Olive Bread

Beth and Chris and Christopher made this (among other delicious things) for my bachelorette party. Several weeks back, Tara mentioned how good it was, and something along the lines of how you can't find bread like that in stores or anything. So I thought I'd make some to bring for dinner this past weekend!

Ignore the Little Visitor Damson... Turns out I forgot to take a photo of just the bread.

Olive Bread

from Inn at the Crossroads
Ingredients
6.5 cups flour
1.5 Tbsp yeast
1.5 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp honey
1/4 cup olive oil
2 3/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup chopped pitted Kalamata olives
1 sprig chopped rosemary
1/4 cup corn meal

Equipment
LARGE bowl, plastic wrap, oven, baking sheet

Instructions
In the bowl, combine 1/2 cup of the flour, yeast, and 1 cup of the water. Let it sit for 10 minutes. (I used this time to chop the olives up.) Add the salt, honey, oil, rest of the flour and water. Mix (I used a spoon) until the dough starts to come together; add olives and rosemary. Keep mixing until all the loose flour is incorporated. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let it rise for 1.5 hours. (It's supposed to expand a lot, so have a bowl big enough for that! Mine didn't expand THAT much, but I spilled some yeast...)
Dust two baking sheets with corn meal. Divide the dough (it should be sticky) into pieces (I did half; if yours rises more, thirds works too) and pull the edges under until you have a ball-shape. Set them on the baking sheets. Let them rise another 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 450F. Slash the tops with a serrated knife (I totally forgot to do this and it wasn't devastating). Place them in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. The crust should be medium brown (see photo) and firm (I tapped it with a table knife and got a lovely hollow-ish sound).

Yields
I made two loaves; I believe when Beth made it, she got three.

Total time
about 3 hours

Cleanup rating 4/5
The dough is sticky, both of my loaves stuck a tiny bit to the pan, and you have to measure some messy stuff (I got flour everywhere, somehow, and honey is always a pain, though delicious).

Difficulty rating 6/10
For bread, this is insanely easy. It's a no-knead bread, and I managed to ace it on my first try, so it really is ridiculous how easy it is... for bread. But it's an involved process with lots of steps, and whenever you're baking, you have to be very accurate with your measuring.

Flavor rating 8/10
I love this stuff. But I like olives. Birk doesn't like olives; he isn't fond of this bread. Should go without saying, I suppose. The original post says you won't have a single bite without an olive bit in it, and I have found this to be absolutely true. You've got a basic white bread with a great crust (not thick, not hard) and salty little olive bits everywhere, and a hint of rosemary.

Adjustability: low
Maybe someone who's more accustomed to making bread would be able to adjust this recipe more, but this is the first time I've made real bread. (Sure, I made that honey beer bread, but that felt more like a hybrid biscuit-and-cake.) Maybe there are other things with similar density to olives that you could put in the dough? Use something other than rosemary to flavor it? I'm not really sure.

Make it with...
By chance, it went perfectly with what we had for dinner Saturday (a sausage-tomato-cream sauce on rigatoni). It's also a wonderful stand-alone snack. If I were having a wine-and-cheese party, I'd slice this up and set it right next to the cheese plate. It's a hearty bread but not terribly filling, so it goes with a ton of things.

Churro Bites

I made these as a quick-and-easy dessert to take to dinner with friends, since I was also busy making olive bread as a surprise for them.

Churro Bites
inspired by this post

Ingredients
box of angel food cake mix (or if you have a good recipe, make one from scratch)
several Tbsp cinnamon (throw in some Vietnamese cinnamon if you want it strong!)
several Tbsp sugar

Equipment
oven and cake pan (if you need to make your cake), cutting board, knife, bowl

Instructions
Make your angel food cake according to package instructions. Allow it to cool completely. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut the cake into bite-sized cubes. Roll each cube thoroughly in the sugar and cinnamon (tap them to shake off the excess).

