Showing posts with label garlic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garlic. Show all posts
We Call it "Spaghetti Bread"
12-17-10: Spaghetti Bread
If anyone was to ask me, "What is comfort food for you?" the first dish that comes to mind is our homemade spaghetti sauce. Our spaghetti sauce, in all its goodness, consists of our tomato puree combined with our farm grown peppers, onions, and garlic as well as spices such as basil, marjoram, oregano, etc.
My family has been having our own spaghetti sauce almost every single week of the year for as long as I can remember. Every time I think of this meal I think of two things: my Papa (who pulls all the listed ingredients together and makes the masterpiece), and our farm's bounty. Two very comforting things for me! Now, I could give you the recipe for this sauce, but there really isn't one (it seems to be evolving every single time it's made), and even if I do concoct a written recipe, it wouldn't be like ours. I would need to send you our puree and veggies to make it legitimate!
Now, there is something else that is as old as our spaghetti tradition, but it hasn't had a very good reputation. It is called Spaghetti Bread. Spaghetti bread is a yeast bread done in the bread machine that has dried herbs and grated cheese added. If done right, it is absolutely perfection with a spaghetti dinner. But perfection has been reached few times with this bread. Almost every time we attempted to wrestle this recipe, we would find a deflated loaf at the bottom of our bread machine. Let me tell you, it is enough to bring tears to your eyes.
We came up with a lot of theories on the cause of these mishaps: too much water, too little, acid in the spices, too much salt, etc. etc. etc. So we kept on trying new versions of the recipe, taking out some of this, adding some of that. . . But nothing worked until a couple Fridays ago.
My Papa thought, "Why not use the wheat setting on the bread machine and add the garlic, cheese, and spices at the time the machine alerts you to add addition flavorings, such as raisins and cinnamon?"
Sounded good to me! I gave it a go, following his specific instructions, and it turned out perfectly. It was one of the tallest Spaghetti Breads we ever saw.
See what I mean?
This is what I did from start to finish:
Spaghetti Bread
Yield: 1 pound loaf
Ingredients:
- 9 oz. warm water (about 115 degrees F)
- 4 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
- 2 1/2 tbsp. sugar
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt
Dough Flavoring Ingredients:
- 1 head garlic
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1 tsp. basil
- 2 tsp. Italian seasoning
Directions:
To bread pan, add water, yeast, and sugar. Stir and proof for 10-15 minutes. Next add bread flour, oil, and salt. Set machine to "Whole Wheat" setting (#3) and "Medium" (A).
Now to make some garlic puree. (I learned about this technique from The Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day cookbook.) Take garlic, with the skin and stem still on, and wrap it in one layer of aluminum foil. Place garlic foil packet into 375 F oven and bake for 45 minutes. Remove from oven, open packet, and allow garlic head to cool. Once cool, cut off the stem and squeeze garlic from skins. The garlic now resembles a paste and can easily be incorporated into the bread dough.
Combine cheese, spices, and garlic in a small bowl.
Machine will beep 1 hr 26 min after you press the START button on the machine, (or when bread time display reads 2:34), that is when you should add the garlic, cheese, and spice mixture to the bread pan.
All in all, it takes 4 hours for the machine to make the bread.
Garlic Puree Technique--Up Close. . .
Bread Machine Setting--Up Close. . .
Now, I suppose you can easily do this without the help of a bread machine, but I haven't given it a try yet. If I ever do I'll come back to this post and document it.
And here is one final glimpse of perfection. . .
;)
Canning and Freezing Episode 1 : Garlic Scapes
6/11/10: Freezing Garlic Scapes
It is harvest time here and you know what that means. . . Lots of canning and freezing! The first item up is garlic scapes. For those who are scratching their heads right now, a garlic scape is a shoot from the garlic plant that grows from the base of the plant around the beginning of June. This shoot, which starts out straight and then turns into a lovely tendril, can blossom and will cause the plant to go to seed. That is why it is important to have it removed before it flowers. And instead of throwing away the scapes, we have found a delicious culinary alternative.
Even though a scape, in no way, looks like a garlic clove, it smells like garlic and tastes like it as well! Prepare it as you would scallions and use it in any recipe that calls for garlic. Take a look at this great blog post for more inspiration.
