No-Time Bread

4 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast (two packets)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups water
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

• In the bowl of a heavy-duty stand mixer put the yeast, sugar, and water and let it sit.
• Heat the oven to 450°F. Put a Dutch oven (or one of these alternatives) in to warm as the oven heats. Get out your flour, salt, vinegar, spray oil, and anything else you need.
• Now that the yeast has had a few minutes to bubble up, add 3 cups of the flour as well as the salt and vinegar and beat for several minutes with the paddle. Add the last 1/2 cup of flour and switch to the dough hook and beat for seven minutes. Alternately, knead vigorously for five minutes, or until the dough becomes extremely elastic. This will still be a wet dough, but not goopy. The dough will clear the sides of the bowl but still stick to the bottom.
• Lightly grease a microwave-safe bowl with vegetable oil and transfer the bread dough to it, rolling it in the oil. Cover the bowl with a very wet towel. Cover the whole thing with a dry towel and put in the microwave. Microwave on HIGH for 25 seconds.
• Let rest in the microwave for about five minutes.
• Microwave on HIGH for another 25 seconds, then remove.
• Let rest and rise for another 15 minutes.
• Shape into a ball and plop into the preheated pan. Quickly slash the top with a knife. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes, then remove the cover and bake for another 10 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature hits 210.

RESULTS:
Chris and I are both sick, and our food supplies are awfully low, so bread seemed like a good thing to make. I was more intrigued by this recipe than expecting it to be good--I mean, how can you beat good old regular bread? First impression is that calling it "no-time" bread is a bit of a misnomer. I mean, it still takes about an hour to come together, which is certainly shorter than regular bread, but it's not like you can just pull it together last minute. It's also certainly not simpler than regular bread. I also think it could have used more salt.

Quick Pickled Zucchini

Just the other day I was wondering, "I wonder if I can pickle zucchinis?" and then Beth emailed me this recipe from 101 cookbooks.

Ingredients

• 3 medium (1 pound) zucchini, thinly sliced

• 1 medium white onion, thinly sliced

• 3 shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fine grain sea salt or pickling salt
  
• 1/4 cup (small handful) fresh dill sprigs
• 1 small fresh red chile pepper, very thinly sliced
• 1/2 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
• 
3/4 cup cider vinegar

• 3/4 cup white wine vinegar

• 1/3 cup sugar

Directions
Toss the zucchini, onion, shallots, and salt together in a colander and place over a bowl to catch the liquids. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least a couple hours. Toss once or twice along the way. You're aiming to get as much liquid out of the zucchini as possible.

When you're finished draining the zucchini, shake off any water. At this point you want the zucchini as dry as possible. Place in a 1 liter / 1 quart jar along with the dill, chile pepper, and mustard seeds. Alternately, you can cram them into a 3/4 liter Weck jar like I do, but it's always a bit snug in the jar.

Combine the ciders and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and continue to boil for a few minutes. Pour the liquid over the zucchini and seal the jar. Let cool, then refrigerate. The pickles are good for a week or so.



Makes one quart.

Results:
Unknown. I'm in Stevens Point right now for a conference and I put these together right before I left. At first whiff, they smelled like McDonald's pickles, but better.

Addendum:
These are pretty good! They go really well with, of all things, tuna fish. They don't keep tremendously long, only a couple weeks, so don't hold back when you're eating them.

Peanut Butter-Banana Oatmeal

From the Washington Post:

Summary:

The banana and peanut butter flavors in this creamy oatmeal are quite subtle. It tastes even better the next day, so you might want to make a double batch and keep it in the refrigerator; reheat with a little extra milk.

2 to 3 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal (do not use quick-cooking or instant)
• 2 1/3 cups water
• Pinch salt
• 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
• 1 banana, cut into 1/4-inch slices
• 1/3 cup low-fat milk
• 1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter

Directions:

Combine the oatmeal, water and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring, over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, until thickened and creamy. Add the peanut butter, banana, milk and butter; mix gently to combine. Cook for 1 minute. Divide among individual bowls and serve hot.

