Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This turned out AWESOME and delicious and so pretty. Make some right now.

In other news: this will be the last of the terrible pictures because our camera has been restored to health!

Cinnamon Swirl Loaf Bread

Adapted from sweetpeaskitchen.com

1/2 cup milk

4 tbsp unsalted butter

1 envelope instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup warm water

few dashes cinnamon

2 eggs

~3 1/2 cups AP flour

1/4 cup sugar

5 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 large egg

2 teaspoons milk

Melt the butter and milk together and let cool to warm (don't put it in the fridge) while you do other stuff.

Mix the yeast, sugar, cinnamon and salt into the water to dissolve. Beat in the eggs, followed by the milk-butter mixture. Now add 3 cups of flour and mix to combine. Start mixing in more flour with your hands, starting with 1/4 cup and using up to 1 cup, until you reach a consistency that is tacky but not so sticky that your hands get all covered and you can't work with it. Once it's at the slightly-sticky stage, knead it for another 5-10 minutes until it is very smooth and elastic. rinse out and oil your mixing bowl and let the dough rise, covered, until doubled, about 2 hours (if you're making it in the winter and, like us, you're too broke to heat your apartment, put it in a very slightly warm oven for the first half hour to get it going.

Once your dough is double, push it down lightly and stretch it out on a floured surface. use your hands or a rolling pin to get it into a 18x8" rectangle. If it's not stretching easily, let it sit for 10 minutes to relax the gluten and then try again. When it's all stretched out, mix the cinnamon, sugar, and salt and sprinkle it all evenly over the rectangle. I suppose you could also add some raisins at this point but why would you want to ruin a perfectly good cinnamon bread like that? Now roll it all up, sleeping-bag style, making sure it's tight so your bread won't be all holey and fall apart in the toaster. press the seam to make sure it's tight. Oil a loaf pan and put the dough in it, pressing it a little so it touches all of the walls. Let it rise, covered, another ~1 1/2 hours until it is peaking up over the top of the pan - again, use a warm oven to get it going if necessary.

Preheat the oven to 350. when it's ready to go, brush the top of your bread with a mixture of the milk and egg and then pop it in. Bake about 40 minutes, or until very brown - if you wimp out and take it out too soon, the inside of the bread will be soggy. Samesies on slicing it too soon - let it cool on a rack for AN HOUR before you cut into it. Enjoy! I am not a big plain-bread eater and I think this bread is delicious on it's own. Even better toasted with butter... and it makes killer french toast.

Gabeday Desserts: Balsamic Strawberries & Tiramisu Cake

I totally made up this dessert and it was sooooo good. Ok well actually I'm sure at some point I've seen roasted balsamic strawberries onthe foodporn sites, and strawberry-basil drinks and stuff, so I had some help. But seriously this was amazing and so easy, make it right now. Of course yours won't be as beautiful if you don't have a basil plant from which to pluck the tiny baby leaves... so go get a basil plant. really there is no excuse for not having one (other than no windows).

Strawberries with Strawberry-Balsamic Jam, Whipped Cream, and Basil

1 box strawberries, halved
~1/4 c balsamic vinegar
~2 tbs sugar
~1/2 c frozen strawberries, defrosted and pureed/mashed (optional)
1 tsp strawberry extract (optional)
~ 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
tiny basil leaves or julienned grown-up leaves

I made a strawberry-balsamic jam, but you can also just make a sweet balsamic reduction. Combine balsamic vinegar, sugar, and optional frozen strawberries and/or strawberry extract in a pot. Simmer until thickened - pure balsamic should be maple syrup consistency, balsamic

and strawberries should be more like a loose jam. Both will firm up quite a bit in the fridge, which is where you should store them for at least an hour.
Make your whipped cream by beating the cream and vanilla together.

Arrange the strawberries on a dish. Smear each one with a bit of balsamic reduction (you canuse more if it's balsamic-strawberry jam cause it will be less intense) and top with a scoop of whipped cream and a bit of basil. Enjoy!

Gabeday Dinner: Butternut Ravioli & Gnocchi Verdi al Gorgonzola

7-Yolk Pasta Dough

1 3/4 cups AP or 00 flour
1 tsp salt
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon milk

Mix your flour and salt and place them in a mound on cutting board or large bowl (bowl will make the mixing easier, but then you'll have to transfer it to a board to knead, so you'll have 2 dishes to do instead of one). Make a hole in the center and drop the yolks, egg, olive oil, and milk into it. Start mixing with your fingers, gradually incorporating the flour (watch a youtube video if you've never made pasta before). Once it's all come together, scrape the extra dough off your board and flour it, or if you were using a bowl, transfer to a well-floured board. Now knead the hell out of your dough. Like forever. Until your hands feel like they're going to fall off. You want it to be perfectly smooth and shiny like a boiled egg, and it should spring back when you press on it. You cannot overknead. Think you are done? Knead some more. Then wrap your pasta dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for a while before using to firm it up.

