Istanbul: First Two Days

We arrived Saturday evening to find this gorgeous sunset welcoming us to Istanbul after a long trip.  Turkish Airlines was great - left on time, arrived on time, and they still have the "old fashioned" service of feeding you constantly (and free alcohol to help Michael get a little bit of sleep).

But I need to mention the driving.  This photo was taken only after I let go of the death grip on my seat.

We'll just say Michael tipped him a little extra for getting us to the hotel in one piece.  It seems like traffic laws (like one-way streets, no U-turns, and pedestrians having the right of way) are more of a suggestion in Istanbul.

DAY 1: Sultanahmet (Old City)
First we went to Topkapi Palace.  We would have to share like 20 photos to just scratch the surface of the beautiful grounds, the architecture, the Imperial treasures, and the tiles.  Here's just one beautiful ceiling... and each ceiling was different in every room (NOTE: the little notch in the ceiling points to Mecca).

It was a beautiful morning so we sat on the patio drinking Turkish coffee over-looking the Bosphorus (Europe on the left side, Asia on the right side).

And this little guy came to say hello.

Cats. Are. Everywhere!  (And dogs too... but there are A LOT of cats all over the city!)

After we said goodbye to our feline friend, we walked out the gates of Topkapi and down the street to the Blue Mosque.

Honestly cannot capture the impressiveness of the Blue Mosque with our little camera.  Gorgeous.

Then we headed off to The Basilica Cisterns under the city.  Wow.  This is the reason the Old City cannot  have an underground subway system... there is literally history under your feet!

Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch and Michael discovered his favorite kabab: yoğurtlu iskerden kebap.  The yogurt here... oh my goodness... so delicious.

Last but not least, now to my favorite place of the day: Hagia Sophia.  Again, pictures cannot do it justice.  It's huge and filled with mosaics, paintings, and more architectural detail than you can imagine... AND it was complete in the 6th century!  Crazy.

We will be back on Thursday for our Turkish baths at Ayasofya Hürrem Sultan Hamamı.  Michael is really looking forward to this... I'm not sure what to expect (or how naked I'm going to have to get) so I'm a little anxious.  I'm sure it will be awesome.  They just restored the entire place and the architecture is supposed to be gorgeous (did I mention Michael's super excited to check it out?).

DAY 2: Food Tour
Julide has been our tour guide since we've gotten here and has been an ENORMOUS help.  Everyone we've talked to said that not knowing Turkish isn't an issue in Istanbul.  Michael and I have found it to be a little bit of an issue (especially when speaking to the waiters and making reservations) so Julide has been well worth it!

So she starts off our Foodie tour at Köşkeroğlu, which is known for its Katmer (ground pistachios sandwiched between one or two sheets of phyllo - like flat baklava!) and we also ordered Sucuk (walnuts on a string dipped in raisin paste) because it looked weird.  Both were good, but the Katmer was beyond delicious!  Perfect with Turkish tea, of course.

Then we went to the Spice Market and purchased (and sampled or smelled) Turkish delights, teas, spices and dried fruit.  I'm not even going to tell you how many Turkish Lira we spent on food... and then we purchased this beautiful hand-painted, double fired plate.

(Note: I think the highlight of Michael's trip to the Spice Market was actually seeing all the Audi's lined up for the filming of the new James Bond next door at the Yeni Cami (New Mosque)... and cringing at the dents in the cars too)

After spending too much money, we had a fantastic lunch at Hamdi overlooking EVERYTHING!

We enjoyed our lunch so much, we had to run to catch the Bosphorus cruise!  Good thing we made it a few minutes before it pulled out.  A gorgeous day to be on the water!

Julide pointed out all the historic buildings and the history of the development along the river.  So much HISTORY!  It was wonderful.

Last stop was Karaköy on the Asain side, where we strolled through the markets, split a big almond cookie and had tea before we headed back to the European side.

Here's the view of Maiden Tower in front of the Asian side from the ferry.  Awesome couple of days but we sure are tired.  Goodnight!

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

We leave on FRIDAY and I'm writing this blog post instead of packing.  I like to live on the edge!

