Pita Bread

pitabreadI made another big batch of baba ganoush. Nothing suits it better than homemade, hot-out of-the-oven pita bread. Seriously.

The key to getting a pocket to form is a really hot oven. Mine didn’t form perfect pockets by any means but I didn’t care. They were delicious anyway. This recipe is adapted from the Moosewood Cookbook.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar or honey
3 cups flour (1/2 white; 1/2 wheat)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
olive oil

Method
-Dissolve yeast in warm water; with sugar/honey, stir and let stand for 5 minutes.
-Mix flour and salt in a large bowl.
-Add yeast/water mix to flour and mix well.
-Turn dough to a flour surface and knead for about 10 minutes.
-Place dough in a large oiled bowl, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm place until double in size (about an hour).
- Punch dough down and knead for a few minutes then divide into 6 balls. Let stand for 15 minutes.
-Heat oven to 475ºF. If you have a pizza stone, place it in the oven to heat.
-On a lightly floured surface, roll balls into circles 1/2 thick and about as wide as your hand.
-If using a pizza stone, place the dough two at a time on the stone (or as many that will fit). If using a baking sheet, place the rolled out dough on an ungreased baking sheet. You can also place the dough directly on the oven rack. Cook for 8-10 minutes. The dough should puff up.
-Remove pita bread from the oven, wrap in a clean towel and place in paper bag for 15 minutes. This will deflate the bread and create the pocket.

Amy’s Cake

amyscakeI made a cake for our friend Amy’s birthday last year and her husband Yves asked for an encore this year…Silly, boy. I can never make the same cake twice, mainly because it’s near neigh impossible for me to follow a recipe. This year’s cake had two layers of chocolate cake (straight from the recipe on the box of Hershey’s cocoa mix, only with butter in place of the oil) and two layers of yellow cake. The yellow cake layers were topped with a soft chocolate ganache and the chocolate cake layers had a caramel sauce. The whole shabang was topped with a mixture of whipped cream, sugar, cream cheese and almond extract. A bit over the top you say?

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake

zucchcake2I’m going to come right out and say that this cake is good for you. And why not, it has zucchini, which has a good amount of vitamin C, the dark chocolate is full of antioxidants, and it has less sugar per serving than I put in my morning coffee. That being said, this cake isn’t super sweet. Too satisfy a particularly sweet tooth, top it with a cream cheese frosting.

This recipe is adapted from Care2.com.

INGREDIENTS
4 tablespoons butter
3 ounces good-quality dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups unbleached white wheat flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 cups grated zucchini

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9-inch cake pan and dust with unsweetened cocoa powder.

2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler, a saucepan over low heat, or in the microwave. If using a microwave, start with 30 seconds. Stir often.

3. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium sized mixing bowl.

4. In a large mixing bowl, mix sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and yogurt and mix until combined. Fold in the chocolate and butter mixture, and the zucchini.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack.

Serve as is or top with whipped cream or cream cheese icing. Ymmm.

Serves 8 to 10.

Grilled Cubano & The Sandwich for Bleu Cheese Fans

New Column up at the Register Star and The Daily Mail:
While eating various types of food on bread has been around practically since the Stone Age, the term sandwich is more of a relatively recent appellation. Rumor has it that, in the 18th century, the fourth Earl of Sandwich liked to eat while playing cards. He didn’t like getting grease on the cards, so he started requesting that his meat, which he would normally eat with his fingers, be served between two pieces of bread. People, maybe other grease conscious card players, started to request the same, possibly saying, “I’ll have what Sandwich is having.” And a new term was born.

It wasn’t until the invention of sliced bread in 1928 that sandwiches comfortably took a seat at America’s dinner table and made their way into the country’s lunch pails. Since then, virtually everything has been tried on a sandwich, including Elvis’ infamous peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich.

In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” Michael Pollan laments that people are spending more time watching people cook on TV rather than actually cooking. He states, “The most popular meal in America, at both lunch and dinner, is a sandwich; the No. 1 accompanying beverage is a soda.”

While I am, of course, a big advocate of spending more time in the kitchen, I don’t see anything wrong with eating a sandwich for dinner, especially if it’s a good one and not just a piece of cheese thrown between two pieces of white bread (which I fear is what Pollan is referring to).

I bet you can whip out one of these sandwiches during the commercial breaks of Iron Chef. Be sure to trade in the soda for a seltzer with a splash of juice.

Go to the articles for recipes.>

Peaches

New column up at the Register Star.

While Georgia is known as the “Peach State,” I’ve tasted some darn good peaches here in New York. The local peach crop is now in full swing, so be sure to grab some.

The best place to get a peach is to pick one right from a tree. My friend Douglas said that he never buys supermarket peaches (unless they are local) because they go from being rock hard to mushy.

Peaches bound for the supermarket are cultivated for a long shelf life and a pretty red color. Flavor gets a back seat. They are also refrigerated, which can turn an unripe peach mealy.

Apparently we’ve been having that problem since the late 19th century. This from a New York Times editorial dated Aug. 23, 1895, written in response to an article claiming California peaches were of poor quality: A defense of California peaches – those sent to New York are poor because picked too soon, by Charles Vogelgesang:

The fruit is picked only half ripened, thus, in the first place, depriving it of the nourishment and sunshine necessary to give it its full flavor and sweetness. Consequently, it ripens without those essentials and, as I will admit, with very poor results as we usually find it in New York markets and thereby the fruit is placed at a sorry disadvantage when compared with that allowed to ripen on the trees and shipped comparatively few miles before reaching the consumer.

I always search out organic peaches. The Environmental Working Group, a not-for-profit research organization, has a list of the most pesticide contaminated fruits and vegetables, called the “Dirty Dozen.” Peaches top that list. They have the highest pesticide residue out of the 42 fruits and vegetables they tested. Pesticides easily migrate into the fruit through the soft skin of the peach. Since local peaches don’t have to travel far, farmers can get by with using less pesticide. Ask your peach farmer about his/her pesticide practices and/or shop for the organic variety.

Go to the Register Star for Peach Cobbler and Grilled Shrimp with Peaches and Bok Choy in a Spicy Peanut Sauce recipes.