Multigrain Bread

I think I may have found my ideal multigrain bread recipe. The combination of the reconstituted whole grain meal and flax seeds makes it moist and flavorful - I wonder if I could make a delicious, high fiber bread pudding with it? That is, if it lasts long enough to be old enough to use!

1 1⁄4 cups multi-grain hot cereal mix

2½ cups boiling water

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting work surface

1½ cups whole wheat flour

4 Tbsps maple syrup (or honey)

1⁄4 cup (2oz/58gr) butter, melted and cooled slightly

2½ tsps instant yeast

1 Tbsps salt

½ cup raw sunflower seeds

1⁄4 cup flax seeds

½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats or quick oats

1. Combine cereal mix in bowl of standing mixer and boiling water in your main mixing bowl; let stand, stirring occasionally, until the mixture cools to about 100°F and resembles thick porridge, under 1 hour.
2. Whisk the flours together in a medium bowl.
3. Once the cereal has cooled, add the maple syrup, the melted butter, and the yeast and stir to combine until it forms a ragged ball covered in dry flour. Pour everything out onto a clean surface and knead - the dough will still be quite sticky, but keep kneading until all the flour has been taken up and dough is just clammy and firm. Return the ball to the mixing bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let rest 20 minutes.
4. Combine the seeds and pour onto your work surface, as if you were spreading flour. Turn the dough onto the seeds, sprinkle it with the salt, and knead for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until the seeds and salt are all taken up by the dough and well distributed throughout, the dough becomes a taut ball, and it springs back when you pinch it.
5. Grease a large bowl and place dough inside; cover ant let rise until doubled, from 45 to 60 minutes.
6. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and heat to 375°F. Grease two 9 by 5-inch loaf pans. Transfer the dough to a very lightly floured work surface and pat into a 12 by 9-inch rectangle; cut the dough in half, roll each piece to make a 9" long log and roll in the oats OR to make buns, divide the dough into either 9 or 16 equally-sized pieces and wedge together in a 9x9 inch pan. Cover again with well dampened cloth and let it rise until it doubles in size, about 30-40 minutes. Bake until the internal temperature registers 200°F on an instant-read thermometer, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove the loaves from the pans and allow to cool on wire racks before slicing, about 3 hours.

Source recipe: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=7535

Braised Baby Bok-Choy

Simple and good. 'Nuff said, go eat!

2 baby bok-choy

3⁄4 cup broth (vegetable, beef or chicken)

1⁄4 cup white wine

Salt and pepper

1. Put the broth and wine to boil in a saucepan. Reduce to a high simmer.
2. Slice the bok-choy in half and arrange, cut-side down, in the pan. Cover and cook a few minutes, then turn bok-choy onto its 'back', simmer until knife inserts easily. Serve cut-side facing up, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Fresh Apricot Tarts

1 recipe of Cookie pie crust, completely cooled

3⁄4 pound apricots, pits discarded, cut into 1⁄4" wedges

4 tsps. sugar

1⁄2 cup apricot jam

1. On a lightly floured surface, roll out half the Cookie pie crust to a 1⁄8" thick rectangle, about 6 by 11 inches. Using a 5" round cutter or a bowl, cut out 2 circles; transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough. Using a fork, poke several holes in the crusts to prevent them from ballooning while cooking. Chill the dough on the sheet in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
2. Heat the oven to 400°F and bake the crust until it's pale golden, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and reduce the temperature to 350°F. 
3. Cool the crust completely before going on to the next step.
4. Arrange the apricots in a fan shape on the crusts. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar on each tart and bake until the tarts are golden and the apricots start to brown, 25 to 35 minutes. As tarts bake, warm the jam in a saucepan. Remove the tarts from the oven and cool. Strain the jam into a bowl and discard the solids; this is your apricot glaze. Brush the glaze on the tarts and enjoy.

Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

I'd been looking for a good recipe for whole wheat bread, and I think I found it. Whole wheat bread recipes tended to taste too strongly of whole wheat and be more dense than I like, and thanks to http://www.cooksillustrated.com/, I think I've figured out why and, also found out what bread dough should feel like. More in the Instructions for the recipe on that! I've made a few changes to their recipe and am really pleased with the result.
NOTE: It is pretty sweet. I reduced the 3 Tbsps. of syrup to only 2.

