I’ve been thinking quite a bit about locally grown food lately — not unusual for me by any means,  but my thoughts have just been more intensely focused.  So it shouldn’t be unusual for an article like “Butchers’ Banquet:  England’s Lincolnshire Wolds” published in the October 2011 issue of Saveur to have an impact on me.  I’m always looking for truly good recipes for traditional food, and even though I’m not British, I have solid connections.   In 1881 at the age of three, my great-grandfather sailed with his family from Newport, Wales to San Francisco hoping to find inexpensive land where his family might grow apples.  But that’s a story for another day.

This is more about the group of men mentioned in the article who have gotten together over years and years to enjoy a Sunday meal each week.  They know where the food has been grown, how it’s been grown, and have prepared it to showcase its quality.  Of course, it helps that they’re in the business.  I’d like to be invited to a table like that to hear the talk and understand more about what they know.  I’ll work on that from here in San Diego and maybe, just maybe, by the end of this year, I’ll know more about the more than 6,000 farms in our county and the farmers who tend them.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share these great Steak & Guinness pies with you.  My father-in-law loves Stilton and will jump at any excuse to tuck his napkin into his shirt and cozy up to a plate of hot food like this with a pint.  The recipe isn’t challenging, but does take some time, so plan ahead.  It’s worth it.

Steak & Guinness Pie Recipe

Filling Ingredients

¼ c. olive oil
1-1/4 lb. beef chuck, cut into 1″ cubes
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large yellow onions, sliced
2 ribs celery, thickly sliced
2 small carrots, thickly sliced
2 T fresh rosemary, chopped
1 12-oz. bottle Guinness
1/4  cup flour
2 c. vegetable stock
2 tsp. mustard powder
1 bay leaf
1 T olive oil
10 oz. mushrooms, quartered
6 oz. English Stilton, crumbled
1 medium zucchini, sliced quartered
1 egg, lightly beaten

For the crust, use the dough recipe from my Cornish Pasties .

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Season beef with salt and pepper, then brown in batches, removing to a bowl as it finishes.
3. Add the garlic, onions, celery, carrots, and rosemary to the skillet and saute until softened and just beginning to brown.
4. Pour in the Guinness and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 20 minutes.
5. Sprinkle the flour into the mixture and cook, stirring until mixed.
6. Add the browned beef to mixture along with any juices that have accumulated in the bowl, the stock, mustard, and bay leaf.  Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat and cook partially covered,  about 1½ hours.
7. Make the dough for the tops while the beef is cooking.  Wrap in plastic and chill until ready to use.
8. After the beef mixture is done, remove it from the heat and set it aside.
9. In another skillet, heat the 1 T of olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the mushrooms and zucchini and cook, stirring, until browned, then add to the beef mixture.
10. Add the Stilton to the mixture and stir in.  Correct seasoning.
11. Heat oven to 375°.
12. Divide beef mixture among four 6″ oven-proof bowls or pie pans able to hold up to 12 oz.
13. Roll the dough into a 14″ square and cut out four 6″ circles.  Press each circle gently down over the filling.
14. Brush the dough with the egg and with a pair of scissors, cut an “x” into the top of each.
15. Bake on a baking sheet until browned and bubbling, about 40 minutes.

Notes:

• This recipe was adapted from this one which accompanied the article linked above.
• I’ve made it a couple of times and although I have switched things up a bit each time, it’s just plain delicious.  Is there such a thing as gourmet pub food?
• The filling is very forgiving, but taking time to brown the meat properly without crowding it in the pan, and then allowing it to braise with the veggie mixture is key.
• You can make the beef mixture minus the Stilton a day ahead, covered in the fridge.  Reheat, add the Stilton, then place the dough on and bake.
• If you try the original recipe in the link, the purchased puff pastry is decent, but I loved the dough crust better.  It’s so easy to make — nothing fancy at all — give it a go!
• You’ll probably have dough and filling left over — I did each time I made it — so if you need to, you can probably squeak out six smaller pies.
• We enjoyed these pies with Bubble and Squeak.  Think mashed potatoes with veg and you’ll have it right.
• Now, for pork pie.  I have lots and lots of pork in my freezer from a local farmer.  Lots.

