No knead bread

Most people, even those who do their fair share of cooking, never bake their own bread, not because they don’t like the taste of fresh, hot out of the oven bread, but because it is just so much work and makes such a mess. When people think of making homemade bread, they typically have visions of a mother or grandmother laboriously kneading bread in kitchen completely covered in a layer of flour, but thanks to a brilliantly simple breakthrough, you can now make your own bread without any kneading at all.

When I say that you can make bread without kneading it, I’m not talking about buying a bread machine or some fancy mixer; I mean that you can make great bread with just flour, water, salt, and a small bit of yeast with about 2 minutes’ worth of active preparation time. All you need to do is mix the flour and salt in a bowl with a larger than usual amount of water and a lower than usual amount of yeast.

Though the active cooking time is minimal, the process does take much longer as you will need to allow the mixture to rise overnight, so if you have people coming over on short notice you will have to pick up a loaf at the grocery store. Once you let the bread make its initial rise over 12-18 hours, then knock it down, put it in a well-oiled loaf pan and let it rise again for 2-3 hours, at which point you pop it in the oven and bake it as you would with any other bread. This works with virtually any kind of bread you want to make, from classic white French bread to any kind of whole grain you’re into.

This is how all bread should be baked from now on. Normally when you find a way to cut down on the work involved in the kitchen there is some sacrifice of quality or taste, but that is not the case with the no knead method. In fact, most bakers will tell you that the prolonged rising period helps to build more flavour. The reality is that you probably wouldn’t be able to detect the difference between a slow rise, no knead bread and a quick rise, kneaded bread, but that’s not the point; the reason for using the no knead method is that it allows you to make a loaf of bread that tastes as least as good as the traditional method but is only a fraction of the effort and mess.

Tools:

  • Mixing bowl
  • Circular thing
  • Pizza stone
  • Pizza peel

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups bread flour
  • 1 ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 cups lukewarm water

Directions:

Whisk together all the dry ingredients then stir in the two cups of water with the handle of a wooden spoon. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for 12 to 18 hours. After the initial rise, place a sheet of parchment paper on a pizza peel, coat it in olive oil, then coat a spring pan in olive oil and place it on the parchment paper. Knock down the dough and dump it into the spring pan. Sprinkle some flour over the dough, then sprinkle flour over a cotton cloth before placing it over the dough. Allow to rise for about three hours or so. Place a pizza stone in the middle rack at least a half hour before you are ready to bake the break and set the oven to 415 degrees. Place a baking tray in a rack just below the pizza stone. When the dough is finished rising, remove the stone and slide the parchment paper and the pan onto the stone and put back in the oven. Pour one cup of water into the pan underneath the stone and through about a half cup into the bottom of the oven. Close up the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.

Lettuce Wraps

I’m not sure if PF Chang’s invented lettuce wraps or if they are just really good at making them, but pretty much everyone I know who like lettuce wraps first tried them at that restaurant and almost every lettuce wrap recipe you will find online states that they are trying to replicate the PF Chang’s wrap. Every recipe you find, as does mine, will include some combination of hoisin and soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, and green onions. I am not a great lover of ginger, so I go with just a half teaspoon of ground ginger, but if you are a ginger fan you can certainly grate up or cube some whole ginger, but I would argue that if you are having some picky eaters over for supper I would stick with just a little of the powder. Likewise, it is always a safe bet err on the side of too little sesame oil than too much. It is powerful stuff and if you use too much in this or any recipe it can quickly overwhelm all the other ingredients.

Ingredients:

  • 4 tablespoons hoisin sauce
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • Half teaspoon sesame oil
  • Half teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 cup water
  • Half dozen diced green onions
  • A pound or so of ground chicken
  • A head of lettuce (or a package or two of Belgian endives)
  • Couple tablespoon sriracha sauce

Directions:

Fry the ground chicken in a large pan with a little olive oil. When the chicken is just about done, dump all of the ingredients except the green onions and sriracha sauce in a mason jar and give it a good shake before pouring it into the pan. Stir it around a few times so all of the meat gets coated in the sauce, then let it simmer on medium-low heat until the sauce reduces and thickens. While the sauce is simmering, break apart the lettuce into big leaves. When the sauce has reduced and thickened, toss in the green onions and give them a quick stir, then fill up the lettuce leaves with the filling and serve. Sriracha sauce makes a great topping but it isn’t for everyone, so serve it on the side so your guests can decide for themselves if they want it. There is plenty of flavour already built in so sriracha is by no means required. If you want to serve these as appetizer I would recommend using Belgian endives instead of lettuce if you can find them. They are naturally cup shaped so you can just fill them with a spoonful or two of the filling and people can eat them with one hand without making a godawful mess.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

If you buy bananas and don’t like throwing away food, then you need to learn how to make banana bread. Bananas can go from green and hard to black and mushy in the blink of an eye so no matter how many bananas you eat you will always end up with some overripe bananas in the back of your cupboard at which point you will have to ask yourself if you are the type of person who wastes food and fills up garbage dumps or if you are a person who makes banana bread.

