Potato Bread Using Instant Potatoes

There seems to be a fear of deviating from the recipe when it comes to baking breads. Yet yeast breads can be tweaked a fair amount while still resulting in a great loaf of bread. Essentially all you need to make a good loaf of bread is yeast or starter, flour, and salt. Practically all other ingredients can be substituted or altered somewhat. I routinely substitute liquids because why use water if I can add flavour and I like substituting sweeteners. But some of my best loaves of bread have come about from blatant mistakes. Two examples of this are my favourite white bread and herbed tomato bread.

Potato Bread

Potato bread is a great way to use up left over potatoes but I came across a recipe using potato flakes. I didn't have potato flakes so I looked around to see how I could make this bread using what I had on hand. From there I used the original recipe as a guide but modified a fair amount so this became a test loaf of bread. The resulting loaf was very moist, flavourful and nicely textured. It made an ideal sandwich bread but was also nice for toasting.

Potato Bread Using Instant Potatoes
recipe by: Garden Gnome

1 c buttermilk
⅓ c water
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp organic sugar
1½ tsp sea salt
⅓ c instant mashed potatoes, complete mix
2½ c unbleached flour
1½ tsp instant yeast

Combine buttermilk, water and butter in large measuring cup. Warm slightly in microwave to just under room temperature. Place remaining ingredients in bowl of stand mixer. Mix on speed setting 1 to blend well. With mixer still on setting one slowly start pouring in liquids. Mix until dough cleans sides of bowl. Adjust with necessary with a little extra water if too dry or flour if too wet. Knead on setting 3 until dough is smooth and elastic. Remove dough ball from bowl. Wipe bowl with vegetable oil. Return dough ball to bowl. Cover with damp towel. Place in warm area and leave until dough is doubled. Punch down the down then form into a loaf and place in prepared baking pan. Let rise to double. Bake at 200ºC/400ºF until golden brown or loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

New York Style Cheesecake

Cheesecake is one of my husband's favourite desserts. Not being a huge dessert fan he doesn't get homemade cheesecake very often. Occasionally he gets my quick no bake cheesecake that while quite good it definitely is not New York Style cheesecake like The Cheesecake Factory sells. I've been on a quest to get that rich, creamy flavour of New York Style cheesecake.

Crust Prep

Traditionally baked cheesecake is made in a spring pan. Well the problem is I have 2 large spring pans but not a small one so I improvised using a 2-piece flan pan (top right). It was wider in diameter but shallower. The prepared crumbs were poured into the pan (top left) then formed using the bottom of a stainless steel measuring cup (bottom right) resulting in the prepared crust (bottom left).

New York Style Cheesecake

1¼c graham cracker crumbs
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp butter

19 oz cream cheese, softened
1 c granulated sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
¼ tsp pure vanilla
3 eggs

Mix graham cracker crumbs with 2 tbsp granulated sugar. Melt butter then stir well into the graham cracker crumb mixture. Pour into baking paan and form into crust. Bake at 350ºF for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Reduce oven temperature to 300ºF. Beat cream cheese until uniform using stand mixer. Slowly add in sugar while continuing to beat. Beat until fluffy then add one egg at a time beating until smooth. Mix in vanilla and lemon zest. Pour into prepared crust. Bake for 1 hr or until centre is set. Remove from oven. Cool then refrigerate 3 hours before cutting.

New York Style Cheesecake

New York style cheesecake surprisingly does not have a high sugar content. It is rich and creamy but not all that sweet. A lot of the sweetness comes from what you top the cheesecake with. I topped the cheesecake slices with low sugar chocolate raspberry sauce that added a deep depth to the overall richness. Next time I will warm the sauce then do that really neat swizzle effect over the cheesecake slices but for this one, the taste test was most important. I'm still tweaking cheesecake recipes so the recipe is a combination of a few recipes with my own ideas tossed in. The texture is right up there so that's encouraging. The end result was a nicely flavoured and textured cheesecake.

