Russian Black Bread Rolls

Sundays have become bread baking days at our home. This morning, hungover from 2 1/2 beers, I again decided to let my bread machine do the kneading. How did I get hung over from 2 1/2 beers? I'm a total lightweight. That and the Brain and I were at a benefit and the parish priests were walking around in togas. It was quite an event. So this morning, I was feeling a little sluggish and lazy. Hooray for the bread machine!

These rolls turned out delicious. They are dark and heady and slightly sour in the way that rye breads get. I took the dough out of the bread machine and shaped it into 12 little balls. At some point I did pretend to channel Julia and that delicious French bread. But that was just me being silly. I let them rise for another 30 minutes while the oven preheated. While they were baking they filled the kitchen with a delicious meaty aroma. I have to admit also that I took the very first roll out of the oven and split it open and slathered it with butter and ate it on the spot. I'd like to say they'd be delicious to make a tuna fish sandwich out of, or to sop up juices from a hearty stew (because it is yet again cold and raining here), but frankly I'm not sure there will be any leftovers tomorrow.

Russian Black Bread Rolls

adapted from The All New Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook

2/3 cup water

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 Tbsp dark molasses

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp caraway seeds

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1 1/2 tsp instant coffee granules

4 tsp unsweetened cocoa

2 cups bread flour

1 cup rye flour

1 package (2 1/4 tsp ) active dry yeast

Add ingredients into the bread machine according to your manufacturer's directions and set the bread machine to the dough setting (or knead by hand). Once the dough is ready, split into 12 equal pieces and form pieces into balls. Let rise for 30 minutes while oven is preheating at 350°. Once risen, spritz the rolls with water to encourage a nice crust. Then using a sharp knife cut a slit in the top of each roll. Bake for about 17 minutes or until when tapped the bottoms sound thumpy.

Crack Beans

So Rosie over at Rosie Bakes a Peace of Cake and Pixie at You Say Tomato are having this Putting Up event. I believe I've already mentioned it and provided my family's favorite Chili Sauce recipe. I don't normally enter twice into a food blogging event. In fact, there's a whole bunch of really cool food events that I don't participate in. Usually because I'm not terribly creative sometimes, or because I just don't have the time, or because if I made that many baked goods in one month I may need Richard Simmons and a forklift to come rescue me. But this event is different. Not only are my Crack Beans already made and canned. Last summer. But I hear there's some interest in the recipe.

I love these beans. I snack on them. I know my sister Super G polished off a whole jar with one friend in one sitting. They are addictive and a little spicy. They are the kind of pickly bean that my friend Bethany's family used to make when we were wee tiny little children. Well kindergarteners anyway. She's gone on to become important and founding foundations and everything. So I will assume that regular exposure to these in childhood leads to very intelligent, hard working, and caring adults. Either that or she was always like that. I think it's a marvelous excuse to have these beans on hand anyway.

The beans are relatively simple to make, in that it's your standard prepping of the jars followed by stuffing them prettily and pouring the syrup on top. Simple yet hugely gratifying. And have I mentioned they're addictive? That's why they're called Crack Beans. They're originally called Patti's Dilly Beans from The Food Lover's Guide to Canning (excellent book), but that's a pretty silly thing to call them when I have no idea who Patti is and when asked I'd probably make something up about her anyway. I'm not sure what it's like to be addicted to Crack, but I'm assuming that if it's anything like these beans it could become a real drug problem. Perhaps I should have named them Meth Beans (I knew a meth-head once), but I wouldn't want people to think there's a risk of the kitchen exploding.

Crack Beans

yields 4 pints

2 pounds green beans

2 cups water

2 cups distilled white vinegar

3 Tbsp salt

4 sprigs fresh dill

4 garlic cloves, peeled

4 tsp red pepper flakes

Snap the stems from the beans. Then cut the beans so that they are 3/4 inch shorter than the pint jars. Place 1 sprig of dill, 1 garlic clove, and 1 tsp of red pepper flakes in the bottom of each jar. Fill the jars with beans such that the beans are standing straight up. Set aside.

