How to have more fun hosting a weeknight dinner party and pesto bread

by on March 26, 2013

pesto bread-170We love our friends and would like to see them more often, but there is already not enough weekend left for family and hobbies. So you are waiting for an invitation for a weeknight? Maybe everyone is waiting for everybody else. You could be the first to wing it and start a regular thing. Don’t believe just because you are working you won’t have time to prepare everything. I help you out: I put on my think hat and here are my two cents:

Team up with another friend and share the party preparations (half duty but double fun).

Be prepared, many things can be done ahead of time: shopping for groceries, setting the table and cleaning your home, cooling the drinks. You should make a plan, I believe in lists. Consider your time realistically. You got one hour? Lasagna is not going to happen. Think more: couscous, pasta… also low maintenance.

This is not the time for testing new recipes. The key is a fool-proof recipe, one you did several times successfully, a simple one is the best idea. You make hands down the best French fries in town, great this will make you look good. You are not going to impress anyone with mushy Duchess potatoes.

Make sure to hand your guests their first drink, I might be old fashion but I think it’s a duty of the host to welcome and clink glasses with every guest. After that they are on their own. Put wine and water bottles on the table or nearby, and encourage everyone to self-service but keep an eye on the coy ones, you don’t want them to dry out. Introduce your friends to your fridge. It’s totally fine to let them grab their own beer. After all you have worked all day. It’s your party and it’s time to have some fun.

Don’t be ashamed to use store bought dips like hummus. Pimp it up with a drizzle of good olive oil and dust with cumin and smoked paprika powder. This looks stunning on a nice platter. And your guests have something to nosh while you are busy in the kitchen. Bread and butter is a classic and on the table in a minute.

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Make ahead: some dishes taste even better reheated like goulash. Compound butter can be made weeks earlier. It freezes well and upgrades a chicken breast, salmon, veggies, baked potato. There are tons of easy and mouthwatering slow cooker recipes out there.

For cold days: soup party! Serve a basic soup for example: consommé (or any clear soup), potato soup, tomato soup, pumpkin soup etc. Serve with a variety of add-ins and toppings for this soup: croutons, rice, bacon bites, pesto, eggs (cooked and chopped or poached), black or pinto beans, sour cream, avocado, cubed ham, grated cheese, herbs, green onions, barley. Place it in small bowls on the table and everyone can mix and match to his liking.

For hot days: salad party! Works basically the same like for soup. Make a mixed green salad and provide a nice selection of ingredients: bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, butter beans, chicken strips, red onions, sun dried tomatoes, olives, crumbled feta. I don’t know about you, but if I want to turn a simple salad into a whole meal, I just add beans and top it with an egg, and I am happy as a camper. Offer two or three different dressings: creamy like ranch dressing and tangy like vinaigrette.

Both options are easier on you when you feed guests with allergies, vegans or vegetarians. Most leftovers make a great stir-fry or stew the next day.

The most important thing is YOU! If you are a hot mess when your guests arrive, they won’t enjoy this evening. They are visiting you and want diversion from their working day. Make sure you are peachy, relaxed and ready to party. Have yourself in order and don’t worry about the food. Your friends will be happy to help in the kitchen and it’s fun. You don’t have to be finished with the meal at their arrival but you should have upgraded yourself and smile. If nothing helps, pour yourself a glass of wine and breath.

pesto bread

pesto bread

ingredients

  • about 500 g / 1 lb. pizza dough
  • 3-5 Tbsp pesto of your choice

instructions

  1. Reheat your oven to 200 C / 400 F and place your pizza stone inside the oven (if using otherwise grease a baking sheet).
  2. Transfer your pizza dough to a lightly floured surface. Roll out dough into rectangular shape. Spread pesto evenly on top of the dough. Roll up the dough from the long side, form a snail, tuck under the beginning and the end.
  3. Place into the oven and bake 25 – 30 minutes.
  4. Remove from your oven and let cool 10 minutes before slicing.

variations

You can make your pizza dough and pesto from scratch. If your pesto contains a lot oil, use just 3 Tbsp, so it won’t squeeze out so much. Cilantro and smoked almond pesto works great, is less liquid (so you can use 5 Tbsp) and vegan.