Last year, when we started planning this trip, I knew little about Istanbul.  All I knew was that my dear friend Sania was going to bring in her 3rd decade with a fantastic birthday party in Istanbul and we were not going to miss it!

First I started pinning images of Istanbul on Pinterest.  Looks pretty cool.  Then I started reading several books on this AMAZING city.  Then I started adding articles to our Tumblr.  And then I started talking to friends (and friends of friends) that had been on vacation there and EVERYONE I've talked to has just fallen in love with this modern, ancient and enchanting city!

I had to put together a google map to keep it all straight.

 

View Istanbul 2012 in a larger map

We hope the wi-fi at the hotel is good and we can blog about our trip in real time, like we did in Paris.  We also hope to do a lot of walking and a lot of eating, like we did in Paris!  There's also a lot of history and architecture and markets... and I'm sure you can probably tell the theme of all our vacations... eating, walking, and architecture... aaaah!  Can't wait!

Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Leeks and Peas

Delicious and quick... this is our kind of dish!  We are rolling this recipe into our mid-week dinner rotation!

INGREDIENTS
8 whole chicken legs
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 large leeks, halved lengthwise and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
One 10-ounce package frozen baby peas, thawed
2 tablespoons chopped tarragon
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 cup crème fraîche

Preheat the oven to 425° and position a rack in the upper third. Turn the chicken legs skin side down on a work surface and cut halfway through the joint. Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper.

In each of 2 large nonstick skillets, heat half of the butter and oil. Add the chicken, skin side up, and cook over high heat until browned, 5 minutes. Turn and cook the chicken for 1 minute. Pile all of the chicken into one skillet.

In the other skillet, cook the leeks over high heat until just beginning to soften, about 2 minutes. Add the broth and vinegar and bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into a medium roasting pan.

Set the chicken on the leeks, skin side up; roast for about 25 minutes, until it is cooked through. Turn on the broiler and broil for about 2 minutes, until the skin is golden and crisp. Transfer the chicken to a platter.

Place the roasting pan over a burner and boil over high heat until the liquid is reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Add the peas, herbs and crème fraîche and simmer until the sauce is hot and slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.

Blistered Snap Peas with Mint

DELICIOUS!  And just in time for summer meals!

Thanks, again, Food & Wine!  And thanks AGAIN to the wonderful (and handsome) chef!

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon pure olive oil
2 pounds sugar snap peas, ends trimmed and strings discarded
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon olive oil (see Note)
Flaky sea salt, such as Maldon
1/4 cup mint leaves, torn

Preheat the oven to 500°. Set a large, ovenproof skillet over high heat until very hot, about 2 minutes. Add the pure olive oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the snap peas, toss a few times and transfer the skillet to the oven. Cook for 2 minutes, then carefully toss the peas a few times. Return the skillet to the oven and cook for 2 minutes longer, until the peas are crisp-tender. Toss the peas with the lemon oil and season with salt. Transfer to a serving bowl. Scatter the mint on top and serve.

NOTES: Olive oil pressed or infused with lemon is available at most supermarkets and specialty food stores.

Roasted Green-Bean and Potato Salad with Soppressata and Mozzarella

Ever thought about roasting green beans?  Me neither... until this recipe... of course, in Food & Wine.

We served this as a side dish, but this is definitely hearty enough to be a meal by itself.  I have a feeling we'll be making this easy and quick recipe all spring and into the summer.  Delish!

INGREDIENTS
2 pounds small new potatoes
1 pound green beans
7 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme, or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 pound sliced soppressata or hard salami, cut into quarters
1/2 pound salted fresh mozzarella, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, at room temperature
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Heat the oven to 450°. On a baking sheet, toss the potatoes with the green beans, 3 1/2 tablespoons of the oil, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, and the dried thyme, if using. Roast in the center of the oven for 20 minutes. Turn the potatoes and beans with a spatula and then sprinkle with the fresh thyme, if using. Roast until the vegetables are golden and tender, about 10 minutes longer. Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl.

Add the remaining 4 tablespoons oil and 1/4 teaspoon salt, the soppressata, mozzarella, parsley, and pepper to the bowl and toss. Add the lemon juice and toss again. Let stand for 5 minutes to absorb the dressing before serving.