Combine the water, vinegar and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Ladle the boiling mixture into the jars and seal with lid and ring. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Sausage with Cabbage and Apples

It is a chilly rainy day. I don't think the sun poked through at all. Temperatures have dropped into the 40s. This of course is because my garden is planted. And so it begins. From now until probably early September, I will anxiously watch the weather channel. I will watch overnight lows like a hawk. I will suddenly become very interested in where low pressure systems move as well as likelihoods of rain or severe weather. I will worry about heat waves and droughts and floods. I will actively pray for the harvest when they mention it in church. Yes, we pray heartily for farmers here. I had to drive down to the middle of the next county for a meeting today and I swear there was very little but farmland between here and there.

I know I'm not a farmer. I have a small plot of a garden that I tend to overplant. It's actually, I think, a geometric work of art that I fit so many varieties of vegetables in such a tiny space. I don't have acreage. I have a 22x16 foot rectangle. But I love it. And I nurture it. And I get ridiculous pleasure from weeding and harvesting. Blame it on my parents. I was born in a city. I lived in other big cities. Chicago. Kansas City. Indianapolis. These are difficult places to have a garden. And now I find myself singing, "Give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above. Don't fence me in!" At the top of my lungs. While driving by farms. I really am a dork.

But I was a chilly dork today. And hungry. So I sliced up an apple and half a cabbage and a package of smoked sausage and made myself a delicious, and filling dinner. Now the Brain and I are going to settle in to watch the Cav's game. I think I might close the windows first though.

Sausage with Cabbage and Apples

1 1lb package of smoked sausage

1 half of a small head of cabbage shredded

1 Granny Smith apple thinly sliced

1/4 cup apple juice

2 Tbsp cider vinegar

Cut the smoked sausage into 2 inch pieces and cook them for about 4 minutes in a nonstick skillet to brown. Add cabbage, apple and juice to skillet and toss. Cook until cabbage is tender, but not mushy and sausage is heated through. Add vinegar to skillet and cook for 1 minute. Serve immediately.

Orange Roasted Carrots with Honey, a chunk of meat, and some dirt

Today, with the help of my migrant farm workers (my mom and stepdad) the garden has been planted. I would have taken a photo, but for the most part it's merely a slab of dirt. But in a couple months I will have eggplant, tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers, kohlrabi, beets, beans, radishes, turnips, cabbage, broccoli, onions, and an assortment of squashes (zucchini, yellow, and acorn). But like I said, for now it's a slab of dirt. They also weeded and planted in my herb garden. My stepdad pruned one of my rosebushes and promised that I would have bigger more vibrant roses because of it. My little family of Robin Red Breasts looked on the whole time. So far I count 3 babies. They're only a couple days old.

My mom and stepdad are Master Gardeners. So having them spend the day meant a day spent outside enjoying the warm temperatures and the sunshine. They complimented my tulips out front and told me that if the tree bush that I have growing there is an elderberry, that the berries would then be edible. Now I just have to go about finding out what exactly an Elderberry is supposed to look like.

My mom even pulled up most of the dandelions in the yard and pointed out a virulent weed (I forgot the name, but the phrase "virulent weed" had me pulling weeds as best I could!) and she helped me pull all of it from under the Maple. So I made them a batch of chocolate chip cookies to snack on and tried not to be completely annoying while I watched them work. Gardening is much more fun when you can be involved. I also made them dinner. Because I know that I have some vegetarian readers, I didn't take any photos of the chunk of meat that I served them. It was a 2 1/2 pound eye of round roast that I got at Costco on the very cheap. I also prepared it from the recipe from this cookbook on page 417. It was FABULOUS!

