WHEAT BREAD MUFFULETTA, LEMONY TEA BISCUITS

Beautiful New Orleans:
Beautiful city of Mardi Gras, French quarter, Cajun and Creole food, river front, Audubon,French market, Horse carriages, Cafe Du Monde's Chicory coffee (you can buy this coffee online here) and Beignets, music and all that Jazz!! We love New Orleans, spent a week vacationing there in 2003. Everything was magical as if we weren't in USA at all! After Katrina, we visited that city again in 2006 and we were heart broken to see the devastation. Although downtown New Orleans is unaffected, certain neighborhoods are completely wiped out and we could see cars piled up and rusting in the car parks. My heart goes out to all the lovely New Orleans residents who suffered a great loss and still suffering! Take a photo tour here.

St. Louis Cathedral/Jackson Square and a typical French style building right opposite the famous Cafe Du Monde, photo taken in 2006:



Muffuletta sandwiches are said to be originated at Central Grocery in New Orleans by a Sicilian immigrant in 1906. They are very popular sandwiches in New Orleans along with Roast Beef "Po' boys"(poor man's sandwiches). Muffuletta is made of round loaf of crusty bread similar to Focaccia, split and filled with layers of sliced cheeses and meat like Salami etc. and stuffed with delcious marinated Olive salad. Muffulettas in New Orleans are so huge, sometimes as high as 3" with fillings dripping with olive salad, that it easily feeds 4 people generously, just need a few beverages to complete the meal!:D
Vegetarians can skip the meat and add sliced Zucchinis, Cucumber,Tomatoes etc. Hope you try this delicious sandwich!:)

Basic Whole Wheat Bread:

The bread recipe is from the book "Ultimate Bread" by Treuille and Ferringno. This is a very basic white bread recipe, easy to bake even for beginners. The original name for this bread is "Pain Ordinaire" which is "Ordinary Bread" in French. You can add wheat flour, Rye or Barley flour along with white flour and mix 1/4 cup buttermilk with 1/4 cup of the water to make it more flavorful. I made this simple and round bread just to make Muffuletta.
You need:
2 tsp Yeast,
1/2 cups water,
1 tsp sugar,
3 1/2 cups Wheat bread flour,(or plain flour)
1 1/2 tsp salt.
To bake the bread:
1. Sprinkle yeast to 1/2 cup of warm (115F) water, and sugar, set aside for 5 mins. Sift flour and salt together in a big bowl or stand up mixer.
2. Mix in yeast mix to flour, mix well or use paddle hook on the KitchenAid.
3. Add as much water as you need and let it all come together into firm, moist dough.Knead until smooth and elastic with the dough hook or by hand.
4. Cover the bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 1 to 2 hrs.Punch down and let it rest for 10mins.
5. Put the whole dough on a baking sheet, pat gently to a 10" circle and cover again and let it rise for 1/2 an hour.
6. Bake in the preheated oven at 400F for about 35-45mins, depending on your oven. It sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a rack. Bread tastes wonderful to make any kind of sandwiches. You can also shape this bread dough into French Bread/Baguettes and bake as well, great to make Garlic bread!

New Orleans Muffuletta with Olive salad:



To make Olive salad my style, you need:

Mix 1/4 cup Olive oil, 1/4 cup green olives stuffed with pimento,chopped, 1/4 cup Black olives,pitted and chopped,1 tbsp red Wine Vinegar,1/4 cup roasted red peppers, 1 tbsp Italian seasoning, 1/4 tsp chilli flakes, 1/4 cup chopped bottled Garden vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, Celery, Pearl onion etc soaked in vinegar, drained and chopped roughly, 1 minced Garlic, 1 chopped Shallot, 1 tbsp Capers, salt and pepper to taste all these in a bowl and chill in the fridge as long as you can, preferably overnight or more is great too.
To assemble Muffuletta:
1. Slice the loaf horizontally, add a thick layer of 1/2 of the Olive salad, lay the cheese slices like Mozzarella, Provolone etc and then layer meat slices like Pepperoni, Salami,Ham etc and cheese slice again and end with the rest of the Olive salad on top and cover with top slice of bread.
2. Press the loaf, cover with foil or cling film tightly and chill in fridge for 30mins. Take it out and cut inti quarters to serve with pickled pepperoncini. That's about it, your yummy Muffuletta is ready to dig in without going to New Orleans!