Fortunately, banana bread is much quicker and easier to make than regular bread and you don’t need any mixing equipment, just a few bowls, a spoon, and a fork. You don’t even need overripe bananas; anything that is fully ripened will do. The only way you can mess it up is if you don’t properly oil the pan or don’t use enough chocolate chips.

Tools:

  • Two mixing bowls
  • Wooden spoon
  • Fork
  • Whisk

Ingredients:

  • 3 ripe or overripe bananas
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon coffee cream (use heavy cream if you have it, but no need to buy a carton for a recipe that only needs one tsp)
  • 2 eggs
  • ¼ tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • Couple dashes of nutmeg
  • ½ cup softened butter
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 cup chocolate chips (get the smaller ones if you can find them)

Directions:

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl and set aside. Combine the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream together with a spatula. As long as the butter is nice and soft there won’t be any need for a mixture as it should only take you a minute or so of mushing with the spatula for the sugar and butter to be fully combined with no chunks of butter or sugar. Once the butter and sugar have been combined, mash in the bananas with a fork and then whisk in the eggs, vanilla, nutmeg, cream, and salt. Many recipes will tell you to whisk the salt with the dry ingredients, but if you want the salt to be evenly dispersed it makes much more sense to dissolve it in the wet ingredients. Once everything is combined in a mushy looking mixture dump in the dry ingredients along with the chocolate chips and stir until there no dry bits of flour. Lightly coat a non-stick baking pan with olive oil and dump in the mixture. Bake in a pre-heated, 325 degree oven for an hour and ten minutes. Allow to cool on a rack for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

Why You Should Try Making Vegetable Broth

The vegetable stock you buy in the grocery store is pretty good, so do you really need to make your own from scratch? Generally speaking, the answer to that question is a resounding no. However, you will often find that you have some leftover carrots and celery in your fridge that are getting past their prime and you don’t really need and/or want to use them in any dish you are planning to make in the next few days so they are probably going to end up in the garbage. In that case, you are no longer choosing between homemade and store bought vegetable broth but between throwing vegetables in the garbage or using them to make about two months’ worth of vegetable broth. When you look at it that way, you may find yourself making homemade vegetable broth. You aren’t making a broth from scratch so much as you are cleaning out your fridge and cupboard.

When making your own broth you can use almost any vegetable you have lying around, but the ones that are best suited and should form the base of all your broths are onions, garlic, celery, and carrot. These happen to be among the most frequently used aromatic vegetables and the ones most likely to be lying around somewhere in your kitchen. There are other vegetables that make good additions, such as bell peppers or leeks. There are other vegetables that just don’t belong in broth, particularly starchy and a lot of leafy vegetables. Don’t ever put potatoes, chard, or kale in a broth; if you really don’t want to throw them in the garbage after they are past their prime, start a compost or give them to someone who owns a horse.

Tools:

  • 2 pots (one to make the broth and one to sterilize the mason jars)
  • A couple of half litre mason jars for bottling
  • 1 knife (technically even this is optional as no fine cutting is required. If life has been unkind to you it is possible to simple smash and snap the vegetables with your hands, although I would not recommend it).
  • Tongs

Ingredients:

  • 8 cups of potable water
  • 3 or 4 carrots
  • Couple cloves garlic
  • 2 or 3 onions
  • 2 or 3 bay leaves
  • Whatever celery you have left over in your fridge
  • Any leftover Sage or Thyme (but no other herb, except maybe parsley)
  • 1 tbsp peppercorns
  • 2 tbsp salt

Directions:

Chop up all of the ingredients and throw them in a pot with the water and simmer for a few hours. Taste at some point to see if it has enough salt. When you are finished simmering the broth, pour it through a strainer into another pot, then rinse and fill with water and bring to a boil. Continue simmering the strained vegetable broth as the water in the second pot comes to a boil. Boil the jars and lids for minute or two in the boiling water, and then carefully lift out the jars and dump out the boiling water. Fill with the vegetable broth and then use the tongs to place the lids on top of the jars. Use a dish towel to tighten the lids. After the liquid cools check to make the lids are tightly sealed. The lid should have snapped down as the air inside the jar contracted.

