Dahlia Bakery- Cook the book for November

November is here! Wait, it's gone.

The holiday season can sometimes seem to fly by since everyone is trying to pack in parties, baking, vacation with family, not to mention shopping for presents (or making presents)! J.K. and Angela stepped outside the hustle bustle one day to enjoy our simple lunch inspired by our Cook the Book for November, The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook: Sweetness in Seattle.

Our goal was a warming and nutritious lunch to sustain us through an afternoon of Chocolate making. We were ready to try out our new silicone molds. The only soup in the Bakery book, Tomato Soup, uses ingredients you can find in the pantry! So it was an obvious choice to add grilled cheese sandwiches to the menu as well. Angela had to buy some canned tomatoes (she's so spoiled by California produce, she usually uses fresh or none), but everything else was at hand. In fact, Angela was a bit skeptical of the recipe, it seemed so simple. However, it was delicious! Next time Angela is visiting a relative and we don't know what to do for dinner...Dahlia Tomato Soup!

 We skipped the croutons since we were having grilled cheese. J.K. made a sourdough rye in her bread machine, using yeast and Ready Sourdough from Seitenbacher. At first the dough looked much too wet, but the finished loaf, while not very tall, was very tasty. We ended up making one sandwich and splitting it. We were good and resisted the bacon (and avocado) suggested as a variation recipe, although J.K. did ask, "Did you bring some?" when Angela asked about the recipe. This sandwich recipe calls for shredded cheese, and due to that, the cheese did fall out a bit on the way to the pan, so maybe we'd form it into a loose patty instead of just piling it on the bread and tomato on next time? Lunch was rounded out with a nice salad dressed with Balasmic vinegar (presented in a vintage bowl).

Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese (with Tomato) Sandwiches

Seitenbacher products make tasty bread (for the grilled cheese sandwiches)

While we didn't get a lot of pictures from lunch, JK was ahead of the game and ready to show off her lovely new baking pan featuring the Chocolate Banana Bread recipe from the Dahlia Cookbook. They're a perfect match to make a lovely and delicious hostess gift. She also gives a picture tutorial on making custard, just add ice cream maker.

Creme Anglaise

Strained over the chopped chocolatae

Melted Magic, ready to go in the ice cream maker.

Created perfect frozen custard.

J.K.'s prepared new loaf pan

The pan was just the right size for the recipe

The strip around the pan kept the top of the loaf even.

And the banana bread unmolded perfectly.

Dessert was much later, featuring the chocolate chunk banana bread (Very good) from the cookbook, served with Chocolate Frozen Custard (Belgian style). That Ice Cream maker is getting a work out this fall. Thanks to Cook the Book from August for making J.K. get it out of the mothballs!

Chocolate Banana Bread with Chocolate Frozen Custard

Meg from Grow and Resist and Briggs from OhBriggsy have inspired a lot of good cooking this year and introduced us to some new cookbook authors. It makes us feel like next year we need to cook our own books, the ones we buy that inspire us but then sit on the shelf for a while waiting to be cracked open, spilled on and loved. One more cookbook is on hold for Tea Time at the Library... check in next month (or maybe look under the tree) for the fruits of our labors.

Happy Holidays from Tea Time!!

The Italian Feast-- October Cook the Book

It's October. It's time to cook the book Italian Style courtesy of Marcella Hazan's The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. The cookbooks were chosen earlier this year, but this one turned out to be very timely, as Ms. Hazan passed away on September 29.

It's hard to cook Italian food for a small group, so we decided that we needed a mob! We recruited a few friends to come and eat dinner with us. The six of us were so eager to eat we didn't even stop to take "before" pictures, so you all get to see a bit of the unconventional. Six plates, in various states, from full to half-eaten.

Angela had to get this cookbook from J.K., who thought ahead and reserved it from the library (Angela did too, but her copy just wasn't going to show up in time). It's another book with few pictures (and those are line drawings) so it was a real toss up as to what to make for dinner. However, it was easy as 1, 2, 3 once we found the menu planners in the back of the book! Since J.K. was really excited about the dessert, why not make the 'A Rustic Menu  II' to go with it?! Brilliant.