Frugal Kitchens 101 - Convenience Foods for the Freezer

The freezer remains a very popular method for store foods for later use. Despite the fact that from the moment a food is placed in the freezer it costs you in terms of electricity until the food is used, the freezer continues a good frugal choice when used properly. A freezer will:

• help lessen the temptation to stop through a drive-through, pick up fast food or order take-out
• save trips to the grocery store
• increase the ability to take advantage of sales and bulk meat purchases
• enable the use of homemade frozen convenience meals, dishes and quick starts.

The following are a few ideas of some of the things that can be easily made then frozen for later use. The following are a few of mine. For more ideas take a walk through the freezer section of the grocery store making a list of those that look or sound appealing. Do an online search for OAMC that will bring up several recipes all suitable for freezer meals. Here are a few things I keep in my freezers but it is no way an exhaustive list.

Quick meal starts I keep in our freezers include:

• pre-cooked seasoned/unseasoned meat cubes, slices and strips - good for wraps, sandwiches and salads as well as adding to soups, stews and casseroles
• pre-chopped vegetables - onions, sweet/hot peppers, celery for adding to soups, stews and casseroles
• pre-chopped fruits - fruit smoothies
• stocks - quick soup/stew starter
• small quantities of pre-made pie/bread/pizza doughs - quiches, pies, bread bowls, pizza

Homemade convenience meals and dishes I keep in the freezers include:

• lasagna
• quiche
• shepherd's pie
• cabbage rolls
• a few homemade casseroles

A few additional ideas that I have tried at one time or another that sometimes find their way into the freezers:

• waffles/pancakes
• burritos
• egg rolls
• omelet mix (uncooked)
• homemade stuffed pockets

Perch Fried Two Ways - Dry Coated & Beer Battered

We eat a fair amount of fish with a good portion of that fish being fresh water from the Great Lakes. I love to fish and we have friends who generously gift us with some of their catch. Fish is one of those things that I really don't like heavily coated. In fact even though I love English style fish & chips I peel the coating off. The coating makes the fish moist and tender so I like that just not the coating.

Smaller fish such a small bass, perch, bluegill and pickerel lend themselves nicely to pan frying. In this case it is customary to use a light cornmeal based coating. The cornmeal gives a nice crunch without being overpowering. The best part is it is extremely easy to do. At the same time battered fish coating as in English style fish & chips offers an entirely different result. The smoother coating rises making the cooked fish look bigger. It is quite tasty as well.

Golden Dipt

We are trying to clone a specific fish batter my husband swears is the best. That means we've been trying a few in an attempt to make a clone. Now the nice thing about this is we get to eat most of the attempts. My husband brought home a couple of boxes of Golden Dipt Beer Batter to try. The real trick to making a good battered fish coating lies in the beer. It is important to use a preservative free, bottled (not canned) micro-brew although I suspect those perfecting English style beer batter likely used draft beer so perhaps a good substitute would be a homebrew. Canned beer and preservatives can result in off flavours.

Perch Dinner

Fresh water perch (lake or yellow perch) fillets are small with a pleasant mild taste. We catch them by line and hook from our dock or boat using minnows we also caught via a minnow net or worms we dug from the garden. We eat a lot of perch! As with all fish occasionally there can be bones depending on how well they were cleaned but normally this isn't a problem making them suitable for coating. They are quick cooking so pan frying is ideal.

Pictured is the perch we had for dinner cooked in about a half inch of oil in a hot fry pay using two different coatings. The thicker coating (larger pieces) was the Golden Dipt beer batter coating while the thinner pieces to the right was a dry coating. Just look at the difference between the two coatings yet the actual pieces of fish were pretty much about the same size. Both were quite tasty and while the battered fish was impressive looking we both agreed we liked the dry coated fillets more. The beer battered coating was good but still not quite what my husband is looking for in the clone recipe. So the experimenting continues :)