You’ve promised your body that you will adopt a healthier lifestyle — something just shy of a “diet” because you know yourself too well.  If what you’ve taken on is reduced to that, it’s probably not going to last because you don’t believe in diets — and for good reason.  You’ve seen too many people begin with all the motivation they can muster, then when they realize the pounds aren’t falling off as quickly as they’d like, or that after what is considered a good effort, they’ve plateaued, motivation dwindles and the “diet” is quietly ignored.  I can’t risk that because my knees will never forgive me for having to carry around 50 pounds they hadn’t counted on at their age.

Poor knees.

Last September when I began to think about more obsessively about my weight and lack of routine exercise (no coincidence since I’d just turned 55) I began to find reasons to avoid the kitchen.  Meals became food I could easily pick up and eat with little or no thought.  I stopped looking at new recipes and rarely used one to try something new for dinner.  And baking?  I stopped that almost completely because it seemed pointless to bake something, taste it, then try to find a home for it outside of mine.  I’ve never been a big sweets eater, but I thoroughly enjoy spending a morning in the kitchen baking something — especially if it involves a little thought or teaches me something new.  I miss that and know baking needs to be a part of my life — as does dessert.

Dessert is a food group, isn’t it?

I’m kidding, of course, but the point is I want to bake and enjoy dessert occasionally so have to find a balance with desserts that showcase a simple fruit without a lot of added sugar or an excessive amount of fat, for example.

Something classic, satisfying.  Elegant, but not fussy.

With apples.

Glorious apples.

Just a small slice?

Yes, please.

 Apple Tart Alsatian Style Recipe

Crust Ingredients

1-2/3 c. all-purpose flour

8 T butter, cold unsalted

1 whole egg

1 T sugar

pinch of salt

1-1/2 T cold water

Filling Ingredients

1/3 c.  blanched almonds

1/4 c.  sugar

1 T  all-purpose flour

2 egg yolks

1/2 c. milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 T Applejack or brandy (optional)

2 lbs. Honey crisp apples

apricot jam melted for glaze

Directions

1. Attach the metal blade and put all ingredients into the bowl of a food processor.
2. Pulse ingredients just until a ball begins to form on the blade.
3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and begin to lightly knead, using a pulling away action with the heel of one hand lightly pulling the dough away from the other.  Continue a few times until the dough is smooth.
4. Dust the dough with flour and make a flattened disk, cover well and chill while you make the filling.
5. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F and position the rack to the lowest position.
6. Place the almonds in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and run until reduced to a fine powder.  Add the flour and yolks, then process until the mixture is paste-like.  Pour the milk in and process until mixed well.  Add the flavorings and mix well.  Set aside.
7. Lightly butter a 10-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom.
8. Remove the pastry from the fridge.  On a lightly floured surface, roll it into a round disk about 1/4″ in thickness and 14 inches in diameter.  Place it over the tart pan and remove the excess dough.  Gently press the dough against the sides of the pan and lightly prick the bottom with a fork.  Chill.
9. Peel the apples.  Position each apple with stems pointing upward.  Cut down through the apple on opposite sides, running parallel with the core.  Do the same for the remaining two sides.  Your apples will be quartered and cored.
10. Place each apple quarter cut side down and make thin slices across the width of each piece.  Slide an offset spatula beneath each quarter and gently press down with your hand to slightly “fan” the pieces, being careful to hold the general shape of the apple quarter.  Arrange in the chilled tart shell.  Once the sliced quarters have filled the ring and center of the tart shell, dice the remaining apples to fill in between the sliced quarters.
11. Pour the custard mixture evenly over the apples.
12. Place the tart on a baking pan and slide it into the oven.  Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 425 degrees F and continue baking until the crust and apples are golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.
13. Remove from the oven and immediately remove from the tart pan.  After removing the ring, run an offset spatula beneath the tart to remove it from the metal bottom before allowing it to cool on a baking rack.
14. Heat the apricot jam and using a pastry brush, gently coat the top of the tart as it cools.
15. Once cool, remove to a serving platter.