Piadina- Flat Griddle Bread, p 641 and Sauteed Mixed Greens
with Olive Oil and Garlic

Pork Sausages with  Smothered Onions and Tomatoes, p 429

Shredded Carrot Salad, p 549

Baked Red Beets, p 558

Ciambella–Grandmothers Pastry Ring p 592 (served with Limoncello)

Plus Auxillary Recipes

 Polenta, 274 (with butter and aged gouda)

 Orange and Cucumber Salad p 552

 Banana and Rum Gelato p 611

ONE

TWO- clockwise- cucumber salad, roasted beets, greens, carrot salad, sausage with polenta and sauce

THREE

FOUR-clockwise-Polenta, carrot salad, griddle bread, beets, cucumber salad, sausage w/ sauce and greens

FIVE

SIX

Our group had some great conversation, lots of laughter and delish Italian food. One guest said this was her most favorite Italian meal ever--because it featured a lot of vegetables and No pasta. Hey, Angela was a bit worried about the no pasta deal, but polenta was an awesome mix with the tomato-ey saucey goodness from the sausage (which was a fancy beef/pork splurge from the local FM). Additionally, Angela chose to change up the recipes for the Piadina (using wheat flour), plus she  subbed some of the 3 greens that went with the recipe. Raddichio, spinach and beet tops ended up in the pot and the greens turned out great, even though Angela felt she was pouring all the nutrients down the drain after boiling them.

Stephanie brought the Cucumber and Orange salad and it was just right, even though the weather outside was a bit chill. To combat the temperature we drank wine (mulled or straight) and a bit of limoncello brought by our dessert guru, J.K. Speaking of dessert, the pastry ring was a bit like a scone in texture and paired perfectly with the gelato. (Yes J.K. broke out the ice cream maker again, it's earning its keep after all these years.) Angela had something special tucked away as well, and this seemed the perfect time to break it out. No dessert is complete without chocolate, so we topped our treat with Chocolate Wine Sauce from the Coppola Winery collection. Delightful!

Pastry Ring with Banana Rum Gelato smothered in Chocolate Wine Sauce  PERFECTION

*Angela asked for this cookbook as a Christmas gift--the recipes are easy and give great taste! The salads are simple and full of flavor! Check it out!

What's cooking in Jerusalem? September luncheon

Cook the Book September (yup! it's nearly the holidaze!) was Jerusalem, co-authored by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Angela must have been living under a rock, because this was a cookbook she's never heard about before cook the book. Turns out the hype is for real. Check out this cook book if you want salads with few ingredients but big taste. Plus the amazing full-page pictures are a treat as well. If you're intrigued about what we ate for lunch, read on!

J.K., as usual, made dessert, a semolina, coconut and marmalade cake. This is very different from her usual cakes. No chocolate, to begin with, and not too sweet. No frosting, either. This is more a quickbread than a cake.

A lot of ingredients, though

First, combine the wet ingredients.

Oil, juice, zest, eggs and marmalade.

Mix until the marmalade dissolves. If you don't have a silicone paddle, use a whisk for this step.

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Don't forget to prepare your pans. J.K. uses cake strips to keep the edges from baking before the middle, so she doesn't get a cracked dome in the middle of her cakes.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and pour evenly into the prepared pans. The recipe said to use two one-pound loaf pans, so she did, but one would have been enough.

The cakes didn't rise enough for two pans, but they were delicious and had a nice texture nonetheless.

After baking, the cakes get brushed with as much orange syrup as they can hold.

J.K.'s cake rounded out our veggie meal nicely! Angela made three salads from the cookbook (although there were a lot more recipes that inspired her, she used the tried and true cook the book method of sticking with the recipes that grabbed her attention during the first scan of the cookbook.) They were Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds, Burnt Eggplant salad and Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Fresh Figs.  We loved them all, and they were great to mix and match. They were supplemented by olives, hummus and pita and lots of pomegranate seeds. For our drinks we had a lovely light Sparkling white, provided by an absent friend which Angela gussied up with Brandied Cherries (also made by said friend, thanks G!)

Cook the Book Jerusalem Luncheon–the mystery jar contains soft cheese!

You can make this–simple, beautiful, delicious–here.

This recipe revamped the spinach salad for Angela.

Choose small eggplants to shorten the cooking time for this dish

Angela chose to serve up J.K.'s cake with the suggested orange blossom water flavored Greek yogurt (tip: make sure your "Greek" yogurt is not thickened with cornstarch–or something more ominous!!) roasted figs and more more more pomegranate seeds. It was a light and flavorful ending to the meal.

cake, yes please!

Have you found any favorite cookbooks through friends? Or do you page through them at the bookstore/library? Maybe you just search the internet (Angela found lots of recipes from Jerusalem online, but few blog posts/articles had the amazing photos and historical background provided in the cookbook–unless they were quoting it directly of course.)  J.K. has so many cookbooks (mostly dessert) that she needs to start a cook the book a week club just to make a dent!

I S'cream for Bi-Rite (Cook the Book August)

This month's Cook the Book cookbook is Bi-Rite Creamery's Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones.

In 1972, J.K. received a Salton Ice Cream Machine for her birthday. She hadn't used it since moving to San Francisco (yay! local ice cream!) in 1975, but after a test run with lemon ice, we discovered that it still works perfectly. Well, lime ice. Lime juice was what we had. We weren't going to risk J.K.'s frozen Meyer lemon juice* until we knew for sure the machine was working.