Variations:
• Line the plates with thin slices of prosciutto and top with the salad.
• Add a roasted, peeled, seeded, and sliced red bell pepper.
• Add a quarter cup of halved and pitted black olives.

Lemon Tea Cookies for Easter

Happy Easter!

This year we're celebrating Easter at Aunt Mary Alice, Uncle Sam and Cousin Karen's house down in Richmond!  Although it's a 2.5 hour drive down, there is just something special about having a home-cooked Easter dinner surrounded by family.

I decided to make lemon tea cookies for dessert... I guess it just sounded Eastery to me... and they turned out super cute and delicious!

INGREDIENTS
2/3 cup butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Place butter in the bowl of an electric mixer; cream until smooth. Add lemon zest and continue mixing until blended. Add granulated sugar and mix until smooth, about 2 minutes longer. Add egg and continue to beat until a lemon colored batter forms. Blend in vanilla extract. Slowly add 2 cups of flour, mixing until dough pulls away from sides of bowl and a ball forms. Remove dough, flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Flour work surface and rolling pin with some reserved flour. Roll dough into a 1/4-inch sheet. Using a 2-inch cookie cutter (or whatever shape you want... I used a flower cookie cutter for Easter!), cut cookies and transfer to an ungreased cookie sheet, spacing them 3/4-inch apart. Gather up unused scraps and re-roll until no dough remains.

Bake cookies until edges are a pale golden brown, about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer to a rack to cool. Let stand for 30 minutes. Dust with confectioners' sugar. Store in airtight containers for up to a week.

Yield: 48 cookies.

M+M On The Web



Hello!  Sorry our posts have been a little sporadic lately.  Between having friends in town, "cramming" for our trip to Istanbul this month, and keeping up our social lives... our M+M Blog has been neglected lately.

Fortunately, we're supplementing this blog with a few other online tools to keep our interests organized and to share them with you (if you're at all interested).

First stop: Flavors.me
This compiles posts from this blog, my linked in profile, our Instagram photo feed, my goodreads profile, and our Picassa photo album (which I really need to update since our photo albums on me.com have gone the way of the Dodo bird.)

Next stop: Pinterest
Beware: Pinterest is addicting!  It doesn't look like much at first, but then you get the hang of it and then you download the app on your phone... and now there's no turning back.

Last stop: Tumblr

We're trying to post a photo a day (it's turning out to be more like 5ish photos per week) to make it like a photo diary, but Tumblr is also a great tool to organize links!  We re-post links on museum exhibits we're interested in going to, links to articles and blogs in Istanbul, and random stuff we find on our Tumblr dashboard that strikes our fancy.

We will continue to post our favorite recipes and personal updates on this blog for our friends and family, but we just wanted to let you know where else you can find us on the web.

Mushroom and Goat Cheese Tortas + Aina!

It's been about 3 years since I visited Aina in Oslo and she introduced us to one of our first go-to vegetarian recipes - vegetable casserole with herb dumplings!

Now it was her turn to come visit DC and for us to share one of our new vegetarian recipes from Food & Wine, of course.  Goes perfect with homemade rosemary bread too!

INGREDIENTS
2 large heads of garlic, cloves peeled and lightly smashed
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
Salt
1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded and caps thinly sliced
1/2 pound oyster mushrooms, stems discarded and caps thinly sliced
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
6 bolillo rolls or other crusty rolls, split
3 cups packed arugula leaves
1 cup prepared tomato salsa
1/2 pound soft goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 325°. Put the garlic in a small, deep baking dish and toss with the olive oil, lime juice and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes, until the garlic is soft and golden.

Increase the oven temperature to 400°. Combine all of the mushrooms in a 9-by-13-inch baking dish and toss with the roasted garlic and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cover with foil and bake for 10 minutes. Uncover and bake for about 35 minutes longer, until the mushrooms are tender and golden. Stir in the chopped cilantro.