Yields
a whole cake's worth

Total time
about an hour; check the instructions on your cake box; mine took 30 minutes, and I let it cool for about 30 minutes outside of the pan

Cleanup rating 3/5
You'll get cinnamon and sugar everywhere, but that's relatively easy to clean up. Other than that, you only have a few things to clean (bowl, pan, knife, cutting board). My hands always get a thin stickiness on them from working with angel food cake, though. Wash everything thoroughly! (Like you should anyway.)

Difficulty rating 3/10
Any idiot can bake an angel food cake. (You literally preheat the oven, mix the box of powder with the prescribed amount of water, pour it into a pan, and put it in the oven.) Letting it cool is a matter of not doing things, and cutting it up is less difficult than I expected (I had a fantastically sharp knife, though). Just don't try to rub your eyes while your fingers are coated in cinnamon. Not a good idea.

Flavor rating 7/10
Angel food is my favorite cake (it's like a giant, fluffy, marshmallow... but cake!) and I love cinnamon sugar, so this is pretty awesome. The original recipe called for frying the cake cubes in oil, which would have given them that awesome crispy churro texture, but I had neither the time nor the inclination to fry them. Some of the feedback I got (all positive) was that they're strong, and you so often get cinnamon-flavored desserts that barely taste like cinnamon at all. (I shared the secret: Vietnamese cinnamon.)

Adjustability: low
I don't know what else to do to these things. You could fry them like in the original post, or make an icing to drizzle on top or dip in, but that's about all I can think of. If you use a different type of cake, it would probably get too crumbly.

Make it with...
Everything. I originally decided to make them when we were going to have fish tacos for dinner, but it worked equally well with sausage-tomato-cream sauce and rigatoni. It would work with just about anything, I think. Or as a stand-alone dessert.

Lemon Cucumber

This isn't a recipe... this is a "hey did you know this thing existed?" I introduce to you... the lemon cucumber.

This is a lemon cucumber. The "lemon" comes from the look,
the "cucumber" comes from everything else: flavor, smell, etc.

Cut open; NOW it looks like a cucumber. This one smelled
pretty strongly of cucumber when I cut it open, too. Yummy!
It had more seeds than a usual cucumber too; I don't know if
that's typical of these guys or if it's just the one I got.

When I try a new vegetable or fruit, I like to eat it by itself
so I'm not influenced by other flavors when deciding if I like it.
I just washed this little guy, cut it up, and salted it as a side dish.

It was delicious and I hope to have more in the future. My mother-in-law sent me home with this one after Independence Day dinner because I saw one cut in half on the counter and had to ask about it.

I haven't been eating cucumbers with the skin on for a long time (since I had them growing in my back yard, actually; I peel cucumbers that come from the store) so I don't know if it was the skin or just a difference between this and other cucumbers, but it was very crunchy. And I usually cut that many seeds out of a normal cucumber but these weren't as bad as normal-cucumber-seed-abundance.

French Croutons

The only "French" thing about these croutons is that I learned how to make croutons on the stove (as opposed to in the oven) when I was in France last year. I didn't follow a recipe or use particularly French ingredients or anything like that. I just had some bread leftover from this day, and decided to try this out... and I was pleased with the results.

"French" Croutons

Ingredients

Bread, cubed

butter

seasonings

shredded Parmesan (I used a four-cheese blend that included Parmesan and Romano)

Equipment

pan, stove

Instructions

Melt butter in your pan on medium heat. (I probably used about 2-3 Tbsp for the amount of bread I had, pictured above). Once it's melted, add your bread cubes. Toss them around to get them thoroughly coated. Season them and toss again for even coating. Once they're just about to your desired level of toastiness (remember, I like my croutons a little chewy, so in my picture, they aren't really crunchy yet) add the cheese and toss until it melts onto the croutons (be careful not to let too much melt onto the pan; it can burn pretty quickly).

Total time

about 10 minutes... be patient while waiting for them to toast; you don't want to burn them!

Yields

As much bread as you throw in there

Cleanup rating 2/5

You'll have a mildly greasy pan, but if you don't let anything burn, it'll be a breeze to clean. You don't even have a bowl/bag to deal with like you do with my other croutons!

