The Best Focaccia Ever

I love Roasted red peppers. I love everything about them. I love how they look under the broiler, all bright red and glossy from the thin coat of olive oil. I love when the thin skin peels right off in one or two large pieces, even if it doesn't often happen that way. I love how it tastes and I love how it looks tossed with a pile of caramelized onions in a jar, or even better on toast. It's the easiest thing in the world to make and it never fails to impress, which leads me to my recipe for the best focaccia bread recipe ever from what is becoming one of my favorite cookbooks, Apples for Jam, topped with soft goat cheese and roasted peppers:

Olive Oil Focaccia with Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Peppers
adapted from Apples for Jam:

1 3/4 cups warm water
1/4 oz active dry yeast
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
600 grams flour
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp salt

4 red peppers
1 large onion
a bit of olive oil


- Put water, yeast, honey, 1 tbsp oil and about a cup of the flour into a bowl and mix until smooth. Cover with a towel and leave in a warm spot for 20-30 minutes until it all froths up and looks foamy.
- Mix in the rest of the flour, the Italian seasoning, garlic powder and the salt and using a dough hook, mix for 4-5 minutes until it's well incorporated. I have a stand mixer, but if you don't she recommends you just mix it with your hands by slapping it around the bowl for a while. Cover the bowl with a towel again and let it rise in a warm spot for about an hour and a half. It should puff up a great deal.
- Lightly oil a rectangular baking dish (11x16). Punch down the dough lightly and carefully spread it in the dish, gently stretching it to the edges making sure it's mostly even. If it won't stretch, leave it for a few minutes and come back to try again, but don't rip it. Tent it with a towel (put some glasses around the dish and drape the towel over them) and let it rise again for about 45 minutes.
- Wash and dry the red peppers and rub completely with a bit of olive oil. Place on a baking sheet and broil them until their skin is nicely charred, checking and turning them every few minutes to make sure it's even.
- Turn down the oven to 450F when you're done, put the peppers into a bowl and tightly cover with saran wrap to let them steam and cool a bit for about 15 minutes.
- Slice the onion into thin ribbons and cook with a bit of olive oil on medium in a large skillet, stirring frequently until they're soft and a nice caramel color. Set aside.
- Mix the remaining 1 tbsp of oil with about a half cup of hot water and a teaspoon of salt. Stir until the salt dissolves.
- Make some dimples in the dough with your fingers and brush well with the water mixture. Put in the oven and bake for about 20-30 minutes until the bread is golden on top.
- While the bread is baking, uncover the peppers and carefully peel as much of the skin as you can. Take out and discard the stem, the seeds and some of the inner membrane and slice the peppers into ribbons. Add to the onions and toss together.
- Let bread cool a bit and then pop out of the pan and cut into pieces. Spread some goat cheese on each slice and top with the pepper mixture. Enjoy!

Surprise Tea Party

I am notorious for ruining surprises and, as is usual with ungrateful children, I blame the parents. My dad will buy a birthday present a month in advance and he'd be bursting to give it to you the moment he gets home. He doesn't want to wait even one extra minute to see the look of joy on your face and I tend to be the same way. I try to trick myself into keeping the present a secret by hiding it from myself, which is how I end up with a closet full of forgotten presents that get delivered years later and not always to the people I bought them for. And if someone else dares to plan a surprise for me, I manage to find ways to undermine that too. One year my friends came to pick me up for a surprise birthday outing where they were going to treat me to a pedicure and manicure (that was supposed to be the surprise), only to be greeted at the door by a very excited me, showing off the freshly manicured fingers and toes that I had gone out and had done that very morning.



Despite this family history, we keep trying to make a surprise work. We keep planning surprise anniversary nights on the town, hiding that perfect present for a birthday months away, and organizing a party that for once will definitely be a complete surprise. I'm happy to announce that two of us finally succeeded! My little sister and I have set out to throw a surprise baby shower for my older sister who's expecting my second nephew, and on a one week notice no less! My job was to cook and host while my little sister's task was to keep the surprisee out on the town all morning and casually drop by to "pick me up for lunch". Considering that she's a terrible liar, she did a wonderful job because when they walked in and my sister saw a house full of her friends she was speechless (and she's almost never speechless). Is this the beginning of flawlessly executed surprises going forward? Probably not, but it felt great to succeed for once.



