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BREAD AND MOTHER
The Basics for a Delicious Life
Giving Thanks
You can edit text on your website by double clicking on a text box on your website. Alternatively, when you select a text box a settings menu will appear. Selecting 'Edit Text' from this menu will also allow you to edit the text within this text box. Remember to keep your wording friendly, approachable and easy to understand as if you were talking to your customer
You can edit text on your website by double clicking on a text box on your website. Alternatively, when you select a text box a settings menu will appear. Selecting 'Edit Text' from this menu will also allow you to edit the text within this text box. Remember to keep your wording friendly, approachable and easy to understand as if you were talking to your customer
Would you say your
Pesto is the Best-o?
"I don't know but I would say it's pretty good-o." For some of you, Pesto reminds of you of the Friend's episode, the one with Rachel's Date and the hilariously awkward interaction between Pheobe and Monica's sous chef. For everyone else, Pesto means summer. Just the smell of basil transports you to long sunny days and terracotta pots brimming with bushy basil plants. So it’s no surprise that when we find ourselves dragging through the worst of winter months - late January and early February - we run to the nearest grocery store and buy a bunch of those succulent green leaves and whip up a home remedy sure to banish the winter blues.
Not only is Pesto a cheap and effective prescription for the winter doldrums but it’s easy, quick to make and tastes delicious. Placing the summer bouquet of basil on your kitchen counter in the middle of January feels decadent and luxurious all at once, like you’re having one over on old man winter. And, a forkful of the garlicky herby sauce reminds you that you can make it through the ice and snow and freezing rain because THIS summer goodness is just around the corner.
Pesto Sauce
One bunch of fresh basil (about three cups of leaves)
3 cloves garlic (less if you want to buss your guests, more if you want to ward off vampires)
¼ cup toasted pine nuts (don’t skip the toasting it brings out the buttery nuttiness but make sure you watch those little gems closely because they love to burn)
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
¼ cup parmesan
½ cup good olive oil (more if you like a thinner sauce, less if you like it sturdier)
Salt and pepper as you like
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Serve over fresh pasta or spoon directly into your mouth as an antidote to winter.
White
Bean Salad
It’s a new year and we all know what that brings. Those dreaded “resolutions” we always seem to break. Statistics show less than half of resolution makers actually keep their promises to themselves. And, the numero uno New Year’s resolution is…drum roll…weight loss! Ok, that’s not so surprising but right there at number five – just above “do good deeds for others” and just below “find the love of my life” is a resolution we can keep and feel good about - ”Learn something new!” While Bread and Mother can’t do much about those “quit smoking” and “find a new job” resolutions, we might actually help make at least a few of the top ten most common New Year’s resolutions come true with our first blog recipe! This healthy white bean salad can check the boxes for “weight loss”, “learn something new,” and “do good deeds for others” (if you make it for more than just yourself). And, who knows, it might even check the box for “find the love of my life”…reaching for the last can of cannellini beans at the grocery store their hands brushed against each other…
Love of My Life White Bean Salad
1 can Cannellini beans (drained and rinsed)
½ red onion chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley chopped
2 tablespoons fresh dill
1 cup baby arugula
½ cup Shaved parmesan
Juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves minced (less if you want to find the love of your life)
Red pepper flakes (couple of shakes)
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Place drained, rinsed beans into a large bowl and add chopped red onion, parsley, dill, parmesan and baby arugula. In another bowl whisk lemon juice and olive oil with minced garlic, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper. Pour dressing over bean mixture and toss gently. Serve with crusty rustic bread and a glass of Chianti!
Gory Beets
One of my favorite things about cooking with fresh beets is scaring the living daylights out of people. Beets mean Halloween fun all year round because it turns out the beet juice (or “beet blood” as I call it) you get when chopping fresh beets is a scare riot. Use the following recipe to make a delish roasted beet salad...or just to shock a few of your guests into thinking you've sliced a digit or two, if the spirit moves you (Disclaimer: Don’t try this beet joke on anyone with a heart problem).
While chopping fresh beets for the salad you’ll notice you get a lot of that beet blood everywhere – your hands, the knife…you get the picture. When your hands are dripping with beet blood simply take your beet bloody self - along with your beet bloody sharp knife - to your unsuspecting dinner guests and give that Academy Award performance you’ve always dreamed of giving. You know the one – full of expressive eye rolls and moans, holding the beet bloody knife up high and gasping “Oh my God! Look what I’ve done! Call 911!” Works. Every. Single. Time. (Just make sure they don’t actually call 911 or you’ll ruin the dinner party).
