English muffins

These beautiful muffins are so delicious. They are easy to make, but take time to cook. 

The recipe I'm using is adjusted from fatemahisokay on YouTube. She has some amazing recipes. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vyN59An_in8

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp salt

3 Tbsp oil

1 egg

1 cup warm milk

1 tbsp oil to roll and rise the dough in. 

Take the flour, yeast and sugar, add the milk, egg, oil and salt. Mix with a fork until the dough comes together, once it has pulled into a mass knead by hand for a few minutes. If the dough get too sticky, add a couple tablespooons of flour and continue kneading. Once it is soft and slightly springy drizzle oil over and let rise at least 60 minutes or until doubled in size. 

Roll out into approx 1/4 inch thick and cut with a cup, cookie cutter, or measuring cup. Let rise at least 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat a large skillet or frying pan on low-med heat.It takes a good 10 minutes to get the pan heated through nicely. Gently place the muffin on the hot skillet gently flip and rotate from high heat areas to lower heat areas for 12-15 minutes until golden brown and cooked inside. 

When rolling out the next batch from the first cut scraps. You need to let the dough rest after shaping into a ball this can take about 30 minutes until the ball is ready to be rolled flat, then cut, let the muffins rise and bake as previously instructed. 

Yumm! Give them a try:) 

A spot of Jam

Today I bring you, my fresh (frozen) berry spread recipe. 

There are 2 ingredients necessary:

1 cup Frozen raspberries

1/3 cup sugar

Makes approx 1/2 cup - 3/4 cup depending on how much you reduce.

The less you reduce, the saucier the spread. 

Pour the berries and the sugar into a medium sized pot. Heat on low until the juices start appearing from the berries. Turn the heat to medium and boil for 5-8 minutes. Stir and watch the consistency carefully. I cooked mine a tad longer today, so much thicker in its final form. 

Perfect for breakfast pancakes, breads, whatever you like.

Keep in the fridge for 7-10 days if it lasts that long:) 

Give this recipe a go, let me know if you like it.

Enjoy! 

Salsa! Yum Yum Yum

My premise behind salsa is a good flavor yet mild and kid friendly. Add more jalapeño if you like. the original recipe tells you to use much more than I do. About 1/2 cup for this batch size 

So one day you think to yourself, yup I bought tomatoes and yup it would be fun to "try" my hand at making salsa.

So you have no idea how head deep you'll be and well, your being lazy like me and making a half batch. Not because your actually lazy, but because you don't just trust a recipe you've never used before... So you don't want to waste good food. Right? Right! 

So here we go the recipe says take x amount of cups and you think hmm, I have no idea how many tomatoes equals 1 cup of peeled, diced strained tomato 

The actual recipe is found on food.com called wonderful salsa. 

http://www.food.com/recipe/wonderful-salsa-9272

but this is my slightly tweaked version and half batch. Yields approx 7 cups of salsa 

Let's dive in:

4 cups tomato (approx 20 small Roma tomatoes) 

1 1/4 cup diced onion (1 medium onion)

1/2 large bell pepper diced

1 inch off the center of a whole jalapeño finely minced and I removed the seeds. (Less than 1 tbsp)

3 cloves of garlic minced

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp pepper

2 tbsp kosher salt

3 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp white vinegar

1 can tomato paste 5.5 ml 

1 can tomato sauce 7ml (I didn't have tomato sauce so I opened another can of tomato paste used 2 tablespoons of paste and my 5.5 oz can that was empty full of water to make a sauce consistency)

So when you start on the tomatoes you might feel like you are about to lose the rest of your day and if your like me and hand slice because your stubborn you just might:) get a large pot of water boiling, after washing your tomatoes Blanche them for 1 minute in the boiling water, remove them and place into cool water, now you can slice one line down the tomato and remove the skin, get chopping, place into a colander over a bowl and keep going;) 

Once you have prepped all of your ingredients. Pour them into a pot get to a low boil and boil for 10 minutes. Place into sterilized jars and be ready to water bath can for 10 minutes and voila.  

Seriously delectable, I hope you give this a try:) and tell me just how tasty it was. 

