No Need to Argue - Braided Herb and Cheese Bread

If there is one thing this blog and my blog posts are known for, it's the ridiculous thoughts I have time  and again. However, you shouldn't take everything I said so serious. That would just be a disappointment. You know, I am not twenty one anymore and I am not so sure, whether I could or should be dreaming my dreams. Whatever the case, this blog will never be empty or devoid of food and I hope I will not be changing into a food writing zombie (whatever that is). Don't be so sad, though, if I can't be with you all the time. Right now, I am having a good time, it's summer, the sun is shinning and if I look outside it's not the time to watch while the icicle melts.
By now you should have found out, that there really is no need to argue. Nevertheless, I have no idea nor plan how ever I could use the terms Yeats's grave and daffodil lament in any causal sentence here during this blog post, even if I would include an ode to my family.
While I like writing song based blog posts, I would like to dedicate this one to The Cranberries studio album No Need to Argue. But why is there no need to argue? I like to be frank with you. I love carbs, gluten, wheat, yeast, bacon and all that stuff. While I have no problems with others eating gluten free or low carb, you don't need to argue with me about these things, I just love my dough.
For that I have some bread for you with all the lovely things.

Fine, go ahead, start arguing about the quality of the photos. Well, sometimes things are good and sometimes they are not

Ingredients
300 ml tepid water
7 g yeast
tsp honey
300 g flour
200 g semolina
salt
basil, sage, mint, rosemary
200 g mozzarella, grated
125 bacon, cubed
pepper

Method
We start with the tepid water in one bowl or measuring jar, as I usually do. We add the yeast and the teaspoon of honey. Let the yeast do its magic. Meanwhile get a larger bowl for the flour, semolina and a pinch of salt.
Then it's time to mix the yeasty water with the flour and get things together for a dough.

Get your share of food fitness by kneading the dough for a while to release the glutens (here we go). At the same time you fry of the bacon cubes for a while to give them some extra colour and all that you want.
Chop up the desired amount of the above mentioned herbs, chop them really finely. Then you can work them into the dough. Yes more kneading. After that you get 100 g of the mozzarella cheese and knead it into the dough as well. Follows the bacon and even more kneading until you have all the goodies evenly in your dough.
I reckon, it's time for the dough to do its thing and rise. Meanwhile you can ... no need to argue .. do whatever you like. Maybe you could watch an episode of your favourite series. While we are talking about it ... nah ... whatever.
Just get it over with. I suggest one hour. Then separate the dough into three even balls.

Get a baking tray with some baking parchment ready. You might want to heat up the oven to 200 °C.
Turn the three balls of dough into ... eh ... three sausages of dough, just a little longer then your baking tray. After that we can go for the fun part, braiding the bread. In my opinion, with hair this braiding is a bit easier and ... if you really have to ... but then again no need to argue ... if you look at the fotos the braiding didn't work that out that pro on my bread, but this in no way diminished the taste.
Once the braiding is finished ... for good or for bad ... spread over the remaining cheese and add some pepper on top and transfer the baking tray to the oven for 20 - 30 minutes. The bread is looking golden brown and ready for ...

... the time to enjoy. For sure you will find a good way to do so. You will find something lovely to eat on the side.

That whole thing might be a bit dangerous for me as I could go ahead and finish off that bread just that. No need to argue!

Bacon and Asparagus Carbonara

Yes, it’s really happening again. I go through the shop and see vegetables and fruits and other ingredients and I get already ideas what to do with them. Wonderful!

However, when you go after every idea you end up in buying more than you can manage to eat in a reasonable amount or amount of time.

Anyway, this time it was asparagus and mushrooms. As for the mushrooms they still have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe, they go for the breakfast, for even as I am writing now another idea comes up for the other half of the asparagus.

Therefore we are having bacon and asparagus carbonara, for we all know that asparagus and bacon go well together. Yes, originally I wanted to have asparagus wrapped in bacon, but … hey … why not try something different.

As bacon, cream, egg and cheese make a good carbonara, why not toss everything together and go for it.

