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.

gulp

Where is the summer going? I realized the other day that there was only a month left til the boy begins school again, in Grade 4. Wait, what? It's been a wierd couple of weeks.

 The weather has been more west coasty - cloud, rain, and then sun, sometimes in the same day or same hour but after weeks and weeks of sunshine, it is taking some adjustment. We've still had days at the beach with waves to jump around in and if we stay for supper, glorious sunsets.

 And just because it is summer, doesn't mean that life is all summery. There was some sad news for our school community a few weeks ago and my heart breaks for a family in mourning. And our group of friends are gearing up to say adieu to a family moving away for a couple of years. But on the plus side, we are looking forward to a family reunion at the end of the month and the boy is anxious to play with his cousins.

Amongst the sad news at the end of July, came the good news of a new addition in our extended family which prompted a crafting fever by myself. Out of the craft cupboard came the felt and fabric, cutting mats and cutters and projects that have been sitting in waiting for ages are coming to fruition.

an oops cake - delicious but a bit messy after the layers slipped around in the heat

quilt for a new addition

Of course, my sewing machine has mutinied and is off at the shop being repaired, so I dug a serger out that I got at a huge sale eons ago and never managed to learn how to use, and have been using it. Teaching this old mummy dinosaur new tricks!

 I made a couple of felt friends, altering a pattern to make a lion (finally as I'd been thinking about it for ages) and which I find slightly ironic given the media storm around this story. We had a stuffie lion, with a fabulous mane, when we were children, so stuffie lions have always had a place in my heart. Here's the one I made:

I also made a sheep:

Cooking seems to be (pardon the pun) on the back burner during these summer days but one staple has been these easy summer potatoes.

Easy Summer Roasties
1 lb small new potatoes (halve the bigger ones)
dash of olive oil
sprinkling of onion salt
salt and pepper

Place the potatoes in a baking dish and microwave for 5-7 minutes. Once done, add the oil, onion salt and some salt and pepper and make sure all the potatoes are covered. Roast in the oven for about 15 minutes at 375 deg F.

soft pretzels

orgami tigers

The heat has come back to the PNW which is not the perfect time for me to be on a baking streak. None the less, I have been making dough, in between fixing my KitchenAid mixer, as the head had come completely off the pin so was thunking around while kneading the dough, most alarming. However, we managed to get the pin back where it should be and the mixer head is back in place. Phew.

a goat spied on a local beach...

Also, in the midst of sewing some curtains for our newly painted laundry room (and sewing/craft/cat bedroom) my sewing machine began to sound severly asthmatic, slowed down and finally stopped completely, so it is off being repaired. Of course, I have been struck with quilting fever and want to be making and sewing a couple of projects, once the curtains are finished. Hopefully my old faithful Bernina can be repaired with a bit of TLC and possibly some oil.

In between mornings at drop in soccer camp and afternoons at the park or playing with friends or visiting lemonade stands, I made a couple of batches of these pretzels. The first batch I halved the dough and froze one half and made up the other half. The second batch went into the fridge after raising and was stickier than the first so I recommend based on my experience that if you don't want to make the pretzels right away, freeze the dough and then let it thaw when you want to make them.

I've seen many recipes for pretzels but they always seemed so complicated, what with food safe lye and the twisting etc. But recently I read this post from Things we make and it seemed I should try them. Hot cinnamon sugar baked dough sounded irristible. So I made them.

Hot Soft Pretzels (from Things we Made)
2 1/4 tsp bread yeast
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
4 tbsps butter, melted

Place the yeast, sugar, salt and flour in the bowl of a mixer, keeping the salt away from the yeast. Mix with the dough hook. Mix the melted butter into the milk and add slowly into the flour mix, until a dough forms. Knead for 8-10 minutes, until the dough is soft. Cover the bowl with the dough with plastic film and leave it for 1-2 hours to double in size.

Preheat the oven to 400 deg F. Take the risen dough and divide into 16 pieces. Roll each piece into a long sausage, not using flour so the dough will be easier to roll.

 Roll each dough sausage out evenly until over 12" long or longer. Take the ends of the roll and form a U with the dough. Twist the ends over twice and then pull them towards the bottom of the U and push them into the dough to form the pretzel. Continue with all the dough.

To Dip: Dissolve 2 tbsp baking soda into 2 c hot water in a largish bowl. With a slotted spoon, slip each of the pretzels into the water, lift out and place on a cooling rack to drain slightly. Once all the pretzels are dipped, place them on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for 4-5 minutes, turn the sheets and bake for another 4-5 minutes until brown.

Melt 2 tbsp butter. Once the pretzels are out of the oven, brush each with melted butter. Dip into a sugar cinnamon mixture (I've tried savory as well - chive and cheese is lovely). Eat.

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.

at sea

breakfast

My cooking mojo got up a left a bit ago and I've been struggling to find my way back. Two nights ago I  made what may arguably be the worst meal in my history. The base of the dinner was bento pork which I've made at least monthly since Molly posted the recipe but this time, I left it on too high a burner for too long and it ended up dry and overly salty and horrible. The tacos were bereft of both the slaw or salad they normally have as a topping as both had vanished from the fridge when I wasn't looking and overall it was a sad supper. My husband tried to make me feel better by telling me that one of his former girlfriends would have considered it a culinary masterpiece but I know terrible when I eat it.

smoke or cloud, I couldn't tell anymore

someone waded into ditches all along the trail

While recent dinners haven't been as awful as that one, I've been in a serious rut. Most of my suppers have been more about assembling than cooking.

on his way to kayak camp

 I could blame our unseasonably hot weather and the blanket of smoke that had my car covered in ash last week, thanks to forest fires raging in all directions (see unseasonably hot weather) but it doesn't really explain the blahs my cooking has been in for the past little while.

first zucchini from the garden

picking blackberries in early July?!

Here are some things that have saved my meals:

Almond pesto 
Cucumber and avocado salad
potato salad
scalloped tomatoes
sausages from here (also burgers, meat skewers, meatballs)
tomatoes from the garden

farm fresh fruit and veggies from the fruit stand and market
Dickie's ginger beer (on it's own or in Pimm's Cup - yum!!)

Last night I redeemed myself somewhat with a pesto pasta with chicken and roasted corn using the basil bunch I got from the market a few days ago and whizzed into a pesto. I used my food processor to make a chunky pesto as I am without a mortar and pestle to make authentic pesto. Instead of pine nuts, I added in a couple of spoons of almond pesto that I made the other night to go with some green beans which was the best part of that dinner.

Basil Pesto with almonds
1 bunch of basil, leaves stripped from stems
a few grinds of sea salt
2 tbsp almond pesto
50 grams shaved parmesan

Whiz the basil in a food processor until chunky. Add the salt, pesto and cheese and whiz briefly to mix. Pour in olive oil and mix until a chunky paste is formed.

Pesto Pasta with chicken and roasted corn
1 small package linguini
basil pesto
3 ears of corn, kernels cut of the cobs
1 cup diced cooked chicken (I used this one)
knob butter
parmesan cheese
dash of cream
salt and pepper

Cook the linguini in salted boiling water until al dente. Drain.

In a separate saucepan, large enough to hold the pasta and sauce, add a small knob of butter over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the fresh corn kernels and saute until some of the kernels take on a golden brown colour. Add in the diced chicken and mix to heat. Add the drained pasta and pesto and toss to mix. Add a dash of cream and salt and pepper to taste. If you have some lemon around, squeeze some lemon over to taste. Add cheese and serve.