550g AP Flour
250mL of water
125mL of whole milk
7g of instant yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tbls olive oil
1 cup of grated cheese
50g of finely chopped bacon or country ham.

* All weights and volumes have been expressed in metric for the simple fact that weighing in grams and measuring in mL is much more accurate than using imperial measurements.

- Weigh out flour and yeast then add liquid ingredients. Mix until dough just comes together, cover and allow to autolyse for 1 hr.  This helps build gluten .

- Add salt to dough and mix on medium or knead for 8-10 minutes.  Place dough in a large bowl that has been greased with olive oil, cover and place in a warm spot.
- Allow to rise until volume of dough has doubled.
- Gently deflate dough by folding the corners into the middle.
- Divide dough into 8 balls of equal size ~ 125g each, and place dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat silicone mat.
- Make a small indent in each dough ball and sprinkle bacon and cheese on dough.  Allow dough to rise until nearly doubled in size.
- Bake in a HOT 425F oven until cheese is toasted and bread is golden brown.   To make a crisper crust toss 6 or 7 ice cubes into the bottom of the oven to create steam.

Best served warm.

I like to use a heavy enameled dutch oven to cook the stew as it provides more even heating (which prevents sticking and burning) and it does a much better job of caramelizing the ingredients than a non-stick pan.  Do not use a crock-pot to cook this recipe; while crockpots may be convenient, these do not heat up enough to produce the depth of flavor that makes a great tasting dish.

Ingredients.

- 1 1/2 lbs of stew beef cut into 1/2″ cubes.

- 3 medium potatoes roughly chopped into 1 inch cubes.

- 1 medium onion cut in eights lengthwise.

- 1 large onion roughly diced.

- 1 clove of garlic, finely minced.

- 1/4 cup of tomato ketchup. 

- 3 large carrots chopped into 1 inch pieces.

- 1 celery stalk, finely sliced.

- 1 pinch of dried oregano.

- 1 pinch of dried thyme.

- 1/2 teaspoon of paprika.

- 1/2 teaspoon of dried parsley.

- 1 bay leaf.

- Beef broth.

- 1/4 cup of your favorite inexpensive red wine. 

- Olive oil (or bacon drippings).

Instructions.

1)  Heat an enameled  dutch oven over medium-high heat until hot.

2) Add ~ 1 tsp of oil or drippings and the roughly diced onion,  reduce heat to medium and slowly cook the onions until they begin to caramelize to a light golden color.  Add the finely minced garlic and cook for another 2 minutes or until garlic no longer smells raw.

3)  Add wine to the pan to deglaze.  Scrape the fond off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.  Cook for another minute or so until the alcohol is cooked off then remove the caramelized onions from pan.  Wipe the pan clean with a paper towel. 

4)  Add another teaspoon of oil to the pan, turn heat to medium-high and brown the meat in several batches.  Don’t stir meat too often, you want the meat to brown nicely and leave its fond on the bottom of the pan. 

5)  Once all of the meat has been browned, add the carrots, cooked and raw onion, and bay leaf .  Cook until the onion just starts to turn translucent.

6)  Add enough beef broth to just about cover meat, stir in herbs, spices, and ketchup then season well with kosher salt.  Bring to a slow simmer, layer the potatoes on top and reduce heat to low.

7)  Cover and cook on low heat for 2 hours or until meat is tender and the potatoes have started to cook down. Remove bay leaf and season to taste with salt and pepper.   Allow to cool and place in refridgerator overnight; this allows the flavors to mingle and intensify.

8)  Before serving, heat stew over medium-low heat until hot.  If you like, a cupful of frozen peas or mixed vegetables makes a tasty addition.   

9) Serve with fresh crusty bread and a glass of your favorite red wine.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 28 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 53mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 29th with 89 views. The most popular post that day was Escabeche: Pickled Jalapenos with vegetables..

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were plurk.com, facebook.com, compostermom.blogspot.com, healthfitnesstherapy.com, and hitztvshows.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jalapenos en escabeche, pickled jalapenos escabeche recipe, jalapeno escabeche recipe, ginger beer bug, and pickled jalapenos.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Escabeche: Pickled Jalapenos with vegetables. June 2010
4 comments

Adventures in Ginger Beer: Getting the Bug. August 2010
2 comments

Top Cheap-o Ways to Eat Like a Foodie Without the Expense June 2010
6 comments

Nothing Says Love Like Comfort Food from Your Childhood May 2010
4 comments

Pierogies Gone Wild! May 2010
8 comments

Ingredients:     

2lbs of white, yellow or sweet onions, finely sliced.     

5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.     

1 tsp salt     

1 tsp sugar  (if using sweet onions like Vidalia, omit the sugar).    

