What's Cooking Dad? » side dish

Tomato bread

Cooking Dad — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:58:00 +0000

This week is tomato week at A Way to Garden.com.

Our tomatoes have been growing quite well and the tomatoes just keep coming, so I have more than enough of them to try out some new things.

I have baked some tomato breads these last couple of days and they just keep getting better with each try.

Ingredients
6 medium sized tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 big clove of garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp of chopped thyme
440 grams all purpose flour
110 grams whole wheat flour
175 ml water
1 packet dry yeast

Cut up the tomatoes and add olive oil, chopped garlic, salt, sugar and chopped thyme. Spread on a cookie sheet and grill in the oven for about an hour.

Mix flour water and yeast in a large bowl and knead for a few minutes. Don’t worry if it feels a bit dry, the tomatoes still contain quite some moisture. When the tomatoes have cooled down a bit, mix them into the dough. If the dough is too sticky you can add a bit of flour. Now comes the most important part: letting the dough rise. Leave the dough in a covered bowl until doubled in size, this should take about an hour. Punch it down and let it rise again until doubled in size. Punch down once more and transfer into your bread form. Alternatively you can use a cast iron pan to bake your bread in. Preheat the oven while the dough raises for the last time. Bake at 250C (480F) for 10 minutes than turn down the heat to 160C (320F) and bake for another 20 minutes.

Homemade tomato ketchup

Cooking Dad — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:27:24 +0000

We have been harvesting quite a few tomatoes from our greenhouse these past few weeks. Yesterday I decided to give homemade tomato ketchup a try and it was a great success! As with many nice foods, it took a lot longer to make than to eat it. I only made a fairly small batch to try out the recipe. Next time I will make a big pan full of it and freeze it smaller batches.

Ingredients
800 grams tomatoes (one 28 oz can if you don’t have any fresh ones)
1 medium sized onion
1 small clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
75 grams sugar
3 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon

Peel the skin off of the tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes should be put into boiling water for a few seconds followed by a ice water dip, this makes the skin come of very easily. Canned tomatoes can be easily peeled or might already be peeled. Fry the finely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat without letting them get brown. Add the chopped up tomatoes and the rest of the ingredients and let it simmer until it’s fairly thick. Smooth mixture in a blender and chill for at least a few hours so the flavors can blend.

This ketchup will look a bit odd to most people as it does not contain any artificial coloring and thus looks more orange than the red we are used to. It’s also free of preservatives.

Chicken and fruit salad

Cooking Dad — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:50:31 +0000

Here’s an easy recipe for chicken and fruit salad. It is a great side dish for a BBQ or it can be served with toast or crackers when watching a movie or having company over. This dish can be prepared ahead of time, in fact it should be kept in the fridge overnight to allow the flavors to melt together.

Ingredients
Chicken breast filet
Canned mandarin
Canned pineapple
Mayonnaise
Sugar
Salt
Pepper

Start by frying the chicken breast in a pan, it should be slightly over-cooked to the point where it almost falls apart. You can also use turkey breast filet or leftover turkey meat for this. After the meat has cooled down, cut it into small pieces. Prepare the dressing by mixing mayonnaise with a little salt, sugar and lots of freshly ground pepper.

Add the chicken meat and cut up mandarin parts and pineapple. Use about one part mandarins and one part pineapple to two parts chicken meat. If the mixture is too dry, you can add a little of the juice from the canned fruits. Put everything into an airtight container and store in the fridge overnight.