use square or rectangular plates only. So naturally, if you give Dale a round thing such as a watermelon, he will cut it into... you guessed it: cubes. Well, here is the lovely thing about cubing a watermelon: you get to eat all the scraps! My grilled cheese sandwich at lunch went pretty darn well with these salty cubes of crunch. Try it!


I won't try to write out a recipe for my Grilled Cheese and Salted Watermelon (with greens), because I'm sure you can guess how I made it. What I will do though, is share some tips: if you don't have a sandwich press, cast iron is great for grilling bread. Put some pressure on your sandwich, though. My brilliant system today involved a plate and a full kettle. You could use a plate and a nineteenth century novel. Whatever works...


P.S. I tried to be really discreet about my use of Challah in making the grilled cheese of this post. I though you're so sick of this loaf of bread by now. But then I got a comment on the last post from Amuse- bouche that sent me back to the kitchen. I came back with this tiny grilled chocolate sandwich to have with my espresso. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sweet sweet conclusion to my lovely loaf of Challah.

The Continuing Tale of the Challah

What does one 115lb girl do with two huge loaves of Challah? Deliver one loaf on bike to best friend. Then come home and proceed with the other loaf. Two slices at a time. Day one: Rice Crispy and Orange zest French Toast. Day Two: poached eggs and grilled tomatoes. I love brunch. You should come over and join me sometime!

Rice Crispy & Orange zest French Toast
2 thick slices of Challah (day old at least)
2 eggs beaten with a few tbsp milk
orange zest
1 tsp confectioner's sugar
handful rice crispies
butter

Whisk the eggs, milk, zest, and sugar in a shallow dish. Soak the slices of bread on all sides until all liquid is absorbed, then roll in the puffed rice, pressing down to secure them in the bread. Fry in a few tablespoons of butter in your favorite pan.

Optional: you can peal and segment your orange and cook it down with a few tbsp honey and more orange zest as a topping. heck you could even put some Grand Marnier in the mix.

Poached Eggs and Grilled Summer Tomatoes

2 eggs
1 tomato (sliced thick)
salt pepper olive oil
2 slices Challah (try not to burn yours like mine)

I used a stove-top griddle to get the best out of my tomatoes. You can use whatever you prefer. Cast iron works best I find. Poaching eggs isn't that hard either. Just get the water to a rolling boil and the bubbles will keep the eggs afloat. One good tip though, is to break each egg in a small vessel first so you can drop them in the water with ease.

I still have Challah left. In case you were wondering...

What Are You Gonna Put on that Bread?

This story starts a few days back. It was Thursday I think and everyone just seemed to do and say the wrong things. It's hard to explain. Small talk and unhealthy curiosity can really rub me the wrong way so I came home and thought, I'm gonna have a coffee, sit on the couch and do nothing for a while and then bake bread. I proceeded in that order and by the time the dough had risen twice I was starting to feel a little better about things. That yeasty smell in the kitchen was doing good things for me. By the time the Bread was baking and I was having my second coffee and scribbling in my book, I heard the ding ding of a message from a friend who asked the first good question of the day: "What are you gonna put on that bread?" By the time I'd waited for the loaf to cool and sliced into it and contemplated its fate, it seemed so obvious. Butter. So I let him know that was the decision and of course, he agreed it was a sound one. Things were feeling better already...


Recipe: Challah Loaf (makes two loaves)

1 1/4C warm water
2 tsp dry active yeast
4C (roughly) All Purpose/Bread Flour
1/3 C sugar
1/4 C Vegetable Oil
4 eggs
1tsp salt
Sesame or poppy seeds for the top

Whisk the water, yeast, one tsp sugar and 1/4c flour to get things bubbling. Set this aside for at least 10 minutes, but no more than 20.

Whisk in the sugar, oil, 3eggs (NOT 4) and salt. Add the rest of the flour one cup at a time mixing with a sturdy wooden spoon until the dough is coming together into one ball and not sticking too much. Transfer to a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes adding flour if needed, until the dough is round, smooth, elastic, and "cohesive".

Put the ball in a greased bowl. Cover and let rise in a reasonably warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk. About an hour. Maybe more.

Punch down and divide into 6 equal parts to make two braided loaves on a baking sheet that's either well-greased or parchment lined. Cover and let rise again until doubled and good looking. Preheat the oven to 325. Beat the last egg with a touch of milk or water and give the tops of the loaves a good egg wash, followed by seeds if you're into that. Bake 30-40 minutes or until the loaves sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom. If the tops are browning too fast cover with foil and return to the oven.

Wait till they're cool if you can. It's hard but it's worth it... There's something else I did with my Challah that will have to be the topic for the next post.

One of Those Days

Sometimes you have time to do certain things and it's amazing. I put a piece of prosciutto on my last chunk of bread early last night and thought, hey, I should make a dough that will rise overnight and in 14 hours I'll have a loaf of bread. I could do this, of course, because I'm taking the day off today to pack and run errands. So I did. Now I'm distracting myself writing this post to avoid sticking a serrated edge into my not-yet-cooled loaf of goodness. It smells really nice in here. This is not a new recipe. You've probably made it a hundred times like me. It's that no knead loaf that was all the hype a few years ago. I like it. It's a good honest piece of bread. I still like to knead and make other loaves with different flours because this one doesn't allow much variation, but it's got a good spongy crumb and it's pretty foolproof... but don't even dream of making it in humid weather. It will not work. Trust me.

