Foccacia with Rosemary

I love making bread. I love watching the dough come to life, the simple few ingredients swelling into this doughy, sticky mess. Foccacia is a really fun bread to make because it's such a silly, runny dough. I am following the recipe from the definitive (in my mind) bread book: Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible.


In a stand mixer, stir the flour and yeast.


Slowly drizzle in the water.


Doesn't it look soupy?


Beat on medium for about 20 minutes, or until it's just barely come together.


Pour into an oiled bowl and let rise for four hours, or until triple in size.


Lightly oil a sheet pan with olive oil.


Gently pour the dough into the pan. Try to be gentle - you don't want to lose the bubbles!


Carefully stretch the dough out to the corners. If it's too springy, let it relax for ten minutes and try again.


Cover with oiled cling film and let rise for an hour.


Carefully remove cling film. Dough should be very light and bubbly.


Drizzle olive oil, sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt.


Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Nommm!!!!

Strawberry Jam

Local berries are ripe! After eating the first basket pretty much straight up, I bought some more with the sole intent of making jam. I've made lots of freezer jam before, but never the kind that you process in boiling water so that it can sit on the shelves.

This is the last of the berry washing.


I totally bought too many strawberries (can there be such a thing as too many berries?) but now I have several freezer bags full of them just waiting to be made into smoothies or somesuch.


Crush the berries. I used a potato masher, but I don't think I crushed them enough as the finished product suffers from Floating Fruit Syndrome.


I've added the pectin and stirred/boiled the stuff. Here comes the sugar. It sure seems like a lot of sugar! I don't know how those Smuckers guys can make jam without sugar!


Bringing to a hard boil.


OK, that concludes the cooking portion of the program.


Skim the foam off the top.


Processing the jars.




Fill jars, place in boiling water. I don't have a canning rack to protect the glass jars from the heat, so I used a dishtowel instead.


Because my pot is small, I had to do the jam in batches. Here are the first four.


All in all, I'm pretty happy with my jam. The jar that I've opened is a little runnier than I think the jam is supposed to be, but it's perfectly usable and quite tasty. I think I might get a larger pot for the processing, and perhaps make just one more batch. Maybe strawberry rhubarb this time. Because can you ever have too much jam? :-)

Lasagne Bolognese

I have been making this lasagne for a few years now. It's from Cooks Illustrated, and although it's a little labour-intensive, a lot of things can be done ahead of time, and it freezes (uncooked) really well too. It's quite a mild lasagne with no stringy cheese. My boyfriend really likes it, to the point where there aren't a lot of leftovers when we're done. :-) And really, isn't that what home cooking is all about?

Process a carrot, a celery stalk and half a small onion in the food processor. I don't like vegetables so I blitz the crap out of them! Brown the veg in a bit of oil until everyone is soft and mushy. Add about 800 grams of meat. I use extra-lean beef ground beef, ground pork, and ground veal if it's available. On this day, it wasn't available, so I used 2/3 ground beef and 1/3 pork. Cook for a couple of minutes (meat doesn't have to brown) making sure to break up any large lumps (as this will cause pockets in your lasagne).

Add a cup and a half of whole milk. Simmer for 20 minutes, then add a cup and a half of white wine. Simmer for another 20 minutes.


Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste.


Blitz a large tin (793 grams) of plum tomatoes in the food processor.


Add to meat mixture and simmer until sauce is fairly thick. I also dab at the orange fat puddles during this simmering phase.


For the bechamel, melt 4 tbsp of butter in a large saucepan. Add 1/4 cup of flour and cook til combined. Slowly (like, don't pour it all at once) add 4 cups of milk, whisking enthusiastically with each addition.


Bring to a boil, add salt and pepper. Try not to let it burn on the bottom of the pan because it's tedious to clean off the pan.


Place in bowl to cool.


You can place the cooled meat sauce and bechamel sauce in the fridge at this point. Just bring 'em back to room temperature before assembling the lasagne.

When you're ready to assemble, fill a pan with hot water. Place your no-bake noodles in the hot water and swish around to prevent sticking. I leave them in for about 5 minutes.


Pat dry on pretty tea towel.


Add a half-cup of bechamel sauce to the meat sauce to lighten it.


In a lightly-greased dish, place a cup of the meat sauce.


Add three noodles. Try to ensure they're not touching. Cover the noodles with a 1 1/4 cups of meat sauce.


Drizzle 1/3 cup of bechamel over the meat sauce.

Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of parm.

Repeat the noodles-meat sauce-bechamel-parm layering until the last three noodles. Cover with remaining bechamel and half a cup of parm.


Cover with tin foil and bake in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes, or until desired brownness is achieved. Let stand for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

The Great Stock Dog Handler Cook-Off

Jerry had this idea that we, the foodie-obsessed stockdog handlers of Western Canada, have a good old-fashioned cook-off. I believe the parameters were seasonal food that tastes good. Or something like that.

Herewith, then, is my submission.

Grilled lamb chops on wilted swiss chard, with a balsamic reduction

Step 1: Go out to garden. Admire swiss chard crop before harvesting.


Oh, grab some rosemary while out there.


Step 2: Go to freezer, get rack of lamb. Lamb is from Rose's farm in Aldergrove, a mere 40 minutes away.
What once looked like this:

Now looks like this:




Step 3: Trim rack into chops.


French chops to make what I call "lamb popsicles".


OK, that's done.


Please to feed me lamb trim?


Step 3: Now on to the balsamic reduction. Mince rosemary. Mince garlic. Find peppercorns. Place each ingredient in anal-retentive mise en place dishes (which also double as soy sauce dipping dishes on sushi night).


Put about half a cup of balsamic in a non-reactive saucepan.


Add about 1/2 tsp each of minced rosemary and whole peppercorns.


Simmer on medium until reduced to a thick, syrupy consistency. It should coat a spoon thickly. Remove from heat.


Step 4: Preparing the swiss chard.


Remove the stems and any tough-ish pieces. This swiss chard is quite young and tender so I've just removed the stems. Then I've rolled the leaves into tight little tubes and made a lovely chiffonade.


I don't like stems. To be honest, I don't much care for swiss chard either, but I particularly don't like stems. If you do like stems, cut them into wee bits and cook them for a few minutes before adding the chiffonade of chard.

Heat up some oil in a saute pan. When hot (but not too hot) add some minced garlic.


Brown garlic. Add chiffonade o' chard. Make a solemn vow to use the term "chiffonade" whenever possible. Most non-foodies find it very annoying.


Reduce heat to medium-ish and add a tablespoon or two of water. A crack of pepper and a bit of salt would be nice too.


Cook until wilted and humiliated.


Step 4: The lamp chops. While the swiss chard is wilting, place the chops on a lightly oiled rack. Hit 'em with some salt and pepper, and a bit of garlic. Minced rosemary would be nice too, but I forgot it.


Mmmmm .... teeny-tiny lambsicles ....


Broil. My rack is about 6" from the broiler, and these guys took about 3 minutes on each side. They are ridiculously small, so if you're using chops from a lamb that doesn't fit into a knapsack, you may need to cook the chops a bit longer.


Step 5: Plating. On Iron Chef, this is worth 5 points, so try to be neat.

Having watched too much Top Chef, I feel obligated to smear some of the reduction across the plate.


The wilted swiss chard is piled in a neat yet random stack.


Make a little circle of chops. Drizzle remaining balsamic reduction as you see fit.


Nomnomnomnom.