Reserve Your Friday Nights for This Bread: Best Date Bread

You won't normally see me making a bunch of hullabaloo over dates. But this date bread...toasted with a nice schmear of butter...definitely worthy of a night in.

I've been away quite awhile, eight months to be exact. I recently was trying to find my recipe for Sticky Chicken and then I remembered that it was on the blog. After retrieving it for dinner that night, I sorta stuck around on my own blog, reading past posts and getting a little nostalgic. I really started to miss it.

I figured I didn't have much time anymore to blog about food. I've been pouring all my energies into our Etsy shop, Lauren Alison, which is also the brand we sell our screen printed linens under. When I say "we", I mean the Hubs and I. You can read all about how he quit his day job to build our brand together on our Etsy feature, Quit Your Day Job, blog post here.

Between printing and sewing, I still am just as passionate about cooking and baking. And baking seems to be the big deal with me lately, especially bread. I happened on this recipe in a book I bought out of the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble about 2-3 years ago and never made a single recipe out of it! Man, I was missing out.

It's the perfect breakfast toast, although, it would be equally good served with cheese and fruit. It's dense, without being dry, hearty but not heavy and perfectly studded with sweet, sticky bits of dates. I'm thinking I may have to take a little break right now and pop a slice into the toaster for a evening snack.

I have modified it slightly to adapt to what I had on hand. Originally the recipe calls for figs and dates. All I had was dates and it was delicious. Enjoy with a hot cup of cocoa for those chilly, autumnal nights.

Date Bread

adapted and modified from Paul Hollywood's Recipe from 100 Great Breads

Scant 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2/3 cup white bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tbsp. salt

2 tbsp. instant yeast

1/2 stick softened butter

1 tbsp. molasses

1 1/4 c. water

1 cup dates, chopped

Mix flours, water, salt, yeast butter, molasses and water together for 5 minutes. Knead for 5 minutes. Let dough rise for 1 hour, covered or uncovered, makes no difference.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Incorporate dates into the dough and divide into two equal pieces. Shape them into balls, place on sheet and let rise 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Dust loaves with flour and using a knife make three equidistant horizontal cuts all around each ball. Bake for 30 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

It feels so good to write after so long. I've tried keeping up with another blog for Lauren Alison, but I find myself getting behind on it too. But there are a few posts you might enjoy, you can check it out here- www.laurenalisondesign.com

Let me know what you've been up to! I miss you foodie friends!

Lauren

Egg-Free Fruit Tart And Other Make-Shift Business

 Hello, dear Foodies! Long time, no blogging. I know. I wanted to let you know that I've been working away in my "studio" a.k.a dining room table, creating decorative pillow cover designs for my Etsy shop, Alice's Pocket. You can see a glimpse of my shop to the right... It's really fun with lots of eclectic bits. My pillows covers have been selling well and have even gotten some media attention!

~Q and A Interview in the Kansas City Star

~Mrs. Blanding's Blog post

~and I will be on our local Fox 4 Sunday Morning show this Sunday, the 26th at 8:10 am! They want me to do a short segment on how to make a pillow and have some of my designs displayed! I'm super excited and a little nervous because it's live!! I don't want to trip or flip flop my words around and say something like "cillow povers", because I do that a lot.

So, as you can see much has been happening since I opened it's doors and I'm finding myself more and more consumed with creating new designs and curating more vintage pieces (which the Hubs and I collect together) and neglecting my food blog. I've really missed blogging but I've missed the community of bloggers even more. This is my shout-out from my felt pit (I use Eco-friendly felt to create my pillow covers). I'm still kicking and I've got a new recipe for you too!

As you might know, eggs are not so friendly in our family. Two out of the five of us do respond kindly to them, so when it comes to baking, in particular, I'm always faced with de-egging sweet treats.

For years, fruit tart has been the Hubs birthday treat of choice- he's not a cake guy. Most fruit tarts have a sweet, custard-y filling that, of course, has eggs. So I found myself drawing inspiration from a friend, who made a lovely filling for a strawberry shortcake she made, which had yogurt and cream cheese.

It turned out beautifully! It was kinda like if a cheesecake and a fruit tart had a baby. I'm not a cheesecake kind of girl, but this is not as rich as a cheesecake. It's super fresh tasting and very satisfying...and a heck of a lot easier than making a custard.

 Egg-free Fruit Tart

use your favorite pie crust recipe for a single crust...or use my favorite

press it into a 10" tart pan with a removable bottom, and blind bake

Filling:

1 softened block of cream cheese

1 16oz. container Fage or similar Greek yogurt (I used full-fat)

1/4 cup powdered sugar (adjust to taste)

juice of 1/2 lemon

zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Whip on high in your mixer for 3-5 minutes. Fill cooled crust (or stick your face in it). Top with 9 halved strawberries around the edge and fill center with a heaping mound of blueberries (about 1 cup). Chill at least one hour.

Love Ya, Foodies!

