BLT Benedict with Avocado-Tomato Relish

  I'll admit it, I've been in a bit of a funk lately.  So, when sorting through some digital pics recently, I realized I had a few things I've not posted here yet.  Bacon, eggs, avocado, and tomatoes....who could resist?  I couldn't when I saw this recipe in Southern Living's March '11 issue.

BLT Benedict with Avocado-Tomato Relish

Ingredients
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 avocado, diced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, divided
6 large eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
6 thick slices of bakery bread
3 cups of your favorite lettuce mix
12 cooked bacon slices

  We're going to start off by making the relish - combine the grape tomatoes, diced avocado, basil, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and 2 1/2 teaspoons of the red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Set aside until you are ready to assemble the benedicts.

  Poach the eggs - Fill a large saucepan with 3 inches of water. Bring the water to a boil and reduce the heat until the water steadily simmers lightly. Add the 1/2 teaspoon of red wine vinegar; this will help the egg whites curl around the yolks as the eggs poach. Break the eggs, one at a time into a small bowl, and slide them into the simmering water. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes, or until they are done to your liking. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon.  Or, if you have an electric food steamer with a rice bowl, you can cheat like I do, and poach your eggs in it.  *wink*

  Assembly - Spread a layer of mayonnaise on one side of the toasted bread. Add about 1/2 cup of lettuce, 2 slices of bacon, followed by one poached egg on top of each toast slice. Top with the relish and enjoy!

Garlic Cheese Rolls (ABM)

  I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays.  I've been lucky to get some lovely gifts in the culinary vein, so you know, I've been busy in the kitchen.  Right now, in my neck of the south, life's in slow motion, due to snow, ice, and more ice.  So it's time to update my dear blog - as we all know, I'm overdue. 

  I received a bread machine as an early Christmas gift.  I swear enabling a carboholic should be illegal.  Oh wait, my sweet hubby gave it to me, and he's a carboholic, too.  Never mind.  I have this love-hate relationship with bread - I love to eat bread, bread hates for me to make it.  Whenever I've tried to make kneaded breads in the past, my kitchen, my clothes, my cat all seem to be covered in flour.  Yeast pizza crust in the stand mixer...yeah, uh, I won't be doing that again.  My kitchen smelled like fermenting yeast for two days.  Quick breads have been my one saving grace, until now.  Ladies and gentlemen, I have made homemade rolls, with minimal flour clean up.

 See!  Look!  Soft, tasty, edible rolls that I made.

 

   You may have noticed the acronym in the post title - if you aren't familiar with it, ABM stands for Automatic Bread Machine.  Today's bread machines have many options and cycles on board.  My machine has a dough cycle which is perfect for people like me, people who can't knead a loaf of bread correctly to save their hides, or busy people, take your pick.  This particular recipe takes advantage of the dough cycle.  It comes from Bread Machine Magic, Revised Edition by Linda Rehberg and Lois Conway.  I have an old copy of the first edition of this book I picked up for 50 cents at McKay.  For 50 cents, I figured it was good research to see if I really wanted a bread machine.  The great thing about this book is it gives you options to make 1 lb, 1.5 lb, or 2 lb sized loaves.  (The first edition featured only 1 and 1.5 lb sizes and focused on several brands of bread machines that aren't prevalent on the market any longer.)  I chose to make the 1.5 lb size, which yields 24 rolls.  You will also need 2 pie plates or baking dishes for this recipe.  As you can see, I only own 1 pie plate and a baking dish works pretty well for these rolls.

Garlic Cheese Rolls

Yields 24 rolls

Ingredients

Dough

1 cup water (about 80°F)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk powder
1 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Topping

1/4 cup melted butter
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  Every machine has its own order for adding ingredients to the bread pan.  The order for my model goes liquids, dry, flour, and yeast.  Pick the dough setting and start.

  Grease your pie plates or baking dishes and set aside.

  Once the dough cycle is complete, turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured work surface - a  clean counter works well. Roll out the dough into a 24 inch rope.  With a sharp knife or dough scraper, cut the dough into 24 pieces.  Roll each piece into a ball in your hands and place into the greased pans.  Leave a little room between each ball because they will go through a rise session before baking.

  In a small bowl, combine the melted butter and crushed garlic.  Pour or spoon the butter over the rolls, and sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese. Cover the rolls and prepare for the dough to rise.

  Rising: This is a neat trick I've picked up and also given in the book - if you don't have a warm spot, use a slightly warm oven to rise.  Flip the oven to Warm (or low temperature if your oven doesn't have a Warm setting) for 1 minute.  Cut it off, and put the dough in to rise 30 to 45 minutes, or until doubled in size. 

