Pizza D'oh!

Pizza Dough worth remembering.

• 1 Envelope of active yeast
• 1 Tsp sugar
• 1/3 cup lukewarm water

Combine these three ingredients together and let stand in a warm place for 10 minutes or until the yeast has fully bloomed.

• 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/4 olive oil
• 3 3/4 cups flour

I chose to use whole wheat flour and the recipe came out just fine.

Combine yeast mix, water, oil and salt in a mixing bowl, then add flour slowly.  Knead together to make a soft, but not sticky dough ball, adding more flour if needed.  Depending on your climate/flour, you may need more or less flour.  Sometime flour is more moist or more dry, this is why adding it in slowly is the key, though keeping in mind that you do not want to work the dough too much.  (Over-working the dough causes it to become tough.)

Once your dough is a good consistency, drizzle a little olive oil over it, covering it and the bowl completely, then cover the bowl and set aside, in a warm place, for an hour.

Once the dough has proofed, divide it into four and roll out each ball on a lightly floured surface.  

Our delicious homemade pizza.  We're sold!

It Could Have Been Fast Food, But It Was Better...

We Budzaks love to go out to eat.  No really, I know that you know that we like to cook, but really it's that we like to eat... and if we can help it, not do any dishes.  Thus the eating out thing.  Even more so, Sunday after church is a great time to go out with friends.  We've even had specific Sunday lunch friends over the years. (You know who you are!)  Many times that is the highlight of our week.  And if we don't have anyone to go out with, we'll feel ripped off and we will often go alone just to ease our pain.
But not this Sunday.  This Sunday we decided, very responsibly, to make lunch at home.  And, as you know, most of the time, making the decision of what to eat is the hardest part, if you haven't planned it out previously. To make a boring story short - the kid wanted McD's buffalo chicken wraps and Ken wanted soup.  I wasn't in the mood for canned soup but was perfectly willing to indulge in the homemade variety.

Buffalo Chicken Wraps

You'll need:

• Tortillas, preferably wholegrain
• Chicken breast(s) or tenders
• Frank's Red Hot Sauce
• Head lettuce, shredded or leaves
• Cheddar cheese, grated
• Tomato, diced

Pretty simple really - pan fry or bake the chicken with a bit of seasoning salt and pepper.  Let the chicken rest for a few minutes, then slice.  Grab a tortilla, lay some lettuce on it, sprinkle a bit of cheddar and tomato, a few pieces of the sliced chicken and douse with as much Frank's as you please.  Wrap it up and you've got you're own healthier version of a McD's snack wrap.

K & C's Mushroom Soup

You'll need:

• Butter & Olive oil combo
• Cremini mushrooms, a small package, sliced
• 1/2 Onion, diced
• 2 Cloves of Garlic, minced
• 1 Cup of Stock, chicken, beef or veg
• 2 Tbsp Flour
• A Couple Sprigs of Thyme
• A Bay leaf or two
• 1 Cup of Light cream
• 2 Cups of Milk
• Nutmeg, just a dash 
• Celery salt, a mere pittance - you could probably add celery at the beginning, but I hadn't thought of it

  When we made this, we just wanted enough for a couple of bowls of soup and no leftovers (apartment sized fridge!!), so I suggest you multiply the ingredient list to suit your family's needs.

Mushroom soup begs for Premium Plus crackers.

Fry the mushrooms and onion in the butter and olive oil, salt and pepper in a medium soup pot.  After a few minutes add the garlic.  Continue cooking until the mushroom are soften and cooked through.  If you don't have an immersion blender, remove the mushroom mixture and dice or wazz-up in your blender with a bit of stock.

Heat your milk and cream (in the microwave - if you use), throw in the bay leaf and thyme and have this ready for the next step.

Meanwhile, make a small amount of roux in your soup pot, adding more butter if needed and an equal part flour.  Cook for a few minutes, or until flour is cooked.  Using the rest of your stock and the warm milk/cream, whisk into roux.  (Less roux + more liquid = thinner soup, while more roux + less liquid= thicker soup.)  Return mushrooms to the pot.  Season with salt, pepper, celery salt and nutmeg.

Simmer for a few minutes, but do not boil. Garnish with parsley (as shown) or green onion.

Blast From the Past

Are you tired of making the same starches for dinner?  Day after day, rice, pasta, potato, rice, pasta, potato, repeat...  Me too.  If you're like me, you've probably experimented with yams and quinoa, seeing as they are fairly popular right now and most likely, a part of the Super Foods group.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, just ignore that last bit!)
But this week I went old-fashioned.  Not oats, but close.  Barley.  I've actually had it sitting in my pantry, waiting patiently for me to utilize it.  Apparently, you can use it as a side dish.  However, I decided to introduce it to my family (read - the kid) as a part of a one dish dinner.
If you are like me, you've only had it in it's most popular form, canned beef barley soup.  Well, I didn't strike out too far from that tried-and-true favorite, other than the fact that my beef barley soup didn't come from a can.  I made it myself.  It was easy, didn't take too much time to prepare and turned out better than any canned concoction I have ever eaten.