Here we go …

Ingredients:
A bit of olive oil
200 g green asparagus
100 g stripes of streaky bacon
A few leaves of sage
Salt and pepper
200 g crème fraîche
2 eggs
Hand full of grated Parmesan
Pasta

Method:
Cut the asparagus into smaller, bit sized pieces and the bacon into smaller stripes.

Heat up a pan with a bit of olive oil and throw in the asparagus and bacon. Let it all get some colour. Later you can add the finely chopped sage and a bit of pepper.

Meanwhile you cook your pasta according to the instructions on the package or … as you have done your own fresh pasta … as long as they need.

Still meanwhile you get yourself a bowl to mix in the crème fraîche, the eggs, the Parmesan and some salt and pepper.

Pasta ready? Get a bit of cooking water into the pan and rinse away the remaining cooking water. Toss the pasta with the asparagus and bacon and take the pan from the heat.

Mix the egg mixture with the pasta and serve your meal …

Grate over some extra Parmesan and maybe sprinkle a bit of olive oil over it.

Enjoy!

It was very delicious. I was pleased with the end result and for sure will have some more of it.

F-Game Toad in a Hole

Lately, around here I am not giving my a-game. I’m not sure, what it would be like, though. No worries!

Anyway, life is like this: sometimes you loose and sometimes the others win. Nah, it's not that bad. Sometimes you simply have other things to do.

Therefore we go right away into food, for at least here we know, that it will go to a meal. Leftovers! There were those pork sausages in my fridge, those tiny ones. Here they are called Nürnberger. I used some of them for my English breakfast some time ago, but what to do with the rest of them.

Now I know, why I put all those knowledge into my head. At some point a bell will ring and I know what to do. So, toad in the hole. I never had. Therefore I never made it before. I now, it involves sausages and … something else.

Now I give you my F-game Toad in the Hole …

 Well, the F-game in this recipe doesn’t refer to it being rubbish. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even think about putting it up here.

No! It’s time for Lord Feta to strike back …

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 tsp mustard powder
120 g flour
100 ml milk
Some parsley, finely chopped
Some sage, finely chopped
Salt, pepper
100 g bacon, preferably 10 slices
10 small pork sausages
200g feta

Method:Heat up your oven to 180 °C.

Get yourself an ovenproof dish, 20 x 20 cm will do for this amount of ingredients. Put it aside.

Now get a bowl and mix in it the eggs, mustard powder, flour, milk, parsley and sage. Season with salt and pepper. Pour that mixture into the ovenproof dish.

What a coincidence, the amount of bacon was just enough for the number of sausages I had left. Go for it and wrap one slice of bacon around one little sausages and arrange in the batter in the ovenproof dish.

All done? Proceed with the feta. You can either crumble it into the ovenproof dish or cut it into cubes and scatter them over the sausages in the dish.

Anyhow, put into the oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you have sufficient time to whip up your onion gravy and get whatever vegetables you want to put on the side ready.

For sure, you have a good recipe for onion gravy and know quite perfectly well how to do it. No?

I took a pan and melted some butter at low heat, tossed in the onion rings of a large onion and let things go until the toad in the hole is almost finish.

To complete the sauce, season with salt and pepper, add a tablespoon of flour and a generous splash of sherry. Briefly cook so the sauce thickens.

The finished dish from the oven could look somewhat like that or when you have a closer look, it will look a bit like this …

Ah, that wasn’t really that much closer. Anyway, plate up. With the right amount of vegetables you could even manage to satisfy four people with that, but than you can’t be as generous with the onion gravy as I have …

However, that was only, because I wanted to have fresh gravy for the leftovers another day and maybe enhance the gravy with some mushrooms then.

If, though, you don’t have four people for tea and decide to have a second go, you can have less or no gravy at all …

You could always have some more peas, though.

Whatsoever, I enjoyed it very much. If you want to have a more traditional version of toad in the hole, I guess, you just have to omit the feta.

