Homemade Flat Breads

We're making these for a Roman feast tonight. The girls are studying Latin this year and Snowy is studying Ancient Rome right now and it's a rainy, grey sort of day that could do with something delicious and fun.

2 cups bread flour
2 cups plain flour
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp salt
2 tsp dried yeast
300ml warm water

Dissolve yeast in warm water with honey. Rest for 10 min until bubbly.

Add salt and flour until dough comes together. Turn out onto floured surface and knead 10 min.

Let it prove until doubled in volume, about 1 - 2 hrs.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. Place a baking tray in the oven.

Cut dough into 12 pieces. Form into little balls, coat with flour and roll out into discs 1/2cm thick.

Bake one at a time by tossing the discs onto the heated baking sheet. It takes about 1 -2 min to cook, or when it has puffed up then collapsed a little. Remove from oven with tongs.

Cool before eating as they are filled with steam and very hot!


This fab recipe comes from one of my favourite cook books, Baking Bread with Children by Warren Lee Cohen.

Strawberry and Coconut Loaf

I found this recipe when I was looking for a way to use up some squishy strawberries. It's delicious and it comes from this website www.beerenberg.com.au

* 1 punnet of strawberries
* 1 1/2 cups plain flour
* 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
* 3/4 cup caster sugar
* 1/2 cup desiccated coconut
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 1 tsp vanilla essence
* 1/2 cup olive oil
* 3/4 cup buttermilk

Method: 1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line the base of a 30 x 15cm loaf tin.
2. Puree strawberries in a food processor.
3. Sift flour and bicarbonate into a large bowl along with a pinch of salt. Stir through caster sugar and coconut.
4. Mix together eggs, vanilla essence, olive oil and buttermilk. Make a well in the centre of the sifted ingredients. Mix until mixture comes together. Lightly fold through pureed strawberries (do this by stirring only 2 or 3 times).
5. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. Serve sliced, plain or toasted, with a dollop of mascarpone.


I use one of Nigella's  suggestions when a recipe calls for buttermilk,  and simply stir 1tsp of lemon juice into a cup of milk and let it sit 5 mins. Not quite as nice as buttermilk but perfectly adequate.

Meatless Monday

Yellow Rice

1 onion, sliced
1 tsp tumeric
1 cup rice
3.5 cups stock
1 tin chickpeas
1/3 cup currants

Fry onion till soft. Add tumeric and cook 1 min. Add rice and stir to coat. Add stock, bring to the boil. Cover, turn the heat down and simmer 15 min. Add drained chickpeas and currants, simmer 10 min. Turn off heat. Stand, covered, for a further 10 min. Serve with toasted pinenuts if liked.


My Dad cooked this for lunch the day we brought Lucy home from hospital and I've loved it ever since.

Meatless Monday

Ok, so it's Tuesday. Let's not get all technical...these gozleme are delicious any day of the week!

Gozleme  - adapted from the recipe on Belinda Moore's website - she also runs the lovely  Spiral Garden at www.spiralgarden.com.au 


500g wholemeal flour
400g plain yoghurt
pinch of salt
500g cottage cheese
handful of other grated cheese of your choice
200g chopped baby spinach leaves

Make a dough with the flour, yoghurt and salt. Cover and leave to stand for 30 min.
Cut into 8 portions and roll out into largish, thin circle. Mix cheeses and spinach together. Put some filling onto each dough circle, fold over and seal. Fry in frying pan on med-high till both sides cooked. Serve with lemon wedges for squeezing over.
Seriously delish.

Meatless Monday

Adapted from Delicious magazine

Orecchiette with cauliflower and pangrattato

I cooked this last week and loved it because 1. it was delish and 2. I like saying 'pangrattato' - sounds much more elegant than 'breadcrumbs'. It says in the mag it serves 4 but this made enough to feed us and the neighbours!


1/2 cauliflower
sliced onion
sliced garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
600ml light evaporated milk
pinch nutmeg
100g sourdough bread, crusts removed and torn
4oog orecchiette
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley chopped
1 cup grated parmesan.

Heat oven to 180 degrees, drizzle bread with oil and bake for 10 min till crisp and golden, then crumble. Chop cauliflower and reserve 1 cup of florets. Cook onion and garlic for 2 min, add bay leaves, cauliflower and evaporated milk. Bring to just below boiling point, then simmer for 20 min. Cool, remove bay leaves and blend. Add nutmeg.
Cook pasta, adding reserved cauliflower for the last 3 min of cooking. Drain, then add cauliflower puree, stir until warmed through. Add parsley and cheese and stir. Season. Serve topped with pangrattato ( I even like typing it! )

Meat-Free - Suggestions ??

Living with one child who doesn't like meat, two who can take it or leave it, and feeling increasingly bothered by the idea of eating factory-farmed animals (though not, I have to confess, the idea of eating animals themselves ), I'm thinking that it might be time to up the number of vegetarian meals we consume in a week. Any suggestions for recipe books, websites or blogs that have yummy, kid-friendly, non egg-planty, vegetarian meals ? Leave me a comment or email me if you do. I'd be most grateful.

Meatless Monday

This one's early, to make up for the poetry being late!


Red Lentil Soup

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tin tomatoes
1 1/2 cups red lentils
4 cups stock
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander

Cook onion in a large saucepan until soft. Add garlic and spices, cook until fragrant.
Add lentils, tomatoes, stock. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until lentils are tender. serve with a spoonful of natural yoghurt or chopped coriander or both!

Meatless Monday

It could be Meatless Wednesday, I suppose, but in the interests of alliteration as well as saving the planet, Meatless Monday it is.

Silverbeet Curry

6 large potatoes cubed.
1 onion
5cm ginger
garlic
1tsp each of cumin, coriander, mustard seeds
6 curry leaves
1/2 tsp tumeric
400g can of tomatoes
bunch of silverbeet, washed and chopped
coriander

Chop onion and garlic, grate ginger and fry. Add spices and fry till fragrant. Add potatoes, tomatoes and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, lower heat and simmer 25 min. Add silverbeet and coriander, simmer 10mins. Serve with flatbreads.

Flatbreads

250g plain flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup warm water.

Mix to a dough. Leave for 30 min covered in bowl. Cut into 8 pieces. Roll out nice and thin, cook in a hot frying pan until brown and puffed up on one side, turn over and brown other side. Keep warm.