Flatbread, Whole Grain, Naan and Caramel Bun

I got my baking done before Thanksgiving.

Naan Buns and Flatbread

For months now I've made fritattas and placed them inside naan. So easy to make, using home-made yogurt to create the softness.

Poached Eggs Florentine

This unusual approach to poached eggs was fun and festive. I cut slices of white bread with a cookie cutter and fried the bread. Then I pressed the broth out of cooked Swiss chard and layered it onto the fried bread.

Poached eggs are topped with Hollandaise Sauce. The chard can have a Bechamel Sauce, but I kept it light, drizzling only the Hollandaise.

I served this with veggies and chorizo.

Homecoming - Matt and Ruhiyyih

Turkey in the tummy, warm fire in our living room, and safe in each others' arms...

Thanksgiving At The Dannells

Rue and Annie hosted Thanksgiving this year, that's dinner for eleven, not including baby Daniel.

Annie worked her shift at Starbucks, getting up at 4:00 a.m., then returned home to put together a wonderful meal. Rue said that she started early, setting the table the day before, and getting all the decorations up - yes, they are decorated for Christmas!

Ruhiyyih and Matt drove over from the tri-cities and spent four days, visiting Matt's family as well as ours.

Little Dan-Dan, Ruhiyyih's nic-name for our grandson Daniel, was the star of the show, not including the turkey. (More photos here, in Kathy Hall's photo-stream.)

Putting Everything To Good Use

Ruhiyyih brought over three large bags of apples for table decorations at her wedding. We put an assortment of the yellow and red ones in vases. When the wedding was finished we collected all the vases, emptied the apples out, and all the apples were brought home so they would not be wasted. I got busy and did some home-canning.

Several different batches resulted in apples for crepes (a thickened brown sugar sauce); pie filling (white sugar and cinnamon with the corn starch); and slightly sweetened apples for yogurt.

I made about 16 quarts over several days. When I was finished it felt like quite an accomplishment, and I know we will thoroughly enjoy the pies, crepes and the cooked apples...but, as with EVERY canning event, it is something I say I'll never do again! Every year I find something more to can, just to save it - like this years' pickled vegetables and slaws. If people hadn't given me the food, I never would have done this. It is so labor intensive!

Often I think how women were so ready to give up this kind of thing, go into the workplace, and bring home pre-packaged quick food. Growing your own food, processing it, and serving simple meals built from scratch is a thing of the past. It is so labor intensive, so time-consuming, with hours spent in the kitchen putting food by for the winter. A few jars like mine are nothing compared to the volume prepared by women out on the farm 90 years ago.

Yesterday I watched "Food, Inc.", the film that spotlights the people who are working to reform an industry rife with monopolies, questionable interpretations of laws and subsidies, political ties and rising rates of E.coli outbreaks. The documentary explores the food industry's detrimental effect on our health and the environment. Barbara Kingsolver has taken the same position that I have, in her book "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral", that going back to the basics is worth the time and affords many long-forgotten pleasures.

I've used one of the jars of apples for apple crepes.

Open them, and you've got an omelette.


I also made several apple torts. The crust is part almond flour, part white flour, butter, egg and water. I ate one of these tarts warm, then froze all the rest for taste thrills for coffee breaks. When Matt and Ruhiyyih drive over for Thanksgiving, I'll give them some of the pie filling, and show Ruhiyyih how to make an easy almond flour crust for tarts.

Baked Acorn Squash With Sweet Potato Filling

Puree the sweet potatoes, add finely chopped apple, brown sugar and cinnamon, and top with pecans or walnuts. Then cut into wedges to serve.

Mushrooms from the Back Yard

Helping In The Kitchen, Family Style

When my sister and her family were here for a few days prior to Ruhiyyih's wedding everyone hovered in the kitchen. This is Kendra, my nephew's wife, helping with preparations for lunch.

We had to bring something for a potluck lunch at Annie's and a dinner potluck at Laurel's, so all of us got busy preparing a variety of dishes. I made soup, Rahmat stirred up an east-Indian curry, and George filled in as prep-cook, chopping onions and sharpening knives. It was a blurr of activity as all of us danced around each other attending to our projects.