You Should Cook More Lasagna

Lasagna is one of the most useful dishes to keep in your regular meal rotations. You can feed a small army with it or freeze the leftovers for later. Much like chilli, it’s also perfect for cleaning out your fridge and freezer. Anytime you have some leftover mushrooms, tomatoes, and bell peppers in the fridge is the perfect time to make lasagna. Have a couple of frozen sausages at the bottom of your freezer and you can’t remember where they came from? In they go. And lasagna is one of those dishes where you can cut corners without sacrificing taste. For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t buy the oven ready lasagna noodles. There is absolutely no difference in taste and if you are in a rush you don’t need to reduce your meat sauce because the dry oven-ready noodles will absorb the excess liquid as it bakes. You also don’t need to mess around with some kind of fancy, time consuming cheese sauce for the filling; just mix up a tub of ricotta cheese with some spinach and some fresh basil.

Ingredients:

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 2 Italian sausages (casings removed)
  • 1 28 oz can whole tomatoes
  • 1 8 oz can tomato paste
  • 3 tablespoons oregano
  • 1 container Ricotta cheese
  • Half dozen or so fresh basil leaves
  • Teaspoon black pepper
  • Package? Mozzarella
  • 1 red pepper (or whatever you have left over)
  • Handful of mushrooms
  • 1 onion
  • 2 cloves of crushed garlic

Tools:

  • 1 large lasagna or rectangular casserole dish
  • 1 large pot or Dutch oven
  • Some toothpicks or short skewers

 

Directions:

Add the ground beef and sausage to the pot on medium heat and dice the onion. Be sure to break up the sausages with your mixing spoon right away while the meat is still soft. Once some of the fat starts to render out, strain out most of it and then add the onion. When the meat is cooked through, dump in all of the rest of the meat sauce ingredients. You can crush the canned whole tomatoes with your hands, but you don’t really need to; you can smash them up very easily with your spoon once they simmer for a bit in the pot. While the sauce is simmering, mix together the spinach, ricotta, chopped basil leaves, and a generous dusting of grated parmesan. After the sauce has simmered for about 15 minutes or so, spread a thin layer on the bottom of the baking dish, then a layer of noodles, then a thicker layer or sauce, another layer of noodles, then the cheese sauce with a thin layer of meat sauce, then more noodles, and then spread the rest of the meat sauce on top. Tear the mozzarella into small pieces and scatter them over the top of the pizza (or grate it, depending on how hard or soft it is) along with a dusting of grated parmesan. Place some skewers in between the noodles to keep the tinfoil away from the cheese and bake covered in the foil for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and then remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes uncovered or until the cheese starts to turn a golden brown in places. Allow to cool for 15 or 20 minutes before serving with a generous glass of red wine.

00 Flour Pizza Recipe

Everyone likes pizza, but despite being relatively easy to make, it is rarely made at home, perhaps because there are so many pizza places who will not only cook it for you, but deliver it right to your door. There is nothing wrong with takeout pizza, but making your own pizza allows you to customize it exactly the way you like it and you don’t have to worry about the personal hygiene habits of the 17 year old who topped your pizza for you. For me, making your own pizza is not just about the right combination and amounts of ingredients, but also about the dough. It is very difficult to get an authentic Italian style thin, chewy crust at a takeout, which too frequently offer an inch thick, bready crust. If you want an Italian style pizza, make sure you get yourself a pizza stone or, better yet, a cast iron pizza pan. Using 00 flour works best but if you only have regular all-purpose it will still turn out fine.  The sauce is the easiest part of a pizza recipe and it is even easier if you have an immersion blender puree everything right in the pot.

One final note on pizza. If like me, you’ve done some research online about the best way to make pizza, you will probably have noticed that celebrity chefs almost universally caution home cooks to not to use too much cheese on their pizza. This is nonsense. If you like cheese, then use it generously; the more the better. Unless you are having a celebrity chefs over for dinner, your guests will never complain about too much cheese on their pizza. Celebrity chefs tell you not to use too much cheese for the same reason that they tell you to always serve meat rare, tuna uncooked in the middle, and to use a whole head of garlic instead of a clove; they are doing it to differentiate themselves from unsophisticated home cooks. Do yourself a favour, be unsophisticated and go crazy with the cheese and while you’re at it, go easy on the garlic.

