Leek Bread Pudding

So, I posted on facebook early this week that Scott is officially smitten with Smitten Kitchen and this recipe (the original recipe plus lovely pictures) is just one of the many reasons. Scott loves onions and anything oniony, so when I saw this recipe with leeks I thought it would be worth a try. They didn't have brioche at Trader Joe's, so I used Challah, with the crust on (minimalist that I am), and I used approximate measurements. Mine didn't turn out as firm as hers, but regardless, I really liked the crispy outer bits, so I think I would prefer to do this is a shallow square baking dish so that there is more surface area to crisp up (I am one of those who likes the brownie edges, lasagna corners, and the crispy topping of casseroles). Below is the recipe with my edits and many less pictures. I'm finding that it is a challenge enough to get the goodies on the table without stopping for pictures, if you know what I mean. We used it as a vegetarian main dish with a nice salad.
Serves 6 as a side dish

3 leeks cut in 1/2-inch thick slices, white and light green parts only, cleaned and rinsed
Kosher or coarse salt
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter
Freshly ground black pepper
8 cups 1-inch-cubed challah
2 teaspoons finely chopped chives (I forgot to buy these; it made me sad)
1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
2 large eggs
3 cups whole milk, heavy cream or half-and-half or a combination thereof
Freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup shredded Gruyere or Swiss

Place a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat, drain excess water from leeks, and add to pan. Season with salt, and sauté until leeks begin to soften, about 5 minutes, then reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in butter. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are very soft, about 20 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While leeks are cooking, spread bread cubes on a baking sheet and bake until dry and pale gold, about 15 to 20 minutes (my already-stale brioche took less time to brown), turning pan about halfway through. Transfer to a large bowl, leaving the oven on.

Add leeks, chives, thyme, and cheese to the bowl of bread; toss well. In another large bowl, lightly whisk the eggs, then whisk in milk or cream, a generous pinch of salt, pepper to taste and a pinch of nutmeg.

Sprinkle 2 tablespoons shredded cheese in bottom of a buttered square baking dish and pour in bread mixture. Pour in enough milk mixture to cover bread, and gently press on bread so milk soaks in. Let rest 15 minutes.Add remaining milk mixture, letting some bread cubes protrude. Sprinkle with salt. Bake until pudding is set and top is brown and bubbling, check at 30 minutes (I haven't tried it this way, but with a larger surface area you will need less cooking time. The original suggests 55-60 minutes.).

My Go-To Salad

So, Ms. Jessie at The Brown Bag is doing a salad-a-day challenge for February and I promised I try and put up some recipes for salads in the spirit of things. Unfortunately, I haven't had a salad each day this month, but I have for the last two days. Sigh. There's little incentive for salad around these parts: two kids that don't eat salad plus eating veg at home (ie eating lots of veggies). But I like salads and have kinda missed them. This week, I put salad on the menu.

The Dressing:
I tend to like sweet, vinegary dressings. I came across this one several years ago in the vegetarian grilling book. The salad itself had arugula, roasted red peppers, marinated and grilled shallots, pine nuts and feta. It actually was the marinade for the shallots, but I had a little extra leftover and used it as a dressing. Yum! So, it has become one of my staple salad dressings.

1/4 C. Olive Oil
1/4 C. Balsamic Vinegar
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
Salt and Pepper to Taste

All you have to do is whisk it all together and toss it with your salad.

I feel like a good salad has a few major components: greens, mix-ins, crunch, and cheese.

The Greens
So, this is the thing. I don't really love the ranch on iceberg with carrots and mushrooms and a tomato. I mean, it has it's place, but I like my salads to have a little more personality. I usually go for spinach instead of lettuce - it's heartier and so full of nutrition. But you can do this with almost any type of leafy green. My second choice would be the "spring mix" or whatever they are calling it these days or arugula.

Mix-ins
Sounds like cold stone, eh? Well, this is the best part of making a salad. I look through the fridge to see what I have. I usually try to shy away from the typical carrots and celery and go for more interesting components: strawberries, blueberries, roasted red peppers, pears, apples, thinly sliced red onion, avocado, nice ripe grape tomatoes, dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, bacon. I don't go wild here. Just a couple mix-ins. Maybe only one. If you want to make it a entree salad you can also mix in leftover chicken or whatever meat you have.

Crunch
This would be what croutons are usually for, but I have a hard time with croutons. You can't puncture them with your fork that well and if you can't do that then you have to try and balance them on your fork with the other salad components. I usually just end up eating them alone and I think that really misses the point. I typically will go for nuts of some sort: pine nuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds, cashews - all toasted. But, you can use anything that sounds good to achieve the crunch. Some other ideas might be chow mein noodles, tortilla chips, fried onions...

Nuts are also great candied: heat the 1/3 C. nuts in a small frying pan until fragrant. Sprinkle with sugar (a tablespoon or so) and stir until the sugar is melted and the nuts are browned. Remove from heat and spread on wax paper that has been sprayed with non-stick spray until cool.