Scrape some of the bread out of the center of the rolls and set the rolls on a large baking sheet, cut sides up. Spread the mushrooms over the rolls and bake for about 5 minutes to crisp the rolls. Spread the arugula and salsa on one half of the rolls and the goat cheese on the other half. Close the sandwiches and bake for about 5 minutes, until hot and crisp. Cut the sandwiches in half and serve.

MAKE AHEAD: The cooked mushrooms can be refrigerated overnight. Reheat gently.

AND AINA!!!!

We had to stop by the Library of Congress since we both worked at the library at UNC!

And the weather was PERFECT to catch the last of the Cherry Blossoms.

Gorgeous...

...and so much fun to have Aina around.

Guess it's our turn to visit her in Norway next!  It's a rough life...

Spring in DC with M-C + Pat

Our long weekend with Ming-Cee and Patrick was too short, a little exhausting and absolutely WONDERFUL!  It's been about five years since they've come visit but we hope it won't be another five years until they come again.

As you can see, we just had the most perfect weather this weekend!  The tulips and cherry blossoms were in bloom in the Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral...

The sun was shining at the National Arboretum...

The fish were smiling at the Arboretum too...

And most importantly, we were all smiling at the Arboretum...

Then Ming-Cee and Patrick struck a pose with the Chinese panda near the Spanish steps...

And of course we couldn't let them go without seeing the Library of Congress...

Cherry Blossoms hit their peak this weekend... two weeks ahead of schedule...

And lastly, it's a crime to walk around the tidal basin without stopping by the frequently-missed FDR memorial.

Ming-Cee and Patrick are also frequently missed by us!  Can't wait until we see them again soon.

The Last Two Hunger Games Books

Wow.

Since last year I've been debating reading the second and third books from the Hunger Games after I read the first one.

Honestly, the whole premise of kids killing each other is uncomfortable and emotional.  And I heard from a couple people that the second and third books weren't as good as the first one.  But Michael was interested in reading them and got the trilogy for Christmas so I picked up the second book a couple weeks ago.

Wow.

Could not put them down!

And I LOVED them so much more than the first one, which really surprised me!

The first one just seemed a little more focused on the violence of the games, but the second and third one focused more on the relationships between the characters.

These books were fantastic and I they are definitely 10 out of 10.

And Michael and I will probably watch the movie (in the theater!) when it comes out too...

...after all, it was filmed in Asheville!

In the Garden of Beasts

Super interesting history book!

I know some of you are probably thinking what I thought when I saw this book: Oh my goodness... another book on WWII?  No thanks.

But our book club picked it and Erik Larson wrote one of Michael's all-time favorite books (The Devil in the White City) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It was very interesting from a historical perspective.  I've always wondered HOW no one could see that Hitler was killing all the Jews and HOW the U.S. could decide to stay out of it for so long.  Larson did a great job of giving you a glimpse into the social hierarchy, political dynamics and office politics of the time.

My favorite parts of the book focused on the U.S. Ambassador to Germany's daughter, Martha, and her scandalous love life!

If you're interested in WWII history and/or political history (which I really am not), this is a good book to pick up.  Personally, I give it a 6 out of 10 (even though it was good for a non-fiction book).

Pork Tinga

Michael and I are already discussing when we're going to make this again!  SOOOOO GOOD!

We're not really into the celebrity chef scene (i.e., we've never watched an episode of Top Chef) but we have been to Rick Bayless' restaurant in Chicaco XOCO (and loved it!) so his recipe in Food & Wine did not dissapoint.

This is a good Sunday night meal because it takes a little bit of prep/cooking time, but you also get quick and easy leftovers on Monday and Tuesday!

INGREDIENTS
1 1/4 pounds trimmed boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
3 bay leaves
3/4 pound red potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch dice
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large fresh chorizo, casing removed
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
One 28-ounce can peeled Italian tomatoes, chopped and drained
2 chipotle chiles in adobo, seeded and minced, plus 4 teaspoons sauce
Salt and sugar, for seasoning

In a large saucepan, simmer the pork, marjoram, thyme and bay leaves in 4 cups of salted water, partially covered, until the meat is tender, 45 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pork to a plate; let cool slightly, then tear it into smaller pieces. Skim the fat from the pork broth; reserve 1 1/2 cups.