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{ 3 comments }

Früchtebrot, German Christmas Fruitcake

by on November 29, 2012

Believe me or not but November is almost over. Like every year December will arrive sooner as expected and with that the holiday season will officially start.  I would like to tell you, I got all my gifts for my loved ones, wrapped and ready to go. But that’s only half the truth and the other half is a lie. Don’t get me wrong, I think Christmas is not all about that but I love to pick presents, for me it’s a nice part of it. At least I got my Christmas tree up and good lord that is a wonder.

For me the most precious gifts are at least chosen with heart and care or even better they are handmade. Although I baked this fruitcake just for me and I won’t share if I don’t have to, it makes an excellent gift especially if you want to ship it.  It is actually more like a bread, stays nicely in shape and the best part, it gets even more delicious when it sits or travels for a few days. It is a very traditional recipe at least before I laid my hands on it. As I love to bake at least one fruitcake every season I tweaked it a little bit every time and more for a German recipe unusual ingredients sneaked in. I switched hazelnuts and almonds for walnuts but pecans will also work just fine.  As for the dry fruit part, I skipped candied lemon peel and added lime zest to balance the sweetness of the fruits. Be creative with your dried fruit choices, I usually add figs and/or dates but run out of them and I had to use up those dried plums sitting in my pantry for too long (even for dried plums). The dried cranberries in company with dried apricots add a little color and different flavors. Mix and match but you should have 600 g / 21.2 oz. all together at the end. If you like and you have time for that, let them sit in a little booze like rum, amaretto or Cointreau over night or a couple of hours. I like my slice of Früchtebrot with some salted butter or cream cheese, but that’s maybe just me?

Früchtebrot, German Christmas Fruitcake

ingredients

  • 110 g / ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 100 g / ½ cup brown sugar
  • 3 Tbsp. maple syrup or honey
  • 3 large eggs
  • 150 g / 1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
  • ½ tsp. fine sea salt
  • 250 g / 8 ¾ oz. dried plums, chopped
  • 50 g / 1 ¾ oz. dried golden raisins
  • 100 g / 3 ½ oz. dried cranberries
  • 200 g / 7 oz. dried apricots, chopped
  • 1 ½ – 2 Tbsp. Cointreau (optional)
  • grated zest of one lime
  • 225 g / 8 oz. chopped walnuts

instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 175 C / 350 F. Grease and line a loaf pan 23 cm / 9 x 5 inch with parchment paper.
  2. In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
  3. Beat butter, brown sugar and maple syrup or honey at medium speed with an electric mixer. Add eggs and continue beating.
  4. Add flour mix and beat at low speed just until blended. Stir in remaining ingredients with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon.
  5. Spread evenly in prepared loaf pan and bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from pan, and cool completely on a wire rack. Store airtight for 3 days for an enriched flavor (good luck with that).

{ 10 comments }

red beet tartine

by on May 4, 2012

As I am writing this I have a huge smile on my face because I am in Charleston, SC for a little beach vacation, some sightseeing and a lot of food. I never heard before about Charleston being such a great foodie city, but everyone I told about my vacation plans, was mentioning the great food and told me: “you’ll love it”. And I do, I really do! I am going to tell you about the restaurants I tried and all this whole shebang as soon as I am back home and able to close the first button of my pants again.

What I am looking forward to do while exploring strange cities, is visiting the local farmers market. Although I basically had all my meals and the ones in between, cooked and served by someone else and I didn’t cook more,  than what you see on the picture above since one week, but a stroll over a farmers market can lead to a flash of genius for future kitchen adventures. Here are some pictures from Charleston, more are about to come.

Red beets are not exactly eye candy, it’s more falling in love on the second sight. The dream team combination is hands down with dill and horseradish. Fresh dill was an easy find on the farmers market, horseradish not so. Hey someone mixed wasabi (aka Japanese horseradish) with mayonnaise and sells it in jars in your supermarket, can’t get easier than that. If  you are not a fan of burning inside your nose and teary eyes, buy the small jars with white horseradish and mix it with yoghurt, adjust the ratio just how you like. If fresh garlic (looks like a small version of leek) is not available for you, simply use 2 sliced garlic cloves and skip the topping of the beets.

red beet tartine

serves two

ingredients:

4 small red beets

1 fresh garlic

olive oil

wasabi mayonnaise

small bunch fresh dill, chopped

4 slices of sourdough bread or baguette

aluminium foil and baking sheet to save your oven from potential dripping

instructions:

Preheat your oven to 200 C / 400 F. Wash the beets and the garlic, pat dry and cut off the leaves. Keep the garlic green but discard (or better save for another purpose) the green part of the beets. Put on one aluminium foil sheet big enough to hold all beets and still closeable. Drizzle with olive oil,  top with the garlic green and make a pouch with the foil, closing at the top. Place on a baking sheet and cook 45 minutes in the oven.