2 1⁄4 cups bread flour, plus extra for work surface

1 1⁄3 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsps salt

2 Tbsps (1oz/28gr) butter

1 cup milk

1⁄3 cup water

2 Tbsps maple syrup (or honey, or agave syrup)

2 1⁄4 tsps dry active yeast 

1. Adjust oven rack to low position and heat oven to 200°F. Once oven temperature reaches 200°F, maintain heat 10 minutes, then turn off oven heat.
2. Mix flours and salt in a large bowl and create a well in the middle. In a pot, melt butter, add milk, water, and maple syrup and heat to 110°F. Remove from heat immediately and allow to cool - the pot will continue to heat the liquid, and you want it to be no greater than 110F or it will kill the yeast. Pour the 110°F liquid into the well, then add yeast to the liquid. With a wooden spoon, start mixing the flour and the liquid/yeast together. When it thickens, use hands to combine everything. Now this is important: the dough will be quite sticky to start - just rub your hands together to get the dough off and keep kneading in the bowl. Once in coalesces into a ball, pour out any remaining flour from the bowl onto your work surface, and keep kneading the dough to incorporate it all. And this is my real discovery about making bread - do not add more flour than this or the bread will be tough. Just knead the bread until it stops feeling sticky, and starts to feel smooth, slightly warm and damp, like someone whose palms are sweaty. If the ball feels dry and floury, then you've used too much flour. Another test is to lightly pinch the dough, and if it bounces back, it's done. Kneading should take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes.
3. Place dough in a very lightly oiled bowl, rubbing dough around bowl to lightly coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap OR a (very) damp cloth; place in the warm oven until the dough doubles in size, 40 to 50 minutes.
4. Form the dough into a loaf by gently pressing the dough into a rectangle, one inch thick and no wider than the length of the loaf pan. Next, roll the dough firmly into a cylinder, pressing with your fingers to make sure the dough sticks to itself. Turn the dough seam side up and pinch it closed. Place the dough in a greased 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan and press gently so dough touches all four sides of pan.
5. Cover with plastic wrap OR (very) damp cloth; set aside in a warm spot until the dough almost doubles in size, 40 minutes. Heat the oven to 350°F, placing an empty loaf pan on the bottom rack. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil.
6. Remove the plastic wrap/cloth from the loaf pan. Place the pan in the oven, also pouring heated water into the empty loaf pan; close the oven door. Bake until instant-read thermometer inserted at an angle from the short end just above the pan rim into the center of the loaf reads 195°F, about 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bread from the pan, transfer to a wire rack, and cool to room temperature. Slice and serve.

Apple Pie with Meringue Cream

I've converted this recipe from French metric, and it seems to work really well. It's not a single-bowl kind of recipe, but it's well worth it. The word"emmitouflée" is used to describe someone well dressed against the cold, but I'm guessing here it means 'slathered' or 'encased' or something of the sort - the apples are under a tasty blanket of sweet meringue.

Les pommes emmitouflées de Grand-Mère

Part 1 - the pie crust

1 cup flour

1⁄4 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

1⁄2 cup (4oz/114gr) butter, cut into pieces

1 egg yolk

1 Tbsp + cold water

1. Follow the instructions for the Cookie Pie Crust, but substitute the vanilla for 1 egg yolk and be careful about the amount of water you add to avoid having a wet dough. Roll out, place in a pie plate and keep in the refrigerator until the filling is ready. Do not pre-bake.

Part 2 - the filling; apples

5 to 6 large apples, firm when cooked

1⁄4 cup (2oz/58gr) butter 

1⁄4 cup apricot jam

1. Peel and core the apples, then slice them into sections about 1⁄4" thick.
2. Melt the butter and get it to froth before adding the apples. Cook until the apples just start to brown. Finally, add the apricot jam and allow to melt completely before taking the pan off the heat.

Part 3 - the topping

1 Tbsp (1⁄2 oz/14gr) butter

1⁄4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks

3 egg whites
1⁄4 cup sugar

1. In a small bowl, cream the butter as best you can, getting it nice and soft, before adding half the sugar and the three egg yolk, one at a time. Beat vigorously until you get some volume out of the mix.
2. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites, adding the rest of the sugar. Beat until the whites become hard peaks - you should be able to rest a teaspoon on top of the whites without it sinking.
3. Add a bit of the whites into the butter-and-yolk cream, then pour this into the egg whites, gently folding so as to retain as much volume as possible.

