Bread under garlic

I would call this garlic bread, but it seems like the ratio supports the former terminology more accurately. I made this garlic bread at Christmas for my family and it was a big hit. I'm hoping that it will earn me a nickname. (Suggestion: Garlic Bread Girl?)

For every loaf of french bread, you will probably need about 3 tablespoons of softened butter and 3 cloves of garlic.

First you will need to make a paste with your garlic. This is quite simple once you get the hang of the technique. Mince the garlic then sprinkle with salt. The salt helps grind the garlic to make it into the paste. Next, move your cutting board to the edge of your counter and secure with a moist paper towel so the board doesn't shift around on you. Then, using a french knife, drag the blade of the knife at a 5 degree angle across the garlic pressing down and towards you as you go. Lift up the handle and repeat. Essentially you are squeezing the juices out of the garlic. Repeat as necessary until you have a nice smooth garlic paste.

Make the garlic butter by mixing the garlic paste with your softened butter, some herbs and spices (e.g. thyme, parsley, etc).

Cut your french loaf lengthwise and slash the top with a knife to open up some pores for the butter to sink into. Apply garlic butter liberally to the faces of the loaf. Sprinkle with cheese. Broil until cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.

Pizza...doh!

I made the most AWESOME pizza yesterday. (Honestly, sometimes I impress even myself...hehe) I believe that my recipe is now ready for publishing! Wash your hands, take off your rings, roll up your sleeves and grab an apron as this can be a messy one!

1. Mix 1 cup of warm water, 1 tbs of active dry yeast and 1 tbs sugar. Let stand for about 5-10 minutes while you prepare your flour mixture. It will start to foam and look pretty unappetizing, but this is what you want to happen.

2. In a large bowl, combine: 3 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 tsp salt and some spices (e.g. oregano, thyme, sage, pepper, garlic seasoning?). Mix this this up with your fingers.

3. Add two tablespoons of oil (canola, veggie or olive) to your yeast liquid, and pour the whole thing into your flour mixture. With your hands, combine the wet with the dry until it forms a ball.

4. Flour your countertop and knead your dough for 8 minutes. Kneading is really fun and a pretty good workout. Just grab a corner of the dough with one hand and press down with the heel of your hand into the middle of the ball. Do the same with your other hand. Repeat until the 8 minutes is up or until you have a nice evenly blended elasticky ball.

5. Rinse and dry out your bowl. Drizzle about at tbs of oil in the bottom of the bowl. Drop your ball of dough into the bowl and turn it around in the oil to coat it. Drag it up onto the sides of the bowl too so they get greased too.

6. Cover with a towel and let rise for about 30-60 minutes. The dough should double in size. While the dough is rising, now would be a good time to prepare your pizza toppings.

7. Preheat the oven to 375 deg F.

8. Punch the dough down and transfer your dough onto a floured surface. With the palm of your hand flatten out the dough to about 1 inch thick. Dust the top with flour, flip and flatten some more. Transfer dough to greased jelly roll pan. Work it so that you have an even layer of dough on the bottom of the pan.

9. Top as desired and bake fore 20-25 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let it cool before slicing and eating!

(Note: My pizza was topped with chopped spinach, sauteed portabello mushroom, onion, garlic and red bell pepper, and mozzarella cheese. OMG. Sooooo good...)

Works in progress

I have been cooking, I'm just in the process of perfecting some recipes. I am on two missions right now: pizza dough and meatloaf.

Coming from a Chinese-Canadian family we never really made either of these at home when I was a child. Pizza was always something that was ordered in when we were too lazy to cook. And meatloaf, which seems like a staple in most families, was never made either. My father recently told me a heart-warming story about how he refused to eat a meatloaf that my mother had made for him when they first were married. She cried, and we never had meatloaf.

I have come to at least two conclusions. Kneading pizza dough - good. Kneading raw ground meat - yuck.

Tonight, I will make a ham, zucchini, mushroom and onion quiche. Quiche is much more complicated and time-consuming than the recipes I have previously described. However, if there is demand, I will supply it...

Hmmm...hummus!