As usual, I got a bit carried away with the menu, and I'm going to include as many recipes as I can type out before my fingers go numb, but I wanted to take a minute to thank Olga for these lovely pictures (I was too busy tending the table, passing around plates of food and keeping the glasses full of the Blood Orange Sparkling Juice to remember my camera until it was too late). Thank you for letting me use them here :)



First up we have the lovely Pesto Cucumber Sandwiches:

Pesto:
This recipe will be a bit on the hazy side because I just tossed it together from memory. I crammed several very generous bunches of basil (let's say 3 cups?) into the food processor, added several handfuls of pine nuts (about half a cup?) and whirred it into a paste. I added a healthy stream of olive oil (let's say 1/3 of a cup), some salt and pepper, several cloves of mushed up garlic and whirred it again until the paste was uniform once again. Finally I added lots of freshly shredded Parmesan cheese (1/2 a cup?) and whirred the machine once again until I was happy. I'm sorry for the fuzzy measurements, but I assure you, as long as your ingredients are fresh, the results will be lovely even if you're a few teaspoons off on any one thing and you can always add more "stuff" if it doesn't look right to you.

Sandwiches:
Once you have your pesto, just slather it onto a slice of white bread and cover with thin slices of cucumber. Spread some softened cream cheese on another slice of bread and sandwich the two together. Cut off the edges (they can be tossed or one of your guests can nibble on them behind your back) and cut on the diagonal into two triangles. Repeat for as many sandwiches as you want or as long as the pesto/bread/cucumbers last.


Next up were the popular Zuccini Triangles, the recipe for which I've had for years and I think came from Betty Crocker. They're in the lower right-hand corner of the picture of the table above.

3 cups shredded zucchini (3-4 depending on size)
1 cup Bisquick mix
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, slightly beaten

- Heat oven to 350ºF. Line a rectangular pan with foil and brush with olive oil.
- Stir together all ingredients in a great big bowl and spread in pan.
- Bake about 30 minutes or until golden brown.
- Let the pan cool a bit, lift out the foil onto a cutting surface and cut into squares, triangles, or whatever shape you like.
Note: if you make these in advance, they don't mind a quick turn in the microwave one bit.

Yikes! I've let the time get away from me once again and now I must go to sleep, but stay tuned and I'll post the rest of the recipes in the next day or so.

P.S. Don't you just love the heart shaped sugar cubes up above? They make a cup of tea just that much sweeter :)

All the difference

I wasn't planning on posting anything today since I didn't really bake or pick anything, but as I was munching on the last of the currants I noticed something. If you're lucky, you might find fresh currants at a store by you, but what you'll find are usually loooong strands with sparsely dispersed berries, like ornaments on a Charlie Brown tree. My friend and I picked these ourselves, so we not only got to see how they grow, but we also got to pick the very best bunches...just like the one in the picture. I'll bet you'll never be able to find currants like these at any old store and I just had to share...and maybe brag a little.

P.S. Please ignore my poor thumb in the picture. It still hasn't forgiven me for accidentally slamming the car door on it.

Berry Delightful

I think my subconscious goal for this summer is to ferret out every single pick-your-own farm within reasonable driving distance and sample each season's offerings en masse straight from the ground, bush or tree one weekend morning at a time. This past weekend I found the only farm in this whole state that boasted gooseberries that would be ready for picking. I have only seen gooseberries once since I left Ukraine and that was last summer in Ireland, in the garden of a mansion, at the end of the row with something like 30 different varieties of potatoes. You can be sure that the little bush in the picture above was a bit lighter after I snuck away trying to hide the plump berries in my cheeks like a chipmunk. It was a long day of sight seeing and I needed a snack, so don't judge me!