"Old Fashioned" Beef Barley Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. stewing beef, cut into small chunks - more if you want a meatier soup
•  2TBSP cooking oil
• 1 TBSP butter
• 2 leeks, chopped and washed 
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed and diced
• 4 - 6 cups beef broth
• 1/2 cup pearl barley, rinsed and cooked to "al dente"
• a couple of twigs of thyme or 2 tsp. dry
• 2 tsp. Italian Seasoning ( A pre-made mix of marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano, basil)
• A dollop Worcestershire sauce 
• A small splash Kitchen Bouquet

Method:

In a small sauce pan, place barley with quite a bit of water and bring to the boil.  Simmer, as you would pasta, for around 25 minutes or until al dente.  Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, put your dutch oven/soup pot on medium/high heat for a couple of minutes to bring it up to temperature.  When hot,  add oil, then butter.  When the butter is melted, add your cubes of beef.  Only add enough beef to make one layer.  If you have more, then do it in batches. When the beef is browned, season with salt and pepper.  Set the browned beef aside.  

To the already hot pot, add the celery, leeks and carrots, using their moisture to scrape up the brown bits left from the beef.  Season with a bit of salt and pepper.  Cook until softened.  Add garlic, cook two more minutes.

Add thyme and Italian seasoning, letting the heat wake up the herbs for a minute. Add the beef, the broth,  the Worcestershire and the Kitchen Bouquet. Simmer for approximately 1/2 hour; check that the beef is tender and the seasoning tastes right and, if the beef is close, add the barley.  Simmer for another 20 minutes.

Serve with big slabs of sour dough bread and butter!

Beautiful or Bust

Going into the oven...

There's an experiment in my oven.  In all appearances they are regular muffins.  Oh, how I hope they turn out to be regular muffins!

I believe this is my first experiment with going outside of a recipe for baking.  Because ,yes, I know that baking is a Science and cooking is an Art.  And I have always adhered to this basic rule.  Not today.  Today, I took what I liked from this recipe and added a little that I like from that other recipe.

In my oven are Experimental Banana Oat Applesauce Muffins.  Six have blueberries pushed into them and a lovely (hopefully!) streusel topping.  Six have a multitude of tiny chocolate chips shoved into the center - I'm hoping for a molten chocolate center, designed to please my chocolate-loving daughter.

Oh! There's the buzzer on my stove going off...

On the cooling rack...

*  *  *  *

They still look wonderful.  Though I was hoping that the chocolate chips would melt into a formidable pool of lava hot chocolate goodness, the chips still look individual.  Oh well.  I guess taste will tell how my successful  my experiment was.

*  *  *  *

This is awful, I have to try two of them.....  I hate to tell you this but they are... *tasting* ...yummy!  Definitely a more dense muffin, because of the whole wheat flour and oatmeal, and not very sweet.  I personally don't like my muffins to be very sweet.  I'm thinking of a reasonably healthy breakfast or snack here.

The blueberry streusel and the chocolate chip varieties have surprisingly different tastes, considering they are both made from the same batter. In the blueberry I taste more cinnamon, like a coffee cake, but in the chocolate chip, more banana-ness.  Who knew?

Join me in an experiment?

Experimental Banana Oat Applesauce Muffins:

Oven: 350  Baking Time: 20 - 25 min. Yield: One dozen


1 egg
3 mashed bananas
1/3 cup brown sugar (I use demerara always)
1 individual portion of applesauce (just over 1/3 c)
3 TBSP sunflower oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup oats
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Method:

Mix thoroughly first six ingredients in one bowl.  Combine remaining ingredients in another bowl.  Pour one bowl's stuff into the other.  Mix gently with a spoon until just combined.  Don't over mix as it activates the gluten too much.

For blueberry streusel:

Five or six berries poked into each muffin
1/3 cup of oats
TBSP of butter
TBSP of brown sugar
Combined and reserved for top.  Divide evenly between muffin tops. Double if for 12.

For chocolate chip:

Poke as many of those little babies as you would like to eat in your finished product. Or a dollop of Nutella prodded into the center would be amazing as well!

Connie Gets Her Groove Back...?

