Focaccia Caprese

Focaccia Caprese

For WE KNEAD TO BAKE we had baked Focaccia Caprese. The focaccia was amazingly delicious and welcome. The wallpaper on my laptop is this focaccia and I dare not change it.

With my site crash I lost a delicious and much in demand focaccia.   So I decided that this April some of the yummy bakes I have lost will have to be remade again. So I am”Fire(ing) my Oven this April “to make this yum focaccia.  

Let me however confess that the pictures are all old the bread had disappeared before I could get the camera out.This is the only picture I have of the bread.

Focaccia is a type of flatbread from Italy, thought to have originated in ancient Greece but now associated with Italy and baked in a variety of ways.   Apparently the name Focaccia originates from the ancient Roman “PanisFocacius” which was originally a flatbread that was baked on the hearth.

I have baked a Focaccia before and when I heard the name of this Focaccia which is Focaccia Caprese, I remembered the time when “Insalata Caprese" tempted me till I made it!

"Caprese" refers to something that comes from or is in the style of Capri, an island off the Italian coast near Naples.  Capri which is so famous for its villas, grottos and limestone towers and for the salad named after it “Insalata Caprese”.   Focaccia Caprese is the basic Focaccia dough topped Caprese style, which is sliced tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, in addition to the usual olive oil and herbs that are typically used in this flatbread.

Fresh mozzarella is recommended but for people like me who have no access to it make do with regular mozzarella that is used on Pizza.

To quote Aparna,”Just remember two things -that it is a good idea to keep to traditional toppings used on Italian Focaccia for the best results and also to use as few as possible because less is always more. The Focaccia is usually served either as a light snack, can be made into sandwiches or be served with a soup or salad to make a meal.”

Do tell me about your adventures when you “#FireUpYourOven" for this yummy Focaccia,

Focaccia Caprese

Recipe Source : My Diverse Kitchen

Yield: Serves 4 as the main course and 6 as a side dish

Ingredients:

For the Dough:

• 2 tsp active yeast
• 1 ½ tbsp sugar
• 3 ½ cups Maida
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ cup oil (preferably olive oil)
• 1 cup warm water + a little more if needed
• A little more olive oil for brushing dough

For the Topping:

• 5 large tomatoes, sliced thin
• Amul round piece of mozzarella, cut into1/4” slices
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into thin strips
• For the Herb Oil:
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp red chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp finely minced garlic/ paste
• Salt to taste
• Fresh basil leaves for garnishing

Method:

To make the herb oil:

• Mix and whisk all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Keep aside till required.

To make the dough:

• The dough can be mixed and kneaded by hand or machine.
• If like me you are using active yeast in a small bowl stir in the yeast, all the sugar and ½ cup of warm water. Mix well and set aside in a warm place for 10 minutes or so till the mixture is all bubbly and frothy.
• Put the flour, salt and oil in a big bowl still well to mix all the ingredients. Add the yeast mixture and stir, mix well.
• Then add ½ cup of warm water (and as much more as you need) and knead until you have a soft elastic dough that is just short of sticky.
•  Shape into a round and place in a well oiled bowl turning the dough around so it is coated.
• Cover with a napkin and let it rise till almost double in volume, this takes about an hour.
• Now, its decision time should you make 2 medium sized Focaccia or 4 smaller ones?
• For the rectangular Focaccia, take two rectangular pans/ jelly or Swiss roll pans and oil them well.
• Then divide the dough into two equal portions or 4 and lightly roll them (or press out) out into approximately 11” by 7” tins if you are e making 2 Focaccia or 5” by 7” if you are making 4.  I am very happy when I am making a Focaccia as it does not mind being in an odd shape its rustic and does not understand symmetry.
• Transfer the dough to the baking tins. The dough will shrink a little. With your fingers push it out to the edges make sure it’s evenly thick throughout.
•  Let it rise for 20 minutes.
• Lightly oil your finger tips and press into the dough creating evenly spaced “dimples” in it.
• Generously brush the surface with oil.
•  Bake at 210C (410F) for about 18 to 20 minutes till it is almost done and is beginning to turn golden brown.
• Take the Focaccia out and turn up the heat of your oven to 230C (450F).
•  Lightly drizzle some of the Herbed Oil over the Focaccia and then arrange some slices of mozzarella evenly over the bread avoid gaps between them the slices.
•  Arrange the tomato slices over this and a little sprinkle the chopped basil over this. The topping should cover most of the bread surface.
•  Drizzle some more Herbed Oil over the topping and return the bread to the oven.
• Bake the Focaccia for 5 to 8 minutes or until the cheese has just melted. Remove from the oven and garnish with fresh basil leaves.
•  Cut the Focaccia into slices and serve while it is still hot.
• Enjoy your fragrant Focaccia straight as it is or with soup or a salad.
•  