What I will tell you about is the Orange-Roasted Baby Carrots with Honey. They may have completely charcoaled the pan I roasted them in, but they were really really good. My mom kept eating them and the recipe went home with them in the stack of 2007 Bon Appetit magazines. The orange wasn't overpowering at all. It was like a little kiss of it. And the honey enhanced the carrots natural sweetness so I couldn't really tell it was there either. It was like a whole lot of really good pieces making an even better whole. Even if my carrots weren't baby. They were the baby cut mini kind Ala Costco again. I love that store.

Orange-Roasted Carrots with Honey

from Bon Appetit

1 1/2 pounds peeled baby carrots

2 Tbsp olive oil

zest of one orange

juice of one orange

1 1/2 Tbsp honey

salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Arrange carrots in single layer on rimmed baking sheet. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and orange peel; sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss. Pour orange juice over; cover tightly with foil. Roast until crisp tender, about 10 minutes. Remove foil. Increase temperature to 450 degrees F. Drizzle honey over carrots. Roast uncovered until carrots are tender and browned in spots, about 10 minutes longer. Drizzle lightly with additional olive oil. Sprinkle with salt.

Beet Risotto

One of the things I've been doing to occupy my time during my massive amounts of free time, has been to go through my food magazines that I acquired last year. I know that many people out there have this problem. Cooking Light is easy enough because they send me a cookbook in January that has all the recipes from the previous year in it. So I pack up my old magazines and give them to my stepdad. Bon Appetit is a little more complicated. But because I have the whole year I've offered them to both my stepdad and my sister Super G and I'm letting the two of them battle out who wants them. All those recipes are on epicurious anyway. The remaining magazines pose more of a problem. There's several Rachel Ray magazines and some Eating Well magazines and maybe some Martha Stewart like little Everyday Food magazines.

So my process has been to tear out the recipes that look really good to me and then I file them in a expandable file by recipe type. It's all very anal and silly, but I'm having the small problem that this file is starting to bulge. It occurs to me that I never cook these recipes that get stuffed into the expanding file. Well tonight at dinner I changed it all up. I cooked from a recipe that I found in a Rachel Ray magazine. kinda sorta. See her recipe was for Beet Risotto with Roasted Asparagus and Ricotta Salata. I had no asparagus and no Ricotta Salata. I'm pretty sure Ricotta Salata would be considered a hard to find ingredient out here. But I did have some goat cheese. So I made Beet Risotto with crumbled goat cheese. Rachel Ray may be super peppy and perky and far cuter than I could hope to be, but she also seems to be pretty easy going and I'm sure she wouldn't mind that I'm changing it all up on her.

It was delicious. Even the Brain, who doesn't "care for beets" ate two helpings. It was rich and creamy without any extra butter or Parmesan cheese. The color is beautiful. And it's not overly sweet like many beet dishes can be. Totally "delish"!

Beet Risotto

very loosely based on a recipe by Rachel Ray

3 Tbsp EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)

6 cups vegetable or chicken broth, kept simmering

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

4 baby red beets, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch cubes

1 small yellow onion chopped

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup dry red wine

salt and fresh ground pepper

4 oz. crumbled fresh goat cheese

Heat olive oil in large skillet or medium dutch oven over medium heat. Stir in the rice to coat with the oil, and toast for 2 minutes. Add the beets, onion, and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Pour in the wine and cook until absorbed into the rice, then begin adding the broth by ladelfulls (about 1 cup at a time) stirring with each addition, until the rice is cooked, about 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Crumble goat cheese on top.

Ranch Dressing

It would have to be Spring that it's been raining all day and we just didn't want something hot and warming for dinner. Actually for a moment, the skies were blue and the leaves on the trees and the new wheat in the fields were all sparkly and washed clean. The Brain and I on our quarterly trip back from Costco, with a car full of meat, took a different way home and discovered several good roads to ride my bicycle on. If only I was allowed on my bicycle. But I will be allowed back on it eventually and until then I just have to remember where those roads were. Nice rolling roads with little traffic.

