My Wild Thyme in the Kitchen

9 lasagna noodles, cooked as directed 

16 ounces low-fat cottage cheese 

8 ounces fresh sliced  mozzarella cheese

12 ounces, mozzarella part skim milk, grated 

2 Tbs  parmesan cheese, grated 

Meat Sauce 

.75 lb  Italian sausage, sweet 

.75 lb  Italian sausage, hot 

3 cups  Marinara

1/4 tsp  garlic salt 

1/8 tsp  salt 

1 dash  pepper 

Combine all ingredients for meat sauce and simmer 10-15 minutes. Layer into casserole: 3 noodles, sauce, cottage cheese, grated mozzarella , 3 noodles, sauce, cottage cheese, grated mozzarella, 3 noodles, sauce, sliced fresh mozzarella, grated cheese, parmesan. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes at 375. 

Mike is making the most amazing Southeast Asian Stew today, and what goes well with that? Why Coconut Cake of course! Well, not with exactly... but still - seems like the perfect way to finish the meal. 

For the month of October, we got to take on one of many bakers' deepest, darkest kitchen nightmares: macarons. Our talented bakers Korena from Korena in the Kitchen and Rachael from pizzarossa made the intimidating task of mastering these French beauties a breeze. The recipe can be found here. 

I’ve always wanted to experiment with making Macarons and so was excited about the challenge. It took until Halloween for me to get to it -- but we’re going to be eating macarons tonight, in addition to the leftover Halloween candy. 

I went with the French method for this challenge. French macarons more so than most other baking experiments, apparently requires exact measures. So I was very careful with the measurements all the way through the recipe, and sifting all the ingredients so that there aren’t any larger chunks of almond in the mix. 

Making the almonds and sugar combination had to be done twice in my kitchen as I misread the next step with the meringue-making and messed it up (i added the almond mixture to the eggs instead of the granulated sugar. 

I also learned that, while I have some pastry bags -- the best solution for piping macarons onto a cookie sheet is a ziplock bag with a corner cut off. The reason is simply that the “lava-like” dough flows right through the pastry bag before I could get it fully loaded. No such problem with the zip lock bag. 

I also learned that while the instructions say that any jiggling means that it’s not done yet -- the absence of jiggling does not mean it IS done. Two of my three trays were not done enough to lift cleanly off the parchment, leaving just the shell of the macaron free and the goopy bit stuck to the parchment. 

For the buttercream, I used 1/2 cup of blackberry jam as the flavoring, which gave it a nice light blackberry flavor. 

All in all, they turned out OK -- although if I were going to do it again, I’d add a little more salt to the buttercream and cook the cookies until they just started to turn light brown. 

My friend, Jeff Morris, shared the foundation for this recipe with me a long long time ago. It’s a yummy “magic” cobbler that never fails to impress. 

I call it “magic” because this is one of those recipes that you put into the pan backward and while it bakes, it sorts itself out in the yummiest way. You start by putting the butter in the pan, the batter on top of that, and the berries on top of that. While it bakes, the berries go to the bottom, the batter rises to the top and the butter incorporates itself all the way through. This is a sure winner. 

We’re heading to a memorial service today for our friend and co-owner of the Butte Creek Mill. So while I always bake with their products, I’m sharing the links to get your own today as well. But if you don’t have their flour, substitute regular all purpose flour instead. 

Berry Cobbler Recipe

Ingredients

2 sticks butter, melted

2 cups sugar

2 cups Butte Creek Mill Unbleached White Flour

4 tsps. baking powder

3 pounds of mixed berries (I use frozen usually)

Instructions

Melt the butter in a 13x9 inch pan.

Mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and milk.

Pour mixture in the melted butter in the pan.

Add fruit and do not stir.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, then check it. Because I’m usually using frozen berries, it still jiggles at this point, even though the crust is browning nicely (see the video below). If you’re in the same boat, cover with aluminum foil and back until it is more solid and the entire batter is baked evenly and golden brown. This could easily bring it to 1.5 hours of baking time (or more).

This is what it looks like when it’s completely done

One of my very favorite times of the year is autumn -- well, and any opportunity I have to pull out my Apple Master and go to work. 

If you’ve never seen an Apple Master at work, check out this quick video and then get one. You’ll love it!

OK -- back to the crisp! When you’re preparing apples for the crisp with the Apple Master, it’s just a matter of putting your apples through the machine and then slicing the remaining apple in half. I always like to use a good variety apples - the more kinds, the better the crisp.

My favorite crisp recipe came from my Great Great Grandma Dena. This is her recipe.

Apple Crisp Recipe

Ingredients

4 cups  apples, sliced 

1 Tbs  lemon juice 

1/4 cup  white flour 

1/4 cup  wheat flour 

1 cup  old-fashioned rolled oats 

1/2 cup  brown sugar 

1/2 tsp  salt 

1 tsp  cinnamon 

1/3 cup  butter, melted 

Sprinkle of Nutmeg

Instructions

Place apples in a greased 13x9 shallow pan. 

