Swisskaese

Thank you so much Dan. I will make the adjustments in the book and try it again. I think this version of the recipe is much more user friendly.

That's so interesting, Michelle! What are some of your favourite Chinese dishes? Henry and I cook different things when it comes to Chinese. My dad is from Canton and my mom is from Shanghai, so those are the two cuisines I grew up with. Henry grew up eating a lot of Hunan and Szechuan dishes, so that's what he makes. ← I like all of the cuisines you mentioned. Chinese cooking is a real art. You can use very simple spices or herbs and the dish can still be very complex. I really love steamed fish with ginger, green onion and lemongrass In my pre-kosher days I made salt and pepper shrimp, which you can also use baby squid instead of the shrimp or a mixture of both. One of the dim sum dishes I liked to make is Har Gow. I think I would need a lesson again on how to do the pleating. It has been years since I made it. But, alas, I can't have shrimp anymore. Kung Pao Chicken Szechuan green beans, preferably with long beans, if I could find them and something non-Chinese, Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken Cashew chicken (not very authentic) Orange beef

I was going to suggest sexy pomegranates or mangoes, but I will settle for peaches These are all fruits that you can make both savory and sweet dishes. Or.... you could really stretch your horizons and choose tehina.

Having nothing to do with politics, I would beg to disagree, but why don't you start a thread about Lebanese wines, for example Château Ksara, Lebanon's oldest wine label, and tell us why you think they are better. I have had Lebanese wine in London.

That would be great. I really think the dough was too wet or I didn't work it enough in between the five 30-minute rises. I definitely want to give it another try. I wish I could come to London and take a lesson.

Pre-excel, my father created a shopping list and timetable to be used for several holidays: Thanksgiving Passover Rosh Hashanana/Yom Kippur It was a great help. I created an excel sheet for my wedding invitations, thank you notes and gifts

This is going to be a great blog. I have been watching your flirtations and now dating with glee because Tapenade and I also met via the internet. Our first real date was 6-1/2 hours. I am really happy for both of you. I am really looking forward to the Chinese banquet. Since I moved to Israel, I have put my Chinese cooking on the back burner. I used to make homemade egg rolls, some dim sum and lots of different Chinese dishes when I lived in the States and Germany. My roommate in Germany was from Taiwan and we made a Chinese banquet (soup, dumplings, rice, etc.) for 12 people out of one small rice cooker and one small wok. We were young and crazy at the time. My roommate taught me a few things, like how to make Nepalese Momos, but my real teacher was my grandparents Chinese cook. She was a master cook and I learned a lot about pastry and Chinese food from her.

If you are interested in Israeli wine, I would suggest getting a copy of Daniel's book. It introduced me to very nice boutique wineries here. Take a look at both of my eGullet foodblogs. In the first one, I featured Flam Winery, which produces some very good red wines. In my second blog, from a couple of weeks ago, I went to a wine tasting that featured the new wines and revamping of Carmel Winery.

This is good news. Cease fire saved the harvest

It was a dismal failure. Back to the drawing board.

After the 30 minute rise, I cut the dough into three pieces and now it is rising for 1 hour. I really have my doubts. I think the dough is not strong enough to wrap itself around the garlic, it doesn't look as thick as the dough in the book. The dough finished its 1 hour rise and it did not double in size. I am going to bake it anyway and see what happens. Any help out there?

The final thirty minute rise has finished and now I am a bit worried. I dumped the dough out on to a floured surface, but it was still very wet and impossible to spread out. It didn't look anything like the picture in the book. I decided to work it a little bit. And then I spread it out into a rectangle. It still doesn't look like the picture in the book, but I continued. I spread the garlic mixture on the dough. I reduced the balsamic vinegar sauce to a syrupy sticky mixture which hardended a bit like candy. Once I spread it on the dough it started melting a bit and became runny. I continued to follow the instructions. I folded the dough in thirds, lengthwise and then folded both ends. See the sauce leaking out of the dough? Now it is resting for 30 minutes more. I hope this is going to turn out.

