Collected Quotidian » sage

Sourdough Foccacia with Cranberries, Sage, and Thyme

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:59:41 +0000

Focaccia is another of those recipes that is redolent with memories. I was introduced to this Italian snack in its simplest form, topped with olive oil and salt during college. The humanities department would have semi-regular meetings where all the professors and students would gather together. (It was a small school, so this wasn’t as big an ordeal as it may seem.)

While we heard tell that other departments had the usual spread of chips, cookies, and soda, we were favored with homemade focaccia baked by our beloved secretary Elizabeth Davis. While she usually tried to keep a low profile in meetings, there was no disguising the warm yeasty smell that accompanied her through the door. She and her bread were the center of everyone’s attention. Even if we tried to politely finish listening to whomever was speaking, our minds and hearts were with her and the bread she was slicing.

Her focaccia stands in my memory as a culinary beacon of hope in an otherwise dreary foodscape of cafeteria food and boxed cereal. It was beguiling in its simplicity, managing to be both fluffy and crisp at the same time. The olive oil, warmed by the bread, pooled in the fingertip deep wells, dribbling over the sides when it was cut. The more refined among us ate with a napkin in hand to dab at the drips. Call me rustic, but I could never resist licking my fingers clean of the buttery oil mingled with the sharp bite of salt.

While plain and simple focaccia still heats my oven, I have recently been enamored with recipes using seasonal fruits, like this Grape and Rosemary Focaccia from Nourished Kitchen. Living in the South, I made it with muscadines rather than concord grapes, but the combination of peppery olive oil, sticky sweet grapes, and salty herbs worked its way into my blood. Sadly, muscadine season is painfully short. Nowhere near long enough to satisfy my craving. When cranberries started poking around the produce, I saw my way clear.

While this recipe is obviously evocative of Thanksgiving, I won’t lie and say I’m not stashing a few bags of cranberries in my freezer so I can enjoy this a few months down the line.

Sourdough Focaccia with Cranberries, Sage, and Thyme
Inspired by recipes at Nourished Kitchen and The Fresh Loaf

1 cup frothy 100% hydration sourdough starter
1 cup tepid water
1 cup extra virgin olive oil, divided
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white whole wheat flour
3 tsp salt
~ 1/2 a bag of cranberries
2 T chopped fresh sage
1 T chopped fresh thyme
2-3 T unrefined coarse sea salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the starter and water. Mix briefly to break up the starter. Add 1/4 cup olive oil, one cup each of the flours, and the salt. With a dough hook, mix the dough until it comes together. If it’s still excessively sticky, add more flour until it becomes more manageable– it can stick to your fingers, but it shouldn’t coat your hand like a glove if you try to knead it. Let the mixer knead it until you can stretch a piece paper thin, about 10 minutes. Roll it into a ball, drizzle the bowl with olive oil and turn the dough to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge over night.

The next day, let the dough come up to room temperature, about 60-90 minutes. Rub olive oil onto a 9×13 baking sheet. Pat the dough out to fit the baking sheet and let it rise, covered, in a warm place for 2-3 hours, until it looks puffy and doubled. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 475°. After the dough has risen, use your finger tips to make several indentations in the dough. Not holes, just dips. Drizzle an ample amount of olive oil over the dough and down its sides. The bread is essentially going to fry on top, so do be generous. Sprinkle the coarse salt and then spread the cranberries out. They might roll into great cranberry canyons, so you might need to press them gently into place.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until the top is golden and crisp. Take it out of the oven and drizzle some more olive oil and scatter the herbs over the top. Using a pizza cuter, cut the focaccia into squares. Serve hot or a room temperature. If you happen to have leftovers, it makes a fabulous breakfast reheated in a toaster oven for about 5 minutes.

This post is participating in YeastSpotting, a “weekly showcase of yeasted baked goods and dishes with bread as a main ingredient” hosted by Wild Yeast, though guest hosted this week by Hefe und mehr.

Lemony Shrimp Soup

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:23:36 +0000

I felt like Snow White while making this soup. While I hummed about the kitchen, ingredients seemed to wing out of the fridge and into the soup as if little adorable doe eyed woodland creatures were helping them along. Before I knew it, I had a beautiful soup that seemed to have created itself.

I love those days.

I’d puttered about with a shrimp soup idea for awhile, but without any concrete ideas. I just knew I was tired of shrimp scampi. And my spicy Asian stir-fried shrimp. I was in a shrimp rut. (A shrut?) So when I began making the soup, I was determined not to use any of my normal shrimpy ingredients. No parsley, no red pepper flakes, no soy sauce.

