Zucchini Bread | You've Got Meal!

The time of vegetable abundance is here. I don't know about you, but in this area the zucchinis are having a great year. After using them in lots of savoury main courses and pasta dishes, a great idea is to incorporate them in desserts as well. 

A classic zucchini bread, enriched with walnuts and cinnamon, this recipe turned out to be a great, extremely moist and flavorful dessert. You will get 2 bread pans or 12 muffins.

Ingredients:

• 375 g AP flour/ 3 Cups (You can replace half of the AP flour with whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 3 free range eggs
• 200 ml canola oil/ 1 cup
• 450 g sugar/ 2 1/4 cup
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• about 2 medium zucchinis/ 2 cups
• 100 g walnuts, roughly chopped/ 1 cup

Method:

1. Grease and flour your pans and preheat oven to 170 C (300)
2. Sift flour, cinnamon, baking powder and soda and salt and mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, add the oil, sugar and vanilla,.
4. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the egg mixture.
5. At this point you might find the mixture really thick, but don't worry, once you add the zucchini it will give it enough moisture.
6. Stir in the grated zucchinis and the chopped nuts.
7. Pour the mixture in the pans and bake for 40-60 minutes.

Extra hint: I added some walnuts for decor on top of one of the breads, but given the long baking time they were burnt, so if you want them, just add them at halfway through.

Enjoy,

Homemade Pizza- 3 Amazing Versions + Pizza Dough Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I honestly think that fast food has gained a far too bad reputation than it deserves. Pizza, hamburgers, kebabs, fries, all these food industry bad boys can be redeemed with just a little ingenuity and effort into some great tasting healthy meals. From all the choices, pizza is my favorite for cooking at home. It’s simple, delicious, let’s you combine a lot of incredible flavors and, if you make your own dough, it gives you that rewarding feeling that you get when baking.

In this case, I used the recipe for the dough from the Jamie Oliver site, except I halved the quantities he suggested, meaning I used:

• 500 grams of 000 flour, 
• 7 grams of dried yeast (that’s basically a small dose that you can buy individually), 
• 1 tbs. sugar, 
• 1 tsp. fine salt, 
• 2 tbs. olive oil, 
• 325 ml of warm water. 

1. Sieve the flour in a large, deep pan (I tried doing this on a work surface but I ended up making a giant mess in the kitchen), add the salt. 
2. In a separate bowl, mix the yeast with the sugar, olive oil and the warm water. 
3. After leaving the wet mixture sit for a couple of minutes, pour it in a well in the middle of the flour and start bringing in the sides into the middle, gradually. 
4. Use your hands to knead the dough until you get a nice, smooth and elastic result. 
5. Next, put the dough in a well floured bowl, cover it with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm room without a draft source for an hour – it should double in size. 
6. The resulting dough was enough for 3 pizzas with a diameter of 30 cm with a thin base.

The 1^st one was with: pancetta, salami, zucchini, broccoli, as seen above. The pancetta was amazing especially when we curled it on the dough and it became just a bit crispy. The broccoli alongside the zucchini made this pizza so special that it was Mrs. G's favourite. Plus, it is healthier than most. I have to mention the broccoli stays just a bit crunchy and that is perfect and you have to use fresh broccoli, as the frozen one might leave some water and make the pizza more runny.  

Mean while, prepare your ingredients for the pizzas. For all 3 pizzas we used some fresh Mozzarella that we crumbled on top. Also, I started by massaging the rolled pizza dough with a very small amount of olive oil (just enough to give it some shine) and relatively thick tomato paste (also used some of the home made paste that we made for this recipe). The cooking time in a hot oven (200 Celsius) was around 10-11 minutes. As another advice from our pizza adventure be careful with the Gorgonzola – don’t use too much and place it near the center of the dough as it tends to melt a lot and get runny. The same rule applies only partially for the fresh mozzarella as it tends to hold its own better, but, again, don’t overdo it, especially near the edges. 

The 2^nd one: salami, Gorgonzola, zucchini, mushrooms, onion, as seen above. This one had a classic taste, a nice tangy hint from the Gorgonzola and you can't possible not love mushroom and onion together on a pizza.  

The 3^rd one: pancetta, broccoli, zucchini, olives, onions and artichoke hearts, as seen above. Basically the one where I went all out, a true veggie delight on a pancetta bed and topped with cheesy, Mozzarella goodness. 

