I love crackers but have not made them myself until recently. I noticed that we haven’t purchased many, if any, crackers in the past year and when I came across JoyTheBaker’s post called Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers, I knew what I had to do. So, I made crackers and they were delicious. In fact they were so nice that I have made four batches in the past 2 weeks and I’m already thinking about making another! This marks the start of my cracker hunt — must find more recipes.
Cracker recipes, where are you?

This recipe is surprisingly simple to make, it requires very few ingredients and about 10 minutes of your active time with 30 minutes or so to bake. It also lends itself to be modified with other spices and flavors. I’ve only just begun to experiment with these.

The recipe below was found on JoyTheBaker.Com
Joy found it in The Complete Book of Cookies

Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers

makes 20 crackers
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon butter, cold and cut into 6 small chunks
1 Tablespoon poppy seeds
6 Tablespoons half and half
sea salt & additional half and half for the topping (I used kosher salt instead)

Preheat the oven to 300° F. Sift together the flour, salt and sugar.  Add the butter and, using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is in tiny bits and dispersed throughout the flour mixture.

Stir in the poppy seeds.

Add the half and half and mix to make a stiff dough.  Place on a lightly floured surface and roll out to about 8×10-inches.  Cut into 20 squares.

Place the dough squares on an ungreased baking sheet lined with parchment or foil.  Brush sparingly with half and half and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp but still pale.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container.

So far the original recipe stands to be the best (of course) but I have started experimenting with adding other flavors which promise to make a nice cracker as well. I will post about them in the future. The additional ingredients in question are crushed red pepper, cumin, and sesame seeds… stay tuned for more cracker fun and dip ideas!

Over the holidays we were gifted some pretty amazing things. There are two new special tools I am specifically referring to right now, a KitchenAid! and a Calphalon Dutch Oven!!! Oh my! Could it get any better?! The year has already started off much much better than last, I couldn’t be happier. Both Joe and I are employed with jobs we like and we’re in good health (crowd cheers) plus, we’re set up to bake anything and everything we want. I’m ready to make 2010 a great year full of fresh bread & happiness. Cheers to all and thanks for taking a moment to look at my little site, a project that I desire to keep growing into something beautiful.  And thank You (M&D and B&R) for gifting tools that will help us grow (up & out;) as well.

Of course we had to break into our new toys immediately to take them for a spin. First stop — rosemary bread. We combed the internet for the recipe we would bake first. We landed on a recipe from ThePioneerWoman.com.

This recipe was adapted from
ThePioneerWoman.com

Rosemary Bread

20 oz. of bread flour (all purpose is okay, too) – about 4 cups.
8 oz. of water (or 1 cup).
4 oz. melted butter with chopped herbs of choice (we used rosemary).
2 teaspoons salt.
1 teaspoon active or instant yeast (if active, it would be best to sprinkle yeast over the water to let it start to work before mixing it in).

In your KitchenAid stand mixer (with dough hook) sprinkle yeast over the water before mixing in the rest of the ingredients.  Mix together on low speed for about 10 minutes or so until you can achieve a windowpane with the dough- this is something I never knew about until I followed their instructions. Achieving a windowpane is when you can pull off a small chunk of the dough you’re kneading and stretch it gently to see if it is somewhat translucent. If you can do this without it tearing, it’s ready.

Once this elasticity has been achieved, allow the dough sit out with plastic wrap over it for 1-4 hours to double in size. After it’s gotten bigger, it should be kneaded for a minute or two so that the yeast can redistribute – Once we kneaded the bread, the dough seemed to return to its original size and become more dense.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut a large ‘X’ into the surface of the bread dough so it can bloom!

Bake inside a covered cast iron pan after coating the rounded dough with olive oil and sprinkling with kosher salt. Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on, then remove lid to finish it off for another 15 to 30 minutes.

The bread can get brown on the bottom if it’s too close to the heating element; if that happens, just slice it off with a sharp knife.

