Homemade English Muffins

I'm still tinkering with this recipe. Expect to see updates as the weekends roll on. It's not as airy as I had hoped for, but it's a decent homemade breakfast bite. I personally recommend coupling it with my lemon curd recipe. Mmm...

Ingredients
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1/4 cup melted shortening
4-5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Heat the milk on the stove over medium high heat until little bubbles start to form. Take milk off the heat, add in sugar, mix to dissolve and set aside.

Mix warm water with yeast packet. Set aside for 10 minutes until it looks milky.

Using a stand mixer and the paddle attachment, mix 3 cups of flour with milk, yeast mixture and melted shortening for one minute on high. Add salt and flour, a little at a time until you have a soft dough. (The original recipe I adapted this from said an additional 3 cups of flour, which was WAY too much. I used 1.5-2 cups max.)

Knead the dough. (Mine was pretty stiff, but still turned out ok in the end). Set in a buttered bowl, cover and let rise 30-45 minutes. Punch down the dough and roll out to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut with a biscuit cutter and dust with corn meal. Cover and let rise another 30 minutes.

Cook on a buttered griddle at 325* (350* was too hot) for 3-4 minutes per side until golden brown. Fork split, toast and eat!

Seth's Tomato Power

What do you do with a surplus of tomatoes? It's a great problem to have. Seth found this recipe to try and made it for me for dinner last weekend. It's real name is shakshouska, but I call it "tomato power"

Serves 2 for dinner, takes 45 minutes

Ingredients:
1.5 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1.5 Tbs paprika
1/2 tsp salt
3 large garlic cloves pressed
1 large poblano chile, stemmed, seeded and chopped
1 to 2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbs tomato paste
1.5 lbs Roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise (1 lb is plenty if that's you have on hand)
4 large eggs
Freshly ground pepper

Mix coriander, cumin, paprika, and salt in plastic bag. Using a rolling pin, crush seeds in bag (or you can use a mortar and pestle. Once seeds are cracked, add garlic and mash into a paste with the seasoning. Set aside.

In a 10 inch saute pan (with a lid for later) over medium heat, cook chile in 1 tbsp. oil, stirring often, until well browned (10-12 minutes). Add spice mixture, garlic, tomato paste, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in 3/4 cup of water, then tomatoes. Cook, turning tomatoes occasionally until softened (10-20 minutes) add more water if mixture starts to dry.

With a wooden spoon, make 4 depressions in tomato mixture and crack an egg into each. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook until eggs are set but yolks are still runny (4 - 5 minutes).

Serve with crusty bread.


From Sunset Magazine, Sept 09

Crepes

I love crepes! This easy make-in-the-blender batter improves if it refrigerate a few hours. And it will hold for a day or two, although it starts looking gray, it's still tasty.

Ingredients:
1c cold water
1c milk
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
-Blend briefly

Add:
2c flour
4 Tbs melted butter

Mix n high for 1 minute
Cover and refrigerate

Cinnamon Rolls

I got this recipe from a Sunset magazine subscription perk and it hasn't disappointed. When topped with cream cheese frosting, these are a big hit. I sometimes make the dough in the evening and then refrigerate overnight. If you let it warm up a bit in the morning, while heating the oven and making coffee, they bake off just fine.

Ingredients:
1.25c whole milk
1 package (2.25 tsp) active dry yeast
3 Tbs white granulated sugar
1.25 c brown sugar
3/4c plus 2 Tbs butter at room temperature
1.5 tsp salt
about 5.5 c all-purpose flour
1/4c ground cinnamon


In a 2 quart pan over medium heat, heat milk to lukewarm. In the mixing bowl of the stand mixer, dissolve yeast ins 1 cup warm water. Let stand 5 minutes

Using a stand mixer's paddle attachment, stir in:
milk,
2 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs butter
salt
3.5 c flour into yeast mixture

Beat on high until dough is slightly stretchy, about 2 minutes.
Switch to dough hook and, on medium speed, beat in 1.5c more flour until a stiff dough forms. Continue beating until dough pulls clearnly from bowl, 5 to 7 minutes longer. If dough is still sticky, add more four, 1 Tbs at a time.

Scrape onto floured work surface and knead until smooth, elastic and no longer sticky about 8 minutes; add flour as required to prevent sticking. Return dough to bowl, cover airtight, and let rise at room temperature until doubled in size, 1 to 1.5 hours.

Scrape dough onto floured work surface and press gently to expel air. Divide dough in half. Using a floured rolling pins, roll each half into a 10- by 16- in. rectangle. Spread 6 Tbs butter over each rectangle. In a small bowl, mix 1.25 c brown sugar with the cinnamon. Sprinkle half the mixture over each rectangle.

Starting from a long edge, roll each rectangle into a tight cylinder. Cut each cylinder into 6 equal pieces. Place, cut side down and sightly apart in two 7- by 11- baking pans. Cover pans and let stand at room temperature until rolls are almost doubled in size, 1 to 1.5 hours.

Preheat oven to 350*. Bake until rolls are browned, 30-35 minutes. Coll in pan 10 minutes, then drizzle with icing. Serve warm!

Charcoal-Grilled Baby Back Ribs

We love to BBQ, and we love ribs, but I was always looking for a good recipe to follow for charcoal grilling that achieved tenderness with ribs. This one works pretty great. Use your favorite sauce and enjoy.

5lbs baby back pork ribs
4 tsp kosher salt
1.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp cayenne
BBQ sauce of your choice

1. Remove the membrane from the underside of the ribs. The original recipe said to "slide a screwdriver tip along each bone and under one end of the membrane to loosen, then grab membrane with a paper towel and pull off." Sounds easy, right? Really a knife works way better and if you invite He-man to dinner he can help wrestle the membrane off. I'm sure they suggest a screwdriver so you won't sever any digits. Proceed with caution. That said, it was doable and helps the ribs absorb more flavor on the grill.

2. In a small bowl mix salt, pepper and cayenne. Put ribs on a baking sheet and sprinkle both sides with mixture. Snugly wrap each rack in heavy duty foil. Be forewarned - leaks in your foil lets all the good cooking juices out and make flames shoot high. Wrap snugly indeed. Let sit 30 minutes at room temperature.

3.Prepare charcoal grill for indirect medium-low heat (300-350*). Light 60 briquettes in a chimney on firegrate. When coals are covered with ash, about 20 minutes, bank evenly on opposite sides of firegrate ad let burn to medium-low. Set a study drip pan on grate between mounds. The area above will be the cooking area. Add 3-4 more unlit briquettes to each mound when ribs go on and every 30 minutes while cooking.

4. Place rib packets, bone side down, on cooking grate over indirect heat, overlapping slightly if necessary. Cover grill and cok ribs until fairly tender when pierced through foil, 50-70 minutes.

5. Transfer rib packets to a rimmed pan. Carefully remove ribs from foil. Set ribs, bone side up, on grill over indirect heat.

6. Using a silicone brush, baste ribs with sauce/glaze. Cover grill and cook ribs 10 minutes. Brush metled sauce/glaze from center of each rack up along sides of meat, turn ribs over, and baste with more sauce/glaze. Repeat brushing and turning every 10 minutes until ribs are browned and tender and meat has shrunk back from ends of the bones, 30-40 minutes total.

7. Remove ribs from grill. Cover loosely with foild and let sit about 10 minutes. Brush a little more sauce over ribs. Cut between bones to serve.


Recipe is adapted from Sunset August 09