Super easy, super fast, super fun and super delicious food. And the next time you start taking a look at those menus from your neighborhood pizza place keep in mind that you can take them out of business any time with this kind of tiny effort. Ok, might sound worse than it actually is, a slight exaggeration there, but you get the idea.

Enjoy,

Sun-dried Tomato and Artichoke Bruschetta | You've Got Meal!

One of the most important things that you’ll ever hear from any professional chef is to be organized in your kitchen. Manage your ingredients, keep things tidy, plan your cooking and so on and so forth. We are not professional chefs in the You’ve Got Meal kitchen, but this whole organizing your meals makes perfect sense it you’re a bruschetta fanatic like we are. 

We always have at hand in the pantry some sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, parmesan, capers, anchovies, cipolline borettane, olive oil, olives, etc. Of course most of the times we don’t have the whole list, but you can cook some darn right delicious treats with only a couple. And so it just happens that we only had some tomatoes and artichokes on hand the other day. 

Making the bruschetta is mega easy, start of by cutting some slices of bread (baguette), not too thick. When we use sun-dried tomatoes we tend not to use olive oil, just because the tomatoes are kept in a flavored oil, same thing for the artichoke hearts.

• Place a piece of tomato, topped with an artichoke heart – you can choose to cut that if you find it too big. 
• Next, place one or two fresh leaves of basil and sprinkle with some grated parmesan. No salt, there’s plenty of that in the vegetables and cheese, maybe a dash of pepper. 
• Cook the bruschetta in the oven for 7-10 minutes and serve warm. 

The conclusion here keep your pantry stocked with at least a couple from those ingredients, they will make a world of a difference when you have to whip something up when you get a last minute visit or when you get the munchies. 

One of the rules we do have about our bruschetta is to keep it simple, not too many ingredients of spices. Keep in mind that just a couple of flavors combined in the right way can do a lot better than trying to mix in a ton tastes.  So, go at it, try and mix them and see which combo suits you better in a bruschetta, there’s no way you’re not going to enjoy it.

 Enjoy,

Christmas Cake Recipe: Buttery and Sticky Orange Cake | You've Got Meal!

Nice and simple recipe for buttery and moist cake with oranges and poppy seeds. Perfect Christmas or holiday cake with minimum effort.

This cake recipe is inspired by the classic Lemon Drizzle Cake. Oranges are great this time of the year and I wanted to take as much advantage as I could of their full flavor. It is as buttery as lemon drizzle cake, of course it uses oranges instead of lemons and, to take it to the next level, you add a delicious sticky orange syrup on top and some drunken orange slices.

For the cake/ sponge:

• 200 g butter
• 200 g powder sugar
• 3 eggs
• 300 g flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 50 g poppy seeds
• 200 ml milk
• 150 ml orange juice

Method:

1. In a bowl, beat the butter (at room temperature) with the powder sugar. I did it with a hand mixer.
2. Add the eggs and mix some more.
3. In a different bowl mix the dry ingredients: flour + baking powder + poppy seeds
4. Incorporate the flour mixture into the eggs and butter mixture.
5. Add the milk and the juice to the bowl and mix.
6. Line a round cake tin with detachable bottom with baking sheet (both the bottom and the sides).
7. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in a preheated oven, medium heat, for 30 minutes.

Syrup:

• 300 ml orange juice
• 200 g granulated sugar
• the zest from 1 orange
• 1 cinnamon stick

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients in a sauce pan.
2. Bring it to a simmer.
3. Let it simmer for at least 10 minutes, until it gets thicker. Beware that the syrup gets thicker when it gets cold.

For the oranges on top:

1. Heat up some rum (around 100 ml) in a sauce pan. No need for it to boil, just make it really hot.
2. Cut 2 oranges in slices. Try to remove as much white skin as you can while doing it.
3. Put the orange slices in the hot rum and let them soak and absorb the alcohol for 50-60 minutes.

To put the cake together:

1. While both the cake and syrup are warm, make tiny holes in the cake with a fork on all the surface and pour the syrup on top. 
2. The syrup will be absorbed and the cake will be soooo moist.
3. You can reserve some syrup for extra flavor for each slice. The syrup is also amazing cold, so don't worry.
4. When the cake is slightly colder and you have removed it from the tin, take the orange slices out of the rum and place them on top of the cake as desired.
5. Optional, sprinkle some powder sugar on top.

