Got too much leftover bread?

Me too.
Or at least I did have, until fellow bloggers graciously bailed me out this week with ideas for how to use it up.
Bread crumbs. Bread pudding. Croutons, soup bowls, French toast. Bruschetta. Poultry stuffing. Soaked in milk and added to meat loaf.
Wonderful suggestions, all.


Since my Tuscan bread, made with minimal salt and baked at high temperature, gave us roughly the same gustatory experience as chewing through a wooden windowsill, I decided my best option, other than shellacking it and using it to weigh down the picnic tablecloth, would be to try bread salad.
Panzanella is the official name of this recipe. It's a word I learned just yesterday thanks to both Kelly and Ingrid.
The process is easy and the finished product delicious. We paired it with canned peaches and

leftover chocolate/cherry cream puffs for dessert, and called it dinner. You could also add a nice sauteed piece of chicken or fish and maybe a green salad, too, if you want.

Full instructions for Panzanella can be found here, at Wild Yeast blog. You simply cube up the bread and set it aside to dry, make a quick vinaigrette out of kosher salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, chop up a couple of tomatoes, 1/4 of a red onion if you have one (I used yellow), fresh basil (I used dried), then toss it all together in a wooden salad bowl you've seasoned with garlic and let it sit for a half hour before eating.
Delizioso.
And to the generous and helpful blogging community: Grazie.

Talk about your extra thick crust

Tuscan bread.

Can you say, "Crusty enough you could break a tooth on it?"

This begs to be recycled into something a little less dentally dangerous. Any ideas?

Roasted Tomatoes

Well it's September 28 and lookit what came in from the garden today.

So far this summer (and now, fall) I have made tomato sauce,

marinara sauce,

tomato soup (both roasted and non).

I have dried tomatoes in the oven,

dried 'em in the dehydrator (and dried 'em and dried 'em),

and yes, even tried drying them on the dashboard of my car.

Not a capital idea.

And now? I am roasting.

Big time roasting.

It's smelling good and garlicky around here. When I'm done, these roasted tomatoes -- those that escape immediate ingestion, that is -- will go into the freezer to serve over pasta in the dead of winter when I have forgotten what it is to be drowning in a glut of tomatoes.

If you, too, would like to know about the glories of roasting tomatoes, check out this post from Notes from a Cottage Garden. The roasted tomatoes really do taste heavenly.

Please excuse me now. I have more roasting to do.

Lots and lots more roasting.

Great-great-grandma Hattie's Cake

I don't usually have much luck making layer cakes. My pans are slightly different sizes which makes stacking problematic, the batter usually rises in the middle making the construction even more precarious, I'm not patient enough to let the cakes cool so I can't get them out of the pan in one piece, the frosting usually melts (see character quality of impatience, above), etc., etc.

This cake, however, a white cake with a hint of lemon, topped with buttery cocoa-coffee frosting, turned out perfect.

What can I say?


The recipe is from 1916. It's one of the stash I inherited from my great-great-grandma Hattie.
If you zoom in on the picture, you'll see in the upper right hand corner the date, 6/17/16. How cool is that? A recipe that's almost 100 years old.

You'll also see it is actually another Mrs. Borwell recipe (see Mrs. Borwell's Fingers here). I figured if Mrs. Borwell could do the fingers, I could probably trust her to do a good cake, too.

You might also note there are no directions on this recipe, just a list of ingredients.

C'mon, Mrs. B., give a girl a little help, will ya?

I turned to one of my trusty regular cookbooks for advice on what exactly to do with all these ingredients.

I also made the executive decision to double the frosting quantities listed on the original card. It was a good call.

After all that effort, I've decided I have earned the right to re-dub this recipe: It is now Great-great-grandma Hattie's Cake.

Enjoy.

Great-great-grandma Hattie's Slightly Lemony White Cake with Cocoa-Coffee Frosting

CAKE

1/2 c. butter

1 1/2 c. sugar

1 t. vanilla extract

1 t. lemon extract

4 egg whites (I'm not sure why you couldn't substitute 2 eggs for this; anyone know?)

2 c. flour

2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 c. milk

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar with electric mixer for a couple of minutes, until blended. Add vanilla and lemon extracts and egg whites; beat until blended. In separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add dry mixture to batter alternately with milk, a little of one then a little of the other, until all dry ingredients and milk have been used and mixture is well blended.