  Remove the dough from the oven and then preheat the oven to 375°F.  Uncover the rolls and return them to the oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Notes - Here are some tips for using a bread machine.  The water temperature is important - too hot and it will kill the yeast before it gets a chance to work.  75-85°F is a common temperature range in ABM recipes.  It will feel cool to your skin, since our body temperatures are much warmer than this temp range.  Bread machine yeast is sold in jars near the envelopes of yeast.  Once opened, store the jar in the refrigerator.

Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread

There is something so utterly satisfying about flipping a still hot skillet and a round of cornbread cleanly falling away onto a plate.  Tonight's supper was pot roast and this cornbread.  A little bit southern (buttermilk and cast iron), a little bit northern (yellow cornmeal and a tad of sugar), The Cornbread Gospels by Crescent Dragonwagon features this recipe.

Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread

Makes 8 wedges

Ingredients

1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal, stone ground preferred
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons butter

  Start off by preheating your oven to 375°F.

  Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl.  If you don't have a sifter, you can do this in a food processor, or fluff and mix everything gently with a fork.

  In a medium sized mixing bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and baking soda.  Add in the sugar, egg, and oil, taking care to whisk everything together evenly.

  Over medium heat, melt the butter in a 10 inch cast iron skillet.  When the butter has melted completely, swirl it around, completely coating the bottom and up around the sides.  Once the skillet is ready, pour the wet ingredients into the large bowl with the dry ingredients.  Mix everything up with as few strokes as possible, and scrape into the hot skillet.  Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.  Let the bread cool a few minutes, flip onto a plate and slice into wedges.

Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

  This beauty is my biscuit pan - makes drop biscuits look awfully purty.  The recipe I'm sharing today is designed to take advantage of a cast iron pan, whether it's a drop biscuit pan like this, or even a skillet or griddle.  This recipe is from Lodge Cast Iron, and is also featured in Cast-Iron Cooking for Dummies.  The biscuits will come out tender and fluffy like a drop biscuit, but with the taste of a good ol' buttermilk biscuit.  At the end of my post, I'll include variations from both sources.

Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

Makes 7 biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or vegetable shortening -- cold
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

  Preheat your oven to 450°F.

  In a mixing bowl, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, cream of tartar, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients together.

   Make sure you are using cold butter or shortening, and cut into the dry mixture with a pastry blender, fork or knife method. The mixture will have a coarse crumb consistency when you are ready for the next step.

  Pour in the buttermilk, and stir just until everything is blended. Take care not to overmix.

Drop Biscuit Pan method: If you have a drop biscuit pan, spoon in the dough into each well, filling it pretty full. I used a 7 well cast-iron pan. If you don't have a pan - see the next step.

Skillet or Griddle method: Mound the dough into about 7 biscuits onto your griddle or in your skillet. (Make sure these are oven-proof!).

  Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.

Variations:

For parsley biscuits, add 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley.

For a garden vegetable biscuit, add 2 tablepoons finely grated carrots, 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley, and 1 tablespoon of finely chopped green onion.

Fresh Strawberry Bread

Mmmmm.  I love strawberries, yes indeedy.  This loverly recipe comes from Cooking With the Noonday Chef 3 by Walter Lambert.  Now those of you unfamiliar with Chef Lambert, he demonstrates recipes on a local TV station on the 12 o'clock news.  I was tickled to death when I ran across this cookbook at McKay, a local haunt for bibliophiles, college students, and interesting people in general.  But, I digress - this is one of my favorite recipes I've tried out of that book so far.  If you're looking to try it, too, keep in mind, you'll need to prep the strawberries the night before you bake.

Fresh Strawberry Bread 

Yields 1 loaf

Ingredients

1 cup strawberry slices
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten


  Firstly, we're going to prep the strawberries.  Put the strawberry slices in a bowl and sprinkle with the 2 TBS of sugar.  Cover and put in the refrigerator overnight (or 8 hours).  This will create a nice syrup with the berries.

  After the strawberries have given up their sweet syrup, preheat the oven to 350°F.

  Blend together the flour, 1 cup sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl.

  In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oil, vanilla, eggs, strawberry slices and its syrup. Dump the strawberry mixture into the flour mixture, and mix just until blended.

  Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan (9 inches x 5 inches) and bake for approximately 50 minutes.

Notes:  Chef Walter suggests variations of adding 1 1/2 cup chopped pecans or a bit of cinnamon to the batter, if you like.  This bread is decadent served with a schmear of cream cheese.