Sundried Tomato and Rosemary Bread.

I love making bread. It's a little time consuming but it's so rewarding! Lately though I've been worling a lot and since I can get bread from work I kinda stopped making homemade loaves. BUT. Last week I was watching (surprise surprise) the food channel and there was chef Smith making homemade bread, so simple and delicious, and versatile! I got the urge to make bread again. You can take this recipe, keep the 4 main ingredients of flour, yeast, salt and water, and go from there and never have the same bread from time to time! There's usually not much room for changing things in baking but you can play around with a bread recipe. I love that! I don't feel like I have to follow a recipe anymore, I actually make it up as I go along, writing it down so I can pass it along to you all. Kinda like freestyle cooking! And i'm proud to say I've come a long way since my first loaf...



For this "bread of the week" I went for a flavor I love and hadn't used yet in bread: sundried tomatoes!! And I decided to pair it with one of my favorite fresh herbs: rosemary!! (yes, again, rosemary. there's a big plant at work growing like crazy, so lucky me i can take some home!:))). And for even more taste I threw in some parm, because you can't really ever go wrong with the King of cheeses!
This is what you'll need:

3 1/2-4 cups BREAD flour
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP sugar
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 1/2-2 cups warm water, at 120-130F
2 TBSP olive oil (or if you're using tomatoes in oil, use THAT oil, it's SO flavorful!)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
4-5 slices sundried tomatoes, cut finely.

In a big bowl, mix 3 1/2 cups of the flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Mix and make a well in the centre. Keep the 1/2 cup flour on the side for the kneading process.
Heat 1 1/2 water up to 120F and add the oil to it. Keep 1/2 cup on the side just in case..
Pour in the middle of the flour mixture.
Mix with a fork, slowly incorporating the flour to the water, gradually stirring from the middle towards the outer edge.
When the dough comes into a ball, or almost, transfer to a clean, floured work surface and start kneading. This is where you add the parmesan, sundried tomatoes and rosemary, and extra flour if necessary. I ended up adding about 1/4 cup more. Keep kneading for about 8 minutes until the dough gets really soft and elastic and feels like an earlobe.
(I was actually pleasantly surprise how this dough came together like a charm! no sticky mess is always nice!)
When the dough is nice and soft, cover and let it rest for about 10 minutes, while you clean up(...).
Then shape into whatever you feel like; braid, buns, round or long log, or in a loaf pan...
Then just cover with saran-wrap and let it rise in a warm place for 45-60 minutes, until it's doubled in size. Here in Montreal it's getting a little cold, so the appartment is cold. What I did was turn on the oven at 200F and put the baking sheet on the oven's cheminee. That's helps A LOT!
Also when it was done "rising" it was a little too round, so I re-shaped it into an oval log. Delicately of course! You don't wanna break the precious air bubbles!
Then turn up the oven to 375F and while this heats up, score the bread 4-5 times, brush with oil (i used the sundried tomato oil from the jar) and sprinkle some parmesan and a bit more chopped rosemary.



Bake it for 30 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave it in 5 minutes extra.
To make sure it's done tap on the bottom it will sound hollow, or check with a meat thermometer, the temperature should say 180F.



Let it cool on a rack, slice and Voila!



This one is going to Yeastspotting!!



I had toast this morning with apple jelly...insanely good with this flavor combo. Sounds weird I know but the salty sundried tomato with the sweet apple is cra-zy!

Millet salad with Mediterranean flavors...

It's summer time, almost, so there will be a lot of salads coming on this blog. This is one I made a few days ago but kept the pictures for a later post...one week later. I have a full time job now, food-related, so my cooking/baking time as gone WAY down! But I'm still around...
So this salad was thrown together after looking in the fridge and grabbing whatever was in there:

1 zucchini
3-4 button mushrooms
1 clove garlic
Leftover millet from last week "bread of the week"(about 1/2 cup was left...)
2-3 big pieces sundried tomatoes
BIG chunk feta cheese
about 1/4 cup roasted UNsalted sunflower seeds.

