Sunday, January 29, 2006

Voodoo Bruschetta

Recipe re-sent by CathrineQ, whose husband I met on Friday:

Ingredients:

* 3/4 to 1 lb pizza dough
* 6-8 ripe plum tomatoes
* 2 tablespoon finely chopped red onion (optional)
* 2 cloves to 2 buds crushed garlic
* 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or several tablespoon of pesto
* 2 teaspoon red wine vinegar or lemon juice
* 1-4 tablespoon olive oil
* 1-2 teaspoon or tablespoon chilli paste (found in Asian
section of supermarket)
* salt & pepper to taste
* 10-20 pitted kalmatta olives, chopped
* Parmesan, grated

Directions:

Cut tomatoes in half and squeeze out the seeds. Chop tomatoes into small dice; place in bowl. Add onion, garlic, basil or pesto, vinegar or lemon juice, chili paste, olives, salt & pepper to taste.
Let stand for about an hour. Drain liquid if desired. Roll out pizza dough into a thin rounded rectangle. Bake pizza dough at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, until lightly browned. Spread with tomato mixture.
Top with the Parmesan. Enjoy. (As for the garlic, go big or go home!!)

Serves: 4

Picture courtesy of The Wingnuterer.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Toasted garlic

DeAnne sent this email:
I recently went to a new restraunt in town and they had fresh bread with a dipping oil. First they place a dried and crushed garlic/spice mixture on a plate and add the oil. It was great and I have tried to "create" a version of it at home with no luck. How in the world do you toast chopped garlic? Any great recipies? Thanks! DeAnne

This is how I'd do it:
1. Chop the garlic
2. Place it on a tray
3. Sprinkle with just a little bit of olive oil
4. Put in toaster oven for no more than 3 minutes

Any other ideas?

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

This just in

Earlier this week I got this email:
Hello there,
I've just been randomly searching food blogs and stumbled upon yours.
I love garlic! It will definitely pop up on my website from time to time. It is called A Food Year and it documents my efforts to eat a different dinner every day of the year. There are pictures, recipes and anecdotes. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, check it out at www.afoodyear.com
If not, no problem. Just sharing my link with like-minded individuals :)

Ken Sloan

Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

Sunday, January 8, 2006

Risotto

According to Mister Anchovy:

Chop up:
Shallots
A few cloves of garlic
An onion
A green or red pepper
Some cremini mushrooms

Soak:
Some dried chantrelles in a cup of water for a half hour. Chop them up, and add the liquid to the stock.

Grate:
Some fontina and some obsenely good parmagiano cheeses....a big handful of each, grated roughly!

Open:
A bottle of white wine that has been sitting around the house because you prefer drinking red.
A bottle of nice shiraz you can drink while cooking the rizotto. This recipe cannot be prepared without drinking wine while cooking.

Heat up:
Some really good soup stock....best is homemade veggie stock, but use what you have.

Chop up:
A couple ripe tomatoes and a few sundried tomatoes. Also chop some fresh basil and thyme, a handful of each.

Saute (on medium heat):
In amazingly good olive oil (we use Salah's gold), the shallots, garlic, onion and pepper, for a few minutes. Add some kosher salt to taste.
Add the mushrooms. Note, the mushrooms should be in larger rather than smaller chunks.

Add:
About 4 cups of arborio or other suitable short grained Italian style rice. You want to make enough for guests + leftovers tomorrow. Add in a ladle full of stock and pour in a few splashes of white wine. Add the herbs. As the rizotto sucks up the liquid, freely add white wine and stock. Add the chantrelles. Add the sun-dried tomatoes. Pour yourself another glass of red, and enjoy a few sips. Keep stirring. Always use a wooden spoon. We do our rizotto in a great big heavy bottom skillet, by the way, and that works out perfectly. Somewhere along the way, remember that you have chopped up some tomatoes and toss them in. Keep adding stock and wine as the rizotto cooks, until the rice is getting tender but still has some body and character about it.

Add:
The cheese. Stir it in. Then add a splash of heavy cream, and stir it around again. Add fresh ground pepper.

Your whole house will smell divine at this point. Shut off the heat and pour yourself another glass of that good red plonk.

Serve in bowls with crusty french bread and a nice fresh green salad on the side.

Feel the love.

Monday, January 2, 2006

Maria's garlic salad dressing

This salad dressing is Ceasar-like, but fixed to be more garlicky:

Recipe for 1 person (yep, that's what you get when you live alone, just multiply it by the number of people you want to serve):

Sun-dried tomatoes: They were too dry (of course), so I put them in a tupperware full of water and left them in the fridge overnight.
Two cloves of garlic finely chopped.
1 anchovy, from a jar
Extra-virgin olive oil
The juice of half a lemon
Pepper
Renee's Ceasar dressing (1 tbsp per person)

Finely chop the sun-dried tomatoes, anchovy and the garlic, cover them with about one teaspoon of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon. Mash them a little bit with your fork.
Mix with the Ceasar dressing.

Use dressing to season pieces of Romain lettuce, some sliced black olives and bacon bits.

You'll have a delicious quasi-ceasar salad, and really garlicky! (that's what I had for dinner last night and, believe me, my mouth remembered it, yaaay).