We steamed up the kitchen with our broths, vegetables and curry, helping each other with sudden tasks like opening cans of beans and finding spices. Had I known ahead of time, I would have soaked our own black and white beans for Rahmat's curry. But, at the last minute I raided the pantry, and he was all set.

I filled out my soup by adding these green beans, which I had canned just a month ago. My sister said my soup was good, but it was the strangest combination of corn chipotle, chorizo, previously frozen kale soup, and the green beans. It never fails to amaze me that when one is desperate to throw something together for a pot-luck, there is always a bit of this and that which comes to the rescue.

Rahmat's curry was a hit. He said he makes this for himself throughout the week. He asked for spices, so I rumaged through my cupboard (George has his spices in a rack near the stove, mine are kept in a cupboard in the dark). I located some cumin, garam masala, tumeric, and a little paunch poran. This last spice should be roasted at the end of the cooking, so that all the seeds explode and the flavor is at its peak.

It is unsettling when family come to visit. I want to cook so many things but ultimately find myself sitting and chatting and letting George do all the cooking. He is an exceptionally good cook - much better than I am. I enjoy experiments and exploring cultures, but he is best at the everyday fare, simple comfort foods.

I made crepes before my company arrived.
I've found that making them ahead of time is more efficient. Once filled with cherries and cream cheese, a little ricotta and powdered sugar, breakfast is ready in half the time.

While my sister and her daughter were here I showed them how to make farmer's cheese, which can be used as a type of chunky, cream or powdered cheese depending on how you handle it. We also made malloraddus, the Sardinian pasta which is rolled on a bamboo mat to create the lines. In Sardinia a malloraddus board is used, with little grooves, but one can make their own using a simple bamboo mat. I found several more of these at the Goodwill, and we made the grooved container for my sister.

I served bucatini rigati with shredded smoked salmon while they were here. This southern Italian spaghetti has a tiny hole throughout, like a straw, making the spaghetti larger and chewier. A similar type of pasta is made in Sardinia. The long strands are rolled out, then cut into one inch segments. A wire is then pressed onto the top of the segment and the sides are collected and rolled up over the top. The pasta then slides off the wire - I used a coat hanger wire, but even a thin bamboo skewer will work fine.

It is a time-consuming process, but very simple, and I listened to Eckhart Tolle's "Stillness Speaks" while I carefully made my pasta and set them to dry on a soft towel. The empty mind, free of thought or feeling, which he describes as an exquisite state of being, is surely fostered by the meticulous process of making one's own pasta on a quiet winter afternoon. The enthusiasm and chatter of our guests in the kitchen was gone, and I felt a wistfulness at just how empty a kitchen can feel when the celebration is over! It is surely a grace, when little pastas settling in a dish can bring me back to life!

I let the pasta dry out for only a day, then I made a tasty meal - bucatini pasta with sauce made from vegetables from the garden. It was so good - vegetables grown in my garden, home-canned pasta sauce and farmer's cheese.

Ready, Get Set......Daniel, the Trek King

More here, by Katherine Hall.

Sardinian Flat-bread - Pane Carasau

Anthony Bourdain said of Pane Carasau, "You just can't get this in New York!", and he was right about that! You can't experience this crispy Sardinian flat-bread unless you grow the rosemary (I do), collect salt from the sea, and bake/blister this bread in an old wood-burning oven.

In Sardinia they remove the flat-bread from the oven halfway through baking and cut it in half. It is then reinserted into the oven and baked, all of which takes only a fraction of a minute. There are several women helping with the bread. One woman rolls the bread, another bakes it, and another woman cuts the bread in half separating both sides from each other. It is then baked again and flattened to press out all the bubbles. (I left the bread whole.)

I fell in love with the process of baking Pane Carasau when I watched this segment on Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations". The ancient garb of the women, the glowing embers of the fire, the prayers before kneading the dough, and that ancient crackle of the bread as it is broken to be used as a plate or utensil were mesmerizing. I wanted that experience, regardless of the outcome of the bread!

I mixed the two flours, part white and part semolina, and piled them into a mound on my counter, making a little well in the center.

Then I added the water and yeast, and mixed the batter into a mound so I could knead the dough.

The dough is divided into portions then rolled so thin you almost see through the dough. Don't worry if the shape is uneven as that is part of the charm of this flat-bread.