Sprinkle with lemon juice. 

In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Mix until crumbly.

Sprinkle over apples. 

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes until nicely browned.

A few years ago, we started making marinara sauce -- and now it’s an annual ritual we wouldn’t dream of missing. There is nothing better than homemade marinara added to pasta, chili, and soup all winter long. So every year, when tomato seasons starts in earnest, we try to make it a point to get a considerable amount of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and a few eggplants to make our homemade marinara sauce. 

Some years we make a small batch each weekend, other years, we only do it once or twice, but in BIG batches. The fun of the small batch version is that each batch comes out differently. Some are more like paste, some are fantastic for pizza, some are fabulous chili base, still others are a spicy marinara. Of course, the big batch method is that it’s more standardized, and you have a better idea what you’re getting when you open a jar throughout the year. 

This year, we went for the big-batch method and got the box you see above plus another box of the same size, full of a variety of heirloom, beefsteak, and Roma tomatoes - for a total of about 50 pounds of tomatoes, 2 Japanese eggplants, 4 large heads of garlic, a basket of sweet peppers and a few hot peppers. 

Here is our Marinara Recipe:

Set the oven to 325 degrees and allow it to preheat.

Line a rimmed sheet pan with aluminum foil (this will make clean up a LOT easier.)

Slice the beefsteaks and heirloom tomatoes in half horizontally and slice Roma tomatoes in half vertically.  Poke out the seeds with your fingers. 

Peel and clove the garlic -- tap into some the new holes you’ve created in the tomatoes -- this will help to keep it from burning. (We use 1/2 of a clove per sheet pan.)

Slice the peppers in half and remove the seeds. (We’re not super huge pepper fans, but it adds something special to the sauce. Use as many sweet and/or hot peppers as YOU like.) We usually use 1-2 Anaheim and 1 Jalapeno per sheet pan. Lay on top of tomatoes.

We add eggplant for body and texture to our sauce. About 1/4 small Japanese eggplant per sheet pan. Lay on top of tomatoes.

Add salt and pepper to the sheet pans, and sprinkle with Italian Herbs or Herbs de Provence - whichever you prefer (we prefer Herbs de Provence). 

  Place in the oven and roast for 60 minutes.

Check on the peppers - they are probably done at this point. Pull the peppers out and place them in the Vitamix Blender for later.

Put the tomatoes back into roast for another 30-60 minutes at 325. 

Raise the temperature to 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

When you remove your tomatoes from the oven, they should look something like the pictures below. 

If ever the tomatoes are looking more done than the picture below, pull them out -- the length of time is very dependent on the TYPE and overall MOISTURE of the tomatoes you are working with. 

Once the tomatoes are out, scrape them off the sheet pan and place them in the Vitamix Blender. 

Blend until smooth. (if they are too dry, you can add water to thin the sauce out a little so it will blend nicely.)

If you’re making a BIG batch, pour each blender-full into a large soup pan and gently mix to standardize the flavors in the batch. Repeat until all the tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and eggplant have been thoroughly blended.

This is the most personal moment, but adjust your sauce for taste. We always assume that the marinara is only base, and we’ll finalize the taste add meat and/or chunky vegetables on the day we use it, but getting the rough flavors in place now will make it easier then. Add salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, or whatever you want at this point.

Then comes the easiest part. Transfer the sauce into mason jars. We use pint-size jars for pasta meals (there are two of us in the house) or half-pint-size jars for pizza sauce. We’ll also do a couple of quart size jars for soup bases throughout the year. But portion it as makes the most sense for you and your household. The key is to put them in small enough batches that you can open just enough for your needs at the given meal. 

If you’re feeling ambitious, you could actually can them, but we usually cheat and put them in the freezer at this point. They freeze well and will last the year. 

And that’s it! Marinara Sauce is done for the year! So much better than the stuff you can buy at the store and I like that I know exactly what I put it. 

Our yield from this batch was 19 pint-size jars of sauce. 

Daring Baker’s Challenge - September 2015

OK --it’s been waaaay too long since I played in the Daring Baker’s Challenge, so back to it! 

For the month of September Meredith from the Poco Loco Olsons challenged us to experiment with soda bread.

I was happy to see a pretty easily accomplished recipe for my first recipe back. I’ve made Irish Soda Bread a number of times before but thought I’d try the source recipe for this challenge instead of using other recipes this time. 

The recipe from the challenge can be found here.

What is different about this recipe is that it uses Whole Wheat flour. I don’t think I’ve ever made a whole wheat soda bread before. 

The dough came together, just as the recipe indicated and it was quickly ready for the oven. 