Roll out your dough on a well-floured board until very thin and cut it into whatever shapes you prefer. If you're making ravioli, use a can to make circles or cut it into squares (save the scraps for a next-day meal). Put a little dollop of filling in the center of a circle, rub the edges of the circle with water, and press another circle on top of it, using your fingers or a fork to press the edges shut. You'll probably make a lot of ugly, leaky ravioli before you get the hang of it (it took me at least 3 tries to make pretty ravioli).

Boil your pasta or ravioli very briefly (unless you've let it sit out for a while and it's gotten hard, in which case it will take more time). Once it floats to the surface, it's pretty much done - but test a piece to make sure. Dress and enjoy!

Butternut-Goat Cheese Ravioli Filling

1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 medium onion, diced
~3 oz soft goat cheese
salt & pepper

heat your oven up to 450, put your squash on a tray with some olive oil, and roast until soft. Meanwhile saute your onions in some butter until caramelized (omit the onions if you don't have a blender or food processor). Mix the vegies with the goat cheese and mash or puree until smooth. Season to taste.

If you have leftover filling after making your ravioli, mix it with a few tablespoons of melted butter and use it as a sauce on your leftover pasta scraps.

Gabeday Dinner: Risotto, Arancini, & Tomato-Basil Dressing

Gabe has been putting in requests for more risotto since I made the zucchini version about a year ago, and I've been wanting to try to make arancini for a long time as well. You're going to be spending a long time over a pot of hot oil if you want to make your entire risotto batch into arancini, so I recommend cooking it for dinner one night and using the leftovers for arancini the next day. I added peas and asparagus to my non-arancini risotto and fed it to a gluten-free friend in place of the birthday pastas. The invented dressing here was also highly successful, and lots of people asked for the recipe, which didn't exist at the time... so here it is!

Basic Awesome Risotto

2 tbs butter

1 tbs olive oil

1-2 medium onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

5-6 cups liquid*

~1/4 cup mascarpone (or ~1/4 c cream cheese or ~2 tbs butter)

Parmesan cheese to taste

Optional stir-ins of your choice: steamed asparagus, defrosted peas, sauteed mushrooms or spinach, etc.

*at least 4 cups of your liquid should be vegetable broth or chicken broth if you want it to taste good. if you have some on hand, using about 1 cup of white wine is also delicious. the rest can be water.

Put all of your liquid in a big pot on the stove and heat it up to very hot, but not boiling.

Heat up your butter and oil together in a non-stick pot. add the onion and some salt and pepper and saute until translucent. Add the garlic and cook another minute or so. Add the rice and saute until golden and toasty-smelling (not brown).

Start adding your liquid to the rice one big ladelful at a time. Stir it in (make sure you scrape the bottom of the pot for stuck rice), and then wait for it to absorb. then add another ladelful. repeat and repeat. when you're most of the way through your liquid, start checking the rice for doneness. it should be soft, but not disintegrated into a big pile of mush. When it's done stop adding liquid and take it off the heat.

Stir in mascarpone, creamcheese, or butter to your desired consistency. Add in parmesan to taste (don't go crazy and make it taste exclusively like parmesan, as some crappier versions do). Adjust the salt and pepper. Stir in whatever (pre-cooked) vegetables you desire, and enjoy!

Arancini

~1 cup leftover risotto

2 eggs

flour

breadcrumbs

lots of oil for frying

Beat one of the eggs into your leftover risotto. Put the second egg into a bowl and beat lightly. Put a few tbs of flour on a plate and the breadcrumbs on a second plate. Heat up your oil until a piece of bread or dough dropped into into float to the surface fairly quickly and gets dark brown in about 1-2 minutes. Roll the risotto into balls about 1" in diameter, roll in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs, and drop into the oil and fry. You want to make sure they're spending sufficient time in the oil to heat up the center - they should be dark on the outside. Blot on papertowel and serve with tomato sauce or in a salad with a dressing like the one that follows!

Tomato-Basil Dressing

1 small onion, diced

1 package cherry tomatoes

~1/4 cup red wine vinegar

~1/2 cup olive oil

a big handful of basil

salt & pepper to taste

Heat up a bit of oil in a pan and saute your onions until they're translucent. Toss in the cherry tomatoes and saute until they start to break down, pressing them with your mixing spoon to hurry the job. Keep cooking until everything is a little bit caramelized. Transfer to a food processor or blender, add some red wine vinegar, and mix until smooth. Now add the basil, olive oil, and salt and pepper and blend again. Taste and adjust - mine was really thick with the original amount of vinegar and oil I used, so I kept adding more and I'm not sure what the final amounts were. It's also going to taste more like tomato sauce as long as it's warm, so adjust the levels of everything again after it's been refrigerated for a while. Serve on a substantial salad (e.g. with mozzarella hunks or arancini).

Gabe's Birthday Dinner: Menu

greens w/ mozzarella, peas, asparagus, arancini, and tomato-basil dressing

ciabatta w/ olive oil

butternut-goat cheese ravioli w/ brown butter and hazelnuts

gnocchi verdi w/ gorgonzola cream

strawberries w/ balsamic, cream, & basil

tiramisu cake

pina colada & mango daiquiri jello shots