I started by sauteeing the zucchini, mushrooms and garlic in olive oil, with oregano(lots of it!!), salt, pepper, and paprika.
In a big bowl I mixed the cold millet, feta, sundried tomatoes and sunflower seeds with cracked black pepper. Didn't add salt because feta is pretty salty already...
I threw in the hot sauteed zucch's and 'shrooms to make the cheese soften a bit.
I then mixed in 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 2-3 tablespoons olive oil.

So fresh and delicious.



Only thing missing is a nice cold glass of white wine...

Spinach Salad with Peas and Feta and other good stuff.

This salad is awesome. It has a lot of my favorites in it: spinach, feta, sundried tomatoes...I've been making this a lot lately. A few secondary ingredients change from time to time, depending on what I got, but it pretty much always tastes the same.



I really like using baby spinach in salads. They come in packs already washed, so it's quick. And the nutrion values of that leafy green is no secret, right?
If you've been following this blog you know by now how much I love feta and sundried tomatoes, so I won't get into that again.. ;) Lots of those in this salad!
And then there's the green peas. Lovely frozen green peas ready to use anytime in anything, rich in fiber and protein. Great for vegetarians.
What else is in there?? Green onions, leftover cooked millet from a few nights ago (grains in salalds is genius! throw in some barley or rice or couscous, combined with the peas it's a complete protein!!), and some cucumber also is in here.

For the vinegrette it's pretty simple:
*1 tsp each of honey and dijon mustard (could be more, just taste and adjust to your tastebuds!!)
*1 TBSP each of lemon juice and red wine vinegar
*5-6 TBSP extra virgin olive oil.
(i like vinegrettes very vinegery so I always use less oil than the traditional 1 part vinegar 3 parts oil ratio.)
Mix in everything but the oil until well combined, add olive oil 2 TBSP at a time and whisk with a fork or one of those mini whisk thingy until it's all nicely emulsified...add salt and pepper to taste. This will be enough for a couple of BIG salalds or 3-4 small ones.
Homemade dressing are so easy to make and so much better than the chemical filled storebought stuff!



Tastes like summer....

Chicken Panini.

Today for lunch I had to finish the last piece of my Focaccia bread. So I made a sandwich. Well, I don't like calling the a "sandwich"...it's more like a panini. If I had to give it a name it would be...: Mediteranean Chicken Panini.



*Chicken, 5oz breast(yes, 5oz...I bought a scale, I weighted it...!) seasonned with salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder and oregano, cooked in a little oil in the pan.
*Salami, about 5 slices, crisped up in the micro-wave.
*Feta cheese
*Chives
*Sundried tomatoes
*Spinach.
*On Focaccia bread, with a little bit of dijon mustard.
*Toasted in a dry non-stick pan with some kind of weight on it to make it as flat as possible(or, in a panini press if you have one...).

Hit's the spot, doesn't it?

Sundried tomato and Feta omelette.

We've already established that muffins are my pre-swim snack. For the after swim I usually go with eggs. Omelettes, sunny-side, softboiled or scrambled...i love eggs. And omelltes are quite easy to make and they're very versatile. Today I went for sundried tomatoes and feta. I looooooove sundied tomatoes. You can buy them dry or in oil; I like them in oil. Then when the tomatoes are gone you're left with this awesome flavored oil perfect for salads. I also love love love feta cheese. So the two together can only be a delicious combo.
Now, today I had a bit of a "sticky" situation with my non-stick pan that's not really non-stick anymore...you can probably tell on that picture. But it was good anyway. Anything with sundried tomatoes...
This recipe is for 1 omelette. For 2 people double the ingredients.

Ingredients:
1 egg
2 egg whites(you can buy just the whites, in a carton. 2tbsp is 1 egg white)
1 green onion(or 2 if they're really thin)
2 slices sundried tomatoes
Black pepper(no salt! the feta is pretty salty already)
Oregano(eyeball it, i love oregano so I put like 1 teaspoon in it.)
1-2 TBSP Feta cheese.(not sure of the exact quantities, i'd say the size of a golfball...)

-Mix egg, egg whites, onion, tomatoes, pepper and oregano.
-Throw in a med-high heated pan(i always put a little nub of margarine, to prevent from sticking to my "non-stick" pan...it works MOST of the time...)
-When it starts to "take" throw in the feta.
-Fold carefully in half, let it go for a minute on one side, flip it and turn the heat off.
-Done!