So, finally inspiration rears its beautiful head in the spice isle.  Oh how I have missed you, Inspiration to Cook. It was not a spice that stimulated cooking creativity, no, I spotted Kitchen Bouquet.  If you've never used it before allow me to introduce you.  It's essentially liquid caramel.  Not sweet though.  It's like the bottom of the pan after you've fried a steak or perfectly caramelized onions.  Oh yes, it is liquid flavour.  And the reason I discovered it was because I went hunting online for a stew recipe.

Where is the logical place to find an amazing beef stew recipe?  The Guinness website. True story.  They actually share their pub's stew recipe.  Funny thing is, when I found it, it was a huge, restaurant size batch.  Not great for a family of three.  So the first time, I had oooodles of gravy left over.  I've since rectified that problem by scaling back and using my common sense.

Interestingly, today when I went to refresh my memory on some of the recipe's finer points, I found that the Guinness website has replaced my recipe with a new one, along-side a how-to video featuring a bloke with a thick Irish accent.  Now, I cannot say which recipe is better - I'm sure they're both delicious - but I stuck with the one that I've made before...

Furthermore, I admit that I use whichever dark beer I happen to have one hand.  This week that is Vancouver Island Brewery's Hermann's Dark Lager.  Without further ado, The Recipe....

My favourite Irish boys would be wantin' a helpin' of this.

MGuinness Beef Stew

1 lb. cubed beef
1 med. onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 leek, diced
2 good sized carrots, diced
2 tbsp. gravy browning (aka Kitchen Bouquet)
Pinch Mixed herbs (In Canada, I do believe that this is Italian Seasoning, 1 - 2 tsp.)
3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp . Flour (or enough to make a nice roux)
3 Cups Beef stock
Seasoning (Salt and Pepper)
½ x Pint GUINNESS® beer (I use one bottle, 341mL)

Method
Sweat all vegetables in the butter for 5-6 mins.
Add diced beef and cook for 5-6 mins. (I know what you are thinking - "What about browning the beef first?"  Honestly, it doesn't seem to matter, though you may go ahead and do this step first)
Add herbs and then flour. Cook a little to get those herbs going and the flour cooking.
Add warm beef stock slowly over heat while stirring, scrapping up the bottom brown bits. Cook for another 5-6 mins. (In the video, the chef added beer before the stock, so I tried that today.  Only half a bottle though, I'll save the rest to finish.)
Add gravy browning
Slow cook for 1 & 1/2 hours. (I also tried putting a piece of parchment paper on the stew while it simmers - like the Irish chef from the vid.)
Finish with ½ pint of GUINNESS® beer and stir.
Season and serve with champ potato (mash potatoes with green onion) and roast carrot and parsnip. 

This serves about 3 or 4, depending on how generous you are with the stew itself.  I recommend multiplying if you have a larger family or want leftovers. 

I just went to taste test my stew, which has been simmering for the past hour, while I wrote this and Oh Yum! It's perfect for a rainy, dreary, blustery day like today.  It is hearty, meaty and full of delicious beef flavour.  I'm sure the menfolk will be particularly fond of this one.

Chicken Adobo - Super Easy Comfort Food

I can't say that I actually got my inspiration back today when it came to cooking, but I did actually cook a real meal that required effort today.  I fell back on a tried-and-true recipe, Chicken Adobo. What does adobo mean and where did it come from?

"According to the history,when Spanish colonizers first took over the Philippines in late 1500s and early 1600s, they encountered an indigenous cooking process which involved stewing with vinegar." - http://philippinesfoodrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/05/filipino-recipe-chicken-adobo.html

Yes, it's got a hefty vinegar punch, but if you've never tried chicken adobo, you are in for a treat.  I admit that the first time I tasted it I was looking for the hit of sweet,more like a teriyak flavour, with brown sugar and ginger, adobo is not that.  Chicken adobo is quite different, you actually get your sweet hit from eating the dish with banana.  Weird, I know.  Banana and chicken?  But trust me it works. (If you're really not adventurous, I've found peas a good substitute.)

So here's my recipe, I've changed it slightly from ones I've seen on the internet by substituting apple cider vinegar almost entirely.

Chicken Adobo  

Ingredients

• 6-8 skinless chicken thighs or drumsticks (boneless too, if you prefer)
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar (you can add some white vinegar if you want to mix)
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (I used Kikkoman) 
• 4 or more cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 onion, chopped into chunks

 

Directions

Separate the thighs from the drumsticks and place into a large bowl with all other ingredients. Let sit to marinate for 1 hour.

Brown in chicken frying pan and return to marinade. Add the onion and garlic to the pan to soften and pick up the brown bits left behind from the chicken.

Return chicken and marinade to the pot and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cover and continue to cook for 30 minutes, turning chichen occasionally. Uncover and let simmer to reduce another 20 minutes or until the chicken is tender.

Serve with rice and sliced bananas.

Chicken Adobo, midway through.
See the brown goodness developing?