Pickles

Hey everyone, I'm back!! Besides a six hour car trip, I'm all right ; ) lol. Sorry for no posting in the last week or so, my good friend Liz experienced some technical difficulties hehe. But anyways, Maine was totally amazing. Wile we were camping, me and Gwen made ice box cake, and challah, but mostly we hung out at the beach.

But let me tell you, the seagulls in Maine are as bad as the squirrels in new york city. My brother was eating a sandwich just standing around, and a seagull swooped down and grabbed the sandwich right out of his hand!!

There was also this stone pier that you could walk out on. It was so cool, even though my cousin Gwen was a little uneasy with the situation. Good times ; D lol.

The day before we left, some Canadian hippies moved in next to us! They had this hilarious Scooby Doo van!So anyways, just some advise for the people who are the the level of crazyness that I am at: don't try to make watermelon juice. Just don't.

I spent quite a long time chunking, and blending a whole watermelon, and putting it through a fine mesh sieve. Personally, I hate eating chunks of watermelon because it is usually grainy or something. So me, being the genius that I am decided to make juice out of it. At first taste, it was good. Then it tasted completely nasty. Like it left such a foul aftertaste that I almost spit it in my dogs face.

So, like ten minutes ago I made pickles. My moms garden is overflowing with zucchini, squash, and cucumbers. It took me like 15 min. with my mandolin. No lie. Its nice because you don't have to cook or boil anything, just mix the stuff together and pour over pickles, and stick in the fridge.

Easy sweet pickles

• 7 cups thin sliced cucumbers
• 1 cup sliced onions
• 2 tbs salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tbs celery seed
• 1 cup vinegar

Mix salt, sugar, celery seed, and vinegar until dissolved. Place cucumbers in a jar. Pour vinegar mixture over cucumbers. Let sit in the fridge for at least a day.

Phylo Tomato Tart

This post is very long overdue. Because of my baking frenzy, this post was delayed, but I'm excited to finally share it with you. the Noble pig suggested this recipe for easter, and it looked so yummy, I knew that I would make it. I have never worked with phylo dough before, and when I went to the grocery store to get it, the idiots that worked there were no help. I asked the manager where I could find the phylo dough. He was like "The what?" I told him that It was like a pastry dough in thin layers. He was completely befuddled. I was like well, where do you keep the pastry stuff. Then he told me that he wasn't sure. Then I asked him where the sushi rice is. Again, he didn't know. How is he manager and not know where anything is!? Well evidently, I found the dough after inspecting every freezer shelf in the whole darn store. Gee thanks price chopper. But I must say that it was totally worth it. I made it on easter day, with the help of my beloved easter gift. A baking mat! Yay! Now my mom won't yell at me for using so much parchment paper! The phylo dough was like nothing I have ever worked with before. It was thin like tissue paper. I used a mandolin to cut my onions and tomatoes thinly and precise.










You have to brush each layer of phylo with butter, and sprinkle it with cheese. Then you layer the top with cheese, tomatoes, onions and a sprinkle of thyme.After you bake it, the phylo gets crispy and golden brown. I don't know what it is, but this tart tastes so amazing. Its crazy that simple ingredients yield such a stunning result! It was so good, that after the first one came out of the oven, I made another one. Tee hee hee.
Everybody loved it, and it was gone after like 5 min. I still have a lot of phylo left, so I'm going to make this again, and again. : D

Filo Tomato Tart
The Noble Pig
adapted from Sunset Magazine

**Cut tomatoes very thin so juice evaporates while baking, or dough will be soggy.**(use a mandolin)

7 sheets filo dough, thawed
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
7 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 cup very thinly sliced red onion
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
8 Roma tomatoes, cut into 1/8-in.-thick slices
1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper and spray paper with cooking-oil spray. Lay 1 sheet filo on paper and brush lightly with a little melted butter. Sprinkle all over with 1 tablespoon of Parmesan. Repeat layering 5 more times (with filo, butter and Parmesan), pressing each sheet firmly so it sticks to sheet below. Lay the last filo sheet on top, brush with remaining melted butter, and sprinkle on remaining 1 tablespoon Parmesan.

Scatter onion across filo, top with mozzarella, and arrange tomato slices in a single layer, overlapping slightly. Sprinkle with thyme and salt and pepper to taste.

Bake until filo is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes, then serve.

