Peasant Bread with Fennel and Sea Salt Crust

 

I’ve recently become obsessed with rubbing fennel seeds all over my breads.  I would have never come up with this idea on my own.  A local bakery, Blue Oven, makes amazing breads filled with seeds and herbs, including fennel.  And luckily we have huge fennel plants all over the garden.  This is a picture of one plant flowering, with my boyfriend behind it so you can see how big it is! 

 

 

 

I adapted a recipe from an old bread machine cook book, called Peasant Bread.  I guess because it’s so simple and always turns out pretty good. 

 

First mix:

1 cup bread flour
1 cup white flour
1 ¼ tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp yeast
1 cup water

                                                                             Knead dough for 10 minutes.

Take a baking sheet and sprinkle around your mix of herbs, seeds and sea salt.  Try different combination; for this bread I used fennel, sea salt, dried basil, flax and dill seeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stretch your dough out slightly into loaf shape, then rub the surface with olive oil and roll it through the seasoning mix.  Let rise for an hour or until it doubles in size.

 

 

Cook at 400° for 20 minutes or so, until golden brown.  I just cooked it on the same baking sheet for a flatter loaf, but use a bread pan for a sandwich loaf.

Chunky Ketchup Sauce

 

I’ve wanted to make ketchup for awhile now and we have so many cherry tomatoes!  We put them in everything; salads, pizzas, sandwiches, wraps, eggs, bread and we still can’t keep up with the garden!  So I went out and collected every ripe cherry tomato we had (mostly Peacevine Cherrys, which have been awesome!), plus all the Casady's Follys.  Also known as psychedelic tomatoes, and while they look beautiful; they just don’t have that juicy, flavorful bite that I love in tomatoes.  But I figured they would still be good in ketchup!

 

I used this recipe as my base, changing it slightly by adding more spices and sugar instead of agave since I didn’t have any.  This ketchup is amazing!  It’s not the super sugary, corn syrup filled ketchup we are used to in the US.  It reminds me of the ketchup in Europe, a more naturally sweet tomato sauce, only it’s chunky because you leave the skins on.  They soften up enough while cooking them, adding extra flavor, texture and nutrients!

 

I learned a good rule of thumb the other day for measuring produce.  1 pound equals 3 medium apples.  I figured I had a little over 2 pounds of tomatoes.  I pulled the stems off the tomatoes and sliced the bigger ones into chucks.  I threw them all in a pan, added enough olive oil to coat them and roasted them until they were tender.

 

I put them through a food processor, blending till smooth and returning the mixture back to the pan. I added:

1 tbsp white sugar

4 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp brown sugar

5 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 tbsp or so dried basil

1 tbsp or so dried oregano

1 tbsp cayenne pepper powder

1 tbsp turmeric

1 tsp cinnamon

Sea salt and pepper

Then cook the sauce over medium heat for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens up to the consistency you like.  Put it in a Mason jar and store in your refrigerator.  I assume you could process it too, just like you would pasta sauce, but I knew this batch wouldn’t last long enough to need that!

 

 

 

 

With all the work of making homemade ketchup I had to make some fries to go with it.  Making your own fries is so easy, it just takes a while.  I just slice up a couple potatoes into fry shape.  Throw them in a bowl and coat with oil.  Then add spices… I like to add sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper.  My boyfriend is from Maryland, so he always adds Old Bay spices, and here in Cincinnati we add Grippos bbq spice… there are many ways to spice up fries. 

 

Toss your potatoes in the oil and spices, spread them on a baking tray and cook at 400° until they are crispy and golden brown, flipping them occasionally.  When I first went vegetarian I ate way too many fries!  But when you make them yourself with fresh ketchup from the garden, they’re not soo bad :)

Drying Herbs

Many of our herbs are starting to flower. I wanted to start drying bunches so we can use them all winter long.  Today I harvested a few different types: spicy globe basil, purple shisho, greek oregano, summer savory and some of our hopi red dye amaranth that was knocked over by our gourds!  First I washed all the leaves as best as I could (except for the amaranth, it’s too fragile) and let them dry off.

For hardier herbs like oregano, savory, rosemary, etc you can simply air dry them out of direct sunlight.  Just gather them in bunches from the stems, tie together and hang.  I always have lots of dust, dirt and animal hair in my house so I prefer to be safe and put a brown paper bag around the herb bunches.  I took some scrap fabric strips and tied the herb bunches tightly together. 

 

Then I placed the herbs in brown paper bags, cut a small hole in the bag and inserted the fabric strips through the hole. 