Day 12

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An InLinkz Link-up

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Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese

Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese

Focaccia is appreciated at home so I decided to “Fire my Oven this April” make another one. This time I choose Focaccia Pugliese or rather Potato Focaccia Pugliese.

 This did not look appetising and so I was worried if the girls will eat it. Needless to say I worry unnecessarily.

Will love to see you #FireUpYourOven" to make this delicious Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese.

 Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese

Recipe Source: My Diverse Kitchen

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 ¾ tsp active dry yeast
• 1 ½ tsp honey
• 1/3 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil plus extra for brushing and drizzling
• 4 medium sized potatoes
•  Salt and pepper to taste (optional)
• 2 tsp dried rosemary (use fresh if you have it and half the amount)

Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese

Method:

• Peel and slice the potatoes. I used the slicer and sliced the potatoes.
• Par-boil them in a little salted water as we will be using salt later. 
• Drain and pat the potato slices dry. Keep aside.
• Dissolve the yeast and honey in about 1/2 cup of warm water and allow to proof (about 5 to 10 minutes).
•  Put the flours, 1/3rd tsp salt, 1 tsp rosemary (if using dried herbs only) and oil in the bowl and mix well.
•  Add the yeast mixture and knead, adding just enough water to obtain a smooth and elastic dough. It should not be sticky.
• Make a ball out of the dough and Place it in a well oiled bowl and roll the dough in the bowl to coat it with oil.
• Cover with a cling film and allow to rise till double (about half an hour).
• Oil a rectangular tin (I used an 11" by 7" tin).
• Gently deflate the dough and knead a couple of times.
•  Using your fingers press the dough out to cover the tin in uniform thickness.
•  Continue using your fingers and dimple the top of the dough. Brush the top of the focaccia dough with oil.
•  Sprinkle the rosemary (fresh or remaining 1 tsp dried) and then arrange the potato slices to cover the surface of the dough.
• Sprinkle salt (if using) and freshly crushed black pepper.
• Cover with a damp cloth and allow to rise for about an hour. Bake the focaccia at 220°C for 30 minutes till the potato starts browning and the focaccia is a nice brown colour and sounds hollow when tapped.
• Serve warm as it is, or as a snack/ appetizer or maybe with soup or as part of a meal. 

Focaccia Pugliese or Potato Focaccia Pugliese

Day 11

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

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Hi! First time here? Well then you are Most Welcome! I hope you keep coming back for more here. If you are my regular visitor then Thanks, for you encourage me to experiment more!! I would like you to please click on my link below and like my Facebook Page. I will be happy if you can follow me on on Twitter too!

 

Pasta Salad

Pasta Salad

Making a salad is a simple job but lazy me hardly makes salads.

Salads are appreciated at my place so I should make them.

For the most noisy birthday, yes it’s my younger ones birthday I am talking about, noisy because she keeps on going on and on that it’s her birthday and she wants this and that. Keeps on changing her mind about this that becomes that in an instant, and makes me mad!

Anyway we made this pasta and thinking not all my friends like pasta and the sauces that go with it I made this salad.

To say that the Pesto Rosso and this salad was a hit will not be an understatement. The least expected dishes became the empty ones much to my embarrassment.

Pasta Salad

Recipe Source: Foodnetwork

Ingredients:

• Salt
• 4 cups shell shaped pasta 
•  ½ cup cauliflower, cut into small florets
• ¼ cup carrots, juliennes
• ¼ cup mushroom, sliced fine 
• ½   cup mayonnaise
• ½   cup buttermilk
• 1 tblspn garlic, chopped
• 1 tblspn parsley
• 1 lime Juice 
• 1 tsp pepper, freshly ground
• 1 cup processed cheese, shredded
• 1 small head romaine lettuce, sliced
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 tblspn spring onion greens, chopped

 Method: 

• In a large pot of boiling salted water. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
• Meanwhile in a thick bottomed   kadhai/wok add the mushrooms and the cauliflower cover and cook on low flame for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
• Whisk the mayonnaise, buttermilk, garlic, parsley, half of the lime juice,   salt, and pepper to taste. Reserve about 3-4 tblspn aside.
• Toss all the   ingredients in a large bowl pasta with the rest of the dressing.
• Drizzle some of the remaining dressing on top and sprinkle with the spring onion.
• Cover and refrigerate the salad and dressing separately up to 6 hours.
• Before serving serve slightly chilled.