So yeah, despite the recurring rain, the Brain wanted a salad for dinner. That worked out nicely with my new cookbook purchase of The New Best Recipe Cookbook from the editors of Cook's Illustrated. To make a long story short, the Brain and I have a deal that when he spends a specified amount of money on fast food I get to buy a book (because I don't eat fast food). It came down to this cookbook, a $65 book that is more like an encyclopedia of vegetables that I know I can check out at the library, and the Martha Stewart Living Cookbooks. I first heard of this cookbook from Deborah over at Taste and Tell. It was her cookbook of the month a couple months ago and I kept drooling over her selections. I have to say there's a ton of information about every recipe and the cookbook details the different trials and errors in making each recipe. It's a great cookbook for nerds like me! I knew that I had some buttermilk to use up so I made the Ranch dressing recipe. Totally delicious! It was a little chunky though, I guess I could have minced my vegetables a little smaller.

It was terrific on a nice Romaine salad with crumbled bacon, hard boiled eggs, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and grilled chicken thighs. Tasty.

Ranch Dressing

adapted from the New Best Recipe

1/2 small garlic clove minced to a paste with 1/4 tsp salt

1/4 small red bell pepper, minced

1/4 small onion, minced

1 medium scallion, white and green parts, minced

1 1/2 tsp minced fresh parsley leaves

1 1/2 tsp minced fresh cilantro leaves

1/2 tsp juice from 1 small lemon

pinch of fresh cracked black pepper

1/4 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup mayonnaise

2 Tbsp sour cream

Mix the garlic paste , bell pepper, scallion, onion, parsley, cilantro, lemon juice, and black pepper in a medium bowl. Add the buttermilk, mayonnaise, and sour cream and whisk until smooth. (The dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days.)

Grilled Zucchini and Bell Pepper Couscous

One of the best things about living in a tiny town in the middle of North Central Ohio is that surrounding the town are even smaller towns, like the kind with one stoplight, and a whole lot of farmland. There is something nice about seeing acres of corn and wheat and even soybeans starting to grow. We're not there yet, but today was a sort sopping wet day where it rained on and off and back on again. During one of those breaks from the rain, as I was driving back from going grocery shopping at Meijers with a car load full of vegetables (seriously I went overboard again), I decided to drive with my window down. There is nothing as great as the smell of fresh wet dirt. It's the smell of possibility.

Last night, however, it was not raining. It was actually fairly hot. And I decided that we wouldn't be cooking inside. Perhaps I should explain that our tiny little house holds some heat, so the hotter the day, the hotter the night. So the Brain came home at just the right moment. I had the vegetables cut up and the pork chops seasoned. I think it made his day that I just handed him some tongs and the big lighter.

The vegetables were for this delicious Grilled Zucchini and Bell Pepper Couscous. Maybe I'm just lucky that I have a husband who can perfectly grill things, but the chopped up zucchini and red bell pepper were charred just right and softened just enough. I made the couscous. I love how easy couscous is and that it's ready within 5 minutes of the boiling liquid. Although I have to say, I'm not sure how Rachel Ray makes mashing garlic and salt look so easy. That was the hardest part of this whole recipe!

Oh and because we're a happy little family of 2 we naturally had leftovers. Those leftovers made and excellent lunch with some canned garbanzo beans and reheated for a minute in the microwave. I'm glad there's more leftover's for lunch tomorrow!

Grilled Zucchini and Bell Pepper Couscous

adapted from Gourmet

4 small zucchini (about 1 pound)

1 small red pepper

1 tsp olive oil

2 small garlic cloves

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 cup chicken broth

3/4 cup water

3/4 cup couscous

Chop the zucchini and red pepper into chunks about 1 inch in size. Toss the vegetables in the oil and place in grill basket. Grill over medium heat until zucchini and red pepper are a little charred, but still crisp tender.

Mince garlic and mash to a paste with salt.

In a dry medium saucepan toast cumin seeds over moderately low heat, swirling pan occasionally, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add broth and water and bring to a boil. Add couscous and immediately cover pan. Remove pan from heat and let couscous stand 5 minutes. With a fork fluff couscous and in a bowl toss with vegetables, garlic paste, and salt to taste.