Slice the remaining (white) part of the garlic and Make a small pouch, add some olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Remove the beets from the oven, don’t open the foil and let steam for 10 minutes. Meanwhile put the garlic pouch into the oven for 10 minutes. If you like you can add your bread to the oven to crisp it up.

Open the aluminium foil and let sit until cool enough to handle. Discard the garlic greens.With a paper towel rub over the beets to remove the skin, slice the beets and the bread and assemble the tartine: spread some (about 2 teaspoons per slice) wasabi mayonnaise, a layer of beet slices,  top with garlic and sprinkle with dill and salt if desired. A drizzle with some olive oil would be great.

{ 4 comments }

orangey sweet bread

by on March 29, 2012

Everyone around here love this orangey sweet bread but I have to admit, for no reason I make this recipe only from time to time, mostly because I got buttermilk around that has to be used up. And this is exactly why I made it last weekend and since then I am suffering from a creative block. I got the recipe ready for you, all the pictures and can’t force myself for some more words. Of course there are all the good reasons I should mention why you should try this and what’s so good about it… So I thought we should get filled in by the one who knows best: the orangey sweet bread itself, further mentioned just as “OSB”. Read the interview:

me: How are you?

OSB: Peachy!

me: How would you describe yourself in three words?

OSB: Three words? Adventurous? Creative and loyal. Let’s say I would be the unloved child of snow white and dopey the dwarf. I am just kidding…

me: Tell us about yourself and about your strengths and weaknesses.

OSB: Well I think I am underrated by many people, they stop thinking about me after their breakfast. But I can do more than that. I can fulfill your sweetest dreams! I am very experienced in french toast, bread pudding or sweet panzanella. It concerns me that some guys want to limit me to their breakfast. Weaknesses are obviously, don’t put salami on me and I am not following the whole grain movement.

me: What is your dream car?

OSB: Like the vast majority: ice cream truck.

me: Tell me about your hobbies and interests, outside of work.

OSB: I tried some water sports, but I hate to get soaking wet and never found the right bikini. I am traveling well, did you ever tried to eat a cinnamon roll in your car? Frosting everywhere! I hate to gossip about my colleagues but I am the smart way. Oh and  I am reading a lot.

me: What is the latest book you have read?

OSB: The baking oven manual, nerve-racking stuff.

me: What is the most embarrassing thing in your bedroom?

OSB: The question should be who… it’s the clover honey bear, he sticks to me like… glue. He has a crush on me and you have to admit we match perfectly, he gives me the orange peel effect, you know what I mean.

me: If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?

OSB: That’s beyond my imagination. Sometimes they slice me up and freeze me for a couple of month. It’s like time traveling, I go to sleep in winter and wake up it’s suddenly spring. Always freaks me out, when they do that. Properly handled I can survive up to one week thanks to the good butter in me. You know the drill, keep me airtight and I am a joy for everyone after a warm up in the toaster.

me: Explain a time you went above and beyond your duty at a certain position.

OSB: When they forgot to freeze me in time and let me go stale… I toss myself (editor’s note: cubed orangey sweet bread) in melted butter, roast for some minutes in the oven and jump in a bowl of fruit salad. Who else would do that for you?

me: What is your favorite color?

OSB: Certainly not green, it clashes with my skin tone. It’s raspberry jam red.

me: If aliens landed in front of you and offered you any position on their planet, what would this be?

OSB: Sometimes I dream big: the secretary of food.

me: If you were a type of food, what type of food would you be?

OSB: I am dreaming about becoming a sweet lasagna, I am in training for this position.

me: What would I find in your refrigerator right now?

