Scottish Baps

Slashfood posted a recipe a couple of weeks ago for Scottish Baps, a flour-dusted yeast roll. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that I bookmarked the page.

I made these today for a snow day project. The recipe is easy to follow and very accessible. Nothing fussy; I would recommend these to someone as a "first yeast baking project" in a heartbeat. The only possible headscratcher is "caster sugar" in the ingredients. If you don't have caster sugar (a.k.a. superfine sugar), you can substitute regular table sugar.

This dough came together nicely... so nicely that I didn't even have to knead it on a flat surface. I kneaded this in the same bowl that I mixed it in. After about 5 minutes of kneading, I left it to rise for an hour. Then some shaping, and the rolls started to take form:



A sprinkling of flour gives them a nice dusty look when they're done.



The finished rolls are light and soft and airy... apparently, one traditional use is to make a sandwich with fried bacon, butter, and a brown sauce. Curse you, my sadly baconless refrigerator!



Space needed: Minimal
For mine, I used one mixing bowl, one cookie sheet, and a measuring cup. I heated the milk and proofed the yeast in the measuring cup, then melted the butter in it as well.

Cost: Under $5
Total cost for the recipe is about $2.50 for 12 rolls.

Recipe: Simply Wonderful Scottish Baps from Slashfood.com

Monte Cubano

This is the cover recipe on the March issue of Gourmet: the Monte Cubano sandwich. Take a Cuban sandwich, and instead of pressing it, dip it in egg and fry it like a Monte Cristo.

Flippin' geniuses, those people.



In a (futile) attempt to make it a wee bit healthier, I used wheat bread and left out the mayo. The "dipping in egg and frying in butter" probably negated a lot of that.



The wheat bread probably wasn't firm enough for this, but I was able to de-soggify it with a 15-minute trip to a hot oven.



Space needed: Minimal.
One plate to build the sandwich, one bowl for the egg, and a frying pan on the stovetop.

Cost: Under $5.
The ingredients for one recipe-specific sandwich come out to about $3.50 (to be exact, $3.46 according to prices here in the DC/Baltimore area). I ended up only needing one slice of cheese for full sandwich coverage, so mine came in at $2.86. That was with Boar's Head meats and Alpine Lace swiss; store brand deli products would have easily knocked this down to less than $2.50.

Recipe: Monte Cubano from Gourmet magazine, March 2009

Buttermilk Quick Bread

I decided today to break the baking lull that's been going on around here. And in honor of health-conscious New Year's resolutions, and the fact that I had buttermilk that I wanted to use up (I'll leave it to you to figure out which one figured in more heavily), I give you the figure-friendly Buttermilk Quick Bread from Cooking Light's January 2009 issue.

Let me tell you, I love baking but I don't always have the best luck with quick breads. I was thrilled to open the oven to find this gorgeously browned loaf waiting.


After a long 10 minutes, I cut into it, hoping that the exterior wasn't just taunting me. I feared finding an undercooked mess, or a dried-out crumbly loaf, or a brick...

Instead, I got this:


Lovely, moist bread. There's a nice sweetness to it from the sugar, and the buttermilk really shines here. The sweet/savory aspect reminded me a bit of cornbread.

Big points for easiness. Mix ingredients; bake. In the interests of saving myself a tiny bit of clean up, I melted the butter in the loaf pan in the oven while it was preheating. This gave me the melted butter and the greased pan in one step, and I didn't have to get out another bowl for butter melting purposes. Score!



Cooking Light's nutritional info says that this has 137 calories and 4.6g of fat in a slice. You'd never guess from eating it. Yum.

Recipe: Buttermilk Quick Bread from Cooking Light magazine, January 2009

Maple Leaf Cookies

For once, I had my annual cookie swap contribution picked out in advance. And I'm talking a couple of months in advance.



Martha got me good, with a recipe for Maple Leaf Cookies as the "cookie of the month" in the November Martha Stewart Living. It's a basic sugar cookie, but with brown sugar and maple syrup added to give it a slightly deeper flavor. I am a complete sucker for maple, so I copied this cookie recipe as soon as I saw it.

I got 6 dozen out of this recipe, despite rolling the dough thinner than the recipe calls for AND using smaller cookie cutters than the recommended 3.5" maple leaf. Martha says you'll get "about 8 dozen".

The cookies as they come out the oven are not very sweet at all, and you could easily stop there and have some nice tea-or-coffee biscuits. The final step of brushing with maple syrup and sprinkling sugar on top adds a nice amount of sweetness to them. The maple flavor is there, but pretty subtle.

I didn't bother with the repeated dough freezes called for in the recipe. I almost always roll out cookie dough between sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper, which lets me get away with a stickier dough. Any time it felt like the dough was getting too warm, it went into the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

I used regular granulated sugar for the final step, instead of sanding sugar. They still came out sparkly and sugary:



Now I just have to keep myself from sampling any more. I've gone through the leftovers already, so all that's left are the packages for my coworkers. :)

Recipe: Maple Leaf Cookies from Martha Stewart Living, November 2008

Chicken and Celery Pot Stickers

My first time making my own pot stickers rather than just heating up a bag of Trader Joe's frozen ones. The Trader Joe's chicken gyoza are darn tasty, but I may never go back.



These were obscenely easy to make, and perfect for a small kitchen. I didn't even need to get out a cutting board. A food processor, a plate to hold the filled pot stickers before cooking them, and a frying pan with a lid. That's it. Filling these felt like a school art project; I had 2 dozen made in no time.



The recipe is not only easy, it's also fairly inexpensive to make. The filling is ground chicken, a couple of ribs of celery, a couple of garlic cloves, some salt, pepper, and soy sauce. A quarter pound of meat gave me 24 pot stickers with filling to spare.



The results were fabulous. A crispy, crunchy browned side, a chewier steamed side, a nice hit of garlicky chicken filling, and a basic soy-and-vinegar dipping sauce... what's not to love?

Want the recipe? Chicken and Celery Pot Stickers from Gourmet.com