Cheese
I like cheese in my salads. Depending on the other ingredients I might use shredded parmesan, chopped mozzarella, feta, blue, gorgonzola, smoked gouda. I don't really like chevre so I wouldn't use it, but it would probably work well, too, if you like it.


So here are some of my favorite mix-in, crunch, cheese combinations to go with the dressing and greens.

Blueberries, parmesan and candied nuts or pine nuts
Strawberries, blue cheese, almonds
Pears, blue cheese, candied walnuts
Roasted red peppers, feta, pine nuts
Roasted red peppers, tomato, mozzarella, fried onions (the kind you use for green bean casserole)

Pesto Trapanese

Is it right to post a recipe from another food blog on my food blog? I don't know. Consider it a review. I wanted to make something with tomatoes because I bought a bunch of tomatoes a couple weeks ago to make the tomato sauce for jachnun (thanks to Ruti and her amazing recipe), but because of births didn't even end up making the jachnun. So 8 tomatoes and two weeks later I was thinking I better use them before they end up rotting in my fridge. Sorry for the lovely picture I've painted. This is where, once again, smitten kitchen comes to the rescue. I love that she has a listing of recipes by food item. Browsing through the tomato section I fell upon this little gem. I don't think there is anything I would change about it. It was easy and yummy.

Linguine with Tomato-Almond Pesto [Pesto Trapenese]
Adapted from Gourmet

3/4 cup slivered almonds
1 large handful fresh basil leaves
1 to 2 large garlic cloves
Several sprinkles of sea salt
6 ripe plum tomatoes, quartered
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan
1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
1 pound linguine

In a large skillet, sauté the almonds in a little olive oil until toasted. Let cool, then blend them in a food processor or blender until they are in coarse pieces. (“The size of orzo,” the original recipe suggests.) Scoop them out of the processor and set them aside.

Put the basil, garlic and a few pinches of sea salt into the food processor and chop. Add the almonds back to the food processor (keeping them separate will keep them from getting too finely chopped as you get the basil and garlic to the right texture) with the tomatoes, cheese and olive oil and whirl briefly. Season it with freshly ground black pepper.

Cook your linguine until it is al dente and could use another minute of cooking time. Reserve one cup of pasta cooking water and drain the rest. Immediately toss the hot linguine with the pesto and mix quickly so that it drinks the sauce up a bit. Add more pasta water if needed. Serve this lukewarm, or at room temperature, with a glass of wine, after you get the baby to bed.

Foods with Booze

The theme for supper club this month was foods with booze in them. Yum! Ironically the girl bringing the drinking booze got caught in traffic and turned home so we didn't have any fancy drinks. Oh well. I love supper club.

Tequila Lime Shrimp (Shannon)

Beer Bread (me)
Sherry Roasted Root Vegetables (Nina)
Jack in the Beans (Gigi)
Amaretto Chicken (Sara)
Champagne Cake (Angela)

Artisan Bread

Tamie always posts the most amazing pictures of her handy home-making endeavors and totally captured my interest with a picture of artisan bread she recently posted. She introduced me to the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which I immediately put on hold at the library. Several years ago I played around with artisan bread from a starter with Nancy Silverstein's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. The bread was great, but it took work...work to keep a starter and several days to actually make a loaf of bread. The basic idea for this book is to use the chemical properties of the ingredients to make a fantastic loaf of bread with minimal effort - not even kneading. Plus, you make enough dough for 4 one lb loaves at a time, so all you have to do is pull of a little dough and shape your loaf when you're ready to bake. I'm still working out some of the kinks, but the bread has been great. Next week I am going to try my first whole wheat loaf.

Due to the length of the recipe I am just going to explain the basic process and trust that you will go and get the book if you're interested. There are two by the way. The original as posted above and a "Healthy" bread in 5 book.

To start you mix lukewarm water, yeast, and salt in a large tub and mix in the flour until it is combined and there are no pockets of flour (a minute or two). The dough will be really wet. Cover loosly and let rise for 2 hours. Refrigerate at least 3 hours (so dough is easier to handle).
When you're ready to make bread pull of a small amount of dough and quickly shape into a round. Let is rise for about an hour on a pizza peel (you can see mine is a cutting board) liberally dusted with cornmeal (I have it on hand for the polenta anyway).Preheat a baking stone or cookie sheet in the oven and place a broiler pan on the rack below the bread. Sprinkle bread with flour and slash (to prevent blow-outs). Quickly jerk bread from "peel" to hot baking stone and pour 1 C. hot water into broiler pan. Close oven door and bake.

Allow bread to cool and devour!



Addendum 2/9/11: I just made my first loaf that is what I wanted visually. The bread has been mighty tasty, but the shape has just been off. So I tried shaping it much more loosely and I think it gave the bread more room to rise up (instead of out).