I tied the strips tightly around the outside of the bag, and tied an additional loop with the excess fabric so I could hang the bag. 

Worked out pretty well!  I hung them under a shelf that doesn’t get much sun.

For herbs with delicate, soft leaves like basils or mints you have to dry them quickly.  So you can use a dehydrator, which I do not have, or your oven.  I just spread my basil and shisho out on a cookie sheet, turned my oven to the lowest setting, and checked on the herbs frequently, flipping them over here and there.  It took about 3 hours until they were completely dried.  Then I pulled the leaves off the stems and stored them in air tight containers out of sunlight.

Keeping Up With The Garden - Basil and Upside 2-Liter Containers

It’s so hard to keep up with basil!  If you don’t keep it from flowering it gets all bitter tasting, plus cutting basil back makes the plant grow bigger.  And since I put basil in the top part of over half of our upside down 2-liter containers, we have a lot of basil!  So I had no choice but to take some time and make a huge batch of pesto!  Just look at all that basil.  And that is the biggest bowl I own!

I used my PurpleShisho Pesto Recipe as a base, substituting basil for shisho of course and eliminating the cheese.  I would have added some pine nuts if I had any, and I tried sunflower seeds a couple weeks ago and it turned out great.  But all I had was basil, garlic and olive oil.  I also decided to use a blender this time, which was way easier than a mortar and pestle and creamier.  A chunkier pesto is still awesome though, just more work.  I basically just blended the basil, added garlic and oil till I had the taste and texture I wanted, which means super garlicky!  And I mostly harvest our Spicy Globe Basil which made for an amazing pesto pizza!

Also here is an update on some of our 2-liter containers.  Everything is doing pretty well, other than a couple of the tomatoes that have outgrown their containers.  And I used a natural twine to hang some the 2-liters, which is beginning to rot out (one fell already, but survived!).  So next time I will have to stick with the nylon macramé cord I started out using.  The peppers are doing great; creating a beautiful, spicy canopy over the bench in front of the hoop house.

And I excited about our cucumbers!  I really want to make pickles this year.  So we have Russian pickling cucumbers growing down out of the containers with some dill on top.  And then some massive 18 inch long Japanese slicing cucumbers growing up out of the ground.  They are starting to get intertwined and producing a few baby cucumbers.   We’ve already had some cucumbers come out of the hoop house so I hope these are soon to follow!

Lazy Sunday Ciabatta Bread

I love Sundays because I’m always off work and don’t usually have much to do other than create things.  I knew I would be spending most of today sewing so I decided to make a loaf of ciabatta bread in between projects.  This type of bread takes all day, that’s why a lazy Sunday is the perfect day for it.  I used a recipe from the book 200 Bread Recipes as my base and added lots of fresh herbs.   This book is made for bread machines, so I’ve improvised a little to do it by hand.   

First you make a starter by combining:

⅔ cup warm water

⅔ flour

¼ tsp sugar

½ tsp yeast

Mix it together very well.  For the first hour or two mix up the starter vigourously every 10-15 minutes, getting it bubbly and full of air.  Then let it sit covered for 4 hours or more (you can also make the starter the night before). 

Next step is to add:

1 cup water

2 tbsp olive oil

1 ½ tsp salt

2 ⅓ cup flour

1 ½ tsp sugar

1 tsp yeast

Stir it very well getting lots of air into the dough again.

Stir again in 15 minutes, then wait another 15 minutes and add:

½ cup fresh herbs (I used oregano, basil, thyme and summer savory)

4 cloves of garlic

Continue coming back to stir every 10-15 minutes for the next 1 hour.

Grease and flour a baking sheet then drop the dough on a well floured surface.  Divide into two loaves and stretch them out to about 11 inches.  Put the loaves on the baking sheet and let them sit for another 30 minutes uncovered in a warm area until they double in size.

Cook at 425° F for 20 minutes or until they sound hollow inside when you tap them.  Let cool and enjoy! 

This is the best bread I’ve ever made and although it takes all day it’s totally worth it.  I’ve brought it to several family dinners and parties and everyone comments on how awesome it is!  So when you have a day to relax just drink some wine, work on some projects and make amazing bread!

Tips For Making Upside Down 2 Liter Planters

You’ve probably seen this idea before, I’ve tried it in years passed and had marginal success.  This year I took some time to research different methods and judging by my tomato plants, I think I got it right!  So I’ve compiled some basic tips to making your planter successful.

MATERIALS: Empty 2 Liter Bottle, String, Scissors, Soil, Plant

The first thing is to wash your 2-liter so that sticky corn syrup doesn’t start to mold around your plant.