Recipe courtesy Food Network Magazine



Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/7-layer-pasta-salad-recipe.html?oc=linkback

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#49

Hi! First time here? Well then you are Most Welcome! I hope you keep coming back for more here. If you are my regular visitor then Thanks, for you encourage me to experiment more!! I would like you to please click on my link below and like my Facebook Page. I will be happy if you can follow me on on Twitter too!

 

Pesto Rosso for Pasta

Pesto Rosso for Pasta

The month of December dawns with a lot of noise in my house. 

Why? 

Because the younger one celebrates her birthday and she starts goading me in action from the 15^th November. So generally even with my haphazard planning we have something organised for the great day. 

It’s hard to believe that 13 years ago we had a baby that fitted in the crook of my hand. The rate at which she is stretching upwards one day I will be in the crook of her arm and let me tell you I am tall.

So anyway the big day this year was a Saturday and I was not too well. I just made two sauces and boiled the pasta. I was skeptical about how it will taste but when my guests kept on returning for more of this sauce I knew I had hit a goldmine. This one is permanent feature in my home from now on and the best part is it can be used as a spread and dip also.

Pesto Rosso 

Pesto Rosso for Pasta

Recipe Source: Share my kitchen

Yield: about 3 cups

Ingredients:

• 2 tomatoes, peeled and deseeded
• 2 tomatoes, sundried
• ½ cup olive oil
• ½ cup almonds, blanched and peeled
• 1/3 cup olives
• 1/3 cup parmesan cheese
• 6 garlic cloves
• 6-8 basil leaves
• 2 Kashmiri chillies
• Salt

Method:

• In the mixer/blender drop the almonds use the pulse button twice.
• Then add all the ingredients in the mixer/blender and blend to get a paste.
• Serve on hot pasta like penne, tagliatelle, rigatoni.

Pasta and Sauces to with them

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#48

Hi! First time here? Well then you are Most Welcome! I hope you keep coming back for more here. If you are my regular visitor then Thanks, for you encourage me to experiment more!! I would like you to please click on my link below and like my Facebook Page. I will be happy if you can follow me on on Twitter too!

 

Marinara Sauce for Pasta

Marinara Sauce for Pasta

According to Wikipedia, “Marinara (English: mariner's) sauce is an Italian tomato sauce that originated in Naples, usually made with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and onions. Its many variations can include the addition of capers, olives and spices. It is occasionally sweetened with a dash of red wine.

This sauce is also widely used in Italian-American cuisine, which has diverged from its Old World origins.

Italians refer to marinara sauce only in association with other recipes. For instance, spaghetti alla marinara literally translates to "spaghetti mariner's style" (from the adjective marinara with the feminine suffix -a pertaining to salsa, Italian for sauce), but tomato sauce alone in Italy is called sugo/salsa al/di pomodoro or pummarola (the latter being Neapolitan language).

Several folk theories are given as to the origin of this sauce: One version is that cooks aboard Neapolitan ships invented marinara sauce in the mid-16th century after Spaniards introduced the tomato (a New World fruit) to Europe. The original recipe did not contain seafood, so it was resistant to spoilage due to the high acid content of tomatoes. This made it ideal for lengthy sea voyages hundreds of years before refrigeration methods were invented. Another theory states this was a sauce prepared by the wives of Neapolitan sailors upon their return from sea.

Historically, however, the first Italian cookbook to include tomato sauce, Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward), was written by Italian chef Antonio Latini and was published in two volumes in 1692 and 1694. Latini served as the Steward of the First Minister to the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. This early tomato sauce was more like a modern tomato salsa.”

So much for history but I did not for once think the sauce I made regularly was Marinara Sauce! Only when I was looking for the sauce for this BM and for Kiddo’s Birthday Party that I found out I was making this sauce regularly.

