What to do until the repairman comes

The Roman Spelt Bread

I didn't want to be way at the other end of the house in the office area, which is a wreck, while waiting for the repairman to arrive and do his magic, so I thought I'd find a way to use up that spelt flour I'd bought to make the Roman loaves. I liked the Roman bread. It was great with homemade "minner cheese," but I was the only one. So I had tried using mixed with white flour like you would with whole wheat it in a regular loaf of bread. Something about the taste of that experimental loaf made me think it would make good cinnamon toast.

Then I got the idea to make a cinnamon bread with it. I had an old recipe from back in the late 60s when I first started my bread making. This is a transcription from my childish scrawl.

Danish Cinnamon Bread (sorry, no provenance)

5 - 5 1/2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 t salt

1 pkg active dry yeast

1 1/4 cups milk

1/4 cup margarine

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

2 t cinnamon (or more + 1 T br. sugar)

In large bowl mix 1 3/4 cups flour, sugar, salt, & yeast. Combine milk and margarine in saucepan, and warm. Gradually add to dry ingredients and beat for 2 min. at med. speed scraping bowl occasionally. Add eggs and 1/2 cup flour, or enough to make a thick batter. Beat at high speed for 2 min. Add 2 - 2 3/4 cup flour, enough to make a soft dough. Turn onto lightly floured board, knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 mins. Place in greased bowl, turn greased side up. Cover, let rise in warm place for about one hour. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Punch dough down, turn onto lightly flour[sic] board, cut in half. Roll each half into 12"x8" rectangle. Brush lightly with melted margarine and sprinkle with half of cinnamon sugar (be sure to get it to long edges). Roll up jelly roll fashion, working from short side. Pinch edges and ends. Tuck ends under, and place seam side down in greased 8 1/2"x4 1/2"x 2 1/2" loaf pan. Cover, let rise until double, about 1 hr. Bake in 350 deg oven for 30 min until golden and top sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove immediately from pan, let cool on wire racks.

Well, no way I was making two experimental loaves, so this is what I wrote down to cut it in half:

3 c fl                        1 c

2 T sugar

1/2 t salt

yeast

heat, add to above [with only one cup of flour], beat

1/2+ c milk

2 T butter [I use butter now]

add rest of flour, knead, rise.

1/4 c sugar + 1 t brown sugar [Mistakenly used 1 T]

1 t cinnamon

I started with a cup of flour that was half all-purpose and half spelt. I substituted another half cup of spelt in the remaining flour. At this rate it will take ages to use up the spelt. Did you notice I left out the egg? I didn't. I had started the kneading process (with the dough hook, not by hand, that's for sure) when I remembered. I worked it in with the dough hook. It was fine. 

For years I under-kneaded bread dough. Now I knead the heck out of it. I run the mixer for 10 minutes and then give it some hand kneading while it's out of the bowl so I can put the oil in.

By the way, washing the bowl before oiling is a waste of time and water. Ditto using another bowl. 

I'm also careful these days to make sure the liquid is 110 degrees. I buy yeast by the pound (and keep it in the freezer) and the package says proofing is not necessary. They're right. Sometimes, like today, it needs a little extra time for rising, but then I usually only give it a half an hour. It had a full hour first rise and 40 minutes for the second. 

I bake a lot of bread. I just enjoy the process as well as the eating. And I finally invested in one of those bamboo bread slicer guides. Once the loaf is absolutely room temp ... I let my husband slice it. Then it gets bagged and frozen if it's going to be used any time soon. If it's for eating farther in the future, it gets wrapped in freezer paper and bagged before going in Phil*, our big freezer chest. I write the kind of bread on the freezer paper. It's handy for that. I used to use foil, but I inherited two rolls of freezer paper (as well as a rather old bottle of J&B scotch) from my parents' collection. Now I love freezer paper (but not scotch). 

About the slicer, it has three different sizes of slice and it took a while to figure out how to use it. You have to move the bread to use the slice size you want. If you just stick the loaf in and slice away, you end up with a loaf with three sizes of slice, which is close to what you had before you bought the thing except maybe you had a dozen different size of slice.

* I don't normally name appliances and cars, but when I said I'd bought a freezer chest a friend asked me what I was going to name it. "Philip," I responded, almost without thinking, "Philip the freezer." Say it out loud. And Phil is Phull.