Notes:

• Having always been a lover of French cooking, I recently purchased French Classics Made Easy by Richard Grausman, thinking it would be nice to learn some new tips for making some of my favorite recipes less fussy.
• I tried this tart recipe first because I’ve always wanted to learn how to structure one in this Alsatian style, which can be used for any fruit such as pears, apricots, or plums.  It’s pretty easy as long as you have an offset spatula.
• What isn’t necessarily easy about making this tart is getting it completely out of the tart pan when it’s hot from the oven.  Not only is the ring hot — if the bottom of the crust isn’t done, then getting it off the metal bottom to cool on a rack is a challenge.  Mine wasn’t completely done, so I put it back in the oven (it was turned off, but still very hot) without the baking pan beneath it for about 5 minutes.  I was able to remove the bottom then.  I guess my worries about a tart pan sitting directly over the heat on the bottom rack of a 500 degree F oven even for 10 minutes should have been ignored.  If I’d decided to put the tart in there without the baking pan from the start, I probably would have been able to remove the tart from the metal bottom easily.
• If Honeycrisp apples aren’t available, try any apple that holds up well in the oven — Pippin, Granny Smith, Jonathan, Jonagold, Braeburn, Winesap, Gala, and many more.  Check your regional resources for what’s most available and when.
• So what about the diet?  Well, traditionally, this type of tart is make with a very rich custard, but this one is pretty much made of fruit.  The crust is very thin — you know where I’m going with this.  Moderation! Enjoy a small piece and share the rest.  And, I made this tart early last October, so it wasn’t a current temptation, but biting into it is all about the apple.  Nothing overly sweet, and definitely without any kind of eggy custard flavor that I know many don’t always like.  It’s a pleasant recipe easily made with whatever fruit you have available.
• I need another cookbook like I need another leg, but I’m glad I decided to get this one.

Apple Tart Recipes from Around the Web:

Beyond the Plate — Apple Tarts (Tarte Aux Pommes)

My Baking Addiction — Custard Apple Tart Recipe

Gimme Some Oven — Easy Apple Tart

Sprinkle Bakes — Easiest Ever Rustic Apple Tart

Oh, the over indulgences of the weekend.  New recipes tried and sampled a bit too much.  Football season in full gear, so lounging more than we normally might, our comfies donned, windows snapped shut against chilly and unexpectedly damp breezes.  Projects stalled while we stay indoors making like house potatoes.

Thank goodness for Monday morning and snapping back to a schedule.  For thinking about all that might be accomplished in a week’s time.  Promising myself to get back to healthy eating.

Exercise?

Hmmm…maybe.

In the meantime, smoothies help.  I’ve become addicted to them — especially the green ones.

So very, very good.

What ingredients do you like in your green smoothies?

Green Smoothie Recipe

Ingredients

1 banana

1 apple, seeds and core discarded

1/2 bunch kale, chopped & stems removed

1/2 can sparkling orange beverage

2 handfuls of ice

1 T ground flaxseed

Directions

1. Place first four ingredients in a blender and puree.
2. Add the ice and blend until smooth.
3. Add the flaxseed to the mix and puree until ready to sip through a straw.

Recipe Notes:

• This green smoothie recipe was adapted from one that appears in the October 2011 issue of Eating Well and it’s very tasty if you’re someone who like a good dose of green.
• Add 3 heaping tablespoons of plain non-fat yogurt to this green smoothie for a different texture and flavor.  It’s also good.
• Add raspberries instead of or in addition to the apple.  The color won’t be the most beautiful thing on the planet, but the combo packs a tangy punch.
• If you’re not someone who has tried a green smoothie, try to get past the green.  I know that’s odd when something is as green as this smoothie is, but think about it.  There’s a whole apple and banana in it.  One of the commercial brands I enjoyed for years had quite a bit of apple juice in it, so it was pretty sweet.  This one isn’t.  It’s sweet enough, light in texture, and very satisfying.
• The original recipe calls for orange juice and water, but I love the San Pelligrino Aranciata because it’s light and flavorful, and not filled with syrup like most carbonated beverages are.  Half a can has 70 calories of orange juice, water, and sugar.  It adds a nice tang.  When I don’t have this, I use sparkling water like Perrier.
• What’s all the fuss about kale?  It’s a power house full of vitamin K (good for our blood and bones), vitamin A (good for our immune system and vision), and vitamin C (good for our bones, skin, and blood).  Its health benefits are actually magnified when it is lightly steamed, so if you’re inclined, prepare the kale ahead of time by steaming for 5 minutes, then dividing it into quantities for smoothies or salads.
• If you use whole flaxseed, its nutritional value will be wasted since digestion cannot break down the seed.  In breads and other food that requires chewing, the whole seed adds a nice crunch, but is also chewed, so you get the the omega-3 fatty acids.  Use the ground flaxseed for smoothies.  Comprehensive information on flaxseed can be found at Medline Plus which is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health.
• A great place to get all kinds of information about the nutritional value in food is Nutrition.gov.  In particular the What’s in Food section is very helpful.

When I created sass & veracity more than four years ago, it was to give myself a space to write about my life as it relates to food — with just the hint of a smirk on my face.  The chances of my being completely serious about it never occurred to me at the time even though I’ve always been someone who is passionate about food.   I wanted to be light-hearted about it all, never expecting that I would be writing precise directions for recipes or searching for just the right light to shoot photos of the food we ate on a day-to-day basis.

What I did expect was stories — stories connected to life’s often pivotal moments and weaving it all together.  Stories about pregnancy and Monday night post Lamaze class burritos.  Sunday morning hamburgers and Charlie Chan. Or stories about why cold yams and spilled milk will always remind me of one of my grandmothers.  Biscuits and old boyfriends, raw shrimp cocktails and romantic dinners at home, and an old, dear doggo who loved tortilla chips.  Stories just like that.  And in the process, I thought perhaps I’d keep myself (and my best friend) focused on a diet we’d promised ourselves we’d go on, thinking if it’s written down, then we’ll stick to it.

Right.  When pigs fly.

I also thought that considering the number of cookbooks I own and food magazines subscribed to, trying new recipes and talking frankly about them would be a fun diversion.  After all, it’s what I’d done for years minus a food blog.  With my youngest son just beginning high school at the time, and mulling over a stay-at-home-mom status for the first time in my life, I knew I’d look forward to that diversion.  There was no real hustle bustle in our small family of three, no school lunches for little kids to pack, and nary a picky eater in residence to cater to.  Instead, my life-long affection for cooking would continue to grow, fueled by new found time to experiment with flavors I’d not tried before, and techniques I’d been too busy to find time to learn.  So I rolled up my sleeves and got busy.

But something happened along the way.  As seemingly hundreds of millions of new food blogs have appeared — okay, thousands? –  I began to feel as if a current I hadn’t anticipated was pulling me along with it.  If discovery is in order — and it should be — then heading in an unexpected direction could constitute quite an adventure.  But there’s a huge difference between looking around and feeling as if one is on a freeway during rush hour in LA instead of a lazy river paddling a kayak, or on a mountain trail, hiking through the trees.

Give me the river or mountain trail on any day.

So it makes sense then, that I’d enjoy cooking from Simply Scandinavian:  Travelling in Time with Finnish Cuisine and Nature by Tero Kallio and Kimmo Saira.  It’s a breath of fresh air.  Although my husband and I enjoy traveling, we’ve never been to Scandinavia, so our knowledge of this area of the world and its cuisine is lacking.  If asked about what marks the region’s cuisine as being unique, I’d struggle to come up with an idea outside of the ebelskivers we enjoyed in Solvang, CA many years ago, the Finnish Pulla I once made, or more realistically, the food displayed in Marcus Samuelsson‘s beautifully photographed book, Aquavit.  It’s all new to me.

At first glance, Simply Scandinavian looks like something I’d expect to see on a coffee table instead of a kitchen — especially my kitchen.  I’m not the neatest cook. Its glossy pages of large photographs featuring seasonal flora and fauna mingling with those of fresh ingredients featured in recipes would need to be protected from my splashing and stirring to preserve its beauty.