We baked ours for the 30 minutes covered and an additional 20 without the lid- next time we’ll do the additional 30 minutes because our dough was a little too moist although it was still very delicious.  Our outer crust was beautifully perfect, this was an excellent first experience with both our KitchenAid and cooking with the dutch oven. We can’t stop thinking about mixing up our next batch of bread!

It’s exciting to think about how much easier the bread making process will be, the possibilities just opened up. Looking forward to finding more recipes to try.

A bread that takes less than 3 hours to make from scratch! Yay! It’s not always easy to find a bread recipe that you can rise within 2 hours and cook in about a half an hour.  I found this peasant bread recipe about a month ago on RealMomKitchen.com and have already baked it 5 times! It requires very few ingredients and very little effort. It’s a perfect bread to eat with soups or simply dip into oil, awesome right out of the oven and will last a few days as well.

Ingredients : flour, sugar, salt, water, yeast, butter, cornmeal

The peasant bread recipe below was found on
RealMomKitchen.com

1 package dry yeast
2 cups warm water
1 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups flour
cornmeal
melted butter

Place yeast, water, sugar, and salt in bowl and stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir until well blended. Do not knead. Cover and let rise until double in size (about 1 hour). Remove dough from bowl and place in 2 rounds on a greased cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Let rise an additional hour. Brush top on dough with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Serve warm.

– I found this dough to be extremely wet (which means easy to stir by hand!). The first time I used this recipe I followed the exact instructions and got a moist yet delicious bread with a crispy crust.  However, because it was so wet, It was very tricky and sticky to get the dough from the bowl to the pan.  The next few times I made it I used 4 generously heaping cups of flour instead and got nice results as well; it was still very wet and not too much easier to handle the dough. Although I think it helped the texture a bit and I will continue with the heaping measurement.

When you are transferring the dough on to the pan you will basically just be plopping two dough blobs down. Because the dough is so wet it may end up merging back to one — no big deal.  Don’t skimp on the butter brushed on top; I think this is one of the best parts, it will add to your crispy golden crust and overall deliciousness. Cooking time will vary slightly depending on your oven. After a few times I found that cooking it (in my oven) a few extra minutes until golden brown is how we like it.

Aside from this bread being easy to make and virtually impossible to screw up, it is also very inexpensive. Nothing beats freshly baked bread!

Average Cost :
flour- $0.56
butter- $0.10
sugar- $0.01
salt- $0.01
yeast- $0.80
Cornmeal- $0.02
water- priceless

Total Cost is about $1.50!

Hoping to find more and more easy bread recipes!
Let me know if you have one for me to try…

Radishes are not something I often buy, not because I dislike them rather I’m not always sure what to do with them. Sure you could always dip them in something or just eat them, what else do people use them for? On a quick search I found a popular use was as simple as sliced radishes on bread with butter and a dash of salt. Hmmmm, ok I can do that! So, I tried it out and this is how it went…

Ingredients : sliced radishes, bread, butter, salt, and radish sprouts.

The day before we had this snack we made the bread, it was a french bread recipe found on The Thrifty Gourmet.  I’m not going to elaborate on our experience making this bread yet, I think we need another try for ultimate success — it didn’t rise properly for us this time.  But, for a first attempt at french bread, it turned out pretty good and was great for this snack. Check out their site for instructions and a great how to video demonstration if you want to give it a try.  I think most fresh breads would be great for this treat.

To make this snack, simply start off by preparing your ingredients. Slice your radishes and bread, pick your radish sprouts.  If you haven’t tried radish sprouts before keep an eye out for them; they’re quite tasty.  They would be great on sandwiches or in salads for an extra kick.

Toast and butter your bread.
Lay radish slices and sprinkle salt.
Top with radish sprouts and snack!

I also made radish chips! Still on a search for other ways to use them… any ideas?

Fall is slowly moving in on us and with it comes the urge to bake more bread! Joe and I love making bread. We don’t have much experience or a stand mixer, but we love to try out new bread recipes. While searching for ideas on how to use our fresh sage from the garden I stumbled across this Cheddar Sage Bread recipe.  Cheese, bread, & herbs… Yep- sounds good to me!