Gory Beets
1 Bunch Fresh Beets (peeled and chopped into one inch chunks) (Saving beet blood for the “performance”)
3 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper
3 oz goat cheese (crumbled)
¼ cup pine nuts (toasted)
¼ cup scallions (minced)
½ lemon
Butter lettuce leaves (optional)
Toss beet chunks in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Put roasted beets in a bowl and toss with crumbled goat cheese, toasted pine nuts and scallions. Place a butter lettuce leaf on each salad plate and arrange a spoonful of beet salad into each lettuce leaft. Drizzle the beets on the leaves with good olive oil followed by a squeeze of fresh lemon juice (using the ½ lemon to juice each plate). Sprinkle a bit more salt and pepper if needed. Serve room temperature to your guests (if they’re still around).
Bless my
Buscuit
I’m a transplanted southerner and everytime I try to make biscuits I am reminded of that fact. Everyone in the South just seems to be born knowing how to make light-as-a-cloud, fluffy biscuits. So, as a northerner I was determined that if I didn’t get the genetic gift of biscuit-baking by birth I would earn it by sheer will...and many, many biscuit fails. While I’ve probably made more hockey-puck biscuits than light-as-a-cloud ones I have finally discovered the deep, dark secret of biscuit making. You need to be born in the South. No, just kidding (kind of), you need to back away from everything you ever thought about bread baking because this is biscuit baking. In other words, no kneading.
I am sure many of you (mostly southerners but a few savvy northerners) are shaking your heads as if my eureka moment is pure ‘DUH’ but this northerner had no idea...until recently. Anything related to bread was just begging to be kneaded and many recipes I followed for biscuits omitted the crucial instructions…’combine flour, buttermilk, salt, baking powder and chilled butter and BACK AWAY FROM THE BOWL!” Seriously. My northern sensibilities wanted to just knead the heck out of those sweet little powdery nuggets but then one day I stumbled upon ‘the gift’. Buried in the recipe for Southern-style Biscuits was the crucial warning ‘a light touch is essential, handle the dough and the biscuits as little as possible’. Eureka! It really was that simple. I had tried Lily flour, unbleached organic flour, George Washington’s flour and every kind of buttermilk and baking powder the stores offered and the whole time I was baking hockey-pucks the missing ingredient was benign neglect of that biscuit dough! I can do benign neglect!
So, the recipe that follows is pure simplicity. Just flour (any kind will do, trust me), baking powder, salt and cold butter...and benign neglect. Yup, it’s the essential ingredient in any southern light-as-a-cloud biscuit. Take it from a weary northerner...just back away from the bowl y’all.
I am sure many of you (mostly southerners but a few savvy northerners) are shaking your heads as if my eureka moment is pure ‘DUH’ but this northerner had no idea...until recently. Anything related to bread was just begging to be kneaded and many recipes I followed for biscuits omitted the crucial instructions…’combine flour, buttermilk, salt, baking powder and chilled butter and BACK AWAY FROM THE BOWL!” Seriously. My northern sensibilities wanted to just knead the heck out of those sweet little powdery nuggets but then one day I stumbled upon ‘the gift’. Buried in the recipe for Southern-style Biscuits was the crucial warning ‘a light touch is essential, handle the dough and the biscuits as little as possible’. Eureka! It really was that simple. I had tried Lily flour, unbleached organic flour, George Washington’s flour and every kind of buttermilk and baking powder the stores offered and the whole time I was baking hockey-pucks the missing ingredient was benign neglect of that biscuit dough! I can do benign neglect!
So, the recipe that follows is pure simplicity. Just flour (any kind will do, trust me), baking powder, salt and cold butter...and benign neglect. Yup, it’s the essential ingredient in any southern light-as-a-cloud biscuit. Take it from a weary northerner...just back away from the bowl y’all.
South by North Biscuits
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons VERY COLD butter cubed
1 cup buttermilk
Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl and add butter. Pinch the flour mixture together with the butter until it all forms a kind of coarse, grainy sand texture. Pour in the buttermilk and mix until just combined - it should be a shaggy, wet dough. DO NOT OVERMIX Y’ALL! form into biscuits and bake at 450 for 10 to 15 minutes until just golden brown - don’t overbake!
(Most recipes call for rolling this dough out and cutting it into cute (read ‘perfect’) circles but I’m a big fan of simply tearing pieces of dough off and quickly forming them into shapes vaguely resembling circles (or maybe an Egyptian pyramid). Just don’t hold those little darlin’s too long in your hot lil’ hands honey. You need to act as though that biscuit dough is red hot and hard to handle. And, THAT is the secret to light-as-a-cloud, fluffy biscuits y’all. You’re welcome).