Final Assembly

1. Pre-heat oven at 375°F.
2. In the chilled pie shell, pour in apple mixture, then top with the beaten egg mixture. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top gets some nice colour.

Croûte aux pêches - Baked Peaches

Another lovely and wonderfully simple recipe from Monet's Table. The bread toasts wonderfully, browning on the bottom, and the juices drawn out of the peach by the melting sugar and butter spills over and soaks into the bread, caramelizing underneath. Each bite is a soft, buttery, sweet bite with a satisfying crunch. Really good!

6 slices of bread, crusts removed (pieces should fit the size of the peach, ie: all fit in the pie plate)

3 ripe peaches, cut in half and pitted

6 Tbsps. or 6 tsps. sugar, or to taste

1⁄2 cup (4oz/114gr) butter, cut into 6 pieces

1. Place oven rack to the middle position. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Generously butter an 8inch pie plate and arrange bread in it, plopping a peach half, cut side up, in the middle of each piece.
3. In the cavity left by the pit, add sugar, however much you'd like, distributed evenly in each peach, topped by a piece of butter.
4. Bake for 20 minutes or until the peach is cooked through.
5. Serve warm or cold.

Potage Fontange (Mixed Vegetable Soup)

This is a soup which was eaten at Giverny, Monet's country home where grows to this day the garden that inspired so many of his paintings. I've leaped into the book Monet's Table once again and tried a couple more recipes. I've made substitutions to this soup just because some of the ingredients are a little challenging to find here - not impossible, just not at the grocery store nearby. I've indicated the substitutions as well as the original ingredients for the sake of keeping a record - my additions are in parentheses and italicized.

Part 1 - the peas

2 cups dried green or yellow (split) peas

Part 2 - the soup

2 Tbsps (28gr) of butter

1 onion (6oz/170g) thinly sliced

2 leeks (12oz/340gr) white parts only, thinly sliced

½ lb sorrel (or ½ lb spinach, plus 1 Tbsp lemon juice added later) trimmed and shredded

1 head iceberg (or romaine) lettuce (550g) trimmed and shredded (or 300g Swiss chard, thick midribs removed)

3 sprigs chervil (or 1 Tbsp finely chopped French tarragon or parsley), finely chopped

2 potatoes (16oz) peeled and cut in half (or quarters for a piece in each bowl)

6 cups rich beef broth (or any broth) or water

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

Part 3 - the cream

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2 egg yolks

1 cup crème fraîche, full fat yogurt or heavy cream (maybe just ½ cup?)

½ cup (4oz/114gr) butter, gently melted and allowed to cool 1 to 2 minutes

Bread to accompany the soup

1. The split peas: Soak the dried peas in water for 2 hours (I put it in a pot and left it on the stove at the lowest temperature, just to keep the water hot but not boiling to make this go faster) then drain.
2. The soup: In the meantime, melt 2 Tbsps of butter in the soup pot. Add the onion, leeks, sorrel (or spinach, not the lemon juice yet), lettuce (or chard) and chervil. Cook over low heat until the veg are well coated; do not let them brown.
3. Add the split peas and potatoes, give it a good stir, then add the broth. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer gently for 60–120 minutes, or until the split peas are completely soft and beginning to break down.
4. (If using spinach, add the lemon juice now). At this point you have two choices: 1) strain the soup (using a vegetable mill or forced through a sieve using a wooden spoon) or 2) keep it chunky where it's recommended you break up the potato with the back of a spoon and mix it in. Either way, you'll then need to make the cream, and for this you must...
5. The cream: The purpose of this step is to enrich the soup with a classic French liaison — it will give the finished soup a velvety, rounded quality that sets it apart from a plain pea potage. 
1. Beat the softened butter with a wooden spoon until it is completely smooth with no lumps.
2. Beat the dairy and egg yolks together in a bowl. in the crème fraîche or cream a little at a time until fully incorporated, then beat in the egg yolks one at a time. 
3. While whisking continuously, stream in the melted butter into the dairy/yolk bowl. The mixture should look uniform and creamy. 
4. 
   
5. Place this cream either in a warmed soup tureen or divide it among individual bowls. NOTE: Your soup must be very hot when you pour it on top — ladle a small amount of the hot soup over the cream first, stirring it directly into the cream to begin warming it gradually, then pour or ladle the rest of the soup over slowly, continuing to stir as you go. This gradual approach warms the egg yolks gently without scrambling them, and brings the whole thing together into a rich, unified soup.
6. Enjoy with crusty bread.