A baking stone is needed in the oven - I use an old floor tile - and the oven is set at 450 degrees. This is an extremely hot oven, and since you slide the bread onto the stone and turn it halfway through you will come to understand that an outdoor oven works best. The heat will escape the oven as you flip the bread and it will warm the kitchen.

At some point toward the end of the baking my smoke alarm started screeching and burping in complete exasperation. I'd no sooner get the flat-bread onto the stone, spray a bit of olive oil on top, and I'd have to close the oven door and grab a towel. I'd vigorously fan the alarm four feet away, and then drop the towel and grab my oven mitts. I felt almost like a lunatic, carried away in a frenzy of imagination and joy. The beautiful Pane Carasau, called the music bread because of its crackle as you break it, had captured my heart.

"Carta de Musica", I baked round after round, then sprayed the bread again with olive oil. I left the flat-breads whole and piled them up onto my skillet, with the pile getting higher and higher.

Much like an ornate cracker, Pane Carasau was baked for the lonely shepherds who would carry it out to their pastures. It would keep for a year and could be moistened with tomato juice to make a thin soft lasagna. An egg and anything handy from the meadow would be placed on top for breakfast. When Ruhiyyih and Matt were here, I made them this ancient Sardinian breakfast called Pane Frattau.

Sardinian cuisine is a hybrid of influences, starting with the Phoenicians, followed by Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Moors, the Spanish, and then other Mediterranean powers. This layered culinary heritage is epitomized by the ancient Pane Carasau, a profoundly beautiful flat-bread baked for more than 2,500 years.

Our daughter Ruhiyyih married Matt last Saturday in a beautiful ceremony with family and friends. (More photos by photographer Katherine Hall in her blog Shutterblog.)

My favorite moment of Matt and Ruhiyyih was the kiss, because when he swept her into his arms there was barely a dry eye in the room. An entire community of friends and well-wishers made her wedding so memorable and lovely. ( I'll wait for Ruhiyyih to share the details, when she has time to do so.)

Here my sister is trying to put earrings on me. She said, "You've got wrinkled ole lady ears Bonita, and I can't get it on!" We fussed and struggled, and finally somebody popped them in... little diamond studs that Ruhiyyih wanted me to keep for her. I figured they'd get lost in my pocket, so I wore them.

The first day of their marriage I lighted altar candles as a way of keeping Matt and Ruhiyyih in my prayers. They've been lighted every day as a remembrance.

About 25 of Ruhiyyih's friends and family celebrated a bridal shower for her on Sunday. (photos by Kathy Hall)

Ruhiyyih opened her gifts ~ lots of pretty nighties and other stuff.

Refreshments were served - I made five different varieties of finger sandwiches, and other people brought desserts and drinks.

We played a bingo game and I won a prize! We had to fill in the squares with everything a bride needed for her special day! I managed to fill in lingerie, toiletries, candles and the like for the first row. But, my goodness, I ran out of ideas as I approached the bottom row, so I just wrote down a tent, Coleman lantern, a flint fire-starter, and a compass.

Malloreddus ~ Gnocchi, Sardinian Style

Malloreddus is a wonderful pasta, similar to gnocchi, which is made with potato flour. The traditional recipe calls for regular flour, but I've decided that about half of it should be semolina, which is duram wheat, perfect for pasta.

After the two flours are mixed with salt and an egg I knead the dough until it is elastic. Then I partition it into four or five small loaves depending on how many servings I will make.

Each little loaf is rolled out, then tiny bean-size pieces are chopped off.

The small chunk of pasta is pressed across a bamboo mat which effectively presses a pattern into the pasta.

The edge of the piece is rolled up and brushed to the side of the pan.

These are left to dry on a soft cotton cloth for several days until the moisture evaporates. I keep them on a tray in my refrigerator.

After they are cooked they can be seasoned with olive oil, Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, finely shredded smoked salmon, or enjoyed with a favorite pasta sauce.

Handmade Tagliatelle and Tortelli

I stuffed the tortelli with homemade farmer's cheese seasoned with caraway, and cooked Swiss chard which is pressed and squeezed to remove all juice. Both pastas were served with my garden pasta sauce and a little Parmesan cheese.

First Halloween for Grandson Dan-Dan