I seemed to (strangely) out of the parchment paper the recipe called for, so just baked the bread on my stone.

It was ready to pull out after the first 30 minutes of baking -- golden brown all over. Clearly with no need for the additional 10 minutes. 

Some days, you just have to deal with the zucchini your neighbor “thoughtfully” dropped off. And today was that day. Our favorite way, hands down to have zucchini is in Zucchini Bread.

So what started as shredding the zucchini rapidly moved into, let's make some zucchini bread. 

Here’s my recipe, in case your friends are equally “thoughtful” sharing their zucchini with you. Enjoy!

Zucchini Bread Recipe

3 eggs 

1 cup  olive oil, Extra Light 

2 cups  sugar 

2 tsp  vanilla 

2 cups  flour, white 

1  cup  flour, whole-grain wheat 

1 tsp  salt 

1 tsp  baking soda 

2 tsp  cinnamon 

1/4 tsp  baking powder 

2 cups  zucchini, shredded 

Cinnamon Sugar to top

Put in 2 large loaf pans or 5-6 small loaf pans and bake for about 1 hour, 30 minutes for small at 350. (Or until a toothpick comes out clean.)

It’s been a long hot summer around here, with a shocking lack of kitchen time. The return of cooler weather brings a return to the kitchen. 

I picked up some overly brown bananas last week that The Butcher Shop was giving away -- since I wasn’t ready to bake last week, I peeled them and stuck them in the freezer until I was. But those bananas seem to have started working in the background and this week it was baking time! 

Since it had been so long, I just made a basic Banana Loaf recipe. This recipe makes a dense, not overly sweet banana bread and it was the perfect start of food being created in our kitchen once again.

Banana Loaf Recipe

1 cup  light brown sugar

1/2 cup  butter 

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups  mashed bananas

1 Tbs  lemon juice

2 cups  flour

3 tsp  baking powder

1/2 tsp  salt

Cream together: sugar, applesauce, and eggs.

Stir in: bananas and lemon juice

Sift together and mix in: flour, baking powder and salt

Pour into 3 baby loaf pans and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the top.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Servings: 8

Daring Baker’s Challenge - June 2011

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was simply too good to pass up. Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge.  Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava. The Recipe can be found here.

Good Baklava is fantastic - but finding good baklava is often a challenge in Southern Oregon. So the opportunity to make it for the Daring Baker's challenge was simply too enticing to pass up. Besides, the opportunity to make phyllo is intriguing--I've been looking for a good reason to try my hand at phyllo and this was that opportunity.

So I set about making the homemade phyllo and baklava. The hardest part was simply finding an appropriate dowel to roll out the baklava with. The reason it was hard was that I didn't want to drive into town to the hardware store and had to find something at the general store that would work. I finally found a short pipe that with the benefit of a saw - would do the trick.

While the video makes it seem supremely easy to roll the dough onto the pipe/dowel, the reality is not quite that simple. Whenever I tried it, I ended up wrinkling the dough -- now crinkled fabric is pretty -- but it's not quite the look I was going for in my phyllo. So I ended up rolling it out in the beginning and end, but tried to roll it up on the dowel in the middle. Clearly, I have more technique to perfect, and used the final rolls to flatten it out as best I could.

Baklava itself though, is extremely simple to make. Just nuts a few spices and a food processor. Then patiently assembling the whole deal (imagine a lasagna). Cut it, pop it in the oven, and then start the syrup. Recut it, finish baking, an pour the syrup over the whole thing. There is a scary moment or two when you're pouring the syrup over and it looks like the whole thing may float away -- but it absorbs the initial onslaught quickly, and that's the magic of baklava.

Daring Baker's Challenge - March 2011

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

After an absence of far too long, the Daring Baker's Challenge this month was too good to pass up. A Yeasted Meringue Filled Coffee Cake. Yum! That coupled with the return of my stand mixer (which broke on Thanksgiving) from KitchenAid*, and it seemed like the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.

I opted to make Jamie’s All-American versions with cinnamon, chopped pecans and chocolate chips or chopped chocolate - it simply sounded too good to be true. While the recipe was fun to make, the results were less than amazing. We certainly won't be making this again, but rejoining the Daring Baker's Challenge was fun.

This time of year, there's just not much better than a Fresh Blackberry Pie loaded with ripe, sweet, plump blackberries. I look forward to it every year. And for reasons that have mostly to do navigating what always seems to be a busy summer and a short blackberry season more years than not I don't make it. But this year - the stars aligned and there's fresh blackberry pie! Hurray!!! Now the only problem is that one pie will probably not be enough... Oh well, it's super easy to make, and I got extra berries. :) So what's the beauty of this pie?

The only thing you bake is the crust. 

The berries aren't baked so they don't have that cloying gummy sweet aspect most blackberry pies do. 