Rustic grilled cheese sandwich

When I say rustic, I mean you can style and shape this sandwich in your own way and it's homemade, except perhaps the cheese, but I'm sure I'll make some cheese on a blog post one day. 

Anyways it's fairly simple, you make a loaf of some sweet crispy magic homemade bread. Once the loaf has cooled completely,  preheat your pan.

Cut 2 slices of bread per sandwich.

Slice enough cheese to top one side of a face of bread. Per sandwich, 2-3 slices will usually suffice

Butter the outside faces of bread with butter, lightly toast the insides of the bread on your heated pan. Once slightly hard and crisped flip one onto the buttered side place cheese inside and place the other slice of bread on top.

Heat until you have a nice golden crisp crust, then flip the sandwich and remove from the skillet when browned. Dip with your favorite topping. Mine is super fancy... It's called ketchup.

Enjoy! 

Salt and pepper potatoes:)

These salt and pepper potatoes are for the simplicity of a soft foil baked style potato, that's already bite sized. When you put your fork into them it's like dipping into a mashed potato, when you pull these out of the oven feel free to generously top with cheese, basil, crushed garlic, butter or olive oil:)

The prep is quick. So here we go.

7 yellow flesh potatoes about 2.5lbs

Chopped into wedges

Salt and pepper to taste. I didn't measure but I'm guessing a minimum of 1/4 tsp of each.

2/3 cup water

Place into your 9 by 13 baking dish. Put salt and pepper, then pour in the water.

Cover with foil 

Bake at 400F for 20 mins to get steamy and bake at 350 for 20 mins to complete the cooking process. Garnish with your favorite topping or dip in ketchup:)

enjoy! 

Pizza Rolls.

This is my spin on pizza in a cinnamon shaped bun, 

I'd highly suggest putting cheese inside and outside, but I'm just a bit in love with cheese. 

I made some pizza dough and hand stretched into a large rectangle. You are more than welcome to roll with a rolling pin. Make the dough about as thin as you'd make a homemade pizza dough, I know seriously vague, but I'm not giving a measurement that will be a lie.

I'll just post pictures and say, chop whatever you like into bite sized pieces. You can roll the items with the sauce in the bun or place on top with the cheese. It's not a science, it's a fun food. 

Once you have rolled it together you will take a fresh new piece of dental floss and  wrap around your dough roll and cut. I'd say you'll like the flavor more if you cut shorter than the height of a cinnamon bun but that's just because we are making pizza and you want maximum crispness and flavor with cheese and minimal crust, so do as I say and not as I did, cut them a tad thinner:) 

let them rise for 20 minutes after rolled and then:

Place in the oven at 350F for 15-20 mins until golden on the bottom crisped on the top and baked in the middle. I baked mine for 20 minutes and the bottoms were a little more than golden. 

Give this a try, if you need a pizza dough recipe, check my previous post on pizza. 

Crepes, something to try out!

So this was my first attempt. Let's continue trying out recipes and proving we don't need special machinery. 

This recipe is copied from foodwishes.com. 

http://foodwishes.blogspot.ca/2008/06/how-to-make-crepes-even-messed-up-ones.html?m=1

2 eggs

2 tbsp oil

1 1/4 cup milk

1 cup flour

Pinch of salt

(Should make 10 crepes) 

Mix until there are no lumps or very minimal. I mixed with a whisk for about 4 minutes. I had doubled the batch as shown above. Place the mixture into the fridge for one hour. If the mixture seems a little thick, add a bit more milk. 

After the hour, get your frying pan ready and lightly oiled, take 1/4 cup measuring scoop. Lift the pan off the heat with one hand and pour the batter into the pan that has been preheated on medium heat (5).

As you are pouring rotate the pan in a circular motion and get as flat and evenly placed as you can. Then place back on the heat it takes about 45 -60 seconds and then flip, get very lightly browned and keep making more. 

Top with whatever you like. Cream, berries, jam, syrup, wrap them, roll them and enjoy:) 

If you look at the batter on the pan, some is changing color from the heat, once it is all the same yellow-y color you are allowed to flip, but you can also cook a bit longer.

Evenly colored

Flipped 

Oodles of crepes.