Tools:

  • Heavy cast iron pizza pan
  • Small to medium sized pot
  • Immersion blender

Ingredients:

For the sauce:

  • 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes
  • 3 tablespoons of oregano
  • 1 teaspoon basil
  • 1 small diced onion (or 1 tsp onion powder if you are in a hurry)
  • 2 cloves crushed garlic (or half teaspoon garlic powder if you are in a hurry)
  • Small can of tomato paste

For the dough:

  • 1 and ¼ cup 00 flour
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 electric mixer

Toppings:

  • Lots of whatever you like on pizza

Directions:

Stir the yeast into one cup of warm water and set aside for 10 minutes while the yeast proofs. Mix together the salt and 1 cup of each flour. When the yeast and water mixture starts to foam, pour it and a tablespoon of olive oil into the flour and salt mixture and mix with the dough hook attachment for about three minutes. Let the dough rest for about 5 minutes and then mix again for a couple of minutes. Add the quarter cup of 00 flour onto a work surface and then knead the dough by hand until all of the flour has been absorbed. Then form into a ball and place in a bowl that has been coated with olive oil. Turn the dough ball around until it has been coated in the oil. Cover with a moist cup towel or plastic wrap and allow to rise for about 3 or 4 hours in a warm location. If you are doing this on a weeknight, allow to rise in the fridge overnight.

About a half hour before you are ready to make the pizza, place the cast iron pizza pan in the oven and set it to 500 degrees or has high as your oven will go. Dump all of the ingredients for the tomato sauce in a pot and simmer. After 10 or 15 minutes when everything has softened, blend with the immersion blender and then simmer on low until ready.

When the dough is finished rising, sprinkle some flour on your work surface and dump the dough on it. Cut it and half and make two dough balls, then form them into thick discs with your hand. You can use a roller to stretch out the dough but it actually works best if you spin the dough in the air just like you see it done on TV. The dough will be strong enough that it shouldn’t tear. Once it is strong enough, place it back on the work surface and use your fingers to raise up the edges. Take the cast iron pan out of the oven and give it a generous sprinkle of olive oil (be very careful with the pan as it will be extremely hot). In order not to stretch the pizza out of shape, fold it in half, then fold it in half again by folding one corner over the other (see picture), then lay it on the tray and unfold it (again, careful with the pan). Use a BBQ brush to give the dough a light coating of olive oil to prevent the sauce from making the dough soggy, then place the sauce, pepperoni, cheese, and whatever else you want on it and place it in the oven for about 9 or 10 minutes or until the cheese starts to form nice golden brown patches. You can make the crust a little crispier by letting the pizza rest on the hot pan outside the oven for a few minutes.

No Need to Knead Bread

Most people, even those who do their fair share of cooking, never bake their own bread, not because they don’t like the taste of fresh, hot out of the oven bread, but because it is just so much work and makes such a mess. When people think of making homemade bread, they typically have visions of a mother or grandmother laboriously kneading bread in kitchen completely covered in a layer of flour, but thanks to a brilliantly simple breakthrough, you can now make your own bread without any kneading at all.

When I say that you can make bread without kneading it, I’m not talking about buying a bread machine or some fancy mixer; I mean that you can make great bread with just flour, water, salt, and a small bit of yeast with about 2 minutes’ worth of active preparation time. All you need to do is mix the flour and salt in a bowl with a larger than usual amount of water and a lower than usual amount of yeast.

Though the active cooking time is minimal, the process does take much longer as you will need to allow the mixture to rise overnight, so if you have people coming over on short notice you will have to pick up a loaf at the grocery store. Once you let the bread make its initial rise over 12-18 hours, then knock it down, put it in a well-oiled loaf pan and let it rise again for 2-3 hours, at which point you pop it in the oven and bake it as you would with any other bread. This works with virtually any kind of bread you want to make, from classic white French bread to any kind of whole grain you’re into.

This is how all bread should be baked from now on. Normally when you find a way to cut down on the work involved in the kitchen there is some sacrifice of quality or taste, but that is not the case with the no knead method. In fact, most bakers will tell you that the prolonged rising period helps to build more flavour. The reality is that you probably wouldn’t be able to detect the difference between a slow rise, no knead bread and a quick rise, kneaded bread, but that’s not the point; the reason for using the no knead method is that it allows you to make a loaf of bread that tastes as least as good as the traditional method but is only a fraction of the effort and mess.