3 tbsp of butter     

5 cups of beef broth.     

2 tbsp of dried onions     

a pinch of thyme     

1 bay leaf.     

Method:     

- In a large dutch oven heat butter over medium low heat until melted.     

 - Add the onions and the garlic to the butter and stir until the vegetables are coated with butter.  Turn the heat down to the lowest setting, add salt and sugar, and place a lid on the dutch oven.      

- Cook onions for 45 minutes stirring once or twice to help the vegetables cook evenly.  At the end of the 45 minutes the onions should be translucent and very soft and sweet with quite a bit of liquid being released.     

- Remove lid from pan and turn heat up to medium low and allow most of the liquid to gently simmer away. Do not boil the mixture.     

- Once most of the liquid has evaporated add 1 tbls of butter, turn heat to low and cook onions slowly, stirring occasionally.  After 20 – minutes of slow cooking the onions should begin to take on a nice brown hue.  Don’t be tempted to turn the heat up to speed up the process as it is very easy to burn the sugars and ruin the dish.  The longer this process takes, the deeper and more complex the final flavor of the soup.     

- As the onions get deeper in color stir more oftenm scraping off the fond that sticks to the bottom of the pan. Once the caramelization process begins it doesn’t take long for the onions to fully caramelize and turn a deep mahogany color.     

Caramelized Onions

 - Deglaze the pan by adding  1/2 cup of beef broth (or a good red wine if you have one handy).     

-  Add the remaining beef broth, dried onion flakes, and herbs to the pot and simmer very slowly over low heat for 1 hour or until ready to serve.     

-  Before serving adjust seasoning to taste.     

- Serve with a crusty, lightly toasted baguette (with or without cheese) and a crisp, cool salad.     

Enjoy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/13/best-foods-in-the-world

This new adventure is inspired by a super-simple and cost-effective recipe  in Sandor Katz’s “Wild Fermentation” for a wild-fermented ginger beer.  While I’ve not made ginger beer before, I remember my dad and brother making a few batches about 30 years ago; finding this recipe brought back memories. 

Unlike other recipes that use a “ginger beer plant,”  Katz’s  recipe harvests the wild yeast in the environment to produce what Katz’s calls a “bug.” It is this basic recipe that I am using as the basis for my first adventure into brewing ginger beer.   

Where Katz’s original recipe for the bug calls for 2 teaspoons of sugar, I have substituted 5g (1/6oz) of golden raisins for 1 teaspoon of the sugar to innoculate the bug with yeast.  Given that I used city water for the process, I boiled the water for about 5 minutes then allowed it to cool to help get rid of the chlorine, other volatile nasties, and unwelcome micro-organisms.

 Ginger Beer “Bug” Recipe.

2 teaspoons of freshly grated ginger root.

1 teaspoon of sugar.

1/6 oz of golden raisins (1 heaping teaspoon)

1 cup of water, boiled for 5 minutes then cooled.

- Once the water had cooled to about body temperature, add all of the ingredients to a large glass or mason jar and cover the container with a piece of cheesecloth or paper towel. 

- Place the jar in a warm spot to start the fermentation.

- For the next few days, the bug will need to be fed 1 teaspoon each of freshly grated ginger and sugar every day or two until the fermentation process is well underway.

Check back in the next couple of days as I blog about the “bug” as it develops.

Day 2.

There were no obvious signs of fermentation when I fed the bug its dose of fresh ginger and sugar at 8:00am this morning. 

Day 4.

There are still no obvious signs of fermentation in the bug but the supernatant liquor is becoming the typical “ginger beer brown” color.

Day 7.

Still no fermentation in the bug but a quite beautiful strain of white fluffy mold has found a new home.  Oh well, I guess I’ll start again and hope for better results. 

One of our favorite places to eat was a small Mexican hole-in-the-wall just up the road from our apartment where upbeat Mexican pop and traditional music rang out from the jukebox, bright and colorful throw rugs decorated the walls, and the enticing aromas coming from the kitchen all but guaranteed a good meal was in the offing.  Just as in many Mexican restaurants across the country, a large bowl of freshly-cooked tortilla chips and two (sometimes three) salsas were brought to the table at the beginning of the meal.  However, unlike many other restaurants, a bowl of jalapeno escabeche was also served. It was here that I fell in love with this simple but delicious dish of pickled jalapenos with vegetables. The acidic tang of the pickling brine combined with the crisp bite of the peppers was a suberb way to begin a meal, while the heat of the peppers was perfect excuse for an ice-cold margarita or a malty Dos Equis. Depending on the season, the ingredients of the pickle changed; it wasn’t uncommon to find small but crunchy florets of cauliflower, cubes of tender-crisp chayote, or even a few serrano peppers added to the mix.  