We have been growing sage all summer and haven’t done anything special with it (until now). I love the flavor of sage but just don’t know much about using it. I was excited to find this recipe because I have never tasted a sage bread before but it sounded delicious to me. We changed a few small things in the recipe and it turned out great! It wasn’t too much work and the rising time was only a couple of hours.  Sometimes when we make bread it feels like the rising time takes twice as long as it says it should. With this recipe I felt like everything went according to plan.

Cheddar Sage Bread
This recipe was found on thathomesite.com
(we slightly modified it in order to use ingredients on hand)

½ teaspoon dry mustard or 1½ teaspoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons fresh sage, minced
3-3½ cups flour (we used bread flour, but all purpose will work just fine)
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 cup milk
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar or 3oz of other cheese
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter

Dissolve mustard in 1 teaspoon warm water – we didn’t have any dry mustard so we substituted it with 3 times as much yellow mustard (this recipe calls for ½ teaspoon dry mustard, we used 1½ teaspoons of yellow mustard instead).

Combine 3 cups flour with salt, pepper, and sage. Warm the milk.

In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, yeast, sugar, and oil. Stir or process to combine. Add the egg and mix well. Add mustard and flour mixtures, adding more flour as necessary so mixture forms a stiff dough and comes together in a ball.

Incorporate cheese into the dough — This recipe called for 3oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese; we used what we had on hand instead- which turned out to be about 4oz of a Gruyere & Colby cheese mix.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour as necessary, about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a lightly buttered bowl and turn to coat top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Punch down, shape in a loaf, put in buttered loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, another hour.

Heat oven to 375°. Melt butter. Brush loaf with melted butter and bake until loaf is golden brown, about 50 minutes  — 50 minutes was just right for us. The bread seemed to turn a golden brown rather quickly and looked like it could be done after about 25 minutes, but we waited until it baked for the suggested amount of time and it turned out perfect. Cool on a rack before cutting into it.

While it was baking the whole house smelled amazing! It tasted just as nice!  We used it all week to eat as a simple toast and for a few breakfast sandwiches as well.

Gourstada, as in gourmet tostada.

Tostadas have to be one of the easiest and quickest meal or snack to make.  We make some sort of variation of a tostada meal at the very least once a week. Whether it’s our huevos rancheros, a simple bean and cheese, or loaded with random delicious it always proves to satisfy.

On this tostada we used almost all home grown vegetables! Starting from the top- straight from the garden, 3 anchos, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil were combined with balsamic vinegar and salt to make a fresh Italian inspired salad. Just beneath baby bella mushrooms sauteed in plum sauce with home grown kale. Below that are black beans warmed with fresh jalapeno from… you guessed it, our garden!  And of course at the base of it all are El Ranchero’s tostadas.

Ingredients : cherry tomatoes, basil, ancho, balsamic vinegar, kosher salt, baby bellas, kale, plum sauce, black beans, jalapenos, El Ranchero tostadas, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese.

At the base of most our our tostadas we use some sort of bean, in this one we used black beans- no, we did not grow them. However the jalapenos were fresh cut from the pot, our first actual harvest of peppers all year! We may have picked these jalapenos a little soon, but they have been growing for quite a while & we just wanted to try them. There are plenty more where they came from; our jalapeno & “red” chili pepper pot is growing like crazy. So many peppers to go. Now, if only these supposed red chilis would turn red. Back to the black beans and jalapenos- drain black beans and simmer on low heat with diced jalapenos while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Next prepare your salad for the top.  We used all the red cherry tomatoes from our garden, which was about ten and an additional handful from our organic produce delivery. They were chopped in quarters from the top making small wedges, a perfect bite size for this dish.

