Sandy Deutscher Green's Blog, page 13

Twofer Tuesday – A Honey of a Quote

“Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.”  - Benjamin Franklin

and

“Though honey is sweet, do not lick it off a briar.” — Irish Sayings 

Filed under: Food, Twofer Tuesdays Tagged: Benjamin Franklin, friends, honey, honey quotes, Irish sayings

Ra-ta-ta-touille: The Dish that Deserves a Drum Roll

Along with fruit I bought for Four Fruit Freezer Jam from a local farmers market, I also bought these lovely vegetables:

Some vegetables were grilled to serve with a barbeque, and I made Ratatouille with the leftovers. The recipe is simple, but the cooking time is long. The delicious melding of flavors and high nutrition is worth it!

RATATOUILLE

 2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, sliced
1 small eggplant, cube into cubes and sprinkled with flour
2 zucchini, cut into small wedges and sprinkled with flour
1 red pepper
5 tomatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil until golden in large fry skillet. Add eggplant, cover, and cook gently for 30 minutes. Splash a little water in it if it gets dry. Add zucchini and pepper. Cover and cook gently one hour. Add tomatoes and heat until mixture thickens.

Serve as it, over pasta, rice, or couscous, in an omelette, or rolled in a tortilla.

HINTS:

Slip tomato skins off easily by pouring boiling water in a bowl. Wait for the water to cool enough to handle the tomatoes, core them, and slip the skins off.

Removing Tomato Skins with Hot Water

Peeled and chopped tomatoes

Red Pepper and Floured Zucchinii

Sauteed Eggplant

Filed under: Cooking, Food, Photos, Recipes Tagged: eggplant, farmers market, healthy food, olive oil, ratatouille, recipes, red pepper, tomatoes, zucchini

Twofer Tuesday – Baseball Quotes

“Well, it took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball, and I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.”  — Hank Aaron 

and

“Never root for a team whose uniforms have elastic stretch waistbands.” — Susan Sarandon

Filed under: Twofer Tuesdays Tagged: baseball, baseball quotes, Hank Aaron, Susan Sarandon, team

Overnight Bread that Doesn’t Loaf Around

Overnight Bread

An interesting recipe for bread dough, which sits overnight and is baked the next day, has been floating around the Internet. I thought I’d tweak it a little first to make a more traditional loaf-type bread. I was afraid the lack of sugar (to feed the yeast) and oil (to help the gluten stretch ) would make the finished loaf  too crisp. 

Here’s my version which bakes in a lot less time than the original. The turned-out dough was very tender, and it baked into a very fragrant loaf. It tasted great with my Four Fruit Freezer Jam!

OVERNIGHT BREAD

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon Instant or Rapid-rise yeast

scant ¼ cup sugar

1/4 cup dry milk OR 2 Tbs buttermilk powder

1 1/2 cups water

¼ cup oil

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, sugar, dry milk/buttermilk powder and yeast. Add water and oil with a spoon, mixing until well incorporated. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12 – 18 hours (or overnight).

Sprinkle top of dough with 1/4 cup flour and turn out on floured surface. Flatten and knead until smooth, adding flour as needed. Shape loaf to fit greased (or sprayed) 9X5X3 inch-loaf pan or shape in a round loaf on a cookie sheet. 

Cover with plastic and kitchen towel and let rise for an hour. Bake in 400º oven for 25 minutes or until loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on rack.

Makes one loaf.

Filed under: Baking, Food, Photos, Recipes Tagged: bread, bread recipe, flour, overnight bread, yeast

Four Fruit Freezer Jam

Four Fruit Jam I enjoyed at Le Pain Quotidien restaurant inspired me to create my own version. I bought raspberries, currants, and sour cherries at a local farmers’ market. The strawberries didn’t look fresh, so I used frozen ones. The juice from the currants gives the jam a fresh, bright flavor while the sweetness of the raspberries and strawberries balance the tartness of the cherries.

I washed new plastic freezer jars from Ball.

Here’s my recipe:

Four Fruit Freezer Jam

5 cups fruit (I used a mixture of strawberries, raspberries, sour cherries, and the juice and pulp of currants after I heated them until soft with 1/4 cup water to 1 cup fruit and pushed through a sieve)

2 cups sugar

6 T pectin

zest and juice of 1/2 lemon

Mix  the pectin with the suger in one bowl. Pit the cherries and slice, and add to strawberries and raspberries in another bowl. Add currant juice/pulp to the fruit mixture and crush with a potato masher.

Add fruit to sugar and stir for three minutes.

Ladle into clean jars and let sit for ten minutes. Enjoy immediately, or freeze up to a year.

Filed under: Food, Recipes Tagged: Ball jars, currants, farmers market, Four Fruit Freezer Jam, freezer jam, jams, Le Pain Quotidien, raspberries, recipes, sour cherries, strawberries