OSB: Iced latte.

me: Thank you for talking with me.

OSB: I can’t believe I left my cozy bread box for this crappy interview. By the way things are living in there, green and fluffy.

 

 orangey sweet bread

You need a loaf pan approx. 23 cm / 9 x 5 inch. A stand mixer makes your life so much easier if you are handling yeast doughs but if you are a purist use your hand and add more flour that it won’t stick.

600 g / 21.4 oz. (about 5 cups) all purpose flour (unbleached)

100 g / 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

3 tsp  active dry yeast

400 ml / 1 3/4 cups buttermilk

100 g / 7 tbsp melted and cooled unsalted butter

1 egg

1 egg yolk

15 g / 2.5 tsp orange zest (approx. 1 orange)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. Put everything in the mixing bowl of your stand mixer with a hook attachment  and knead for 3 to 4 minutes but start slowly you don’t want the flour all over your kitchen. The dough should be sticky (at the bottom) but clears up the sides of the bowl, add more flour or buttermilk if necessary. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 45 minutes.

Prepare you loaf pan, grease or use parchment paper. Carefully punch down the dough and dump it into the loaf pan. Cover and let rise for further 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 175 C / 350 F and bake for 1 hour. Let cool for 5 minutes before you remove the bread from the pan, put on a rack and let cool completely before slicing.

{ 4 comments }

carrot bread with poppy seeds

by on March 3, 2012

This is me adapting my own recipe. Actually that’s what I do all the time, there is not one recipe that I would call completed. Not one that stays as it is.  There is always something I like to change or swap, apples for pears, raisins for dried cranberries just to start easy. But I also changed recipes form savory to sweet or from meat lover to vegetarian. There are many reasons for that, at first I think it’s boring to eat the same over and over again. Then it depends what I am up to, sometimes it has to be a chocolate filling and not fruits. I think the main reason is quiet simple, I ran out of the asked ingredients and I am too lazy to hit the road for grocery shopping.

Well I don’t end up with something enjoyable all the time, that’s the risk if you manipulate recipes. But that’s fine, it might have also been the invention of the best oven soup ever although it should become casserole dish when grown up. Putting cheese on it is always a life saver…

This bread recipe caught my notice as I was working on my blog moving (copy and paste, copy and paste, that’s how the non web designer do it). I stopped at this post and I was embarrassed of the bad pictures. That’s maybe the reason why it didn’t get the attention and love I had hopped for, I truly understand. So here you get a second chance, I simplified the recipe and added more poppy seeds (I wrote poopy seeds for the fifth time now with no hidden thought, thank you spellchecker).

carrot bread with poppy seeds

If you don’t have rye flour on hand, substitute with all purpose flour or whole wheat flour.  If you want to skip the healthy flours and just use all purpose flour that’s fine, but start with less milk and add more only if necessary because whole grains are more “thirsty” than regular flours.

1 1/2 tablespoons / 20 g / 0.7 oz. butter
1 1/4 cup / 300 ml milk

2 cups / 200 g (about 4) carrots finely grated
2 cups / 270 g / 9.6 oz.  whole wheat flour
1 cup / 120 g / 4.3 oz.   all-purpose flour or bread flour
3/4 cup / 80 g / 2.9 oz. rye flour (I used stone ground)
1/3 cup / 50 g / 1.8 oz.  poppy seeds
4 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Heat the milk and then add the butter, the butter will melt in the milk and cools it at the same time. Make sure the butter and milk mix cools down until lukewarm before you add it to the remaining ingredients.
Add everything into a large mixing bowl. Use a dough hook and a stand mixer or knead by hand for at least 3 minutes. Add more milk or flour if necessary and just a little bit at the time, you should end up with a slightly sticky but well manageable dough.
Cover the mixing bowl and let rise for 45 minutes.

Grease your  loaf pan or line with parchment paper. Carefully punch down the dough and put it into the prepared loaf pan. Let rise for a further 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 190 C / 375  F.  Make some cuts on the top of your bread and bake 40-45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack before you slice it.

For a even more crunchy crust: start baking  at 220 C / 430 F for 10 minutes then reduce heat to 190 C /  375 F and continue baking for 20-25 minutes.

 

{ 3 comments }

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