Muffuletta is ready for you!!:)
If you like warm slice of Muffuletta, press the sandwich in Panini press or grill until cheese melts or you can also microwave for a minute until cheese melts.

Try it!

***********************************************************************************************************************

Ready for some sweet-tart Lemony Biscuits now?

Lemony Tea Biscuits are my contribution to Coffee from "The Spice Cafe". She is hosting Jihva this month which is originally started by Indira of "Mahanandi". She has chosen "Lemon/Lime" as her JIHVA ingredients for February. Thanks for taking time to host Coffee!:)


Lemony Tea Biscuits:
This recipe for flavored southern biscuits is from "Southern Cooking" by James Villas with my slight changes. He says "one of the southern tradition/ritual in the finer homes even to this day is to have "high Tea", sitting in their porches and gardens!" Tea and dainty little Lemon flavored Biscuits make a fine accompaniment for afternoon tea. I have glazed the biscuits with Lemon syrup. Any citrus syrup will do too, enjoy!:))



You need these to make them:

You Need:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour,
4 tsp baking powder,
1 tsp salt,
1 tbsp sugar,
4 tbsp cold butter,cut into small cubes,
1 cup milk.
Filling:
2 tbsp melted butter,
1 tbsp Lemon Zest.(grate only the yellow outer skin,not the white part)
Glaze:
3 tbsp Sugar,
juice of 2 Lemons.

Preheat the oven to 450F.
Spray a large baking sheet with no-stick oil.
Mix 2 tbsp sugar and lemon juice well until dissolved and keep aside.

To make them:
1. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, baking pd, salt, sugar, and cold butter. Mix until it resembles bread crumbs.Add milk, fold gently just enough to mix, do not over mix.
2. Knead 3-4 times on the counter top, pat out to a rectangle about 1/4" thick, brush melted butter evenly on top and sprinkle Lemon zest on top.
3. Roll up like Jelly roll or like cigar lengthwise, cut into 1" rolls.Place them on the baking sheet 1" apart and lightly dab them the tops with sugar and lemon glaze, do not soak it in.
4. Bake for 12-15 mins or until golden on top.Cool on racks and store them in the air tight container.
Note: If you don't want to make the swirls or pinwheel rolls, gently roll out the dough to about 1" thickness and cut out 3" circles, glaze and bake!

Serve at room temperature with jam or jelly for breakfast or with Tea/Coffee in the afternoon!!:)

****************************************************************************************************************************
Book I read last week:

"The red carpet-Bangalore stories" by Lavanya Sankaran.
Author is raised in Bangalore and living there now with her family (after moving back to India from USA), she writes her very first witty (cosmopolitan people are "one-Thara" people, as Ram her character in the book says!:D) and very articulately written book. It is sprinkled with expletives thru' out the book which I don't like to read or hear in the movies, which is my problem of course! I am old fashioned in that way.
It's a collection of 8 stories, all set in Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India!), writes about new and old generation clashes, about "foreign returned" engineers, ABCDs , perception and presumption of life in USA! IF it's a true portrait of modern day B'lore, specially as in the first story (I really hope it's just fiction!), it shocks me! I have been away from Bengaluru for too many years I guess, again it's all my fault!!! :P
She won a "Poets and writers best of first fiction 2005" award for this book. She is a very BEAUTIFUL girl too, looking at her photo on back of the book!
Movie:
Saw the movie "SAW 4" at last, my favorite most "intelligent" REAL scary bunch of movies (SAW 1,2,3) if you ask me, love them all! :D

Few dishes I tried from other bloggers:

Vimmi's delicious Baingan da Bharta:
Here is a simple but great tasting Baingan da bharta I tried from Punjabi blogger friend Vimmi. I have never cooked Baingan Bharta before since it always involves the usual dhania-jeera pd, garam masala etc. This recipe uses the minimum of spices and tastes excellent with Parathas. Thanks Vimmi, loved it and as you said, it's absolutely delcious!:)
Srivalli's Spicy Peanuts:
Happy cook made these peanuts last week with the recipe from Srivalli's blog. Although this dish is not new to me (my mom always roasts the peanuts in 2 tbsp oil in a pan and seasons), I wanted to try Sri's deep fried version. It came out very well, great to munch on cold Winter evenings, love the fried garlic. Thanks Sri!:)

Enjoy your weekend!:)