Soft pretzel experiment

And so continues my love of carbos. With the last of my crackers quickly devoured, I now needed a new snack. Hmm what shall I make? Well last weekend, up north at a ski lodge, I got a soft pretzel. They are my undoubtedly my favorite snack when out and about. There is just something about them that I can't get enough of! I have made soft pretzels before, but I have also made pretzel rolls. You had to boil, then bake the pretzel rolls, which gave them the signature chewy texture. Since I have never boiled my actual pretzels, I decided that I might as well give it a shot. So this is also a very quick yeast risen bread.I don't know why, but I'm wildly amused by this picture! All I added was yeast sugar and water, and in 5 min it turned into this fizzy beast! How cool! So then you mix up the stuff and let it rise.






















This dough is enough for eight pretzels, so divide it up evenly!

Then you shape them into pretzels. Once, wile I was being lazy, I just twisted them into sticks, which was still pretty cool.Ok so here is the moment of truth.**drums for added effect** The mountain of fizz! I think that this happened because of the baking soda that I added. : D So I slid a pretzel at a time into the pot, after the fizz went down. I sprinkled some salt on top of the pretzels, and baked them. I also baked some non boiled pretzels. The pretzel on the left was not boiled, the one on the right was. The ones that were boiled and baked were chewier. I like the ones that were not boiled also, because they were sort of crisp and cool in their own unique way.

*I forgot to brush my non boiled pretzels with egg wash to make them shiny, but thats ok, they were still great!

Soft Pretzels

• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 2 1/4 tsp yeast
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup water
• 1-2 tbs baking soda

Combine the yeast, warm water, and sugar in a small dish (5 min)

Combine the flour and salt in a med. bowl. Add the yeast mixture, and 3/4 cup water. Mix untill combined. Knead dough on a floured surface until smooth.

Place in an oiled bowl, and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

Cut the dough into 8 pieces and shape into pretzels, of pretzel twists.

You can either boil them in some water with the 1-2 tbs of baking soda for about a 30 sec. to a min., then bake at 400 degrees, or you can skip the boiling, and just bake at 400 degrees, but brush the pretzels with a little egg wash, or melted butter. Sprinkle with Salt.

Bake for 15-20 min, or until golden brown

Compulsive Crackers

So I'm going to confess a problem that my house currently has. We never have enough snack foods...and me, being a still growing person, needs snackage! So yesterday I decided to fix this problem by making something really cool- homemade crackers. Wile browsing blogs, I happened upon some crackers from Food Stories. Her crackers looked really yummy, and I can be a little compulsive sometimes. I got up from my chair and started to make them. But then... doh!...I don't have some of the ingredients. So I improvised! I used the same proportions, but like swapped ingredients that I didn't have. So It asked for whole meal flour, which when I first read, didn't completely connect in my brain. So for some odd reason, I substituted semolina flour for. Don't ask me why, because reflecting upon it now, still makes me wonder.So I mixed all of my ingredients to make this cute little ball!When you roll it out, make sure that you have enough flour, so that it doesn't stick to the counter : )













So then I got my sprinkles out. I decided to use rosemary, and sea salt.




Then I cut them into triangles, and poked them with a fork, so they would not bubble up in the oven. My first batch in the oven came out burnt, but the second batch came out really good.

Smoked Sea Salt and Fennel Seed Crackers
(rosemary/plain sea salt version)
Food Stories

4oz (1/2 cup0 plain white flour
4oz (1/2 cup)wholemeal flour (for some reason, I used Semolina)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
35m l(approx 1/8 of a cup) olive oil
Smoked salt (or regular (What I used))
Fennel seeds (I used rosemary)
Water

-Mix the flour, baking powder and fine salt in a bowl. Add the oil and then enough water for the dough to come together. It shouldn’t be too sticky.
-On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for around 5 minutes then cover and allow to rest (at room temp) for around 30 minutes.
-Roll out the dough as thin as you can manage without it tearing and cut into desired shapes.
-Sprinkle each cracker with smoked sea salt and fennel seeds to your taste.
-Transfer to a lightly oiled baking sheet and bake at 150C/300F/Gas2 for 20-30 minutes. The cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your crackers but they are ready when golden brown and crispy (If you used non-whole wheat four, it will not brown up to much, if it does, then that means that you burnt your crackers like I did first time around: (. Cool on a rack, or in your tummy.

Before you put the crackers in the oven, make indents in the top with a fork to prevent them puffing