Once upon a time, this was my favourite party dips while I was in Toronto. But, as I only just purchased tahini sauce on Saturday while on Commercial Drive, I haven't made it since being in Vancouver (or Winnipeg for that matter). But, it's super easy and super tasty. This was my dinner last night...

First, open up a can of chick peas and drain the liquid into a cup. Pour the chickpeas into a deep medium-sized bowl. It should be deep, as I learned last night, so that you dont get a lot of splatter (i.e. chickpea bits in your hair) as you are blending the ingredients together. Add in: one clove of peeled garlic, a 2-tablespoon-sized chunk of onion, juice from 1/2 a lemon, 1/2 teaspoon each of cumin and coriander, 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper and 1/4 cup of tahini sauce. Blend until smooth with a hand-blender. (If you don't have a hand blender, you should get one. They are very handy. Pun intended.) It will be very thick, so you will want to add some of that chickpea liquid that you saved earlier to give it a creamier texture. You probably won't need that much, maybe 1/4 cup depending on how fluid you like your hummus. Enjoy with warm pita bread or with fresh veggies.

Add a little crunch to your salad...mmm...croutons!

In your face Brendon...some people (ok, my brother) think that my food blog IS a good idea. So, I present to you my instructions for the preparation of crunchy croutons. While it may sound completely lame to make croutons, these are simple to make and it gives you a use for those ends of bread that you have been throwing away. First, you need to collect the first and last pieces from your loaves of bread and save them until you are ready to use them, in your freezer. If you are impatient, then you can use the middle of the loaf too. Once you have about 10 ends, then you can make a decent amount of croutons. Preheat oven to about 250 degrees C. While it's heating up, cut the bread up into little cubes, drizzle them with oil and sprinkle them with spices of your choosing. I like to use the "garlic blend" that I mentionned in the perogy post. If you don't have that, then rosemary or chili powder would be nice too. Spread them out on a cookie sheet and let them dry out (about 40 minutes). Let them cool before transferring to a plastic bag. You will never buy croutons again...

As per your request (Karen)...Perogies!

Apparently they don't have George Foreman Grills in England...or maybe Karen is just out of the loop. Anyway now that we are all on the same page...my recipe for oven-baked perogies. The purists may disagree with this method of cooking but I find it less slimy than the boiling method and you don't have to baby sit them like you with the frying method. Friends in Winnipeg (Ukrainians at that) have informed me that another acceptable method is to BBQ them...I'm not sure how that would work, but I don't have a BBQ to experiment anyway. I do, however, have a George!

So, here's the deal --

On a cookie sheet, coat frozen perogies with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic blend seasoning. (Both frozen perogies and garlic blend are available from Safeway. I like the perogies with the cheddar cheese and potato inside.) Bake in a 300 degree F oven for about 20 minutes, or until defrosted and golden brown, flipping them over halfway through cooking. Serve with sour cream.

Paninis...even better than Toasted sandwiches!

A couple of months I stayed up until 2 am on a school night watching with fascination a show on the Food network that was featuring Paninis. They are like sandwiches that have been squished and grilled. The guy on the show was making them in a panini grill, which I don't have and didn't really know where to find. He also used a brick wrapped in tin foil and a frying pan for the same effect. This seemed like a lot of work. So, I went panini-less for many months...until this weekend. Rob, among his numerous unused kitchen gadgets, has a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine. Which is like a panini grill except that it's got grooves in it that make grill marks. I have always thought that Toasted sandwiches were better than Untoasted. Now, I propose the Panini...even better than a Toasted sandwich!

So here is the general idea:

Make a sandwich as you normally would, then drizzle olive oil on both sides of the sandwich. Squish inside the panini grill (or alternative) and leave it in until the sandwich gets all nice and golden.

Mine was roast beef on rye with lettuce, spicy mustard, and sundried tomato and basil havarti. I had it three meals in a row.

When i get back to Vancouver I will have to buy myself a George Foreman grill. I will also try using non-stick cooking spray and butter to see if you get the same golden, crunchy crust. I'll let you know how that goes.