As much as the book features dishes “faithful to the Scandinavian tradition,” influences from other regions are acknowlegded as are the effects of interesting times in history where ingredients were affected by war shortages.  With an open mind I scanned the ingredients lists to get an idea of just how different this cuisine might be, surprised by what I found.  Many recipes included ingredients I’ve never heard of and had to do a bit of research on to begin to consider what might be substituted.  Vendace, sal ammoniac, cloudberries, swede, and most unusually, beestings, were all ingredients I googled.  Other ingredients such as reindeer, moose, birch sap, treacle, and rose hips were more familiar, but perhaps not as easily found in San Diego for a home cook wanting to sample Scandinavian dishes.

Organized by seasons, each section of Simply Scandinavian provides recipes for appetizers, main courses, and desserts.  A simple vegetable “Summer Soup” caught my eye as did the “Strawberry Meringue,” both of which would be lovely to enjoy at this time of year.  The “Cep Pie” sounds fantastic, but I’ll have to substitute mushrooms available here, so I’ve tagged that one for another time.  “Karelian Stew” which includes beef sirloin and pork loin with vegetables in beer laced with allspice berries is also on my list of recipes to sample.  Many of the main course recipes include allspice as well as some sweetness provided by a syrup, or fruit, so I decided to begin with “Loin of Pork, Cauliflower Puree, and Dark Beer Gravy” which called for treacle, a syrup.  But I’ll post that another time.   “Blueberry Cheesecake” is perfect to try now since blueberries are so plentiful and the recipe required no cooking — something that appeals to many home cooks.

Blueberry Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Base:

200 g (7 oz) digestive biscuits

80 g (2.8 oz) butter

Filling:

1 litre (8.4 cups) blueberries — ***see notes below

100 ml (3.4 fl oz) water

5 sheets gelatin

600 g (21 oz/1.3 lb) cream cheese

400 ml (13.5 fl oz) double cream

200 ml (6.8 fl oz) (4/5 cup) sugar — ***see notes below

1-1/2 tablespoons vanilla sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

icing sugar

Directions

Crush the biscuits into crumbs using a food processor.  Mix with the melted butter into an even paste.  Press the paste into the bottom of a dish with a detachable base covered with baking paper.  The biscuit base should be approximately 5 mm (0.2 inch) thick.

Pour the water and blueberries into a saucepan.  Pulp the berries with e.g. a pestle  Boil for a while.  Strain through a coffee filter, this gives you a clear blueberry juice.  Pour the juice back into the saucepan.  Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water for about five minutes.  Squeeze the water out of them and add them to the blueberry juice at a low temperature.  Wait until the gelatin melts.  Allow to cool.

Whip the cream.  Mix the cream, cheese (*see notes below), sugar, lemon juice, blueberry juice and whipped cream.

Stir until the mixture becomes evenly purple.  Cover the biscuit base with the mixture.  Smooth over the surface of the mixture with a spatula.  Allow to rest in its dish in the fridge for at least four hours or overnight.  Decorate with blueberries and icing sugar.

Recipe Notes:

• If you’ve never cooked from an international recipe, then having a kitchen scale is invaluable for many reasons.  It makes it very easy to create the recipe without having to do conversions yourself, but more importantly, it provides a way to make sure that the English measurement and its international conversion is accurate.  There were some discrepancies printed in the original recipe.
• ***The recipe calls for 1 liter or “8.4 cups” of blueberries, but  1 liter = 4.3 US cups — about 50% less than what the recipe states.  And since this recipe is calling for the juice of the blueberries to be used, I immediately worried about ending up with a thin mess so went with the 1 liter measure for the whole blueberries.
• The recipe mentions that the blueberries should “boil for a while.”  I allowed the juice to boil just until reduced to 2 cups of juice.
• There’s a liquor store not too far from our house that has a convenient selection of British pantry items — like Mcvities digestives — but I went with the gingersnaps in my own pantry.  I’d used them in a cheesecake before and knew they would work out just fine. Most often, I bake the crushed cookies after they’ve been pressed into the pan before adding the filling.  But in this recipe, there’s no baking involved and the crust — although discoloring due to the intense color — holds up fairly well.
• On the gelatin sheets:  there are 10 sheets to 1 oz of powdered gelatin, so 5 sheets equal 1/2 oz of powdered gelatine.  I added water to it to soften it before mixing it into the blueberry juice.
• Once the gelatine had dissolved into the blueberry juice, I poured it mixture into a different container to allow it to cool to room temperature.  The recipe directions instruct “allow to cool.”
• ***I used extra fine sugar and did notice the recipe called for “fl oz” for what is normally a dry ingredient.  I used the ml measure and forged ahead.
• Instead of vanilla sugar, used 1 tablespoon of liquid vanilla.
• I allowed the cheesecake to set overnight before piling on the blueberries and sprinkling with powdered sugar.
• The flavor is fresh, fruity, and pleasant.  The texture is more like that of a chiffon pie, and although the cream cheese is tasted, it’s not as strong as what I’m accustomed to in a traditional cheesecake.
• Speaking of the cream cheese:  the directions include another typo, I believe.  There should not be a comma between “cream” and “cheese.”  At first I wondered about whether there was a quantity of cream not listed which wasn’t whipped.  A technicality, but an important one should someone think to add liquid cream to the filling ingredients.
• To release from the pan, apply a very hot, damp cloth to the exterior of the pan until light pressure on the bottom allows you to push it upward.  It stores nicely in the fridge, and even travels well should you want to share it with others.
• I’d love to try a mixture of berries or perhaps other fruit — like mangos — or if cloudberries grew here in San Diego, that would be perfect.
• Lovely recipe!
• I was not paid to review this book, and the opinions I’ve expressed about it are my own.

Notes on what I learned about the ingredients found in Simply Scandinavian:

• Beestings, a primary ingredient for the “Beestings Brulee” recipe is essentially colostrum, or the liquid mammals secrete before milk is produced.  Here is a great piece on cooking with colostrum from a New Zealand small farms website.
• Nettles are used to make a pesto sauce in one recipe, and although I’ve heard others in the food world discuss their favorite method for preparing nettles, I’ve only seen them while hiking in our local mountains with 6th graders who were cautioned about steering clear of them. to avoid a painful rash.  They’re called stinging nettles, and interestingly enough, are considered a noxious weed in California.  From what I’ve read, soaking them before preparing them removes the “sting.”
• Treacle is a syrup produced in sugar refining, much like Golden Syrup.
• Vendace, a fresh water fish found in colder regions of the world can be one of many varieties of whitefish such as this one, and is considered endangered in some areas.
• A swede is a rutabaga, or “yellow turnip.”
• I found a source for reindeer or caribou meat online, but would rather not link to it.  It’s amazing what one can find on line, isn’t it?
• Sal ammoniac has been used in baking to produce crispness in cookies as well as to make a salty licorice candy popular in Scandinavia.

 Other sources featuring recipes from this cookbook:

Melecotte — “Beetroot Burgers“

mommie cooks — “Simply Scandinavian:  A Cookbook Review”

Mastering Finnish Cooking – Finnaussity — “Simply Scandinavian”

cook your dream — “Simply Scandinavian and Rye Canneloni”

Sometimes I’d love to skip dinner.

It’s beautiful in the evening just before the sun has set and I want to be on the patio enjoying the cool, dry air, watching the light against the the trees and houses change as the sun disappears into the Pacific.  I don’t want to waste one second of daylight at this time of year when the days are longest and sometimes, the temperature barely fluctuates between day and night.

Like right now.  It’s nearly seven and the sun isn’t quite ready to set.  Dinner is ready to prepare and won’t take all that long, but I’d rather be sitting in one of the chairs outside doing not much of anything.

All I’d need to complete the picture is some soft cheese — like burrata, perhaps some proscuitto, a handful of the sweet little sungold tomatoes my plant loves to produce, a nice crisp white wine, and good crusty rolls with a bit of something else added — like spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes.

If you’ve tried any of the recipes in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, then you know they’ll be good.  But do you know the secret to make them even more crusty?