Results:
There's already a chill in the air here in the Great Northwoods. The mornings have been brisk, to say the least, and as I don't have to be anywhere today until 9:30, I thought I'd make myself a nice hot breakfast. Peanut butter and banana are in my top most favorite flavor combinations of all time, but I was a little disappointed. They're definitely "subtle," as the recipe claims, in this dish. I kicked it up by adding a little bit of homemade jam that my friend Sally gave me. And it is certainly creamy. I'm not sure how necessary the butter is, I bet you can leave that out.
Addendum:
Having gotten to the end of the bowl, I'm not sure I'd make this again. It was just TOO creamy, if that's possible, and not quite to my taste. But you might like it. :)

Harper does not like Frank Lloyd Wright

Chris and I said goodbye to summer with a trip down to Chicago for a wedding. The wedding was awesome, but also cool was the neighborhood we stayed in, Oak Park. Birthplace of Hemingway and proud show-er off-er of many Frank Lloyd Wright homes and his studio. It was amazing. We stayed at the Write Inn (which accepts dogs, by the way, and it fairly reasonably priced for it's location) which is right at the edge of the Wright houses (quick, how many homophones were in that sentence?). While Chris was helping get the wedding reception music set up, Harper and I went for a walk around this fabulous neighborhood. There were tons of tourists wandering around, and even the houses that weren't Wright homes were amazing. This house in the photo was his first independent contract after leaving his firm.

We also came across a bust of Wright, which had these hollow soulless eyes. Harper did NOT like this bust. She had an immediate distrust of it. It wasn't until I went up to the head and started poking it that she would approach it and sniff it, but she still didn't like it.

Chris was gone this weekend, so....

Items put up this weekend:

• 1 qt raspberries (frozen)
• 5 lbs roasted roma tomatoes (frozen)
• 6 pints pickles (frozen, thus bringing the season total for freezer pickles up to 12 pints)
• 20 pints crushed tomatoes (canned--it was a group effort, I'm getting 5 jars)

Items unsuccessfully attempted:

• 10 lbs apples sauce from crab apples (I don't have a food mill, and I wasn't going to peel all those tiny apples, but I thought maybe a sieve or a potato ricer would work to separate the peels from the apple mush. They didn't. Luckily, I tried it with only 2 lbs first, so I only have a little bit of skin-on apple mush to work through. It tastes very good with yogurt!)
  

Sweet Corn Pancakes

I got to go to the farmer's market for the first time in weeks yesterday. I went a little overboard and bought enough to feed a family of four vegetarians. Contributing to this was my mistakenly buying a dozen ears of corn instead of my usual 6 (I must have been checked out yesterday because when he gave me the corn and I noticed how much heavier the bag was than usual, I thought it was due to all the rain we've been getting. It didn't occur to me until I was home that it was heavier than usual because I had bought twice as much corn). However, this is a happy thing, to have too much corn, especially when it is literally the tastiest corn I have ever had in my life. Very, very sweet. But what to do with it all?

Enter the recipe below. It was good, it pretty much tastes like pancakes with corn in it, but that's a fun twist, no? From Smitten Kitchen.

Makes about 9 to 10 4-inch pancakes

2 tablespoons butter (1 ounce or 28 grams), plus additional for brushing pan
3/4 cup kernels cut from one large ear sweet fresh corn
1/8 teaspoon (1 gram) salt plus additional for seasoning corn
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups (296 ml) buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon (13 grams) sugar
3/4 cup (3 3/8 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (3/4 ounce or 22 grams) cornmeal, any kind
1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Melt butter in a large cast iron skillet or griddle pan over medium heat. Add corn and saute for 4 to 5 minutes, until it begins to brown ever-so-slightly. Sprinkle with salt and set aside to cool. Wipe out skillet.

Lightly beat egg in the bottom of a large bowl, then whisk in buttermilk, corn, vanilla and sugar. In a smaller bowl, whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Stir dry ingredients into wet, mixing until just combined but still lumpy in appearance.

Reheat your skillet or saute pan to medium. Brush the pan with butter and ladle 1/4 cup batter at a time, 2 inches apart. When the pancakes have bubbles on top and are slightly dry around the edges, flip them over and cook them until golden brown underneath. If they seem to be cooking too quickly (dark on the outside, raw centers) turn your heat down to low for the next batch and inch it up as needed. Repeat with remaining batter, and serve immediately with a pat of salted butter and a healthy dose of maple syrup.

Corn Chive Pudding

From Gourmet cookbook. This recipe is the reason I bought the cookbook. Suz would make it and it would be heavenly. You can use fresh corn or frozen corn. Make sure you stick to the amount of corn (20 oz) as if you have too much corn, the pudding will be loose and runny.

Serves 8

Ingredients

• two 10-ounce package frozen corn kernels, thawed
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 cups milk
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped, reserving pod for another use
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
• a pinch freshly grated nutmeg

Garnish:
Garnish: 3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. and butter a 1 1/2-quart quiche dish or pie plate.
2. In a food processor pulse half of corn until chopped coarse. In a bowl stir together chopped corn and remaining corn kernels and sprinkle with sugar and salt, stirring until combined well.
3. In another bowl whisk together milk, eggs, vanilla seeds, butter, flour and chives and stir into corn until combined well. Pour pudding into quiche dish or pie plate and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake pudding in middle of oven until center is just set, about 45 minutes. Garnish pudding with chives.