The following recipe is our basic version of this delicious pickle: 

Escabeche Recipe.

~20-25  jalapenos (1lb -1.5lbs) sliced in halves lengthwise.  I prefer to leave the seeds in the pepper but they can be removed if you wish.

1 large white or yellow onion, cut in 8 wedges.

3 carrots, thinly sliced into rounds.

1 cup of cauliflower florets broken into small pieces (optional).

1 head of garlic, cloves separated, crushed and peeled.

3 cups water

1 and 3/4 cups of vinegar.  We mainly use distilled white vinegar as it has a neutral flavor but a good apple cider vinegar (or mix of the two) could also be used.

1 Tbs of kosher or pickling salt.  Iodized table salt is NOT recommended for this recipe. 

2 Tbs white sugar.

1 Tbs of extra-virgin olive oil

2 bay leaves

1/4 tsp of dried oregano or two 2 inch sprigs of the fresh herb. 

- In a medium sauce pan made out of non-reactive materials, add the olive oil, a pinch of the salt, carrots, onion, and garlic.  Saute on low heat until the onion and carrot just starts to soften and the onion begins to become translucent ~ 3-4 minutes. 

- To the carrots and onion, add water, vinegar, the remaining salt, sugar, bay leaves and oregano to the pot and turn the heat up to medium-high.  Continue heating the pickling liquid until it just begins to bubble slowly at the sides of the pot, then taste the brine for seasoning.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.  There should be a good balance of flavors in the pickling brine; adding more sugar helps mellow the harsh acidity of the vinegar, while the salt helps ensure the pickling brine does not become too sweet. 

- Turn the heat under the brine to low and then add jalapenos (and cauliflower if you are using it) to the pot. You don’t want to boil the brine as this will affect the texture of the vegetables. Part of what makes these pickles so delicious is the toothsome crunch of the vegetables.

- Cook the jalapenos, stirring frequently, until they take on an olive-drab color (~ 5-7 minutes).  At this point remove the pot from the heat and allow to cool.  I like to speed up the cooling process to help preserve the pickles crunchiness by placing the entire covered pot directly into a sink filled with ice and water.

- Once cool, transfer the pickles and pickling brine to a clean, dry vessel and place in the fridge.  A large (80 oz) pickle jar works perfectly for storing the escabeche.

- Although it is tempting to dig in and savour the results immediately, allow the jalapenos to sit in the fridge for at least 24 hours to finish the pickling process.

Mindelei and I like to eat these as a healthy and flavorful snack while watching TV or surfing the web.  The jalapenos are excellent on nachos or in tacos when sliced thinly, and although I have not yet tried this yet, it would be easy to turn the peppers into home-made jalapeno poppers.

Happy eating!!

Note: This escabeche must be kept in a refrigerator where it will last for about a week to ten days (if you can resist the temptation that is) and the pickling liquid makes a tasty hot sauce .  This is NOT a suitable recipe for the long-term preservation of peppers.

Build Your Budget by eric731 on Flickr

GET TO KNOW YOUR LOCAL FARMERS’ MARKET(S)

It surprises me that there is a myth circulating that produce and other goods at the farmers’ markets are so expensive. Honestly, in all the different places I’ve lived around the country, I have yet to find one that is priced far above and beyond that of the local grocer. Sometimes the prices are comparable, but more often than not they are less expensive at the farmers’ markets. For me, spotting heirloom tomatoes at the local farmers market is such a thrill! Not just because the prices are lower, but because these fruits have just been plucked from the vine. If that alone doesn’t impress you then think about this: if you buy seasonal veggies in bulk then you can freeze or possibly even can them for use in the off season. This will save you from buying imported veggies during the winter months.

Farmer's Market Veggies by mindelei on Flickr

FIND THE ETHNIC MARKETS IN YOUR AREA

Granted, there aren’t any ethnic markets in my area… but I still have a secret: when Nigel and I drive down to Holland, MI we are always sure to stop at the Vietnamese grocer, Huynh Plaza.  We can buy all the ingredients that we need for Thai and Vietnamese dishes (plus Chinese, Korean, etc.) while we are there. More amazingly, it’s at a fraction of the cost of the ingredients that we can find locally. We often purchase canned coconut milk for 69 cents or cans of single-use pre-mixed curry powders for 59-89 cents each. This is a great savings when you consider that the “cheap” (and lesser quality) coconut milk at the big box stores ranges from $1.29-2.99 per can and that the jars of curry powder (only red or green and not as flavorful) are at least $2.50 and then have to hang around in the fridge for awhile.  Not to mention that we also have the option of picking out new ingredients that we haven’t used or maybe even seen before and don’t have to feel so guilty for experimenting because the price is so much less.

