Wordless Wednesday

Turkish Feta And Spinach filled filo pastry

 

It’s been a while since I made these and I didn’t want to post because of the lack of better pictures. See, I made them spur-of–the moment while cooking dinner and it was already dark when they were out of the oven.

No real recipe either but you can find similar pastries on the Internet.

I used:

450 gr frozen spinach squeezed dry
1 egg
300-400 gr feta cheese, crumbled
pepper, salt, thyme
couple of dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 tsp chili pepper (Aleppo)
1 tbs lemon juice
1/4 cup dried breadcrumbs

1 package ready made filo pastry, I think it was 750 grams. I got mine from the Turkish shop, sealed and chilled but not frozen. (I hate frozen filo pastry, the ones I get are either dried out at the edges or clinging together, this one was great to work with).

Mix all the ingredients for the filling, The egg is there to keep it all together, and I included the breadcrumbs to make sure if there was any liquid left in the spinach it was taken care of. Would have used fresh but frozen was what I had on hand.

The process of the triangle fold was a pleasure once I had it down to a routine. My filo dough came in long rectangles and I sliced them lenghtwise in three equal strips. Proceeded to brush half of each strip with melted butter (lengthwise) and folded the unbrushed part over the buttered part. This left me with one long narrow strip.
Placing a tablespoon of the filling on the bottom left hand side of the strip it was a matter of fold over, aligning the edges as I go. Flop, flop flop and ready!

This is what I did. Mind! These are not my pictures, they are from here! And there’s a written instruction as well.

When the sun really comes out..

You’ll slowly believe in Spring again! I’ve been hunting and gathering vegetables this afternoon and for the first time felt like a big bowl of salad for dinner. Fleetingly remembered the veal chops in the freezer.. Saw the grill from the corner of my eye. Not yet! Not yet!
The people at HSN Cooks are in the same state of mind. They are celebrating Spring by organizing a Spring Weekend Event presented by Bon Appétit!
So.. if you, unlike me, are in the States you have the possibility to check it out! This weekend is Spring weekend on HSN.
I for me would love to have a year subscription to Bon Appetit for only 9,97… Do you think they ship to the Netherlands for free? No I don’t think so either hehe.
Anyway.. when you’re hankering for Spring or inbetween enjoying the first rays of sun you might check it out.
Nope, not a sponsored post, I am that nice. No really!

Wordless Wednesday

One of the kids' favorites (and a frequent request of my sister): italian knotty rolls. In this case the rolls aren't scored; the way I braided took care of the beautiful scores.

Bread Baking Babes go original Aboriginal: Rewena

  *cough* it’s not Aboriginal, it’s Maori. But that doesn’t rhyme as much, dang!

We Babes, we get around these days, Lien is our Kitchen of the Month and we gathered around her kitchen table briefly before she set us on a trip to New Zealand.

This bread is adapted from Dean Brettschneiders “Global Baker” and it requires a two-day starter mixed with mashed potato and it’s cooking liquid. Tickled purple we were (at least some of us ;-))

“Rewena is the Maori term for the fermented potato mixture used as a raising agent to make this effect it's a type of sourdough. It's difficult to find the exact history of this bread, but it has been suggested that a flat unleavened bread was made with ground-up bullrush plant and water, baked over hot rocks. Traditionally, rewena is baked for large gatherings and the loaf is simply torn apart for sharing amongst friends and family. I have added a little fresh rosemary for flavour because this bread has little salt and can be bland. Stencilling the iconic New Zealand silver fern onto the loaf by dusting with flour and baking gives this loaf a truly New Zealand identity. This rewena needs to be made two to three days ahead.”

The original recipe didn’t work as planned so Lien rolled up her sleeves and fixed us a recipe that did work. At least for a lot of us. Mine? Mine came out a bit less holed than I expected and somehow looked like it was made with whole wheat… {Now that I write this an awful suspicion rises…. At the time of baking I was preparing three different doughs… Do you think I mixed up two of them? Not entirely impossible since I managed to make non-currant currant rolls a couple of weeks ago by forgetting to incorporate the dried fruit into the dough. Gah.}

Anyway the prolonged counter time of the starter made a very firm dough for me, not slack, not wet but lovely to shape.
I even tried to craft a stencil to create the fern leaf pattern on the bread. Kudos to me! Yes it took me two tries to get it somewhat right, is not easy to wrap your head around which parts show when you snip away at the mediocre drawing you yourself made LOL.

See what I mean? No holes! NO HOLES! Dang again!
But good. It was good. Nothing really special and a bit dense crumb but soft at the same time. 
Let me show you this wonderful stencil again…. (I really like my slashes!! I do!)

Don’t forget to check out my fellow Babes (blogroll on the left hand side!) and if you like to bake with us and become a Bread Baking Buddy with your own smashing Buddy Badge please do! All details are to be found at Lien’s; deadline, where to send your info etc. Go ahead, you know you want to!

Old world braided coffee cake / ABC

 

Another month of ABC baking. This time we all set out to play with a yeasted dough. We continue to bake from Flo Braker's "Baking For All Occasions", recipe will not be posted here but can be found in her book.

I would call this type of shaping a “mock braid”, it’s a very easy way of presenting an intricate weaving pattern with none of the fussy braiding. Definitely worth trying and very easy to adapt to any kind of filling, think lemon curd, baker’s cream, jam or fresh fruit in season. Or… be brave and dream up a savory version!

 

As you can see in the picture rail below -which is obviously not in the correct order but I trust you to find out the correct order all by your self- this braid is not difficult to make. First you roll out a rectangle, divide vertically in 3 equal parts, your filling goes in the middle. Then you cut two little flaps that go over to secure your filling. Next step is slicing strips on the diagonal, on the left as well as the right side of the dough. I like to put little markers out first so my strips are more or less equal.

Volledig album bekijken

Then you simply fold your strips one at a time up and over the filling, alternating left and right. You will see that you get that cross braid because the strips are slanted down, just follow the natural direction of your cuts. Easy as pie!

My notes:

- The dough is easy to work with and behaves exactly like stated in the recipe–as in all of her recipes so far-.

- I played around with the filling. I had my walnuts already out on the counter. They were fresh, beautiful and whole. I stood there staring at them and really it pained me to grind up all these lovely walnut halves…
A quick dash to the basement pantry revealed a bag of ground hazelnut filling (one of my German supermarket finds) and I decided to use that. Using the pre-ground filling also meant I had to wing the other ingredients a bit, using the components of the recipe in other quantities to reach the desired consistency.

- Make sure you do not overbake this coffee cake, it has a tendency to get dry. Or maybe use more filling so the moist filling will aid the surrounding dough. 

- Overall, a nice one, but I have a hard time placing this in a category. I think it is too bready to have as a treat with coffee (for us Dutch anyway ;-)) . I can see it serve as a mid morning/mid afternoon snack with a cuppa, or as part of  a Sunday brunch.

Want to know what the other ABC bakers think ? You can find the ABC blog roll HERE.