In a large saucepan of boiling salted water, cook the potatoes until just tender, about 8 minutes. Drain well.

In a medium, deep skillet, heat the oil. Add the chorizo and stir over moderately low heat, breaking it up, until cooked through, 10 minutes; transfer to a plate. Add the pork and onion to the skillet and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until well-browned, 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Stir in the tomatoes and chorizo and cook for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, chipotle, adobo sauce and the 1 1/2 cups of pork broth; simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt and a pinch of sugar and serve.

SERVE WITH Flour tortillas, sliced avocado, red onion and queso fresco.

Escarole-Stuffed Seared Trout

Michael's Valentine's Day present was to introduce me to another delicious mid-week meal! 

This seared trout recipe in Food & Wine took about 30 minutes, which was perfect with the Trader Joe's mushroom risotto that also took about 30 minutes on the stove top!
Actually, his REAL Valentine's Day present was just to take an evening off work to have a nice dinner with me.  Poor Michael is working nights and weekends to meet a tight deadline the first week of March so I'm trying to get accustomed to doing my own thing again... at least for a couple more weeks.

Hope everyone had a special and romantic Valentine's Day!

INGREDIENTS
1 cup packed chopped escarole
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, plus lemon wedges, for serving
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 whole 12-ounce trout, cleaned
Cornmeal, for sprinkling
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

In a bowl, toss the escarole with the shallot, lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of olive oil; season with salt and pepper. Stuff the trout cavities with the escarole and close with skewers. Season the fish with salt and pepper and sprinkle with cornmeal.

In a cast-iron skillet, heat 1/8 inch of oil. Add the trout and cook over moderate heat, turning once, until the skin is crisp and the fish is just cooked within, 8 minutes. Transfer the trout to a plate. Wipe out the skillet.

Melt the butter in the skillet. Add the trout; turn to coat. Remove from the heat and let stand in the pan for 5 minutes. Transfer the trout to plates; serve with lemon wedges.

Mini Black-Bottom Cheesecakes with Jam

Dinner parties are the best excuses to try new dessert recipes... and it's even more rewarding when you find a new, easy favorite!

This recipe was very specific about using foil liners.  Well, we only had 6 foil liners in the pantry and I forgot to pick some more up at the store and we stayed later than we expected at a Marti Gras party last night and couldn't get to the store... so all the excuses aside, I decided to wing it and use half foil liners and half regular paper liners.

I carefully sprayed the foil liners before I delicately inserted them into the muffin pan... and I didn't do anything but unwrap the paper liners since I was secretly hoping that they would come out messy and I'd have to eat the "mistakes" after the dinner party.

To my surprise, the un-sprayed paper liners came off rather easily and were totally presentable!  The ridges were a little more pronounced on the foil liners, but in a pinch, paper liners would work great.

Another note: Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers are delicious!  I found them at Rodman's in DC but I don't think I've ever seen them at a big-name supermarket before... so if you can't find any, just use Oreos and scrape out the filling.

Sorry for the long intro.  Here's the recipe from Food & Wine:

INGREDIENTS
Vegetable oil spray
24 plain chocolate wafer cookies, preferably Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup fromage blanc (6 ounces), at room temperature
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup seedless raspberry preserves, warmed

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with foil baking cups and spray the cups with vegetable oil spray. In a food processor, crush the chocolate wafer cookies. Add the butter and process until fine crumbs form. Spoon the chocolate cookie crumbs into the prepared baking cups and press with the bottom of a glass to compact. Bake for 5 minutes, or until almost set. Leave the oven on.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar at medium speed until smooth. Beat in the fromage blanc, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.

Pour the cheesecake batter into the baking cups, filling them three-quarters full.

Bake the cheesecakes for 15 minutes, or until slightly jiggly in the center. Remove from the oven and spread 1 teaspoon of the warmed raspberry preserves on top of each cheesecake. Transfer the muffin tin to the freezer and chill the cheesecakes until set, about 15 minutes.

Remove the cheesecakes from the pan and peel off the foil baking cups. Transfer the cheesecakes to a platter and serve.