I do.  And it works every single time.

Crusty Spinach Feta and Sun-dried Tomato Bread Rolls

Ingredients

1 c. fresh steamed spinach, chopped (see notes)

1 c. sun-dried tomatoes, julienned

3 egg whites

3 c. lukewarm water

1-1/2 T dry yeast

1 T kosher salt

2/3 c. feta, crumbled

1-1/2 T sugar

6-1/2 c. all-purpose flour

Cornmeal to sprinkle

Directions

1. Prepare the spinach first by steaming over simmering water until wilted.  Remove and when cool to the touch, squeeze in a fist or wring in cheesecloth to remove as much water as possible.  Set aside.
2. Make the dough by mixing the yeast, salt, spinach, feta, tomatoes, and sugar in a large container.
3. ***Add the egg whites to a large measuring cup, then measure the 3 cups of water to include the egg whites.  Combine with the spinach mixture.
4. Add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon only until all ingredients are moist.
5. Do not knead!
6. Cover the container lightly and rest at room temperature for 2 hours.
7. If you don’t plan to use the dough immediately, you can place it in the fridge, lightly covered until ready for use, up to 7 days.
8. To use immediately, sprinkle flour over the surface of the dough and pull off a baseball-sized piece.  The dough will be wet and soft, so sprinkling with a bit more flour may be necessary.  Shape into an even round.  Repeat until the dough is gone.
9. Allow each ball of dough to rest on a baking tray covered with parchment and lightly sprinkled with cornmeal for 1 hour.
10. Allow each ball of dough to rest for 1 hour on a baking tray covered with parchment that has been lightly sprinkled with cornmeal.
11. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F about 30 minutes into the resting period and place a tray for water into the oven on a rack at the lowest setting.
12. After the resting period, sprinkle the dough balls with flour and cut an “X” in the top of each with a pair of scissors by pinching into the dough.
13. Prepare a cup of very hot water.
14. Slide the baking tray into the oven and carefully pour the hot water into the tray set there earlier to create steam and quickly close the oven door.
15. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the rolls are a rich golden brown and have firm, crusty tops.
16. Cool on a baking rack before serving.

Recipe Notes:

• ***I had to edit this post because I omitted the inclusion of the egg whites.  Apologies!  My server went down while I was writing, and evidently I left that important step out.  Thanks to Ailouron for noticing. Much appreciated!
• This recipe was adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  The fabulous idea for using the egg whites in the water for the dough is theirs and can be found in this adaptation of their master dough recipe.  We’ve made it many times for holiday dinners and it’s truly the best recipe for rolls we’ve tried.  The only change I made for my adaptation above is to avoid brushing egg whites on the dough balls since flour is dusted over them before baking.
• One batch of dough should make about 10 good sized rolls and 1 small boule depending on what you’re interested in.
• I had quite a bit of spinach on hand one day and wondered whether there was such a thing as spinach bread, referred to “AB in 5″ and lo and behold there it was. I should have realized it wasn’t all that unusual.
• I had the julienned sun-dried tomatoes on hand so added them to the other ingredients and wanted to add chopped kalamata olives but sadly, didn’t have any.    The brand of sun-dried tomatoes I use comes in small bags, they’re pre-cut and quite soft — not the leathery ones sometimes sold in bulk.
• Make sure you steam enough spinach to make a fully squeezed 1 cup — at least 1 lb. of fresh spinach.  It’s better to err on the size of steaming more than you think you’ll need because you can always save the excess for another use.
• If you’ve never made AB in 5 dough before, it can seem quite different from making bread in a traditional way, but it’s easy to do.  In fact, my husband  enjoys making bread using their method, and he’s not a baker — let alone a bread maker.  Make sure your hands  are a bit wet before grabbing the dough from the container.  That keeps the process from getting too messy!  Don’t worry about whether all the rolls are exactly the same size, but if you have a scale, that can help.
• Don’t skip the steaming part — it really helps the rolls form a great crusty top.  Once you’ve poured in the hot water, keep the oven shut.  No peeking until you’re well into the baking process — 20 minutes to check for doneness.
• I do have a baking stone, but it’s a round pizza stone, so when I make rolls I use a baking pan instead.  They come out quite nicely.
• Truly a wonderful recipe!