The Ice Cream Machine is no longer manufactured, but it is available on the secondary market. It goes right into the freezer and has a fan that draws the cold freezer air into the machine, so pre-freezing it isn't necessary. The cord is protected with a metal coating so it can have the freezer door closed on it. If you have one packed away but have lost the manual, you can find it here.

We chose the recipe for chocolate ice cream on page 78.

Not too many ingredients

First step:  Whisk the eggs lightly and add  sugar.

Cook cocoa powder with milk, sugar, cream and salt.

Add 1/2 cup of the hot mixture to the eggs, slowly, whisking constantly.

Then add the egg mixture back into the cream and cook until thickened.

Strain to get smooth ice cream.

Cool the mixture in an ice bath. We had to jury-rig this part. J.K.'s only large-enough bowl is plastic, and she doesn't keep ice cubes around, so we put a large blue ice in the bottom of the bowl, with a sponge on top of it to stabilize the bowl of hot ice cream base.

And into the metal Ice Cream Machine container to chill in the refrigerator.

When it was cold enough, we placed the container in the machine and the machine went into the freezer for 90 minutes.

The finished ice cream has a light color, but the flavor is very chocolate! It was also very soft at first, but firmed up after a few more hours in the freezer.

Here's our ice cream sandwich. The ice cream was a little hard for our soft cookie, but we squished it back together easily enough.

We also made a pear sorbet, which had a more granular texture than the lime ice. We had to improvise on the recipe, starting with the recipe for Mango Sorbet on page 205. This cookbook's sorbet recipes use already-prepared simple syrup, while the recipes that came with the Ice Cream Machine just start with boiling sugar and water.

Also, neither of us has a juicer, so we had to puree and strain our pears. Our juice was still fairly thick and our final product was more of a Sicilian granita than an Italian ice, but still delicious.

If you've read any of our previous ice cream posts, you know we love to hit up the Bi-Rite store to get our ice cream fix (walking to get there helps mitigate our caloric intake). So it was tempting to just sample all the various kinds they give recipes for in the cookbook. However we're glad we finally used J. K.'s ice cream maker and that now we can make our own flavors at home! This book would be ideal for Bi-Rite lovers who don't have the opportunity to walk across town for their favorite flavor. 

Do you have a hard to find flavor of ice cream you'd like to make at home? This book has great ideas and makes it easy to get inspired and create your own using the base recipes. Viva la Summer!

* Life gave her lemons, so she made limoncello, which resulted in a lot of leftover juice.

Cook The Book July: The Bread

The July Cook the Book selection, Maricel Presilla's Gran Cocina Latina, doesn't have any recipes in my style of dessert-making. I requested her book The New Taste of Chocolate on July 4, but the library still has not been able to locate one of its four copies. So I made Cuban Coconut Bread (pp. 593-4), which turned out to be rolls. (Angela specially requested them for our cook the book lunch!)

I weighed the flour in my newest gadget–a measuring cup scale. I've been using it as a regular scale, but I could just tell it "flour" and it would tell me how many cups, according to the weight. That would be useful if your recipe doesn't give weights and you don't have enough dry measuring cups. Bread is very forgiving, though, so if you don't have a scale, you'll be fine measuring your flour. If your dough is too wet, add flour. If it's too dry, add water. Just remember, a little goes a long way, so don't add too much at a time.

 It was easy to assemble the rest of the ingredients.

Only 7 Ingredients

Mix the wet and dry ingredients separately, then combine them.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.

Whisk the yeast into the wet ingredients.

When it bubbles (about 10 minutes), it's ready.

The directions told me to mix the dough with my fingertips. That was a huge mistake. It was a sticky mess, and it took me longer to get the dough off my hands than it did to mix it.

So I scraped it into my trusty bread machine, and let it do the kneading.

The bread machine has a warm up period before starting the kneading cycle, so for the second kneading I used my stand mixer.

Both risings were voluminous, and took about half the time suggested by the recipe.

The dough plopped right out of the oiled bowl, onto a piece of silicone paper.

The recipe said to make nine 4-ounce balls of dough. I got eight, and the last one was "only" 3 7/8 ounces.  I think that's because I used the bread machine for the kneading and didn't have to work more flour in to keep the dough from sticking to a board.

A final rise and the rolls are ready to bake.

Top of Rolls After 12 Minutes

Bottom of Rolls After 12 Minutes

Fully Baked Rolls
Brown and Crusty!

I had to make these the night before, so they weren't crusty when we ate them, but they were still delicious. This was a lot of work, and took a lot of time. I'm going to use the rest of my coconut milk in a bread machine recipe. The recipe says that grilling the bread is the ideal way to go when making these rolls, so please try out the recipe and let us know if the coconut flavor shines through when they're cooked that way?