Pad Thai - mmmm, Ketchup!

Pad Thai

                  

From Kamolmal's Thai Home Cooking

Soak 20 - 25 minutes in enough warm water to cover them, then drain           

½ lb dried rice noodles 1/8” wide

                             

1/2 lb shrimp (peeled and de-veined), chicken, or pork or a combination meat should be cut 1/8 thick by 1 - 2" long

 

Mix: 

1/4 c fish sauce

1/4 c + 2 T granulated sugar

1/4 c + 2 T white vinegar

1 t paprika or 1 T tomato paste or 1 T ketchup*

 

4 scallions, sliced diagonally into pieces 1 1/2" long by 1/4" thick

 

1/2 c vegetable oil

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 eggs

 

-

Heat a wok, add oil, stir fry garlic until light golden.  Add meat and stir fry until done (shrimp pink, other meat not pink).

Add noodles and toss.  Add fish sauce mixture and bring to boil quickly.  Fold noodles carefully to coat them.  Push noodles to one side and break an egg into the wok (may need a little more oil).  Cover with noodles.  Do the same on the other side.  When the eggs are done, fold them into the noodles and meat.

Add sprouts and scallions and cook 2 more minutes.  Garnish with chilies, peanuts, lime wedges (to be squeezed on by individual eater).

 

When I was in Toronto, I went to a brilliant Thai restaurant that served me a Pad Thai that was a work of art as well as delicious.  And their Thai iced tea was incredible.  The Pad Thai had the peanuts in one corner of the plate (if a round plate even has corners), more scallions in another, and strips of carrot in a third.  The whole thing was garnished with a shrimp sitting tail up in the center.  It was fantastic.  You could add as much of the peanut as you wanted, as if I would short myself in that department.  These people had presentation down pat.

 

*For years I used paprika and then one day I had a Pad Thai at a local restaurant (now defunct) and realized that they were using ketchup.  What the hell, I thought.  If they can use ketchup, so can I.

The Famous Club Sauce Recipe

Pretty as a picture! 

This is the family recipe for Club Sauce (according to my notes, it originally came from a nice lady named Rose Petz who had 2 Siamese cats called Si and Pinkie. Pinkie was the one with a big pink lipstick mark smeared on the top of its head every other day ... Okay, that wasn't all in the notes, but I remember her. She was a housekeeping mentor for my mom. Mom stopped by on Christmas day to bring her a gift and Rose was baking Christmas cookies. "A little late," my mom ventured. "I like my cookies fresh," snapped Rose.)

I'll start with the half recipe, in case no one has 20 lbs of tomatoes on hand.

10 lbs of tomatoes peeled and diced (or 10 of the what-used-to-be 1 lb cans but are now 14.something oz.)

3 cups of sugar

2 cups of vinegar (I used cider vinegar because I like the flavor)

2 T salt

4 onions (keep in mind that this is an old recipe that comes from the time when onions weren't the size of grapefruit)

6 red and/or green peppers

Cook all but the peppers 2 hours or until thick. Add peppers, cook 10 minutes. Might make about 6 quarts and a bit.

Getting ready to can.

1/4 recipe

5 lbs or cans of peeled, diced tomatoes (I love those petite diced ones)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 T salt

2 onions

3 red or green peppers

It only made 6 1/2 quarts, but I needed to fill
the middle space to use less water and the
measuring cup was to hold the half-filled
quart down.

The "Marf, I only have 2 cans of tomatoes in the pantry" recipe:

2 cans of peeled, diced tomatoes

3/4 cup sugar (can't you people do math?)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 T salt (I have a 1/2 T measure, but a heaping teaspoon also works)

1 onion

1 big green pepper (for color)

Now, the cool thing is, you can throw in anything else you think might add to the flavor, like some jalapeños or whatever. And then you can call it "salsa."

Brats with the homemade Hot Sweet Mustard Sauce
as well as the Famous Club Sauce. No bun. Buns
are "edible" napkins. Use a knife and fork like a
person.

Photo is the Serving Suggestion. The brats are from the hot dog section of Publix and I like them better than the Boar's Head ones because 1. they're slightly cheaper and 2. you get 6 in a 1 lb. pack instead of 4. Also pictured is my family's famed hot, sweet mustard sauce. Recipe for that on request.