Kitchen Supplies

This picture was took in Monrovia Liberia, West Africa when I was working there in 2008-2009. The big thing street-side there was what we called Wheelbarrow Entrepreneurs in Monrovia!

(click the link if your interested in seeing the rest of them, quite entertaining!)

We have a reliable source for all our kitchen supplies...

and this is not it!

Eggs in Lasagna?

A lot of people over the years ask me how to make lasagna. Sometimes they just want a recipe, and some want me to tell them step by step how I make it...So for those of you who have asked I found a really simple video for making lasagna (I guess I should define it's like most North American lasagna's) posted below.

Here are some of the usual questions I get when it comes to lasagna:

• Do you have to put an egg in it to bind it? No, I haven't for a long time. Just use the shredded mozzarella you have and put about a third of the total recipe amount in your ricotta (or cottage cheese) mixture, when it melts in, it helps bind. Most problems are not with binding the lasagna, its with letting it rest long enough to congeal/setup so the lasagna becomes firm again.
• Do you have to buy no-cook noodles to bake it without boiling the noodles first? No, I never have. There may be some 'secret' process I don't know about with those noodles, but I just use the regular noodles.
• Why do some people put cottage cheese in lasagna? Or Ricotta? Preference. I prefer ricotta. But some will simply put a nice bechamel sauce in it.

I make a mean chicken Florentine (spinach) lasagna BUT I will save that for another post! The possibilities for lasagna are many; Meats, sauces, veggies...how do you make yours?

 

Yogurt Bread

The yogurt bread turned out great! Kind of dense with a tight crumb. The taste was reminiscent of an English muffin. We enjoyed it for toast and a few Panini's!

Ciabatta, Pizza, & Yogurt Bread

I usually try to get things done in batches for freezing since I have two young children. This morning after batching some banana waffles (made from those black bananas you throw in the freezer before they really go bad) I started several doughs.

Later tonight we will be having guests over for pizza (on the grill unless raining) and salad. Then at a later time I will bake off the dough I have for ciabatta. In Italy the ciabatta goes from crunchy crust and porous chewy crumb to the more dense heavy crumb. I have a high water content in my dough and am going for the crunchy, porous, chewy version. (picture & post later)

Yogurt bread is just something I am experimenting with. I like to adjust water content, ingredients, knead times ...mostly just to entertain myself and have fresh bread while figuring out what it does to the texture, crumb, and overall taste among other things.

Grilled Pizza pt.2

If you have some caramel sauce from either making it or buying it (particularly the dip you can buy in produce for apples works good as well!) a 1/8 to 1/4 cup of it spread thin on a thin crust then topped with marshmallows and semi-sweet chocolate chips makes and excellent dessert pizza! None of that pizza h-t apple pie filling and cinnamon roll icing on top dessert pizza...no!