Those of you who have known me growing up will be aware that one of my favorite food staples is tea and toast. I used to regularly eat 4 to 6 slices of toast with marmite for supper and basically survived on the stuff throughout my college years. Whenever I return to Ireland for visits I eat about 10 metric tons of toast with my youngest sister Ellie.
Over here, in America, the bread is very different; it is super sweet and has a different consistency. So in the past, when I've wanted some tea and toast I have not been able to do so because if I try making it with the bread over here I just end up getting angry at the sweetness and grittiness of the bread.
This morning our good friends Ryan and Julia took us out to brunch at a place called 'Wheatfields' The menu was huge and I finally decided on an Italian frittata with red onions and bell peppers. The menu said that it would be served with some ciabatta bread. The bread that actually arrived looked nothing like ciabatta and I assumed it was just regular sweet awful American bread.
However, being the glutton that I am I still tried a nibble of it and just about started crying!!! It has the same taste and consistency of the bread I have grown up with!!!! I ate my two slices with some delicious jam (another unusual thing to find over here, not a trace of high fructose corn syrup in it!) and then my wonderful husband allowed me to steal his two slices too. If Ryan and Julia's meals had come with the toast I would have had no problem groveling for theirs too, what do manners count for when there is real toast available!?!
To make things even better the restaurant sells their bread in an adjoining bakery shop!!!! Unfortunately they were out of it this morning, but Matt has promised me he will stop by on his way back from picking Joshua up to see if they have made some more.
Oh happy day!
Yesterday was Independence Day (or angry colonists day) and so we had Ryan and Julia over for dinner, games, a fire and to watch the fireworks from the deck.
For the occasion I made spinach empanadillas (anyone know if the dilla is pronounced the same as in quesadilla or do you say the l's?), a tomato mozarella and basil pizza, and goat's cheese and crostini with fruit. I forgot to take photos before serving the dishes and so the photos I am putting up were taken when Ryan reminded me, hence why most of the empanadillas are gone :)
Spinach empanadillas are puff pastry turnovers stuffed with spinach, pine nuts, raisins, garlic and anchovies. They turned out really well and I will certainly do them again as finger food when we have company over. I made them in advance and just bunged them in the oven for 20 minutes when the guests arrived. The good thing about them too is that you can pretty much put whatever you want in them. A great party food and very yummy.
The pizza is a recipe that I've been working on for a while now. It's a very basic recipe where I roast a full garlic bulb and use that as the 'sauce' before adding the mozzarella and tomato slices. Fresh basil is added when it comes out of the oven and it results in a lovely fresh tasting pizza with nice undertones that only roasted garlic can provide. One problem is that the mozzarella I have been using tends to release a lot of liquid when it goes into the over and so it can get rather soggy. I have used a low moisture version, but then the consistency of the melted cheese wasn't what I wanted. Any suggestions??
The goat's cheese and crostini with fruit was a success too. It is basically toasted french bread slices rubbed with garlic, sprinkled with chopped spring onion and then topped with a slice of goats cheese that has marinated in olive oil, walnut oil and sherry (though I just used some Riesling as we had less than a glass left in a bottle). The toasted bread topped with cheese is put under the grill and then served with a tomato orange salsa. I was a little nervous about the salsa (tomatoes, oranges, fresh basil, olive oil and brown sugar) but they went really well together and the combination of the textures was rather pleasing :)
I'm not going to be cooking today, Josh is spending the night at his gramms house and Matt has a meeting this evening, so I'm going to eat mustgos.... food that must go from the fridge. That being said, there will probably be no blog entry until Wednesday. Until then bon apetite!
Yum. That sounds much nicer than the bubble and squeak with cold chicken that we had tonight.
ReplyDeleteGuess who's going to get lumbered with cooking for all seventeen of us in Normandy next week.....
ReplyDeleteTry the pre grated mozzerella, meltsa easily cos its grated and isnt as watery??
ReplyDelete