Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Recipe review: Ciabatta





I love simple and easy. This is both. Also tasty!
The recipe is simple and instructions are easy to follow. 

What Caroline Cooked - Ciabatta

In the interests of giving her credit, use the link to get the ingredient amounts.
I used her quantities, but doubled the yeast as mine is a little old.
This is the dough (made about ten pm) at 7:30am, so a 9.5 hr prove.
The dough turned out easily with a big of help (wet your hands) and I made a slim log, then cut into 8 pieces. I could have easily shaped them a little more neatly but I still hadn't had my coffee by now. I'd add more flour to the tray and use baking paper next time.




22 minutes at 225 Degrees, with plenty of water sprinkled around the tray for added steam. I did some in the oven and some in the airfryer, and I was happier with the oven ones, probably because it was just a little hotter than the 200 max of the airfryer.




This recipe made enough for breakfast and lunch for 3 kids. I'm about to go make a double batch and I'll pull one batch of rolls out a little early so they can be reheated in the air fryer for breakfast straight from the freezer. Win!

Monday, February 02, 2015

Budget Dinners #1

Presenting: Budget Dinners! These are ideas, not specific recipes, because the idea is to use what you have.




Dinner #1: Noodle Surprise.
I don't like Pork. There. I said it. So I drown it in flavour.
This is also super quick.
Ingredients:


300g Pork mince (languishing in the freezer for 6 months!) cost=nil
2 cloves garlic, minced = 15c
Vegetables (the rest of the frozen peas about half a cup; One carrot, sliced finely) = 50c
3 blocks Noodles (homebrand 2 minute, discard flavour sachet) = 60c
1/2 tsp fish sauce = nil
1 massel stock cube =40c
Spices = Nil
1T Coriander whole
2T Sesame seeds

1T Cumin seed
1/2 tsp ginger powder or use fresh if you have it 
oil for cooking.



Method: Grind or blender the spices together until the coriander is broken up a bit .Brown the mince. Add oil and fry off garlic and spices. Meanwhile, Cook the noodles in barely enough water to cover them and the stock cube.
Add Veggies, just use whatever you have, then add the cooked noodles and the stock water, which should have cooked down to not a lot. Sprinkle over the fish sauce and add a dash of sweet chilli or soy if you wish, or just season with salt pepper and vinegar. Don't mix it too much or your noodles might start to break up. Garnish with fresh herbs if you have any. I didn't.
Voila! Filling meal for 3 adults or 1 adult, 3 kids, with some nutritional value.

Notes on the protein. Use whatever you can find. Chicken, beef, pork mince, Eggs first cooked into an omelet, then rolled and stripped and sprinkled over the top. You can even use leftover meat from last night's dinner.