back to the rain

Last week we had a family reunion and of course it rained.

 We've had so many sunny days since the beginning of the year and this summer has been tinder dry.

Water restrictions, etc. So the one day we could have used some lovely warm weather, it rained. We had fun anyway and the rain let up for us to have a trip to the beach - although it was very windy so apart from my nephew throwing himself into the waves, no one went swimming.

 We very much enjoyed the kite surfers in the bay as well.

The huge wind and rain storm seems to have marked the turning of the season - it's been cool and grey since the weekend even though I am loathe to give up my summer wear, I've added big sweaters on top to keep warm and have been snuggling under blankets of an evening while reading. Last night I made this lovely supper thanks to Luisa at Wednesday Chef. It seemed perfect for a cool, rainy evening. And it was.

Baked Sicilian Rice (adapted from the Wednesday Chef)

I used only red peppers as that is what I had, no pepper flakes or basil as my husband can't eat chili and my basil plant didn't survive our vacation. Instead of plum tomatoes, I used a bunch of cherry tomatoes cut up that came from my cousin's garden.

320 gms arborio rice
3 tbsp olive oil, plus some for the dish
150 gm provolone, grated
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 small onions, thinly sliced (I used some red onion and shallot)
2 red peppers, sliced into thin strips
1 large eggplant, halved and sliced
handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced into thin strips (equivalent to 3 plum tomatoes)
2 tbsp salted capers, soaked and rinsed
1/4 c cured black olives, pitted
Salt

Boil a large amount of salted water in a saucepan; once boiling add the rice and simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain well and add 1 tbsp olive oil and 50 g of cheese and stir, Put aside.

Meanwhile heat the rest of the oil in a saute pan, add the garlic, onion, peppers and eggplant and cook over medium-high for 5 minutes. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, add the tomatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add the capers, olives and cook for 5 minutes. Season to taste.

Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Oil a baking dish. Spread half the rice over the bottom of the dish. Add half the vegetables evenly over the top and sprinkle half of the remaining cheese over the top. Repeat once more. Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbly. Let sit for 5 minutees and serve.

croissants

We finally had some rain this past weekend. I was so happy to wake up to the sound of solid rain fall on Sunday morning (fortunately I had brought the patio cushions in from outside).

It has been beneficial to my parched garden and more importantly, helped reduce or contain the number of forest fires burning around here. I spent the morning in the kitchen baking and it was lovely.

I tried my hand at croissants using a recipe I found on BBC Good Food. In the end, I baked the dough off in three sections, making a pan full of croissants each time, all various sizes. You need to start the dough a day before you want to bake them, to allow the dough to develop and rest. Although the recipe says it takes a lot of elbow grease to make these, I found the hardest part was rolling the cold butter into a rectangle.

Croissants (adapted BBC Good Food)
from
625 g all purpose unbleached flour
75 g sugar
1 tsp salt
7 tsp bread yeast
500 g butter, cold

The day before you want to bake the croissants, measure the flour, sugar, salt and yeast into a food processor fitted with a dough hook. Pour in 350 mL of water and form a dough. Add up to an extra 50 mL to get the dough to form if required. Knead for 8-10 minutes until the dough is smooth and stretchy. Set aside to rest.

Take the chilled butter and place between two sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper and roll out into a rectangle about 30 x 20 cm, about 1 cm thick. Put in the fridge to chill.

Turn the rested dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a rectangle measuring about 60 x 30 cm. Place the butter in the center of your dough rectangle (having removed the plastic or parchment paper). Fold one edge of the dough over half the butter (top down) and then the other edge over the other half of the butter (bottom up) and then fold the top half over the bottom half. Rotate the dough a quarter turn and roll out into a rectangle measuring 60 x 30 cm. Repeat the folding, turning and rolling three more times, on the final turn leave the dough after folding, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 24 hours.

wrap well, this dough expands in the fridge!

Once the dough is rested, remove from the fridge and roll out into a rectangle about 0.5 cm thick, cut into strips and then cut into triangles about 10cm wide at the top. From the top end, pull out the ends of the dough a bit, and roll towards the triangle point until the crescent shape is formed and the triangle point is rolled over the middle of the croissant.

Place the croissants on a baking sheet lined with parchment and let rise for 30-45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 deg F. Beat an egg in a small bowl and once the croissants are risen, brush the egg wash over the surface of each croissant. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

rain, rain go away

It was raining again on Wednesday. And it just seemed as though every last person around was just sick of it. Maybe because the forecast for the week was supposed to (finally) be sunny and warm. Not so much. It is cold and wet and we want sunshine.