Grease and flour two 8 x 8-inch pans. Pour half of batter in each pan, and bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

COCOA-COFFEE FROSTING

1/2 c. butter

3 c. powdered sugar

4 t. cocoa

4 T. coffee (I used decaf as I was serving in the evening)

2 t. vanilla

Using electric mixer, cream butter. Add about half the powdered sugar, blending well. Beat in cocoa, coffee, and vanilla. Gradually blend in rest of powdered sugar.

For best results, let cakes cool before taking them out of the pan and frosting.

An added side note: this plate is one that Hattie herself painted. Her initials are on the back, along with the date of 1893.

Anyone else have an Heirloom in Autumn post you want to share?

Tomatoes Tonnato

We had this dish tonight with fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes, smothered in a sauce made of tuna fish, capers, and anchovies, among other ingredients. My guess is that no child under the age of, say, 20, would eat it (at least no child I know). Kahuna and I, however, found it to be outstandingly delicious, especially with that lemon zest and slivered basil garnish. This is a keeper.
I got the recipe from an old issue of Parade Magazine, but I found the identical one here. While the recipe called for an entire cup of mayonnaise, I put in just 1/4 cup, and I thought the results were perfect.

As you can see, I still have a few more garden vegetables to use up. We have been eating like kings all summer.

Powdered Sugar "Finger" Cookies

The real name of this recipe is "Mrs. Borwell's Fingers." No offense to Mrs. Borwell, but that just sounded creepy. So I renamed these cookies, which are tasty little morsels that contain chopped walnuts and are rolled in powdered sugar while still warm.

I was inspired by this post at The Golden Needle blog. Golden Needle has been baking her way through the old recipes in her mother's recipe box. Isn't that the neatest idea?

My beautiful grandma Nana, who was an accomplished cook and indefatigable baker even into her 90s, gave me this stack of recipes a few years ago, before she passed away.

They belonged to her own beloved grandma (so that would be my great, great grandma), whose name was Hattie.
They just don't make names like Hattie anymore.
Apparently Nana was the family scribe, helping her mom organize recipes and taking down notes specific to their preparation. Many of the recipes are simply yellowed newspaper clippings, cut out and taped onto 3 x 5 cards with no personal notes added. I'm not as eager to try those as I am to try ones like "Mrs. Borwell's Fingers" -- creepy name aside -- recipes that have notes added in my grandma's own hand.

Though I've had these recipes for a few years now, this is the first one I've tried from this bunch. It was fun trying to decipher instructions like "blend over fire slowly" -- which I translated as "cook over low heat." The biggest puzzle was being told to take the batter and "spread in tins." Er, tins? What kind of tins? I decided an 8 x 8-inch greased baking pan would do nicely.
Which it did.

POWDERED SUGAR "FINGER" COOKIES

1/4 c. butter

1 c. brown sugar

1 egg

1 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1/4 c. chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

1 t. vanilla

powdered sugar

In medium saucepan, melt butter. Add brown sugar and blend over low heat until well-mixed (a couple of minutes). Remove from heat and cool for a few minutes. Add egg and beat well. Mix in flour, baking powder, salt, nuts, and vanilla. Spread batter in greased 8 x 8-inch pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. While hot, cut into strips. Let cool for a couple minutes for easier handling. While still warm, roll in powdered sugar ("if so wish," instructs Nana. I wish).

Thank you for the inspiration to pull out these recipes, Golden Needle. Anyone else want to join in the fun of trying out some old family recipes? We could do an Heirloom in Autumn recipe challenge. Anyone?

Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin. One of my favorite cuts of meat. A little on the expensive side, but you can cut it into thin slices to make it go further. Fan it out on some lettuce for a really nice presentation.

Or not.

We had this delicious version for last night's dinner, courtesy of Pam over at For the Love of Cooking. Recipe here. Note the Dijon-maple syrup glaze in the white cup. I could drink Dijon-maple syrup glaze. In fact, I think I'll go drink some of the leftover Dijon-maple syrup glaze right now.

Sorry. Just had a little taste. I'm better now.

Go pay Pam and her tenderloin a visit. You won't be sorry.