Pane Al Formaggio

It has been a long time since I updated this blog. I am sure both of my followers have been completely devastated by the lack of updates. But good news! I am starting up again.

Today's recipe was Pane Al Formaggio or "Cheese Bread". This one was interesting because it called for shredded parmesan and 'pecorino' cheese mixed into the dough. Now I had no idea what a pecorino cheese was, but after some quick researching I found that it has to do with the way/from what the cheese was made. I decided to go with Romano cheese as my secondary cheese for the bread.

Mixing and kneading the dough felt a little odd as it had the very hard cheese shreds in it giving the dough almost a gravelly feel. Otherwise the process was pretty normal for the bread and after the second rise it was ready for the oven.




Taste: The bread was pretty good, the cheese added a definite sharp tang to the bread as a whole. My brother and I found that eating it with some Colby jack was very tasty.

Christmas Cookies 3 of 3

Chocolate chip cookies. Who doesn't like them? They are pretty much a staple of cookies everyone loves them and recognizes them.

Christmas Cookies 2 of 3

Butterscotch cookies, I honestly can't think of a none chocolate cookie I like more. I find that these end up being not too full of sugar.

Christmas Cookies 1 of 3

So for christmas this year everyone got their normal gifts from me plus a box of cookies. Today's featured cookie is the chocolate and white chocolate cookie. I kind of got the inspiration for these from those "Grandma's" double chocolate cookies I ate growing up. This one got the best reviews and pretty much disappeared instantly from the batch I gave out at home.

Tulumba

This is a dessert from the Balkans. Kind of like a churro you take unleavened dough. Fry it and then soak it in a sugar syrup. I decided to try and make this dish because I was watching a Swedish (I think) movie where one of the antagonists made this. Of course he made it poorly so everyone joked about his poor cooking skills. But that got me thinking so I looked up a recipe and threw myself at it.

Pear and Squash Soup

I must admit when I saw this recipe for the first time I found it kind of odd. I mean whoever would put fruit in soup? But this worked out pretty well. The pears held together very well in cooking and along with the acorn squash, shitaki mushrooms, and onions this soup tastes fantastic with this slight sweetness. Its honestly a nice little break from the more spicy and traditional soups.

Black Bean Soup

This is another really interesting one with coloration. The black beans apparently will change the color of the broth as they finish cooking. But otherwise this was a normal stew. Onions, celery, jalapenos, bell pepper, garlic, and of course black beans all go into this meal.