Thuan Phat Supermarket by mikecogh on Flickr

KNOW WHEN TO GO GENERIC

I have to admit there have been several times that I’ve been pleasantly surprised when using a no-name ingredient. As you might imagine, there have also been plenty of other times when you couldn’t have paid me to try it twice. Experimenting is good. It might just save you some dough like it has me. Of course you may not be able to find a generic version of Red Leicester cheese, but you can certainly find Extra Sharp Cheddar in the Great Value Brand at Walmart. Yes, I know it was near sacrilege that I just typed that, but it’s true. The Walmart generic does taste better than either Kraft or Sargento. Who knew? I tried it in desperation once and I haven’t looked back.

It’s also not a bad idea to ask yourself why you use a particularly high-priced ingredient. Believe it or not, there was a time when we used to buy some rather expensive extra virgin olive oil (or EVOO as Rachel Ray prefers to call it). After years of throwing money at the first pressing, we thought about what we actually did with it. Often it was simply used as an ingredient or as an addition to the pasta water to keep it from boiling over. Now we purchase plain old olive oil (yes, even generic) in a small bottle to have on hand when we need it.

Same Old Brand by i am riding on the screen name carousel on Flickr

CHECK OUT THE DISCOUNT/SCRATCH & DENT STORES

I know this may sound a bit odd, but don’t be afraid to check out the foods at Big Lots!, TJ Maxx, or your local scratch and dent food store.  I like to head over to a Big Lots! because they tend to get foods in from all over the country and international items that I might not be able to buy from the other stores nearby me.  You can find some nice imported oils, pastas, chocolates, etc. in these types of stores. Just keep an eye out for the expiration dates (if that’s a concern for you).

I’m also lucky to have two scratch and dent food stores within a 25-45 minute drive from where I live. I don’t shop at either store regularly, but when I do: look out! Not every item is dented, nor are most out of date. It’s ridiculous the amount of money you can save at these stores if you look (usually 50-70% below retail). Another amazing benefit that you might find if you look: one of our local scratch & dents also sells bulk spices! They come in several sizes prepackaged by the store owners at a fraction of the price that I find them at other grocers in the area. I just save my spice containers, clean them, and reuse them. This also saves me from having to recycle or toss out packaging. That’s a big bonus for mother earth too!

Price Cut by -AX- on Flickr

MAKE YOUR PROTEINS MORE COST EFFECTIVE

One of the biggest expenses at the store is meat.  If you can’t afford to go-in with a friend on a quarter of a cow or half of a pig, watch for those great sales! There’s no shame in purchasing family sized packs to get the sale price and then package them up for the freezer once you get home.

Feel free to shop around too. You shouldn’t feel the need to remain faithful to a single store. Keep in mind that there are plenty of sale papers available for perusal online. If you prefer the physical hunt, you can still find several that come through snail mail or others that can even be found in the weekend paper. If you’re really good, you will even manage to “double dip” by hitting a sale and using store or manufacture’s coupons as well. Heck, if you can “triple dip” and use all three – more power to you!  Also, don’t be afraid to look at the smaller stores in your area. I recently noticed that a small grocer called Best Choice Market (which carries many upscale and specialty foods) has the best price in the area on ground beef (sometimes up to a $1.00/lb. cheaper).

Keep in mind that protein doesn’t always mean meat. Don’t be afraid to add tofu (be sure not to use silken unless you’re making a dessert) to your meal. It’s more cost effective than other proteins and can really soak up the flavor.  Another good idea is to use your protein as an ingredient in a larger dish. In our house, rather than serve everyone (Nigel, my mother, and me) our own breast halves, we can slice up a single breast half and make a stir-fry or a pasta dish that will feed the three of us. You may remember that back-in-the-day they used to call this stretching.

At the Butcher's by Suzanna on Flickr

SEARCH OUT A REAL DEAL

If you’re looking for beautiful baked goods and don’t have the time or the talent to make your own, you can often get some excellent deals at the end of the work day.  Many bakeries will discount their goods or outright give them away. If you’re really adventurous, you could save even more money by going to a local farm and partaking in the U-Pick programs that so many offer when seasonal fruits and vegetables are available. In addition, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s) and Local Food Cooperatives (Co-ops) may wave fees or reduce the prices that you pay for volunteering to help out at the store or farm. Of course you can also take part in a community garden, but if that’s not available or would be too much of a time commitment, find out where there are public fruit trees in your area ripe for the picking!  Free is definitely the best four letter word out there.

Grandfather's Harvest by andyket on Flickr

So there you have it! Just a few ideas to make a positive impact on your pocketbook and still enjoy fantastic foods at home.  If you have additional ideas or would like to share an experience that has worked for you, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.