For other versions of Spinach-based bread, you may be interested in the following:

Soul Curry:  Spinach Feta Bread

Baking and Books:  Rustic Spinach Feta Bread Recipe

The Knead for Bread:  Spinach Feta Bread Recipe

Simple Daily Recipes:  Spinach Feta Bread Recipe

Experiments of a Housewife:  Spinach Bread

The Way the Cookie Crumbles:  Spinach Bread

My food magazines seem to pile up quickly these days so to encourage myself to sit down long enough to look at them, I make a small pile and carry them from one room to another thinking their physical presence will be a reminder.  It’s not an effective plan on most days for obvious reasons, such as, I’m busy doing other things?

But last Friday the sun unexpectedly graced us with its brilliance burning through the June Gloom, and I found myself daydreaming out the windows instead of doing the dishes, listening to the dribble of water from the fountain on our patio my husband diligently worked on to get the large spout at the top to run well enough to fill the smaller ones.  Will wonders never cease.  It’s a nice sound that distracts me from the traffic just over our wall and watching the hummingbirds trying to bathe themselves in it is hilarious.  I haven’t been able to get a shot of them yet, but give me a few weeks.

I give in to the urge to go out and sit in the warmth.  The sun feels good, so I relax a bit and begin to thumb through the magazines remembering how much I enjoy the summer issues.  Everything is fresh and the recipes are relatively uncomplicated.

It’s not long after I’ve had some time to make a mental list of my favorites that I email my best friend and invite myself and husband to dinner at her house.  It takes a bit of arm wrestling to get her to agree to let me make the entire dinner, but she loves the recipes I mention, so dinner it is.

I make a quick run to the store for ingredients, do some easy prep, and everything is ready to pack up and take to her house for a night of food that comes one dish at a time — with wine, of course.

When’s the last time you grilled lamb?  This recipe is truly delicious, and quite easy to make — even at the last minute.

Grilled Lamb Chops with Garlic, Chilies and Anchovies from Food & Wine

I used the little bundle of mint from one of my planters that always seems to have grown back after its last plucking by the time I next need it.

The recipe calls for 3 red jalapenos, and I didn’t think anything of that at first because they never seem to have that much heat.  But after cutting into one, I could smell the pungency, so only used one.

The chiles release all their spicy goodness into the oil.

Chop the rest of the ingredients up to make a nice paste.

Pour all the goodness over the lamb — or put it in a plastic bag so it can sit and soak up all the flavors.

We grilled the racks whole to sear them, but sadly, did not protect the very delicate bones with foil first.  Yes, we know we’re supposed to.  The grill master mentioned that they were actually on fire at one time.

After the racks were seared (uh, almost incinerated), and after much discussion, both racks were sliced into 2-bone chops and sent back to the grill for additional cooking.  Just a bit.

Thankfully, they were absolutely delicious.

Recipe Notes:

• The original recipe can be found here.
• If you’re thinking “Ewww…Anchovies!” try this.  Anchovies lend such great flavor to so many recipes. To me, they seem to enhance the other flavors.  If you’re not sure, then cut down on the quantity, but give them a try.  And when you take that first bite, think of what you’re eating instead of, “This has anchovies in it.”
• I marinated two whole racks of lamb for this recipe instead of individual chops, putting all ingredients into a zip-lock bag for about 3 hours.  It was enough.  Even using only 1 chile, we could taste just a hint of heat.
• For extra heat for those who enjoy it, grill extra chiles and slice them up for serving.  It’s a nice accompaniment to a bite of the succulent lamb.
• Why racks of lamb instead of the chops the recipe called for?  Lamb chops are so very tiny and tender.  I enjoy doing different things with racks of lamb, so searing them before moving on always presents a nice, tender product.  The idea of using the grill for those tiny things had trouble written all over it — especially considering the oil in the marinade which caused the flare up.  We grill quite often, but we’re not experts.  Wasting a lovely natural lamb product isn’t worth it.