Declining nutrional values of prepared food had me making a lot of dinners from scratch, and someone said, oh Gwen, that's sooooo expensive! And I was surprised 'cause I hadn't thought so, in fact, I've been spending Markedly LESS on food, but I sez, eh, maybe I should add this up -- Come to find out, a lotta the meals I was making were costing me around three dollars or about fifty cents a serving! Anyways, I thought I'd share
Pea Soup
1 lb bag of washed and sorted Split peas (green)water to cover, 2 cloves of garlic, smashed a large sprig of fresh dill
Cook for about an hour. Don't add salt until the end - if you add it at first like every cookbook tells you the peas get tough and it takes longer to cook. Remove the dill and the garlic and I ran it thru my blender to make it very smooth - actually, I just took the garlic peel? You know, that paper-y cover like onions have? The garlic itself was very soft so I just ran it through the blender with the peas, maybe you don't like garlic so much, so either way. If its too thick add more water.
Season with Salt and pepper and Wabsabi Powder to taste. I thought the wasabi added a different and very pleasant taste to peas.
Foccacia:
Its a good bread if you don't bake bread a lot, it doesn't take a long time to make, and nobody expects it to 'light and fluffy' - its not a light and fluffy bread. Its most delicious with soups, I think, or grilled with mushrooms.
Anyways you need:
yeast (1 packet),
1 cup of WARM water,
1 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp of salt, oil
two to 2.5 cups of flour
I used white flour this particular night, you could use a combination of white and wheat. I think I used white sugar that night, I often use brown or honey. The sugar is to feed the yeast, you need some sort of sugar, but its not really particular so use the one you like best.
Add the water, sugar and yeast to PROOF (that means that you wanna make sure the yeast is good, if it doesn't get all foamy? chuck it out and start again with better, fresher yeast, it'll never rise).
Add the salt, oil, and slowly add the flour, stirring, it'll make like a sticky ball, that's when its ready to knead. This is the part of bread-making that people don't like - me personally, its the part I enjoy, I think about my ex-husband a lot whilst I'm pounding the dough. You knead the dough on a floured surface (like your counter or tabletop) for about fifteen minutes, until its really spring-y and a solid co-hesive Dough.
Place your dough in an oiled bowl (I heard that a pottery bowl or a wooden bowl is the best for breadmaking 'cause plastic and metal don't hold the heat -- I dunno, I have a ceramic bowl, and used to use a pyrex one afore it 'cause that's what I had in the house. I can't say it isn't true, but I never experimented with metal or plastic).
Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and place somewhere warm out of the way of drafts. It should rise 'til its doubled in size - if you used all white flour and really good yeast it might take as little as half an hour, wheat flour usually takes longer I find, and with honey takes longer than with white sugar - these are just my observations - your time should be somewhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour 15 minutes.
Roll out the dough into a roughly rectangular shape and place it in a baking sheet (like a cookie sheet). Some people sorta make those indentations like you see on a bakery loaf and press down the corners - I don't bother, I don't brush it with oil either, although most people do.
Cover it and let that rise for another 30 minutes or so - I put it on top of the oven whilst I warm it up - Bake for about 30 minutes to a half hour.
Honey butter: I served it with honey-butter - half a stick of salted room-temperature butter mixed with honey. I know half a stick doesn't sound like a lot of butter for six, but frankly I wish they wouldn't eat any, and if put out more, oh they would!
Note: These are prices in the Northeast, the $ are for the percentage of each foodstuff that I used - ie they don't sell 2.5 cups of flour, it comes in 5lb sacks; if you have no flour and need to go buy a bag to get your 2 cups -- although obviously you still have the rest of the bag for next loaf/loaves.. Peas are 65 cents a pound, butter is 50 cents a stick here, etc. etc...
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