Julia Would Approve (Biscuits and Chowda)

Before we start, we must talk about this bowl. I found myself wondering if it was an ash tray or an artistic expression of a coconut husk. It was one of my mom's flea market finds. Thanks, Mom!

We talk about Julia a lot, do we not? Many of us grew up watching and listening to her warble her way through French technique but not without a relaxed “what the hell” attitude. I truly adored how messy she was.

I pick up her biography, Appetite for Life written by Noel Riley Fitch, every so often and randomly open it up to a new place. I’ve never done that with a book before, but I guess it’s because any where you read in this book, you will find something fascinating. It’s a joy to read.

Early on in the book they talk about her childhood (duh) and peppered in among people’s descriptions of her growing up -and her delightful shenanigans- are recipes. One of them is her mother’s Buttermilk Herb Baking Powder Biscuits.

This recipe stood out to me for it’s simplicity and that it was dear to her heart. Her mother was supposedly not a very good cook and when asked about her mother’s cooking this was the recipe she gave a newspaper to print.

Well, if Julia liked them, I knew I would like them too. But there was a problem.

I didn’t have half the ingredients. Oh, and I was lazy, which caused me to not want to walk outside and snip a few sprigs of whatever herbs were left in my dying garden.

So we ended up with plain biscuits.

And then I didn’t have vegetable shortening, I only had butter. Darn.

And I didn’t have buttermilk, so I winged it and added some vinegar to regular milk.

My son can’t eat eggs, so I left those out.

You’re probably thinking, “This sounds like a flop”. Oh contraire, Dear Ones, they were simply heavenly. Best biscuits I’ve ever made, which isn’t saying a lot because my biscuits are generally like bricks or out of a can, soooo….

They truly were delish. I wanted to pad my bra with their fluffy goodness, powder my face with one of its million flaky layers, or simply crack one open and rub its buttery goodness on my elbows. Bizarre? Who cares.

What did I serve these with, you say? How ‘bout some chowda’? (I watch The Perfect Storm last night and I can still hear Clooney, with his dreamy, husky voice, going on about longitudes and latitudes in a Boston accent.)

How about some, the-clams-are-too-damn-expensive-so-I-had-to-buy-fish-chowder? Divine.

I think I actually liked the fish, (I used rockfish, a deep sea type of red snapper), better than clams. It was so tender and flakey…kinda like the biscuits- sorry, but I can’t get over the triumph that was the biscuits. I don't think Julia would mind that I totally changed the recipe. I mean, I'm sure she improvised many times. I felt her approval as the dough stuck to my cookie cutter and I flung flour across the counter and onto the floor.

So here’s the deal. I’m going to give you Julia’s mother’s recipe but in bold I will put my changes AND I will give you my original recipe for my fish chowda. And if you call right now, you will get a forever lazy snuggy free!…just kidding, sorry. I mean, seriously, who wears that? With the zipper in the back? Really?

Buttermilk Herb Baking Powder Biscuits

Julia Child’s mother’s recipe from Appetite for Life.

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. salt

4 tsp. double-acting baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

8 tbsp. chilled vegetable shortening (I used butter)

4 tbsp. fresh minced chives (did not use)

4 tbsp. fresh minced parsley (did not use)

2 eggs (did not use)

1 ½ cups buttermilk (I used milk with 2 tbsp. vinegar added)

Cut shortening (or butter) into dry ingredients, until it is in small pieces, stir in herbs. Mix together all wet ingredients (it says in the book that many Yankee homes did not use the eggs) and briefly mix into dry ingredients. Be careful not to overmix. Turn onto surface and knead (I barely kneaded it, for fear of my classic brick-style biscuits) and pat to ½ inch thick. Cut into rounds (make sure you flour your cutter) and bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Amazing.

Foodie House Fish Chowda

original recipe

(I don’t really measure much, so this is my eyeballed version. I’d say by eyeballs are 95% accurate)

½ sweet onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

3-4 sliced uncured bacon, diced

3 tbsp. flour

2 tbsp. butter

1 tsp. “Better Than Boullion” organic chicken base

4 cups chicken stock (or fish stock)

1 cup cream

2 med. organic russet potatoes, diced

1 cup frozen organic sweet corn

1-1 ¼ lbs. rockfish or snapper, cut into bite-size pieces (use what you like, really)

salt and pepper to taste

Render your bacon in a heavy bottom pot. Leave the drippings. Put in onion, carrot and celery. Cook until slightly soft, about 5 minutes. Add butter and let it melt. Sprinkle flour over veg and bacon and stir in. This is the roux. Cook this mixture together for about another 5 minutes.

Add chicken stock, bullion and cream. Let this cook for a good 10 minutes. You want to see the stock thicken. Stir quite often.

Add your potatoes and corn and let cook until potatoes are tender but not mushy. Taste the soup for seasoning, as the potatoes tend to absorb the salt. Ten to fifteen minutes before you serve the soup, gently simmer the fish pieces in the soup. It’s very important you do not over cook the fish.

Serve with the luscious biscuits…if you’re feeling healthy (which you won’t if you make this meal) eat a salad.

Love ya, Foodies!