The part that gives an extra pinch of fairy dust to this recipe is that everything (apart from the shrimp) was just lying around my fridge. The lemon had been lying naked in a drawer since I zested it last week. The onion and leek were left over from the cooking class I taught on Sunday. I always have quarts of whey sitting around as I make my own mozzarella cheese every week. And the collards were leftovers from last night’s dinner. Whenever I’ve attempted such “leftover soups” before, the individual ingredients, like ugly step sisters, have never played well together. But in this soup, they all seemed to grow up and realize each other weren’t so bad.

This soup even got it’s own “happily ever after” ending at dinner. Mr. Quotidian, the ever skeptical prince, pronounced throughout all the kingdom that this was a “soup-er soup.”

A note about the whey: This is actual, real, living, whey. It was drained off of cheese, not mixed from a powder. They are two completely different products and should not be substituted for one another. However, if you are not like me and do not have excess quarts of whey sitting in your fridge, a good chicken stock (or shrimp/fish stock- even better!) would substitute quite nicely.

Lemony Shrimp Soup

1 lb of fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
Juice from one lemon
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, chopped, white and pale green parts only
2 tbs lard, butter, or olive oil
1 1/2- 2 qts whey
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 tbs dried sage
1 tbs herbs de provence
1 cup cooked collard greens
salt and pepper
1/4 of a preserved lemon- I used Jenny’s recipe from the Nourished Kitchen, chopped fresh lemon could be substituted
2-tbs yogurt

Pour the lemon juice over the shrimp and let them marinate while you prepare the rest of the soup. Melt the fat in a large soup pot. When the surface shimmers, add the onions and leek with a pinch of salt and sweat until soft, about 2 minutes. If they start browning, turn down the heat. Pour in the whey, then add the chopped garlic and herbs. Bring the whey to just below a boil. Add the shrimp cook for another minute or so. The shrimp are done when they turn bright pink. Add the cooked collards and turn off the heat. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with a spoonful of yogurt and a generous pinch of preserved lemon.

This post is part of Pennywise Platter Thursday at the Nourishing Gourmet.

Holiday Dressing

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:59:04 +0000

This started out as my grandmother’s recipe. But, in the several times I’ve made it, it has become my own. While I keep it traditional for Thanksgiving, I play around with it at other times. It’s a great way to use up stale bread of any kind. It is another recipe that is very adaptable to whatever you can imagine. Play with it. I’ve made a Greek dressing using extra garlic and oregano. Next time I make it, I want to try a Ruben-esque theme- rye bread, caraway seeds, and corned beef.

Holiday Dressing

1 whole loaf of crusty bread (french, baguette, ect)
2 Tablespoons fennel seeds
1 cup walnuts, mildly crushed (opt)
1 lb Sweet Italian, Hot Italian, or Breakfast sausage (opt)
6 Tablespoons butter
4 onions, chopped
1 box golden raisins (or half cranberries)
2 T rubbed sage
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons brandy (opt)
6 eggs
3 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Tear the bread into bit size pieces, cover with a towel, and leave out at least overnight to dry. Having the bread dry with keep it from absorbing too much liquid later and becoming soggy. It gives your dressing a nice texture.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bring a mid-sized skillet up to a medium-hot temperature.  Add the fennel seeds and allow them to toast until fragrant. As soon as you smell them, take them off the heat. Remove the seeds to a small dish, then add the nuts to the same hot, dry skillet and allow them to toast 3-5 minutes, taking care to stir them constantly to prevent burning. Pour the nuts off into a large bowl.

Add olive oil to the same skillet, then fry the sausage until it is cooked through (about 8-10 minutes). Remove the sausage to the same large bowl containing the walnuts.

Add the butter to the skillet, allowing it to melt and blend with the sausage drippings. If you’re not using sausage, add an extra tablespoon butter or bacon drippings.

Add the onions, sauté 2 minutes, then add the raisins and sauté two minutes longer, or until the raisin are plump.

Sprinkle the sage over the vegetables, sauté 1 minute, then add the garlic and toasted fennel seeds.
Sauté two minutes longer, then add the entire mixture into the large bowl with the walnuts and sausage.

To the same big bowl, add the bread, eggs, salt, pepper and brandy. Add enough stock to thouroughly wet the ingredients, but remember, you can always add more. You don’t want it to be too soggy. Prepare to get messy. Using your hands (or salad servers), thoroughly mix all the ingredients. Think toss rather than clump. Squeezing the stuffing will destroy its texture.

Butter a 13 x 9 inch baking pan, add the stuffing, then cover tightly with a piece of buttered aluminum foil.

Allow the stuffing to cook 35 minutes, then remove the foil and allow it to bake 30 minutes longer, until the top is nicely crisped, lightly browned, and no liquid bubbles up when you press the crust.