But let me confess this sauce has been made by my elder one! I was not well and we almost cancelled the little ones birthday party as I could not make anything. As the initial plan was to make pasta this sauce was something that Apeksha made for Akanksha. So all Apekshas have been met, no more Asha Akansha for me!! Before you wonder what I mean Apeksha is expectation and Akansha means desire, wish!!

Marinara Sauce

Recipe Source:  Here

Ingredients:

• 1 tblspn olive oil
• 1 onion 
• 1 ½ tsp garlic, minced
• ½  cup  red wine(I did not use)
• 12 tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and crushed 
• ½ tsp flat-leaf parsley, dried
• 1 ½  tsp salt
• ½  tsp kali mirch/ kali miri/ pepper corns,  freshly ground

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in a large kadhai/wok.
• Add the onion and sauté on low flame til translucent.
• Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.
• Add the wine, (if using else jump to the next step) and cook on high heat, keep stirring and scraping till almost all the liquid evaporates.
• Stir in the tomatoes, parsley, salt, and pepper.
• Cover, and simmer on low flame till sauce thickens.
• Serve hot with spaghetti or rigatoni pasta.

Come back tomorrow for another delicious sauce....

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#48

Hi! First time here? Well then you are Most Welcome! I hope you keep coming back for more here. If you are my regular visitor then Thanks, for you encourage me to experiment more!! I would like you to please click on my link below and like my Facebook Page. I will be happy if you can follow me on on Twitter too!

 

Spaghetti and Vegetable Balls

Spaghetti 

My daughters picked up a packet of spaghetti the other day from the local supermarket and have been pestering me to make spaghetti and meatballs, mock meat of course!

Where on earth, or should I say in Panaji, will I find mock meat?

So I Googled for recipes for Spaghetti and Meat balls unfortunately every recipe I landed on call for ground beef (guess I used wrong key words :-) ), any way they were just grinning through all my efforts finally asked me do we have to tell you? Just invent? 

For the sauce as I already had some lasagne sauce & hence ½ kg tomatoes was too much for me. I suppose ¼ kg would be enough. Also the spaghetti should be boiled in a bigger vessel.

Ingredients:

For the Veg. meat balls:

4 boiled potatoes

200 grms paneer

Salt

2 tsp chilli powder

½ tsp dried oregano powder

¾ cup rolled oats

1 cup bread crumbs

Oil for frying

For the sauce:

4 cloves garlic, minced

10-12 stalks of coriander (no leaves as I have run out of coriander), minced

2oilve oil

½ tsp oregano

1 onion, chopped fine

½ kg Tomato (As I had about 1½ cups of sauce I had made for lasagne lying in my freezer I dumped it too in the sauce)

2 tblspn tomato ketchup

1 tsp chilli sauce

½ tsp Soya sauce

Sugar (optional)

Method:

For the Veg. meat balls:

The veg balls being shallow fried

1.       Grate the boiled potatoes, paneer and mix all the ingredients to form soft dough.

2.       Make small marble sized balls and fry them, reddish. The choice is yours either deep fry them or shallow fry them like I did.

3.       Keep aside.

For the sauce:

Tomato sauce just before it staterd bubbling

1.       Make a cross on the tomato near its stalk. Heat enough water in a pan and dump the tomatoes for about ½ hour.

2.       The skin peels easily after this, puree the skinned tomato in the mixer. Keep aside.

3.       In a pan add the garlic and coriander stalks with the oil and brown the garlic.

4.       Add the oregano, stir and add the onions fry till soft and translucent. Add the pureed tomato at this point I added the lasagne sauce too.

5.       Bring to a boil adding the ketchup, Soya and chilli sauces, sugar salt.

6.       Adjust the amount of sauce and the seasoning.

7.       Just before serving thicken the sauce using corn flour in water.

For the Spaghetti

1.          In boiling water toss the spaghetti till it is cooked.

2.          Drain and cool using running water. 

3.         Toss a little oil over the spaghetti to prevent sticking.

To serve:

1.          Arrange the balls on in a deep dish and pour the thickened sauce. . (You have to cook the meat balls in the sauce in the actual recipe but since my meatless balls are already cooked and appear to be fragile I followed this way as we do for koftas).

2.        Ladle the spaghetti on the plate and the balls and sauce.