3 anchos were hollowed out, sliced in thin rings and then halved. They were the largest of our peppers so far, although they probably would have grown a little bigger; we felt it was time to cut them down as the slender stems could barely hold them up anymore and were not producing any more flowers. They were perfect for this meal though, very crisp and had a nice mild spice to them.  The basil was sliced into thin strips as well. All ingredients were combined and tossed with some balsamic vinegar and kosher salt to taste.  Set aside and refrigerate until serving time.

The last step in preparation for this meal is the mushroom kale layer.  First chop kale into small pieces.  Remove the stem from the center and slice or tear the leaf into small bits.  Set aside and slice the mushrooms, in a large frying pan heat up a 2-3 tablespoons of plum sauce and a splash of olive oil, sautee mushrooms coating them with the plum sauce flavoring.  Toss in kale and saute a bit more. Once they are done cooking it’s time to plate your tostada.  Remove from heat and get ready to assemble your meal.

Joe and I made 4 tostadas, 2 each and it was the absolute perfect amount.  We were both completely full but not even a little bit over stuffed!

To assemble : lay El Ranchero tostadas on the plate, add beans and jalapenos, sprinkle with cheese if desired- we used a mixture of shredded cheddar and mozzarella because that’s what we had. Next make a layer of the mushroom and kale with plum sauce and top it off with your fresh ancho, basil, and tomato salad.

Generally we think of tostadas as being a mexican flavored dish, we still used a lot of the same traditional ingedients (beans, corn tostada, tomatoes, and jalapenos) but introduced some completely different flavors to the dish as well. I really enjoyed this combination because the bottom layer of beans was a bit spicy and totally cooked, the middle layer was cooked a bit but still somewhat fresh with sweetness of the plum sauce, and the top layer of salad was also a bit spicy and flavored with basil but very fresh. It’s an odd mix of flavors but they all add something interesting to the dish and complement each other quite nicely.

Week two of our organic produce delivery, received on August 12th 2009.  This week our box seemed a little heavier than last, this is what was in it :: broccoli, 2 bananas, 8 apricots, 8 white nectarines, green leaf lettuce, 2 apples, kale, 4 russet potatoes, a box of cherry tomatoes, & 1 ear of corn.

For our weekly roommate dinner we made a curry, muffins, and fruit salad each including something from our delivered produce box-

The curry was a little sweet and moderately spicy; we added flavors as we cooked and because of this we can’t share an exact recipe for it with you because we don’t know it! Sorry, it was an add and taste situation- spice taste spice taste spice taste until it’s done!  However, we can tell you what went into our curry and how we cooked it.  And, if we could do it- why couldn’t you?

Ingredients in this curry : from our produce box- an ear of corn chopped off the core, 2 medium russet potatoes, & broccoli. From our home- Basil from the garden, garlic, mushrooms, two cans of coconut milk, cumin powder, ginger powder, chili garlic paste, hot curry powder, coriander powder, salt, turmeric, basmati rice.

We ate our curry over basmati rice; this particular rice only takes about 10 minutes or so to cook, so we chopped and prepared all of our vegetables ahead of time and had our spice selection and coconut milk ready and near our wok before we even thought about the rice. We started the curry first and then the rice. However, if you are cooking a rice that takes forever (50 minutes) you’ll want to get that going early on in your dinner prep.

To start, in a splash of olive oil, fry about 2 cloves chopped or crushed garlic.  Add in some initial spices and fry for a moment. Include coconut milk and simmer for a moment dissolving the spices.  At first you can be pretty liberal with your spices, to make a coconut curry without a pre-made curry paste you need to add quite a bit of powdered spices. Start off with at least a teaspoon of each and go from there.  Allow the spice to simmer and add more to taste as you are cooking.  Once you add the vegetables the curry will inherit more flavors, adjust spices to taste.  Add potato chunks first and simmer, cook until half way done, include corn, mushrooms, and broccoli and simmer while adjusting your spices. Cook until vegetable are how you like them, avoid overcooking the potatoes, all the other vegetables are fine if they’re a little crispy. Just before eating time include the basil.  Serve over rice.