How to freeze garlic scapes: I froze garlic scapes last year simply by cutting them into 1" pieces and placing them in a freezer bag. Simple. We enjoyed them through the summer, winter, and spring and they were good as if we used fresh. Since I was happy with last year's results, I repeated the same method this year.
Harvest Details: So my family planted three rows of garlic, each being 500 feet long. We were able to harvest about 2 1/2 five-gallon buckets of scapes.
Freezing Details: I froze 9 quarts of garlic scapes.
It is harvest time here and you know what that means. . . Lots of canning and freezing! The first item up is garlic scapes. For those who are scratching their heads right now, a garlic scape is a shoot from the garlic plant that grows from the base of the plant around the beginning of June. This shoot, which starts out straight and then turns into a lovely tendril, can blossom and will cause the plant to go to seed. That is why it is important to have it removed before it flowers. And instead of throwing away the scapes, we have found a delicious culinary alternative.
Even though a scape, in no way, looks like a garlic clove, it smells like garlic and tastes like it as well! Prepare it as you would scallions and use it in any recipe that calls for garlic. Take a look at this great blog post for more inspiration.
How to freeze garlic scapes: I froze garlic scapes last year simply by cutting them into 1" pieces and placing them in a freezer bag. Simple. We enjoyed them through the summer, winter, and spring and they were good as if we used fresh. Since I was happy with last year's results, I repeated the same method this year.
Harvest Details: So my family planted three rows of garlic, each being 500 feet long. We were able to harvest about 2 1/2 five-gallon buckets of scapes.
Freezing Details: I froze 9 quarts of garlic scapes.
Redoing Stew
1/24/10: Beef and Butternut Squash Stew with Fluffy Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Meal details: For the main course I made a bright colored stew using round steak and butternut squash. And for a side, I made a special type of mashed potatoes using heavy cream and roasted garlic.
Defining moments: The first thing that pops into my mind is the cut of meat. My Papa, an old hand at choosing cuts of meat, chose a round steak for the stew. The steak was pretty darn big and it is probably the largest piece of meat I ever wielded. But I wielded it, and that is a good thing. Another significant part of this meal for me was the use of sun-dried tomatoes. I never used nor tasted them before. It's always very interesting to try out something new.
Recipe sources: The beef and butternut stew is a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, the host of Everyday Italian and Giada at Home, both which air on the Food Network Channel. The mashed potato recipe is a George Duran creation. George Duran is the host of Ham on the Street (a show that comes on Food Network sometimes, but I believe it has been canceled), and now is the new host of the Ultimate Cake Challenge on TLC. I chose these two recipes because I am part of the Food Network Chef Cooking Challenge that is being hosted by the I Blame My Mother blog. Learn more about this challenge here.
What I learned: I learned that my Papa has had bad results with stew beef before so I needed a different cut of meat. When he was at the store he chose a round steak which is a lean cut of meat that comes from the thigh of the cow. Since it is lean it needs to be stewed or cooked in some sort of liquid (braising will work here) for a long time to make the meat more tender. So as you can see this cut works will with this technique!
I didn't want to cut the whole piece of meat when it was raw (mainly because we don't have a large cutting board specifically for meat), so I roasted it for about 25 minutes in a 375F oven. I was then able to cut it into 1"cubes with no fuss or mess.
About the mashed potatoes. I learned from Annemarie that beating the potatoes with an electric beater for a few minutes really makes them fluffy, especially with this particular recipe since it has heavy whipping cream.
Any modifications? Yes, I made some to the stew recipe. I used round steak instead of stew beef and I cut them into 1"cubes instead of 2"(easier to chew). I also prepared the meat in a different way and I used one acorn squash instead of butternut.
How it tasted? I am very happy to say that the stew was enjoyed! Stew doesn't have a great reputation around here. The stew had a muted orange color--much different from your typical dark and gloomy broth--and the beef was tender and flavorful. The addition of squash, wine, and tomatoes was the key to making this stew great. The squash was soft and it soaked up all the goodness of the broth and the tomatoes were like little pockets of flavor.