When I picked up the boy from daycare, the kids were all singing, “Rain, rain go away – come again – NEVER!” And both the boy and I were grumpy.

I was reading Ottolenghi's column and he had recipes for quick cooking polenta. While his recipes had a decidedly spring like bent, it reminded me of my oven baked polenta recipe. So I made polenta with sausage and vegetables. More of a wintery food but it seemed to be called for on a wet, chilly, grumpy Wednesday night. And I made lots so there would be filling leftovers for lunches.



Polenta (adapted from Alton Brown)
2 shallots, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
6 c vegetable broth
1 12/ c corn meal
¼ c parmesan cheese, grated

Heat the olive oil in an oven proof sauté pan. Add the shallots and heat until tender and slightly brown. Add the broth. Add the corn meal to the broth, whisking while adding. Let the mixture come to a boil. Put a lid on the pan and place in a 350 deg F oven. Bake for 40 minutes, whisking the mixture a couple of times in the baking process. Remove from the oven and mix in the cheese. Serve.

Sausage and Vegetable Cheese Sauce ( a mummydinosaur staple)
1 small onion, sliced
½ lb mild Italian sausage meat
1 orange pepper, thinly sliced
1 c of sliced mushrooms
1 c frozen peas
1 c frozen corn
2 ½ tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
420 mL milk or stock (or mixture)
½ c grated cheddar cheese
Salt, pepper, cayenne, worchestershire sauce

In a sauté pan, heat the sausage meat and onions until the sausage is a bit browned. Add the peppers and mushrooms and continue to cook until soft. Add the peas and corn. In a separate pan, add the butter, flour and milk/stock and heat over medium high heat, whisking until all the ingredients are incorporated. Heat to boiling and then turn the heat down to simmer for 5 minutes. Add the seasonings to taste. Add the cheese and stir well to melt it into the sauce. Pour the sauce over the sausage and vegetable mix and stir well to incorporate all the ingredients.

To serve with the polenta, plop a couple of big serving spoonfuls of polenta in the bottom of a bowl and pour a similar amount of the sausage and vegetable sauce over the top. Serve hot with extra cheese if desired.

digging at last

The rain has started again. As it grows dark here, the raindrops are plinking against the window and I'm grateful, that although the raindrops threatened more than a few times in the last 2 days, the rain (showers?) held off until now. Today, after a run to the garden store for bags of soil and amender, I pulled out the potato grow bags and some cedar planters and we started digging. We filled the bags and planters with some composted soil from last fall and topped them up with the new amender and soil and I planted potatoes, spinach, chard and radishes. In the next couple of days, I hope to get the peas and sweet peas seeded as well. Also time to start the arugula and basil (indoors).


here are my helpers filling the bottom of a pot with styrofoam

Out in the front, the star magnolia is about to burst into bloom and the camelia has a few flowers peeking out and one lonely daffodil has poked up. Ah spring!

rainy saturday

The rain was pouring down when we were awakening by T's thundering feet down the hallway. It always makes me laugh when I hear the expression, the pitter-patter of tiny feet, because in our house it is more like the thundering rampage of a herd of elephants - all from one three plus boy! T announced that the rain was really loud and it was - sheets of it banging against the roof and the garden and the skylights. After a cuddle, we got up and ran around getting ready for swimming at 9AM. T had a great time jumping and splashing and diving. His poor instructor has to spend a lot of her time getting him to sit down on the steps or to join the circle but she said he listens to her so hopefully it is ok.

We ran errands after swimming and were home, with groceries unpacked by 11 AM!

I made a big pot of baked beans from the America's Test Kitchen recipe. Bacon, onion, molasses, mustard, salt, beans and water all simmered for hours in the oven, spreading sweet molasses smell all through the house. And now a big pot of delicious beans to eat.

I made vegetarian moussaka for supper, followed by peach galette. D liked the galette - half of it was gone this morning! (Either that or the cat has taken to eating pie!)

While the beans were cooking, D played trucks with T. I put together train tracks and T made a super long train to chug around them. And then we played hide and seek. T doesn't quite get the hiding part yet - he usually tells us where he is going to hide and gives himself away by giggling madly the whole time or yelling "are you coming to find me?"