You Should Cook More Turkey

I had a great culinary epiphany this Christmas season; I need to cook more turkey. I had only cooked two turkeys in my life and then I cooked two over the holidays. I had bought a couple of frozen turkeys in November for $1.49 a pound. I gave one to the food bank and cooked the other Christmas day. Despite my limited experience cooking turkeys, and the turkey being slightly less than 100% defrosted, it turned out fantastic, so fantastic that when I went to the grocery store a few days later I picked up another one, this one a fresh turkey for 99 cents a pound. The turkey cost less than 12 dollars! I’ve paid more than that for a small chicken.

Turkey had become synonymous with special occasions like Christmas and Thanksgiving since it they are a great way to feed a large crowd, but turkey is often one of the cheapest meats to buy, particularly if you keep an eye out for sales. Grocery stores are always offloading unsold turkeys at cheap prices after major holidays. If you have a moderate sized freezer you should always buy a couple whenever they go on sale.

Just because you are cooking a turkey it doesn’t mean you have to prepare some kind of elaborate meal with all the fixings, though you certainly can. You can just stick one in the oven around noon on a weekend and by suppertime you have a pile of juicy turkey. When I made my post-Christmas turkey I just had French fries, dressing and gravy with it. After the main meal there is plenty left for sandwiches, and then you can make or pile of turkey soup using whatever dried up leftover vegetables you have in your cupboard or fridge. And if you don’t want to bother making soup you can just throw whatever’s left out for the crows. It’s still a good deal even if you don’t eat all of it.

It’s amazing how much more chicken is sold than turkey. It’s understandable that there is more chicken sold as it comes in a more manageable size. A basket of turkey wings at your local sports bar just wouldn’t be the same. Nevertheless, the fact that that chicken outsells turkey by a thousand to one suggests the turkey industry needs to do a better job of marketing itself. Everyone likes turkey bacon club sandwiches yet no one ever cooks a turkey. It doesn’t make any sense. If you are trying to feed your family quality food on a budget, there are few better options than turkey.

Mango Chutney Recipe

Mango chutney with papadums is the best food that most people have never tasted. If the Indian food industry had its act together it would rank just behind salsa and tortillas in popularity. It should be up there with butter chicken as the most popular Indian food for people who don’t really like Indian food. While there isn’t a great deal of variation among the butter chicken recipes out there, and all of them taste fantastic to the average person, the recipes for mango chutney vary wildly, from the simple to those with an ingredient list a page long. If you want to be sure of serving your guests something they will definitely like, keep in simple and let the mango be the star of the show with the spices and supporting characters.

Ingredients:

  • Two diced fresh mangoes
  • Half cup roughly diced onion
  • 1 cup sugar (brown or white)
  • Three tablespoons white vinegar
  • ½ tsp turmeric
  • Level ¼ tsp ground cloves (cloves are powerful, so you can actually add slightly less, never add more than this)
  • 1 tablespoon grated ginger
  • Quarter cup water

Directions:

Throw everything in a pot at the same time, turn on high until it starts to simmer and then turn the heat down on low and allow to gently simmer until the onions and mango are tender, about 30-45 minutes. When everything is tender blend with an immersion blender until smooth and set aside. Bottle half of it and set aside the rest to cool before serving.

Too Many People Can’t Make a Proper Grilled Cheese

There are few things as satisfying as a properly made, hot of the pan, grilled cheese sandwich. Anybody can make a fantastic grilled cheese, but not everybody does. Perhaps because it is so easy, many home cooks get complacent because it is so easy and manage to mess it up by not putting any thought into it at all, while others ruin them by overthinking, kind of like the reasons good golfers miss two foot putts.

Those who don’t put enough thought and effort into a grilled cheese throw a slice of processed cheese in between the bread, which is absolutely inexcusable. Aside from the fact you should not have processed cheese in your house in the first place, if you can’t take one minute to grate a handful of cheddar you are simply too lazy to ever been a respectable home cook.

On the other end of the spectrum people feel like a plain grilled cheese is beneath them and make the classic mistake of trying to improve upon perfection and ruin it by using real butter or whole grain bread. If you want to impress people with your cooking ability then make beef wellington. When it comes to grilled cheese sandwiches, stick with what works. If you absolutely have to put some kind of personal touch then add a sprinkle of Monterrey jack with your cheddar.