While the dough is on its last 30 minute rise, I made the garlic filling. First I broke up the three heads of garlic into cloves, peel remaining. Tapenade thought I should add another head of garlic. He is Hungarian! Then, I blanched the garlic for 2 minutes in boiling water. Drained and rinsed with cold water. I proceeded to peel the garlic cloves. Then, I heat a pan with olive oil, added the garlic, water, balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper and chopped rosemary and cooked until the garlic was tender. Then I removed the garlic and reduced the liquid to a syrup. Here is the finished filling. More to come later...

Today is garlic bread day! I began with getting all my ingredients together: Bread flour AP flour Cake flour (not pictured) Yeast Water Orange juice Salt Garlic Pepper Balsamic vinegar Sugar Polenta for baking (not pictured) First step was to mix flour, yeast and water together. And, let it sit for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Because the room temperature is approximately 22 degrees, I used room temperature water. My other ingredients are also all at room temperature. So far, so good. This was the results after 30 minutes..... I thought it looked pretty frothy. The instructions say to let it sit for 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until it is frothy. I went ahead and added the orange juice, rest of the bread flour and the AP & pastry flour. And mixed it until it formed a ball. Add oil and tuck Smooth? Then I added half of the olive oil and mixed the dough under itself in quarter turns of the bowl and it doesn't look so smooth and shiny. I worked it for quite a while and decided that maybe I shouldn't overwork it; so, I stopped and let it rise for 45 minutes. Then I deflated the dough and added the rest of the olive oil. I tucked the dough under itself again in quarter turns of the bowl and let it rise for 30 minutes. I am continuing to do this five more times. More to come later....

Shabbat Shalom everyone We are having a pot luck Shabbat dinner at our house and it is going to be a bit of a mixed bag because we have some vegetarians in the group: Shepherds pie without cheese and butter (made by a guest) Jerusalem artichoke chips with a lemon-thyme dip Various Druze salads Steamed broccoli Other surprises from guests Green salad with tomatoes on the side Peach pie Variety of red wines

They might be out of season now, but you could also try making it with white currants.

The recipe looks interesting, but there are no ingredient amounts in the recipe.

Hello Dan, I am not worthy! Thank you so much for answering my question and explaining the method. I really appreciate it. I will try putting the dough near the air conditioner. This is what is so cool about eGullet. I am going to make the bread this weekend. I have had this cookbook for a year and have been staring at the beautiful picture of the garlic bread. I can't wait to give another go. I will post pictures. Regards, Michelle

Thanks Abra. I am glad you told me not to bloom the SAF.

I looked back at the recipe and it calls for 425g of strong flour and 100g of 00 flour. Should I use 425g of the bread flour and 100g of 75% AP and 25% cake flour? I always bloom the yeast. I bought some new yeast that I plan to use this weekend. It is saf-instant. Usually, I use a fresh yeast cake. It is possible that the yeast cake was not fresh. Although it was very active when I bloomed it. Anyway, we will see what happens this weekend.

This weekend I am going to attempt for the second time to make this bread and I will post my results. I didn't get very far this past weekend because the dough just didn't rise. I don't know if it was the weather (very hot here at the moment) or the yeast or the flour, but I did change something from the original recipe. It calls for regular flour and 00 flour. I do not have a source for 00 flour. I tried using bread flour and AP flour. What is the benefit of using 00 flour? I know it is great for pasta, but what are the benefits for bread? I should explain that it only calls for about 1/4 of a cup of 00. Also, this dough is a very wet dough. It suppose to be a very airy dough. It calls for five, 30-minute risings. I am worried that the yeast is going to die on me with that many rising, since it petered out on the first rise.

OMG! That looks amazing. The only way I could make this is if I sneak some cheddar cheese in my suitcase the next time I am in London. You can't find good cheddar here. Happy birthday Deborah from me too !

Oh Chufi, you are really making me cry. This is exactly how my great-grandmother and grandmother made their plum compote, except they put whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in theirs instead of ginger.

What is blossom water? Is is orange flower water?

Come on over, it is never too late. We are waiting for you with open arms.