baking – assorted savoury

French onion muffins

Cold weather always makes me crave soup. I have a couple of soups on rotation during the cold months and one of those is an easy, peasy pumpkin soup.

It basically involves softening some diced onion and garlic in a bit of oil. Then I add peeled and diced pumpkin to the pot, add just enough water to cover the pumpkin, plus a couple of teaspoons of vegetable stock powder. This gets simmered until the pumpkin is soft. Then I mush everything up with a stick blender, season with salt and pepper and add a teaspoon of curry powder (just enough to give it a slight flavour – not too much). We normally eat the soup with a bit of sour cream on top.

The hardest thing about making this soup is peeling the skin off the pumpkin. It’s such a tedious job but made easier with a sharp knife.

French onion muffins

To go with the soup, I usually make French onion muffins. The recipe that I use comes from a little muffin book that I bought from a discount shop a few years ago (back when it wasn’t as easy to find recipes online). The book cost me $1! Onion muffins are the only muffins I’ve ever made from the book, but it’s still been $1 well spent!

French onion muffins

French Onion Muffins

From Marvellous Muffins by Robyn Martin

Makes 10

2 medium onions
2 tablespoons oil
50g butter
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup grated gruyere cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Peel onions and cut into thin rings. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry onions over medium heat until golden. Add butter to pan and melt. Remove from heat and set aside.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients. Lightly beat eggs and milk. Add onion and egg mixtures to dry ingredients. Add the grated cheese, reserving some for sprinkling on top of the muffins. Mix quickly until just combined.

Three quarters fill greased muffin pans with mixture. Sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and bake for 15 minutes or until cooked. Eat warm.

Caramelised onion tartlets

I found out a “neat” thing today – chestnuts explode! Fortunately, I have a lovely husband who is currently cleaning my oven while I sit on the couch. If I had bothered to google roasting chestnuts before I popped them into the oven, I would’ve found out that I should’ve cut them first. Whoops!

On Saturday, the highly entertaining PG kindly hosted the second Bloggers Banquet. Oooooh pressure! What do you cook for people who love food and know a lot about it? I had a feeling that there would be lots of sweet items, so I went down the savoury route.

bagels

One of my items was bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese. I’ve owned a copy of Richard Bertinet’s Crust (not an affiliate link) for a couple of months, and so far all I have made are bagels. To be fair though, none of the bread recipes in this book are quick and easy. This was my second attempt at the bagel recipe, and initially it all seemed to be going rather well. The starter dough fermented in the fridge for a day, and then on Friday night I added the rest of the ingredients and worked the dough as instructed. The dough started to come together and was very light and lively. I let it rest for 30 minutes, then separated it into small balls and shaped into bagels. The bagels then proved for an hour.

When I came back to them, the bagels had risen but seemed a bit limp. But I was too far gone by this stage and had to keep going – the bagels got a brief boiling then baking. They tasted okay (I think), and had the chewy texture, but they were a bit flaccid and some were wrinkly.

Obviously I haven’t quite mastered the art of bagel making yet, but I will keep trying!

tarts

Fortunately I had another item to redeem myself! The recipe for the tarts is from Cuisine.com.au and the shortcrust pastry recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. My bread making skills are a bit lacking, but at least I can make pastry! It was 11pm by the time I rolled out the pastry, and despite the late hour and my haphazardness, the pastry was still light and slightly flakey.

tarts

Onion tartlet recipe from Cuisine.com.au.

Shortcrust pastry

From Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion

Will line up to a 26cm tin

180g unsalted butter
240g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup water

Remove butter from refrigerator 30 minutes before making pastry.
Sift flour and salt onto a marble pastry slab or workbench.
Chop buter into smallish pieces and toss lightly in flour.
Lightly rub to combine partly.
Make a well in centre and pour in water.
Using a pastry scraper, work water into flour until you have a very rough heap of buttery lumps of dough.
Using the heel of your hand, quickly smear pastry away from your across the workbench. It will combine lightly.
Gather together, then press quickly into a flat cake and dust with a little flour.
Wrap pastry in plastic film and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
When required, roll out pastry, dusting generously with flour as necessary.
Line your required tin and blind bake.

Homemade pizza

Pizza

Some days when I get home from work, I can’t be bothered cooking. All I want to do is sit on the couch and have dinner bought to me. So sometimes we have pizza delivered.

Then when the pizza arrives, I open the box and see that along with my pizza also came a crap load of oil. Ergh.

I’ve found one way of cutting out all that oil is to make my own pizza! Sure, I don’t get to sit on the couch and vegetate, but homemade pizza is pretty easy. The recipe listed below makes a bready base, that gets a bit crunchy on the bottom. It could possibly be more crispy if you had a baking stone.

For the tomato sauce, I use tomato paste with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic mixed in. I like making separate pizzas for everyone so we can choose our own toppings. We like things spicy in my house, so you’ll notice on my pizza that there’s salami and jalapenos (as well as capsicum, onion, mozzarella and tasty cheese). It’s by no means authentic wood fired pizza, but it satisfies my pizza cravings and it’s so much nicer than delivery pizza from a chain.

Homemade Pizza

From the Little Big Cook Book

Preparing the dough

This recipe will make about 350g of dough. This is enough to make one round or oblong pizza, sufficient for 1 or 2 people.

1 package active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm water
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt

Put the yeast in a small bowl. Add half of the warm water and stir with a fork until the yeast has dissolved. Set aside for 10 minutes.

Place the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Pour in the yeast mixture, and remaining water. Stir well until the flour has been absorbed.

Shape the dough into a compact ball and place on a lightly floured surface. Press down with your knuckles to spread it a little. Take the far end of the dough, fold it a short distance toward you, then push it away with the heel of your palm. Flexing your wrist, fold it toward you again, give it a quarter turn, then push it away. Repeat until the dough is well kneaded (about 5 minutes).

Place the dough in a large clean bowl and cover with a cloth. Let rise for about 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk. To test whether it has risen sufficiently, poke your finger gently into the dough; if the impression remains, then it is ready.

Shaping the pizza

Preheat the oven to 230 degree C.

When the rising time has elapsed, knead the dough for 1 minute on a lightly floured work surface. If making more than one pizza, divide the dough into the number of pizzas you wish to make. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and flatten the dough out into a disk. Place on an oiled baking sheet. To finish, use your fingertips to make a rim around the edge of the pizza so that the topping won’t drip out during cooking.

When the pizza dough has been shaped and is in the pizza pan or on the baking sheet, set it aside for 10 minutes before adding the topping. This will give the dough time to regain some volume and will make the crust lighter and more appetizing.

Place your desired toppings on the pizza and bake for about 12 minutes.