5-minute Artisan Bread

When I downloaded the book "Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day," I was more than a little skeptical. But it turns out my skepticism has been proved wrong. 

This book has a base recipe for dough that takes about 10 minutes to throw together in a bowl. Your wait time and rising times and oven heating times are not counted in the "5 minutes," but they are also not working time.

You start with the basic dough, super super simple i.e. 1.5 Tablespoons yeast, 1.5 Tablespoons coarse salt, 3 cups lukewarm water and 6.5 cups of all-purpose flour. It rises in a covered, but not air tight bowl for 2 hours. Then you can either make some bread or put it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. 

Every time you wish to have fresh bread, you have to think about 1.5 hours ahead, but that's all you need. You pull off a hunk of dough, make a loaf, let it rest for 40 minutes, preheat your oven to 450 degrees for the last 20 of those 40 minutes, stick it in the oven on a pizza stone, add some water to a broiler pan in the bottom, bake for 30 minutes and you have amazing artisan bread.

Each batch makes 4 small loaves... enough for dinner or two average loaves, enough for dinner and breakfast or lunch.

Loving the comfort food!!!

My favorite Olympia "Holes in the Wall"

My favorite Olympia "Holes in the Wall"

Olympia is cool.
We live in one of the coolest places in the country or so says many a popular magazine poll.
One of the things that makes us cool are our homegrown restaurants or what I like to refer to as "holes in the wall." To qualify for "hole in the wall" status, a restaurant must be locally owned, have good food and be fairly small and simple.
My favorites:
1. Ramirez Mexican Grocery: Fresh food, well seasoned, clean, delicious and inexpensive. You feel like you are in Mexico. By Ace Hardware in Tumwater on Capitol Blvd.


2. Sri's Corner: South Indian food, delicious, reasonably price. Great buffet for lunch $7.99. This place opened about a month ago and fills up for lunch most days. Right next to Ramirez in Tumwater on Capitol Blvd.

3. Gyro Spot: Downtown Olympia on 4th Avenue. Amazing Gyros, great prices, absolutely worthy of my repeated visits.

4. Le Voyeur: Downtown Olympia on 4th as well. Best Philly Cheese steak EVER. But they call them Oly cheese steaks for obvious reasons. Little scary to go in, but once your inside, it's dark but clean. Interesting and   a real taste of downtown Oly. Highly recommend.

Easy Garlic Chicken

OK, so I'm simply reposting this fantastic recipe. I made it for dinner last night with coucous and roasted asparagus on the side. Fabulous combination and the whole meal took maybe 30 minutes to prepare.

Easy Garlic Chicken

By Alexis Zgud on February 17, 2000

Photo by Derf

44 Reviews

• 
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Total Time: 30 mins
• Servings: 4

About This Recipe

"A quick, easy recipe for days when you don't want to spend time in the kitchen. Even finicky people will eat it. Goes great with traditional potatoes or rice."

Ingredients

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3 teaspoons olive oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 500°F and lightly grease a casserole dish.
2. In small sauté pan, sauté garlic with the oil until tender.
3. Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar.
4. Place chicken breasts in a prepared baking dish and cover with the garlic and brown sugar mixture.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Bake uncovered for 15-30 minutes.

Kale and White Bean Vegetable Soup

I made this amazing soup yesterday. It was a cold rainy day and neither of the kids were home, it was quiet and we had a fire going... so it called out to me to make some comfort food. I adapted my recipe from several different recipes.

This photo is from Epicurious, it was the closest thing to my soup, but the recipe is quite a bit different. If you would like to see there's click http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Kale-and-White-Bean-Soup-106153.
Lisa's Recipe
2-3 T Olive Oil
1 large yellow onion chopped 
4 garlic cloves minced
6-8 cups homemade chicken stock
8 small red potatoes
6 small slender organic carrots
2 stalks organic celery
1 or 2 bunches of kale (I like to use two different kinds)
2 cans Cannellini beans
1 can diced tomatoes
About 2 T. Smoked Paprika
About 1t. freshly ground pepper and 1t. freshly ground kosher salt
About 1/2 t. cayenne paper
About 1 t. thyme, oregano, basil, cumin seed
a loaf of bread of your choice for homemade croutons
more olive oil
Fresh Parmesan cheese


1. In bottom of cast iron dutch oven, saute onion and garlic in Olive oil.
2. Add chicken stock to about 2/3 of pot and bring to a boil.
3. Chop carrots, celery, potatoes and kale into bite sized portions, add to pot.
4. Add canned tomatoes.
5. Stir in spices to taste.
6. let simmer for an hour then add beans and simmer another hour or so.
7. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
8. Chop more kale and the loaf of bread.
9. Toss Kale in olive oil to coat, spread thinly on cookie sheet and lightly salt.
10. Toss bread cubes in olive oil lightly and spread on separate cookie sheet.
11. Roast Kale until crisp and bread cubes until lightly browned.
12. Serve soup with Kale chips and bread cubes on top, lightly sprinkle entire dish with parmesan cheese and ENJOY!!!

Spaghetti

My first food post on this food blog, must be spaghetti. When you are raised Italian/Sicilian, there is no other comfort food. This is the ultimate!!! So I cut and paste from my LOL blog into this new blog, and here it is.



OK, so my first attempt to write about food and recipes, and I've already screwed up. I forgot to take pictures of the dinner. So the above picture looks like my spaghetti, but isn't. I'll add my pictures next time.
I am Italian. OK, not really, I'm actually 1/2 German and 1/2 Sicilian. But Italian is what I look, and it's easier to explain.
In my family making red sauce is an art form. The irony, though, is no one does it the same way, but we all adopt some of the stuff our mom taught us, and then we change it up.
I think my sister has mastered it, so I have adopted her strategies, mom's strategies and added my own twists.
I truly love meatballs myself, but my daughter has lately taken to meat sauce, so I've come up with a really good meat sauce that doesn't take too long.
Meatballs are another art form, and I will address them in a different entry.
Mama Lisa's Meat Sauce 
1 lb. ground beef, I use 85/15 
1/2 lb. Mild Italian Sausage
1 Walla Walla or Vidalia onion diced
4 cloves garlic minced
A couple of cans of diced tomatoes
A couple of cans of tomato sauce
(both of these can be less or more depending on your tastes)
A Tablespoon or two of Garlic Powder
A Tablespoon or two of dried Basil
Grated Parmesan cheese in the can and fresh grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste


1. Brown the ground beef and Italian sausage at Med High
2. Add the onion to the pan and cook until soft
3. Add the garlic and cook a couple minutes until brown but not burned
4. Add the tomatoes and sauce, garlic powder, dried basil, salt and pepper and canned grated Parmesan cheese to taste.
5. Stir and let come just to a boil
6. Simmer anywhere from 1/2 hour to 2 hours, I usually do about an hour.


This sauce always tastes better when it's reheated, so I will save even the smallest amount and add it to a new batch to kind of season the new batch.

Make any kind of noodles you like and put the fresh Parmesan on top....MMMMMMM.