Ingredients

3c flour (it's gotta be white guys, sorry)
1/4 tsp INSTANT yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2c warm water
cornmeal or bran for coating

I'm not gonna type up a recipe because you can watch Jim Lahey do it, himself. Here is how!

Sunny Days, Sunny Thoughts

Once in a while I'll be at a grocery check-out line and a girl with scars on her forearms will give me this knowing look of solidarity and I realize my food scars are being mistaken for self-mutilation. It's an awkward situation. I feel like saying no no that's actually from the convection oven at this one place I worked at, where everyone was taller, and this is from that time I left the tongs on the gas range and forgot they were hot, and that one... the list goes on. Anyway, I don't say any of these things. I just smile and hope she won't hurt herself anymore. I'm baking biscotti in my ridiculously sunny kitchen today with a breeze so nice I have to stop and acknowledge it every few minutes, and I'm wishing I could pack up a little cookie package for all the people I've met who ever needed to be comforted and weren't. Here is a biscotti recipe that will never fail. You must dunk these in coffee or wine, though, as they are of the tougher persuasion.


Spiced Chocolate & Espresso Biscotti
250 g flour
250 g sugar (I use half caster, half brown)
2 beaten eggs
75g chopped dark chocolate
75g chopped nuts
50g crushed espresso beans
pinch each of
salt
cinamon
chili pepper

Preheat the oven to 375

Mix everything together, except the eggs, which you will beat in a separate bowl with a bit of orange zest or vanilla extract, whichever you have or prefer.

Use your hands to bring it all together and form a dough. Try to distribute the nuts and chocolate evenly (but no fuss). If you have a hard time with the dough, put a few tablespoons of olive oil on your hands or in the mix.

Divide your dough, shaping two logs on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Your logs should be about an inch thick. Brush them with a little bit of milk and sprinkle an little extra sugar on top.

Bake the logs for 15 minutes letting them spread, but they should still be soft in the middle. Take them out and lower the oven to 325. Let them cool a little so you can handle them and cut them to your desired size. Arrange them all on the baking sheet again and bake for 10-15minutes more on each side. Watch them though, some ovens will burn your biscotti really fast.

I'm taking a plate down for the ladies working at the hair salon I live above. There's always a pot of coffee on down there...

Post Script: I went over to Sarah's to hang out with the little ones and look what I came home to! I feed the stylists, they hook me up with hair products. This is a functional relationship...

Why Not?

Why not get off the bus and go see a show you know you'd regret missing? Why not tell that old friend exactly what it was that hurt you? Learn the words to a song in a language you don't speak? Eat pasta at 10pm because you were working till 7 and it takes a while to get dinner going? I did all of those things in the last 72 hours and i still managed to make it through most of my to-do list as well. What's more, I'm gonna make a blog post even though I don't have very good pictures. I highly recommend you go for it as well, whatever it is you feel like doing. What's the worse thing that could happen? At least you'll learn something, right? That's a pretty good deal if you ask me! Here's a delicious work-week pasta dish that goes really well with an episode of your favorite food-network show. So check dinner off your list and put your feet up. Life is good.


Monday Night Rigatoni

450g dry rigatoni

400g ground beef
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
10 crackers
1 egg
olive oil
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 tsp each of:
salt
pepper
ground ginger
ground mustard
paprika
chili powder

Food process the crackers, onion and garlic together. In a medium bowl, using your hands, knead together the beef, cracker mix, beaten egg and all dry spices for a few minutes until mixture looks homogeneous. Then wet your fingers and shape as many meatballs as the mix will allow. Freeze however much you don't want to cook.

Fry meatballs in olive or canola oil until browned all around and add a can of chopped tomatoes (or half depending on how much of your meat you froze) and cook on medium high until the tomato juice reduces a bit to sauce consistency. If you've got an open can of tomato paste you can use a bit of that to thicken the sauce, too.

Boil pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente. Throw it all together, add a hand-full of your favorite fresh green (mine is arugula), some shaved parmigiano, and press play.

Newness

This is Pipp. He is the newest addition to my family. he started out really small and has just moved into his bigger tin can. I have a feeling he's gonna need even more space soon. I've been trying to incorporate a lot of herbs into what I cook these days just to keep up with the ones I have in my kitchen. Soon I'm gonna have to resort to pesto-making, but it's still under control. Sweet basil in a savory crepe with cracked pepper and pecorino romano, which the cheese lady didn't let me pay for? So I went home for lunch today, you can probably tell. It was indulgent and brilliant.

All Purpose Crepes

2 eggs (get real farm eggs they're delicious)
1 1/4c good milk
1c sifted flour (a.p. or pastry will do)
pincha salt
1tsp sugar
2 tbsp melted butter or other oil you like

Mix the above ingredients really really well. If you feel like cleaning a blender, you could use that but I just used my big big whisk and burned some calories. The consistency should ideally be like heavy cream. If it's like custard, you need more milk. You want a runny batter with no clumps.

Chill covered for about an hour. I made mine in the morning before I went to work and used it at lunch. That worked just fine.

In a non-stick crepe pan/frying pan that has been lightly oiled on medium heat, cook 1/4c batter at a time. Swirl the pan to get a thin and even(ish) crepe but don't fuss. You'll wreck a few and get the hang of it. cook for a minutes or so per side, and use your own judgment for doneness, pans and batters vary, of course. If you're like me and you cooked way too many crepes, cook the ones you're not eating a little less and wrap and refrigerate them. Then when you want to eat one, you can heat it on the same pan and it won't brown too much.
So so good. I promise.

I couldn't resist. I had a sweet one with brown sugar and lemon, too.