Borek ( Spinach and feta layered Turkish bread)

Recipe from Home Cooking in Montana. This girl is great, I love her blog. I book marked this recipe months ago and finally got around to making it for my backyard knitting bbq this weekend. I pretty much followed her take on the recipe except I used active yeast instead of instant. So here's deal about yeast:

Instant yeast can be added directly to the dry ingredients. Active dry yeast has to be re-hydrated first. To do this you must use water that is no hotter than what you can comfortably put on the back of your wrist. If the water temperature is hotter the yeast will start to die. When substituting active in place of instant use 25% more.

I also didn't have a mixing machine with a paddle so I just kneaded the dough by hand (about 10 minutes, or 3 songs on my ipod shuffle). It's really difficult to over knead bread by hand so don't be afraid to go at it. In retrospect, I could have kneaded the dough even longer. My bread didn't rise as much as Ellie's, but it was still delicious.

Valuable lessons from my 5th grade science project (What factors affect bread making?): The dough kneaded for longer than the recipe called for came out better, almost double the size. The bread made will boiling water to activate the yeast came out terrible. Killing the yeast with hotter water is what will do your bread making in. So be careful!


Kneading dough= great release for built up stress.

Cheesy Goodness part II

The creative grilled cheese juices have been a flowin'. I call this the Costa Rican Grilled Cheese.

Tomato
Fresh Cilantro
Dubliner cheese
Artisan bread (I've been loving Rudi's Organic Bakery Multi-grain from MOMs lately)
Lizano sauce* (souvenir from CR. I suppose you could find this in an international grocery store)

Grill Marinade

grilling season has returned hizzah!

SOY SAUCE MARINADE

1/2 c soy sauce
1/2 c water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Our Best Bran Muffins

This is one of my favorite recipes from my Mommom. The crucial thing here is to not over bake them. If you leave them in the oven too long they taste like a substandard dried out mass of bran. If you bake them just right they taste like a glorious bran success, and they stay moist for many days to come. You have to know your oven just right to get the correct bake time. In my oven it takes about 16 minutes.



OUR BEST BRAN MUFFINS

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder (I make these VERY generous)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups 40% Bran Flakes
1 1/4 cups milk (or buttermilk, if you don't have any you can add a tbsp of vinegar to the milk and get the same effect)
1 egg
1/3 cup veg oil

1. Stir together flour, baking powder, salt & sugar. Set aside.
2. Measure bran flakes & milk into mixing bowl. Stir to combine, let stand 1-2 min or until cereal is softened. Add egg & shortening, beat well, with a spoon.
3. Add dry ingredients to cereal mixture, stirring only until combined. Portion batter evenly into 12 muffins.
4. Bake in oven at 400 degrees about 25 mins or until golden brown (keep an eye on your muffins. as soon as they bounce back to a poke, take them out. they will continue baking even after you remove from the oven by the residual heat of the muffin tin)

DON'T OVER BAKE!

How to cut a pineapple

Cutting and serving a pineapple is always an awkward situation. I had to go whitewater rafting in Costa Rica to learn the proper technique. After a few hours of rafting our instructors Felipe and Diego pulled us over to a nice beachy spot where they flipped over our rafts, put table cloths over them, and served us a lovely lunch (this reveals our rafting difficulty, or rather lack of difficulty level). Felipe was a fruit cutting extraordinaire. I'm going to try to sum up his secrets via instructional photos. Mind you he had an entire pineapple beautifully sliced and ready to serve in all of 30 seconds.

1. Using a very sharp serrated knife, cut off the shoot and base.

2. Cut in half.

3. Place pineapple half on counter with the flat side facing up. Cut length wise down one side of the pineapple till you reach the center. Rotate the pineapple 180 degrees and repeat.

4. Making two slits, cut out the core into a V shape and remove.


5. Slice width wise to water ever thickness slivers you want.



Felipe and Diego's were much prettier than mine