I was all set to relive that experience again with a friend, who I picked up bright and early on my way to the farm, but once we got there we were told that the gooseberries were almost all gone, but that the currants were plentiful. Life is hard. We grabbed a little red radio flier-type wagon and some cartons and set out to pick what was there to be picked. I left my friend to pick the currants, grabbed a carton and set out to collect each and every single gooseberry that might still be hiding within the barren shrubs. I don't know if you've ever picked gooseberries, but if you come late in the season those bushes REALLY don't want you to have those last few berries. The branches are starting to dry up and the thorns are extra prickly. After walking the whole row I had a little bit over a pint of these tart and sweet berries, every single shrub was picked clean, and my arms were scratched from my fingernails to my elbows. Ouch! Don't they look lovely though?



By the time I got back my friend had picked a bunch of lovely red currants, so I just added a handful more (you can never have too much) and we headed back. Now, while Garden Patch Farms, the place where we went, is a bit overpriced all things considered, they have a fantastic variety of produce available for picking. On our way back we encountered the green bean vines, peas, green peppers, broccoli, and lovely rose shaped red cabbages. I wasn't planning on getting any veggies, but the cabbages just looked so good, I just couldn't walk past them, which led to my second learning experience of the day. I think assassins practice their skills on cabbages. After pulling and twisting I learned that the best way to pick a cabbage (aside from bringing a knife) is to sneak up behind it, grab it with both hands and sharply twist. The snap felt strangely like what I'd imagine a person's neck would feel like under similar treatment. Gah! At least this "bounty" will make a wonderful red cabbage cole slaw tomorrow and in the mean time I'll just put aside the blood-lust and munch on these:

Cherry Picking

When I was little I used to climb trees. Tall ones, short ones, ones with branches really low to the ground and those that you really had to work to get anywhere. While it usually wasn't a requirement, I loved to climb fruit bearing trees mainly because they came with snacks. I'd climb a tree full of still-green plums and hang out and munch until my belly ached. Then I'd pick whatever would fit into the skirt of the dress my mom would send me out in, hoping that for once I'd keep it clean, and I'd lug the loot home for homemade punch, jam or whatever else my mother was inspired to make. Inevitably, I fell out of more trees then I can recall, but I always came back for more. There's just no better vantage point from which to observe the world then from the quiet solitude of a tall leafy branch.

When we moved to the states, the suburbs no less, my tree climbing days were abruptly cut short. I tried to pick up where I had left off, but after a few neighbors complained, I was firmly asked to keep my feet on the ground, which is more or less where I've kept them for many years. Now you rightfully ask, why would I tell you this? Well, because it turns out my tree climbing days aren't quite as behind me as I had feared. I have been wanting to go sour cherry picking for many years and two weeks ago I found a spot in Rockford, IL and drove a little over an hour early in the morning to do just that. Some of the trees were already picked over as this was not the first day and I was not the first one to come, but after I grabbed four large bags back at the front desk, where a large dog washed my feet with his tongue, all part of the service, I turned left where others turned right and I was able to find some nice trees where I promptly got to work. After going through most of the tree and barely filling up one bag I looked up and saw....tons and tons of unpicked cherries hanging off of the hard to reach branches way above my head:


"Aha! If I just climb up there, I'll be able fill up my bags in no time," I thought to myself. I hesitated for a moment, remembering all those pesky neighbors, slung my camera over my shoulder, hung the bags over one of the higher branches and climbed up higher where I was literally surrounded by dozens of crowded bunches of sun warmed red cherries, which basically jumped into my bags on their own. Aside from one startled Polish lady that didn't see me up there when she picked my tree to pick her harvest until I dropped a few cherries, narrowly missing her head, no one complained and I came away with a huge load of cherries to work with.

I gave one of the bags to my mom, just as I used to in the old days, and she promptly churned out dozens and dozens of cherry filled buns and cookies. Yummy! I shared a large bowl of them with a friend and took the rest home for experimentation. First up came sour cherry sorbet using a recipe I found on this site. It was very good, but next time I think I'll cut the sugar by quite a bit as it was too sweet to my taste.



The next batch went into a large jar with several liters of vodka with the hope that in a few months I'll have a lovely sour cherry liquor to give out as gifts for the holidays. I'll post pictures once the mixture gets a bit more saturated.

And finally, skipping the ones that I ate right out of the bag, the rest were turned into a "no recipe" sour cherry jam I read about on David Lebovitz's site:


I think next time I'll save more for just eating :)