The mashed potatoes was also very good. I kept on the skins so they weren't totally smooth (we like it that way), but the cream really made it fluffy. I roasted the garlic in the oven and added it to the potatoes but I didn't detect much garlic flavor. Roasted garlic is mellow so I'm guessing I needed to use more; maybe 3 heads for 2 times the recipe?
How about a 2nd time? Yes, I would do both recipes again.
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Meal details: For the main course I made a bright colored stew using round steak and butternut squash. And for a side, I made a special type of mashed potatoes using heavy cream and roasted garlic.
Defining moments: The first thing that pops into my mind is the cut of meat. My Papa, an old hand at choosing cuts of meat, chose a round steak for the stew. The steak was pretty darn big and it is probably the largest piece of meat I ever wielded. But I wielded it, and that is a good thing. Another significant part of this meal for me was the use of sun-dried tomatoes. I never used nor tasted them before. It's always very interesting to try out something new.
Recipe sources: The beef and butternut stew is a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, the host of Everyday Italian and Giada at Home, both which air on the Food Network Channel. The mashed potato recipe is a George Duran creation. George Duran is the host of Ham on the Street (a show that comes on Food Network sometimes, but I believe it has been canceled), and now is the new host of the Ultimate Cake Challenge on TLC. I chose these two recipes because I am part of the Food Network Chef Cooking Challenge that is being hosted by the I Blame My Mother blog. Learn more about this challenge here.
What I learned: I learned that my Papa has had bad results with stew beef before so I needed a different cut of meat. When he was at the store he chose a round steak which is a lean cut of meat that comes from the thigh of the cow. Since it is lean it needs to be stewed or cooked in some sort of liquid (braising will work here) for a long time to make the meat more tender. So as you can see this cut works will with this technique!
I didn't want to cut the whole piece of meat when it was raw (mainly because we don't have a large cutting board specifically for meat), so I roasted it for about 25 minutes in a 375F oven. I was then able to cut it into 1"cubes with no fuss or mess.
About the mashed potatoes. I learned from Annemarie that beating the potatoes with an electric beater for a few minutes really makes them fluffy, especially with this particular recipe since it has heavy whipping cream.
Any modifications? Yes, I made some to the stew recipe. I used round steak instead of stew beef and I cut them into 1"cubes instead of 2"(easier to chew). I also prepared the meat in a different way and I used one acorn squash instead of butternut.
How it tasted? I am very happy to say that the stew was enjoyed! Stew doesn't have a great reputation around here. The stew had a muted orange color--much different from your typical dark and gloomy broth--and the beef was tender and flavorful. The addition of squash, wine, and tomatoes was the key to making this stew great. The squash was soft and it soaked up all the goodness of the broth and the tomatoes were like little pockets of flavor.
The mashed potatoes was also very good. I kept on the skins so they weren't totally smooth (we like it that way), but the cream really made it fluffy. I roasted the garlic in the oven and added it to the potatoes but I didn't detect much garlic flavor. Roasted garlic is mellow so I'm guessing I needed to use more; maybe 3 heads for 2 times the recipe?
How about a 2nd time? Yes, I would do both recipes again.
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Roasted Garlic Bread to the Rescue
1/01/10: Roasted Garlic Bread
On Friday we were going to have our homemade spaghetti lunch and we wanted some garlic bread to go along with it. Annemarie tried to make an herb bread in the bread machine but it was not cooperating at all that week! So I tried another recipe from The Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. I started working on the dough around 8 a.m. and I had the bread all set to enjoy at 11:40 a.m. Now, that is some quick bread making!
What was really interesting about this bread is the use of herb butter. I mixed some dried herbs into soft butter and inserted the butter into the slits I made. I did this when the bread was slightly warm so the butter started to melt and seep into every nook and cranny. Yummy!
On Friday we were going to have our homemade spaghetti lunch and we wanted some garlic bread to go along with it. Annemarie tried to make an herb bread in the bread machine but it was not cooperating at all that week! So I tried another recipe from The Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. I started working on the dough around 8 a.m. and I had the bread all set to enjoy at 11:40 a.m. Now, that is some quick bread making!
What was really interesting about this bread is the use of herb butter. I mixed some dried herbs into soft butter and inserted the butter into the slits I made. I did this when the bread was slightly warm so the butter started to melt and seep into every nook and cranny. Yummy!
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