I hope you will find the result as rewarding as I did. I took some slices to work the next day and everybody loved it, they were surprised how much beautiful orange taste it had. I also want to mention that the cake is at its best when it is served after it had been refrigerated for 2-3 hours.

Happy December,

Irish Soda Bread- Simple Homemade Healthy Bread Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I just love the smell of freshly baked bread in our house. It makes a house feel a lot more well… homey. And fluffy. And pretty much like you never want to leave – just think of the gingerbread house in the Hansel and Gretel story. No wonder those two went right in, must have smelled amazing.  

   

But I’m not here to tell you of classic story or to present you our flat’s dramatic transformation into a gingerbread house. Instead, I’m going to do something better and tell you about our awesome Irish soda bread recipe. This is one of the easiest ways to try and level up your baking skill.

I mean, we’re only talking about 

• 500 grams of flour (half wheat, half rye), 
• 1tbs. of baking powder, 
• 1 tsp. of salt, 
• 400 grams of buttermilk, 
• 75 grams of rye flakes, 
• 50 grams of flax seeds and 
• the same amount of pumpkin seeds.

A couple of things here: the classic Irish soda bread makes use of the chemical reaction between the baking powder and the butter milk to kick things up. The kind of flour you add, seeds, raisins or butter – these things are pretty much optional, go nuts over it. 

But, if you browse some other recipes on this blog (a wise course of action that would be), you’ll see that we like to keep some dishes close to the original, and this one deserves to be like that. The thing we went for was a super healthy, full of fibers, rich in taste bread, that could rock next to some fresh cream or garlic paste. 

Be careful here, the bread will be in its top shape for a max of 24 hours, make sure you enjoy it in that period of time. The more you wait, the harder it will get and the more intense the flavor of baking powder will get.

The making of the bread itself is as easy as finding a bar in Dublin (see what I did there?). Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, the rye flakes and the seeds. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the buttermilk.

Use your well floured hands to mix everything together, until you make a rather gooey dough. As a comparison to pasta dough, for example, the Irish bread dough is runnier. You can’t work the dough for very long, just create a ball shape, flour it and, with a knife, make an incision on top of the bread, so the center will cook at the same pace as the sides . 

We just put that on top of some aluminum foils in order to cook it, but feel free to use your fancy baking equipment. Pop the bread in the preheated oven at 170 C and cook until you see the bread getting a dark brown color in the middle (around 40  minutes). 

In order to make sure, stick a clean, dry skewer in the center of the loaf. If it comes back out clean, the bread is done. Now, enjoy the freshly-baked-bread smell and the view, because it is a wonderful, rustic looking bread that you made. Just look at the photos!

Enjoy,

Beer Bread- Simple Recipe | You've Got Meal!

For some time, I've been saving on Pinterest some recipes for simple, beer bread. I never tried it before, although I am a big fan of homemade bread that does not require yeast and a lot of time. I was really curious to see if you could identify the taste of beer in the bread. The outcome was worth it!

What is great about the recipe is that it requires just a few ingredients, it is super easy to make and it is not time-consuming. The preparation it takes less than 15 minutes and after baking you have a great bread you made and of course, a lovely homemade bread smell for your kitchen. Who does not find that comforting, especially now that winter is knocking on our door?

Ingredients:

• 350 g all purpose flour
• 50 g rye flour (optional, or you can use 400 g ap flour )
• 125 g sugar
• 330 ml beer
• 2 tbsp melted butter

When I started making the dough I realized I didn't have enough flour so I also used some rye flour, but you can use all purpose flour only.

In a large bowl, mix the flour with the beer and the sugar. The resulting dough will be sticky. Place it in a buttered loaf tin or use some baking sheet if it makes you feel safer. I used baking sheet and it turned out ok. Place it in the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes take it out and pour the melted butter on top and return it in the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes.

My oven has some issues, being old and grumpy, and it tends to burn in the back, but that only affected the aesthetics of it all, the taste being amazing.

No, it does not taste like beer :), but rather like sugar. It is a bread more on the sweet side, perfect for some butter and jam. I have to say I will try it with less sugar and maybe some added salt and other flavors and keep you posted. Considering the minimum effort and the total cost of this bread it is a recipe to try and to save, the bread actually makes itself.

Enjoy,