Oven roasted

Have I mentioned yet that it’s hot in Canberra at this time of year?

To anyone who is reading from the northern hemisphere: I promise you I am not gloating. I know you’re chilled to the bone and, in some cases, up to your ears in snow. I am accepting offers to trade that for 38C (that’s 100.4F) and sunshine so strong you want to hide from it.

It is a dry heat, which I think is an improvement over Boston humidity. It makes you feel as if you’re being roasted in an oven during the day, but as compensation it cools off enough at night that you can at least get some sleep.

Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to find the motivation to turn on the oven and cook anything (although some days this past week it’s been so hot in my kitchen that I can’t actually tell that the oven is on). I’ve been eating this salad a lot. It’s filling enough to be a meal in itself without being heavy, and is quick and easy to make. It is also a good way of using up leftover bread, should you happen to have any of that lying around. *cough*


Too Hot to Cook Salad
1 avocado, halved, stoned and cubed
10-12 cherry tomatoes, quartered
3-5 balls bocconcini mozzarella, quartered
1 cup croutons
3-4 leaves basil, chopped
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Arrange the avocado, tomatoes, mozzarella, and croutons in a salad bowl, and sprinkle the basil over. Season with salt and pepper, then drizzle olive oil and vinegar over everything. Toss to combine, if desired. (I don’t.)

Serves 1, with a very, very large glass of ice water.

DIY pita

This seems to be turning into Bread Week. Apologies to my gluten-free reader(s).

I’ve already talked about how, as an expat, one of the things you learn is that, if you want the food you crave, often you have to figure out how to make it yourself. This isn’t always very convenient, but as compensation it is generally cheaper than grabbing something off the shelf. Oh, and you can feel smug, too, when you make something by hand that most people never even considered could be made by hand.

“You made this?!” they say incredulously, as if whatever it is can only be produced in a factory, shrink-wrapped, and then transported in a truck to a giant supermarket.

“Shucks, it was nothing,” you reply modestly. And even if it really was nothing, you still get the props.

Now I have to say upfront that I’ve never had any problem getting pita bread, anywhere I’ve lived, so that wasn’t my main motivation. No, my main quarrel with pita is that I’m not always thrilled with the quality: I’ve eaten a lot of inexplicably sweet, crumbly pita that doesn’t seem much like bread at all. It makes my teeth hurt, and then sticks to them. I hate that.

So when I saw a post on Under the High Chair about making your own pita, I was intrigued. Maybe if I made my own, I’d get some idea of what the quality and consistency should be like.

I followed the UtHC recipe and method pretty much to the letter (except I did it without a mixer), so I won’t repost it here. I did leave them in a little too long (they seemed to take a long time to puff), so they came out a little too brown. I think I’ll have to preheat the oven sooner next time to facilitate early puffing. But, even on the crispy side, they were delicious. Not sweet, not crumbly. I don’t know how authentically Middle Eastern they are, but they’re better than anything I’ve found in the supermarket lately.

Especially with a heaping helping of smug on the side.

Free food

Yesterday was Australia Day, so DP had the day off. We didn’t do much; it was hot, and we’d already had a busy weekend, so we mostly just took it easy. Late in the afternoon, we went for a walk, and ended up at a neighborhood café in search of something cold to drink and a seat in the shade. I went inside, approvingly noted the racks of fresh bread, ogled the pastries (which were really pretty spectacular), and then decided it was too hot and too close to dinnertime to eat anything that rich.

When I placed our order, the guy behind the counter wrote it down and then said, “Would you like a free sausage roll or spinach and feta parcel?”

Free food?! I goggled. “Sure,” I stammered. “I’d love a spinach and feta parcel.”

(I can’t say no to free food. I hadn’t been to this café before; even though I wasn't very hungry, I rationalized that it would give me a chance to decide if the food was worth paying for on a return visit.)

“Great,” he said cheerfully. “Would you like two?” (Apparently I was entitled to two because I had ordered two drinks.)

Okay, even I can say no to that much free food at 4:45. “Oh no, one is plenty,” I gasped.

The spinach and feta parcel was delicious, if misnamed. A parcel implies a dainty morsel to me. This was huge: a triangle of crispy puff pastry, hanging off the edges of a dessert plate, sprinkled with poppy seeds and bursting with oozy, cheesy filling. We only managed to eat half of it.

Then, as we were finishing up, another server came over, carrying a plastic bag stuffed full of bread.

“Hi guys!” she said enthusiastically. “Can I interest you in some free bread? We’ve got garlic and rosemary focaccia and some sourdough rolls. What do you think?”

Translation: this was two whole, huge focaccie, each one about the size of a sheet of legal paper and two inches thick, plus about eight sourdough rolls, each one as big as my two fists. (See picture!) People, I’m talking 30 dollars’ worth of really good bread, easy.

I goggled some more, thinking in panic of my small and already jam-packed freezer. “I-I’d love some,” I blithered, “but I don’t think I could take that much….”

“You know what?” she said. “Just take it, please? You can share it with your neighbor, or stick it in the freezer, or throw it in the bin if you really can’t use it.”

Throw it in the bin? Uh uh. I’m even worse at throwing away food than I am at turning it down. “Okay, I’ll take it,” I said firmly.

“Fantastic!” she said, and handed it over.

Luckily, I had remembered in time that I am the kind of crazy person who saves old bread and uses it for croutons, crostini, and crumbs. I’ve already made two batches of focaccia croutons, and I fully expect to shortly have enough of all of the above to last me through to next Australia Day. At least.

So. Anyone have any good recipes using stale bread products that they want to share?