MAKE AHEAD The mini black-bottom cheesecakes can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

NOTES Instead of Formage Blanc Crème fraîche, goat cheese, lebneh or quark.

First Loaves of Bread!

Once upon a time, (nearly 2 years ago) I tried making bread from scratch and failed.  But I'm not a quitter!  Michael and I can't go into Whole Foods without leaving with a loaf of bread - especially when you catch them fresh out of oven... mmmm - and I finally found a recipe that worked!

If you're a bread-a-holic, you need this cookbook: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  Dad and mom Merschat got it for me at Christmas and I've been in a carb coma ever since!

Check out that crust!

Look at those air bubbles!

It's so delicious... we're having it with Russian Cabbage Soup tonight!

And read this article to get some good background information on what ingredients are best, what tools you need, and the master recipe.  (It's long but not hard... I promise!)

INGREDIENTS
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (2 packets)
1 1⁄2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
6 1⁄2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
Cornmeal for pizza peel

1. Heat the water to just a little warmer than body temperature (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5-quart bowl or, preferably, in a resealable, lidded container (not airtight — use container with gasket or lift a corner). Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.

3. Mix in the flour by gently scooping it up, then leveling the top of the measuring cup with a knife; don’t pat down. Mix with a wooden spoon, a high-capacity food processor with dough attachment, or a heavy-duty stand mixer with dough hook, until uniformly moist. If hand-mixing becomes too difficult, use very wet hands to press it together. Don’t knead! This step is done in a matter of minutes, and yields a wet dough loose enough to conform to the container.

4. Cover loosely. Do not use screw-topped jars, which could explode from trapped gases. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flatten on top), approximately two hours, depending on temperature. Longer rising times, up to about five hours, will not harm the result. You can use a portion of the dough any time after this period. Refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and easier to work with than room-temperature dough. We recommend refrigerating the dough at least three hours before shaping a loaf. And relax! You don’t need to monitor doubling or tripling of volume as in traditional recipes.

5. Prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven.

Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, then cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-sized) piece with a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on four “sides,” rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn’t need to be incorporated. The bottom of the loaf will flatten out during resting and baking.

6. Place the ball on the pizza peel. Let it rest uncovered for about 40 minutes. Depending on the dough’s age, you may see little rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on another shelf.

8. Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing, serrated knife to pass without sticking. Slash a 1⁄4-inch-deep cross, scallop or tick-tack-toe pattern into the top. (This helps the bread expand during baking.)

9. With a forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about a cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is browned and firm to the touch. With wet dough, there’s little risk of drying out the interior, despite the dark crust. When you remove the loaf from the oven, it will audibly crackle, or “sing,” when initially exposed to room temperature air. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack, for best flavor, texture and slicing. The perfect crust may initially soften, but will firm up again when cooled.

10. Refrigerate the remaining dough in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next two weeks: You’ll find that even one day’s storage improves the flavor and texture of your bread. This maturation continues over the two-week period. Cut off and shape loaves as you need them. The dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in an airtight container and defrosted overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking day.

Makes 4 1-pound loaves

Roast Salmon with Whole-Grain-Mustard Crust

Here's another quick, healthy and easy mid-week meal courtesy of Food & Wine!

If it was summer, we'd have all the ingredients at home... but our chives are dormant for the winter so we had to buy them this time.

The recipe suggests to serve with brussels sprout leaves sautéed with diced chorizo.   We already had broccoli and baked potato in the house and so we'll try the chorizo next time.  It still turned out pretty good though...

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup whole-grain mustard
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons minced chives
Four 8-ounce skin-on wild salmon fillets
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 400° and line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. In a small bowl, stir together the mustard, olive oil and chives.

Season the salmon fillets with salt and pepper and place them skin side down on the prepared baking sheet. Spread the mustard mixture over the tops of the fillets. Roast the fish for 6 minutes.

Preheat the broiler. Broil the salmon 6 inches from the heat for about 4 minutes, until the mustard crust is browned and the salmon is almost cooked through. Using a spatula, carefully slide the salmon fillets off their skins and transfer to plates; leave the skin on, if desired. Serve immediately.