Difficulty rating 3/10

If being patient is difficult for you, this is a little difficult. And you need to keep an eye on them; don't turn away for too long or something (bread, cheese, seasonings) might burn.

Flavor rating 8/10

YUM. It's hard to go wrong with butter, bread, and cheese (hey, that actually does sound pretty French... just add some wine!).

Adjustability: medium

You'll notice I didn't specify seasonings. Honestly, I made this a little while ago and can't remember what I used. I know there was garlic powder involved, because there always is. And I'm pretty sure I used my Parisian spice blend (...French) which has some dry leafy seasonings in there, and I was concerned about burning. But use whatever bread, spices, and cheese you want! Add other things! Leave out the cheese!

Make it with...

In the bonus photo, you'll see the croutons were their own individual side dish. You could put them on a salad like normal croutons, or make them smaller and use them in a Grenobloise style dish (that's why I learned it in France... we made skate Grenobloise, with capers and croutons and lemon juice). You could also just make them as a snack. Put some of these next to a cheese plate and glass of wine? Perfection.

Bonus photo:

Made them with sauteed chicken with red wine mushroom "relish,"
garlic mashed potatoes, and peas.

Cheesesteaks

I'm pretty sure I've never been to Philadelphia (therefore, if I have, I don't remember it) so go easy on me here, okay? I just like sandwiches. Don't try to tell me this isn't a proper cheesesteak... I'm from the south; I'm not expected to get these things right.

Cheesesteaks

Ingredients
green pepper
onion
mushrooms
ground beef
sliced provolone
bolillo rolls
about 2 Tbsp butter

Equipment
pan, foil, baking sheet, stove, oven

Instructions
Cut up your veggies into pieces that are an appropriate size to put on a sandwich. (I mention this specifically because I made mine a little big... they shrink a little while they cook, but not that much.) Melt butter in a pan and cook the veggies on medium-high until they start to get little char marks on them. Move the veggies to a bowl to wait while you cook the ground beef thoroughly in the pan. Drain your ground beef (I set out a paper plate covered in paper towels and pour the meat onto it, pat it down with a couple more paper towels) and put it back in the pan. Add the veggies back to the pan and mix thoroughly. Turn the heat to low. Once the veggies are heated through, spread the mixture evenly in the pan and cover with slices of provolone. Preheat the oven to 250F. Once the cheese is melted, scoop the mixture into sliced bolillo rolls. Wrap each sandwich very very tightly in foil and set on the baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes.

Yields 
I got 5 sandwiches out of one package of ground beef, one pepper, one onion, and a few button mushrooms. If we had used bigger rolls, it would have been 4.

Total time
about 30 minutes

Cleanup rating 1/5
Using one pan for the veggies and the meat makes cleanup even easier. Since the sandwiches are wrapped tight in foil, they don't leak onto the pan, so that doesn't even need to be cleaned.

Difficulty rating 2/10
These are not hard... they're just a little more time-consuming than a sandwich usually is. I was playing on hard-mode because my thumb hurt (have you ever cut your thumb by opening shampoo? I have) but still... not hard.

Flavor rating 6/10
Pretty good. I feel like there's something missing, or maybe I just should have used actual steak, but they were good.

Adjustability: high
Switch up your veggies! Change your cheese! Use steak instead of ground beef! Try chicken or pork or turkey instead! Use a different bread! Season your meat with something crazy! Every ingredient can be changed, removed, or switched out for something else. You could even go against everything Philly stands for and just put the mixture on top of rice or mashed potatoes or something, I don't know.

Make it with...
I made potatoes, and I had some green beans on stand-by to make sauteed green beans if the timing was a little off (but it wasn't). I thought about potato chips, potato salad, something with avocado (I just couldn't decide what)... it's a sandwich! Make whatever you want with it.

Bonus photos:

Veggies should look pretty much like this when they're done sauteeing.
Look at the little brown bits on some of them! YUM.

Cheese is just about melted over the meat-and-veggie mixture.
Almost time to transfer to the rolls.