In case you want to have a vegetarian version, you could omit the bacon and use veggie sausages or use something completely different, but then again, you might get a totally different dish here. So, why then, not cook something completely different.

Still Italian - Saltimbocca alla Romana with Roasted Vegs

I am still in the mood for Italy or was it Italian food? I would right away do a food trip to Italy, if I could. However, as there is no room for thinking about that at the moment I have some more Italian food: Saltimbocca. It may be strangely, but that was something popping into my mind when thinking further about Italian food. I wanted to make it for some time now. The only problem so far was, to come across some nice veal escalopes.
A few days then, it was the case, so I started searching for some ideas and found something from the Jamie Oliver magazine: Saltimbocca alla Romana.

That sounded perfectly good for me ... eh ... almost good for me. I just made a tiny bit of adjustment.
First of all, I concentrated on what to have with my saltimbocca. The original idea was to have some rosemary potatoes. Instead I went for a bit more colour. So, feel free to use any kind of vegetables you love to have or want to use up.
I used potato, courgette, carrot and celery. I simple chopped up the vegetables in different shapes, seasoned them with some dried rosemary and salt and dripped enough olive oil on top of them.

Because that wasn't good enough for me, I tossed in some whole garlic cloves, which to squeeze over the vegs after roasting them for about 30 minutes at 200 °C in the oven.

Just before the roasted vegetables are ready, you can prepare the saltimbocca.

Ingredients (for 1 person):
1 veal escalope (about 100 g)
Black pepper
Some sage leaves
2 slices of Parma ham
A splash of olive oil
2 knobs of butter
A splash of sweet white wine

Method:
I started my saltimbocca with flattening it out. Sometimes I need to make some noise, so the neighbours know I am still alive.

Then I went on seasoning the meat with some black pepper. After that I placed a few of the tiny sage leaves I still had left from the bunch of sage I had bought a few weeks ago.
Just a few stems had survived them. I had put them in a glass with some water. One of the stems had developed some roots now. So I planted that one into a pot and used the leaves from the other stem.
Over the sage leaves then, the two slices of Parma ham were placed.

Time to heat up the pan with some olive oil and a knob of butter. From here on, things go quite fast. The saltimbocca needs two minutes on each side. Then you remove it from the pan, cover it with aluminium foil and leave it to rest until you are finished with the sauce.
In order to do that, you add another knob of butter and a splash of sweet white wine to the pan you have still on the heat. Add some more sage leaves to the pan and quickly reduce the sauce, because I am hungry.

Plate up the Saltimbocca alla Romana with some of the roasted vegetables and enjoy a very delicious meal. Now I remember, why I always wanted to make saltimbocca, because it tastes so great - that is, if you have used good quality ingredients.

Before I come to end here I like to add this post to some challenges.
First of all to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays. I didn't see anything wrong in the ingredients I used. It's all from scratch here.

The herbs in that dish are obvious. You can even see them on the photos, the rosemary and the sage. So I even used herbs according to this month's Cooking with Herbs, which is managed by Karen from Lavender & Lovage.

Now it's just time to continue thinking of Italy. I don't know whether reading Romeo & Juliet will help ... or some Italian wine is necessary ... who knows!?

One way or the other Red Hokkaido Squash Soup

From what I gather by looking around, it's time for squashes and pumpkins. Really? Yes, I would say so. What do we get out of it? For example, I bought a Red Hokkaido squash. Well, I didn't have to go that far and travel to Japan to get it. From it we can get vitamin A and vitamin C, calcium, potassium and iron to mention just a few. Furthermore it is low in calories and sodium. That is, if you are caring about nutrition facts and ... eh ... calories. However, I guess we have to mess around with the calories anyway. But at least you can say, the calories didn't come from the squash.
We are going to have some soup. One day I was invited by some friends ... eh ... just a moment, I invited myself and ... we had some pumpkin soup. Some time later I tried to recreate that soup without having the recipe. 

I may have gotten it slightly wrong, but I will give you some alternative ideas, too. So you can have it one way or the other ...