Apricots, white nectarines, mint, and sesame coated cashews!
Wow, imagine all of them together in one salad. Um, yeah- it’s amazing. Absolutely delicious.  There’s not a lot of explaining to do on this one, it was quick and easy but the flavors are complexly wonderful. Cool, spicy, sweet and minty with a crunch!  Oh my.

We used our white nectarines and apricots from our produce box, the mint was cut from our garden, and the sesame honey cashews are a mix made by Trader Joe himself.  The instructions are simple- cut fruits into bite sized pieces, tear mint leaves into the bowl and add your nuts!  That is all! The nuts in this dish are brilliant because they come packed with flavor that adds a whole new element to a simple fruit salad.  The cashews are coated with a bit of sweet and spicy and then rolled in sesame seeds.  So delicious and so easy.

Fresh nectarine and apricot muffins

We make a lot of muffins in this house- even in the summer. We often will add blueberries, walnuts, spices, or vegan chocolate, and almost always use bananas, but this would be the first time we ever tried using fresh apricots or nectarines.  We started with this basic recipe from The Joy of Cooking book and the we added fresh nectarine and apricot pieces.

Recipe :: makes 12 muffins.
This is a modified version of the Banana Nut Muffin recipe from The Joy of Cooking.

Preheat oven to 375°

whisk together dry ingredients:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Whisk together in a large bowl:
1 large egg
¾ cup packed lite brown sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 nectarines chopped
2 apricots chopped

Fold in dry ingredients until batter is smooth, avoid over mixing. Divide batter between the 12 muffin cups and bake for 14-16 minutes.

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Our cherry tomatoes are finally turning red! The other day we made our first salad using them- I have to say, fresh picked cherry tomatoes are oh so delicious and satisfying; I’m already anticipating the next ripe bunch any day now. This salad was thrown together with a mix of our usual produce, offerings from our organic produce box and some wonderful from our garden. Just thought I’d share the idea with you, it’s always nice to have salad inspiration- mmmm vegetables!

ingredients :: red leaf lettuce, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, olives, cheddar cheese, 1 baby ancho, pine nuts, basil, hard boiled egg, mustard seed dressing.

The preparation of this meal is pretty obvious, chop vegetables as necessary and combine.  The basil in our garden is now growing well and we have been able to use it a couple times a week with out depleting it completely.  One of our plants started off slowly and seemed to be struggling so we repotted it, changed it’s location, and trimmed it down. Now, it’s growing really well. Another basil plant started off full and healthy, once we started to chop stems from it we found it wasn’t growing back; we started to pick just the larger leaves from the top so that new growth could move in and it seems to be working out right. New leaves keep appearing and the plant is now becoming more stable.

Our ancho peppers, also known as pablano peppers, are probably the most impressive peppers growing in the garden right now because they are getting so big. We have three fairly large ones that seem to be taking over the plant and weighing it down.  We’re going to pick them to eat tomorrow and hopefully the plants will continue to produce.  The one we used for this salad was tiny and fell prematurely- but we decided to use it anyway.  Although it was very small it still tasted nice. Anchos are a fairly mild pepper, this one smelled like it might be spicy but didn’t really offer any heat.  We just sliced it as a topper for fun.

The cherry tomatoes are doing well, the whole pot of plants is filled with green, orange and red fruits.  We only had a handful this time around but it was definitely enough to brighten up this salad.  They were near perfect!

We used a red leaf lettuce as the base of our salad, raspberries from our fresh produce delivery last week, and pine nuts.

Green olives are always a nice addition to a salad, I don’t always like to use dressing- if I do, I take it on the side.  Olives and fresh herbs usually add enough extra flavor on their own for me.  And last, cheddar cheese and a hard boiled egg for some extra protein. We have a little egg slicer which is perfect for slicing uniform rounds for a salad. I also like to quarter them or halve them as well- any way will be good!

The dressing on the side is one we have been preparing an awful lot these days.  It originated from our raw kale salad, and now that we’ve made it several times it’s an easy one to whip up and modify quickly.  This time we added some crushed red pepper to spice it up.