Then cut the bottom of the bottle off, leaving as much of the 2-liter as you can.  I found that the simplest way to do this is to take some crappy old scissors, heat the end of the blade over a candle and stab it into the bottle making a hole you can fit your scissors through and then cut the rest of the way.  Using this same method, I then punch 3 holes evenly spaced around the edge that was just cut.  If you are going to make multiple containers it’s easiest to do this to all the bottles at the same time because the scissors stay warmed up.

One of the biggest issues I’ve had in the past was the bottle heating up too fast and drying out the soil.  I’ve tried covering them in burlap and scrap fabric, but it didn’t help much.  This year I spray painted my bottles with a matte white paint and it has worked out wonderfully.  A white fabric covering would probably also work, but be more time consuming.  The key is to have something that reflects the sunlight.

I also learned that starting a plant from seed inside the bottle only confuses the plant.  I put small pickling cucumber seeds in a couple bottle and the leaves grew up into the soil!  So use a small starter plant, even a little more mature plant works.  We had a tray of 2 foot cherry tomato plants sitting around for weeks and since their stems were stronger it was much easier to push the plants through with little damage.  Of course it can be done at either stage. 

You can use any kind plant that has small fruits, like cherry tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, small eggplants, etc.  I strongly recommend putting a companion herb on the top of your planter.  This will not only make your plant healthier, but also help keep the soil from getting scorched.  For the tomatoes I put basil on top and both plants are going wild.  I have dill on the cucumbers, horehound and basil on the peppers. 

 It’s just so cool to watch the plants grow from both directions.  I love watering them too (which you will have to do every day in the summer since the container is so small), you can just watch the water trickle down through the bottle.  You should try an upside down plant, they are great for saving space, you don’t have stake them and they grow in incredible directions.  I will post more about these once I my peppers and cucumbers really get going! (check it out here)

 

*UPDATE* Tuesday October 9^th, 2012

After a summer full of upside down 2-liter experimentation, I’ve learned a lot and would like to update our overall experiences.  Herbs work great!  Cherry tomatoes do well for most of the summer, but eventually the roots fill the bottle.  Peppers did fine as well and they are still producing fruits, but we didn’t get nearly as many peppers in the bottles as in the ground.  Thai Hot Peppers did the best, because they are tiny and high producers; however I’d say the plants in the ground produced at least 5x as many peppers.  Same thing with a huckleberry bush we tried in one, it only produced a few berries.  The cucumbers started out great and then just died, but we harvested plenty of dill from the top of those bottles.

All the containers still have herbs in the top section, so now we are letting them go to seed and planting the perennials in the garden.  I think the upside down 2 liter is great for experimenting with.  And the tomatoes work out alright.  But the space is just too small for most plants to reach their potential.  I guess upside down buckets could be the answer.

Personally I may still use 2 liters for herbs next year, and hang them on our fence.  It’s still a good way to save space, and keep pests out.

Purple Shisho Pesto Recipe

I bought this amazing purple shisho at my neighborhood farmers market the other day.  We have green shisho plants growing all over the yard, but I had never seen purple.  It's a beautiful herb, often referred to as japenese basil.  So it was perfect for a pesto.  If you've never heard of shisho you should check this link out.  It has a nice overview of how to grow it and what you can do with shisho.  It's super easy to grow, and does great in containers if you don't have much space.

This was also my first time making pesto.  It seemed easy enough, but for some reason I just kept buying those little expensive jars at the supermarket.  But not any longer, here is what I did...

INGREDIENTS : 4 oz. shisho, 4 garlic cloves, salt, 2 tbsp parmesean cheese, 1/4 cup olive oil

STEP 1 : I roughly chopped up a small bunch of shisho (about 4 oz. or so) and 4 garlic cloves, and added pinch of salt.  Using a pestle and mortar, I ground it up into a paste.  You could also use a food processor for this.

STEP 2 : I transfered the paste to a bowl and gradually stirred in 2 tbsp of parmesan cheese (you could use more cheese of course!).  Then I mixed in 1/4 cup of olive oil. 

And that's how easy pesto is!  We couldn't wait to eat it so I cooked some pasta, drained it and threw in a little more olive oil to coat the noodles.  I added about half the pesto for a meal for two.  It was amazing!  Especially with a big chunk of italian bread.  I think I might make a little pesto pizza with the rest. 

I can't wait to make a big batch of pesto this summer when all our shisho grows in.  I'd like to try experimenting with other herb combinations too, maybe throw some oregano or savory in with the shisho.  It's an easy way to preserve the herbs and still keep that fresh taste!