Those luscious berries are held together with a nice light sweet binding that comes together with the berries and the crispness of the sweet crust for a heady taste of summer on your fork.

Feeling inspired? Here's the recipe, it'll be done and chilling in less than 45 minutes:

Sweet Pie Crust:

Makes one 9 inch crust  

1 cup flour

1/2 cup margarine

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup walnuts, chopped

Mix crust and pat into a pie pan. Do not turn over edges of the pan. Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes, then cool.

Fresh Berry Pie:

1 Sweet Pie Crust

3 Tbs cornstarch

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 Tbs corn syrup, light

3 Tbs black cherry jello, regular (not sugarfree)

4 cups blackberries, fresh

Cook until thick cornstarch, sugar, water. Add corn syrup and jello. Cool to luke warm. Place berries on bottom of pie plate on the crust. Pour 1/2 of jello mixture over. Place remainder of berries in the pie pan. Pour remainder of jello mixture over the top of berries. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

I love apples. There I said it. :) I love them plain and raw, and I especially love them in desserts. Perhaps the easiest and most reliable apple dessert I have is an Apple Crisp from my Great Grandma Dena. It's the perfect balance of butter, sugar, and cinnamon to top any bunch of apples - anytime, especially in the fall but when you find yourself on a hot August night with a bunch of apples that haven't lived up to your eating-raw expectations and absolutely no chocolate in the house - it's the perfect solution.

Here's the recipe in case you find yourself in the same pickle.

Great Grandma Dena's Apple Crisp

4-6 cups apples, sliced

1 Tbs lemon juice

1/4 cup white flour

1/4 cup wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup butter, melted

Place apples in a greased 13x9 shallow pan. Sprinkle with lemon juice. In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Mix until crumbly. Sprinkle over apples. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes until nicely browned.

Long overdue, I'm finally posting this recipe I found for Simple Sourdough Pan Bread over at Carl's Friends. This is the easiest, tastiest, and most reliable sandwich bread I've ever tried to make. It works great from a sourdough starter or from a sponge start. (No sourdough? Just add equal parts water and flour for the starter that's called for and add a packet of yeast. I'll be going fine by morning.)

You owe it to yourself to try this bread - in the summer, though, keep a watch on it during the final rise, it'll blow the proof faster than you can imagine. I came home the other day after running errands while it proofed to find it rolling down the side of my bread pan. Not to worry, though, I punched it down, reshaped and let it rise again, it wasn't the prettiest loaf I've made, but it tasted just fine.

Instructions for simple Sourdough Pan Bread using Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter and a Kitchen Aid K-45 mixer

I found this wonderful website: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ and decided  I simply had to spend some time on it. There is a great basic recipe for "Daily Bread" or Pain Sur Poolish. This is where I started my adventure, Fresh Loaf.

As the commentary predicted, it is WET. So I added enough extra flour to get it to together. Also, since I have Active Yeast, not instant at the house I added an extra 1/2 teaspoon of that to Main Dough. It rose as at should, shaped and let it go for it's final rise. Before putting it in the oven, I brushed it with egg yolk and sliced it. My oven goes up to 550, so I started it there with one loaf on each cooking stone and with about 4 ice cubes for steam.  It baked for 5 minutes at the high heat, and then I cut the heat to 475 and baked for the remaining time.

This is easily the best tasting, best looking, and best bread I 've ever made. Great flavor, nicely chewy crust, gorgeous crumb. I'll have to make it again -- tomorrow. :)

In the event the recipe gets moved from the original blog, I've reproduced it here. You owe it to yourself to read the commentary on it from the original site here. My comments are in italics.

Pain Sur Poolish (Daily Bread) Recipe

Poolish

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/4 tsp instant yeast

Final Dough

1 lb flour

10-12 oz water (I used 10, and would try 8 next time)

1 tsp instant yeast (I used 1-1/2 tsp Active Dry Yeast)

2 tsp salt

all of the poolish  

Combine the ingredients for the poolish in a small bowl the night before baking. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave the poolish out at room temperature overnight.

The next day, prepare the final dough, either by using the autolyse method of flour and water first then the rest of the ingredients with minimal mixing or by combining them all and mixing until you have decent gluten development (8 to 10 minutes).

I typically fold the dough once an hour twice during primary fermentation, then shape the loaves and give them a longer final rise, typically around 90 minutes. Meanwhile, my oven and baking stone are preheating as hot as they can safely go. (550 is the hottest my oven will go. Brushed with an egg yolk before docking. Incidentally couldn't dock with a razor blade - docked with a serrated knife instead).

Baking, with steam, takes me 20 minutes, 5 minutes or so at maximum oven temperature, the remainder at 450-475. I rotate the loaves once half way through the baking.

That is it. Simple, tasty, and a great recipe to practice with.