Tag Archives: recipe

Dutch Crunch Rolls Do The Two-Step

Dutch Rolls

Serves	6-12
Prep time	3 hours, 30 minutes
Cook time	15 minutes
Total time	3 hours, 45 minutes
Allergy	Milk, Wheat
Meal type	Bread
Misc	Child Friendly, Freezable, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold, Serve Hot
Region	European
Website	Bright Eyed Baker

Soft on the inside, with a surprising crunchy surface, these rolls are popular in northern Europe and the British Isles.

Ingredients

Soft white rolls

1 1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 tablespoon butter
3 1/2-4 cups white flour
1 tablespoon active dry yeast (If you use packets--they are slightly less than 1 T. Save the partial packet for toopping.)
1 tablespoon salt (Use less if you don't want a very salty bread.)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Crunch Topping

1 tablespoon active dry yeast (If you use packets--they are slightly less than 1 T. Be sure to measure)
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4-1 cups rice flour (Either white rice flour or brown rice flour will work.)

Directions

Soft white rolls
1.	Put butter in milk and warm in microwave for one minute, or on stove top until milk is warm and butter has melted. Stir together and set aside to cool to lukewarm
2.	In large bowl, whisk 3 1/2 Cups of flour, 1 T. yeast, sugar and salt. Add the lukewarm milk and butter and fold in with spatula until everything is combined in a somewhat sticky dough. If it is very sticky, add a bit more flour. Otherwise, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead incorporating the remaining 1/2 cup flour only if needed, until the dough is elastic, tacky, and smooth.
3.	Shape the dough into a ball with a smooth top surface and place in a greased bowl about twice the size of the dough. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap and leave to rise until doubled in size (about two hours.)
4.	Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, punch down the dough and divide it into 6 (or 8 or more)* balls. Tuck outer edge together underneath and pinch them together. Place the dough balls on the prepared baking sheet(s), space at least one inch apart. Cover with towel or plastic wrap and leave to rise for 30-45 minutes, until puffy.
Soft white rolls and Dutch Crunch Topping
5.	While rolls are rising on baking sheet, preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Crunch Topping
6.	Combine the 2nd Tablespoon of yeast with the warm water, sugar, vegetable oil, salt and 3/4 cup rice flour for the topping. Beat together well to form a smooth, thick batter that drips off your whisk or spoon in thick clumps. Add another 1/4 cup of rice flour if needed to achieve the desired consistency. Let sit for 15 minutes.
Crunch topping
7.	Spoon the topping in equal amounts over the fully risen rolls. Scoop up any batter that falls on the pan and patch any spots that are not covered. Use all the mixture.
Baking Dutch Crunch Rolls
8.	Bake the rolls in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes, until golden-brown on top. Serve warm.

Note

* Although the original recipe for Dutch Rolls calls for making six rolls--they would be the size of small loaves. I made eight and the size is like a large hamburger bun. There is nothing wrong with making twelve, which would be a more normal size dinner roll.

Be sure to spread the topping with the back of a spoon so as to cover the entire Dutch Roll for the pretty crackled finish.

Although the recipe calls for one tablespoon, I used no salt in the soft roll and the taste was fine. I believe I will use one teaspoon in the future.

I used brown rice flour instead of the traditional white rice flour and could not see any bad effect in the crunchy covering on the Dutch Rolls.

Saving Summer Fruits and Mini Sweet Peppers

1 Reply

It gets a bit overwhelming doesn’t it? The summer fruits. All those bags of cherries, boxes of blueberries, stacks of peaches, apricots and nectarines, piles of figs, that will disappear in the blink of an eye. Not to mention the mini sweet peppers that appear for a short time in summer.

Size with teaspoon

I have given you recipes from my grandmother Vera Anderson for red pepper jam, and other vintage ideas for saving green tomatoes (pickles or piccallili), blackberries (cordial), and a Mennonite cookbook suggestion for freezing pie fillings–-pear, peach, blueberry, and even green tomato work well.

But those recipes merely scratch the surface. The next few installments of Ancestors in Aprons will suggest ways to deal with this onslaught of summer fruits and vegetables. Rest assured I’ve been freezing pie fillings as fast as those summer fruits jump into my grocery cart, but as much as I love pie–there are other ways to eat summer fruits and vegetables.

Roasted Mini Peppers

One pound package of Mini Peppers

Start with a one pound package of Mini Peppers, olive oil, garlic salt and herbs (preferably fresh) of your choice.

Mini Peppers out of package

Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Rinse peppers and blot dry. In a bowl large enough to hold all the peppers, mix 1/4 cup olive oil, garlic salt, and herbs of your choice. I used fresh thyme and oregano for an Italian flair.
Scoop the peppers out of the oil with a slotted spoon (saving oil) and place on foil-lined cookie sheet or broiler pan.
Bake for ten minutes. Turn peppers with tongs and return to oven for another ten minutes. Bake until peppers start to collapse and turn black (You decide when enough is enough) .

Remove Stems of Mini Peppers

Remove from pan and let cool slightly. While the peppers are cooling I turn the oven off and put a canning jar and its cap in the oven (some spaghetti sauces come in jars appropriate for reuse). That would thoroughly sterilize the jar.
Remove stems from smaller peppers (the seeds are edible, so don’t worry about them. Usually if you pull the stem out, most of the seeds will come with them.

Cut and Seed the larger peppers

Any larger peppers can be cut in half lengthwise and have the pulp and seeds removed along with the stem.
Carefully remove the canning jar from the oven. Using tongs, drop the peppers in the jars, and screw on lid.

One pound of mini peppers fills about half a quart jar.

Pour in the reserved seasoned oil, and add as much olive oil as needed to almost cover the peppers.

Mini Peppers in jar, topped with olive oil

The peppers covered with oil will keep in the refrigerator about two weeks.

When the peppers are thoroughly cooled, they can be frozen BEFORE adding oil , to keep them even longer.

How do I use them?

Add them to lunch meat sandwich.
Stir into meatloaf.
Dress spaghetti with marinated peppers and oil.
Chop into an omelet.
Stir them into corn or green beans to liven up canned vegetables.
Chop and scatter in a salad–green salad, macaroni salad, potato salad.
Mix them into soups or stews in the last minutes of cooking.
Eat them straight out of the jar.

HISTORY

Disclaimer: I have to admit that despite the fact that this recipe is in the spirit of our waste-not grandmothers, I have not found evidence that our great-grandmothers roasted vegetables in this manner. I have to believe that with open fire cooking, some vegetables must have fallen into the coals. And someone must have realized that seasoning with herbs and oil would make them even tastier. Nevertheless, the concept of roasted vegetables seems to be a recent style in American cooking, starting in the 1950’s when backyard grilling became popular.

Dutch Gouda Sauced Chicken

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Smoked Gouda shredded for cheese sauce

This is only “kind of” a Dutch recipe, since it is a great way to use the most famous Dutch cheese–Gouda. And oh my goodness, as if we did not have enough problems, the Washington Post says that we have an enormous cheese glut in the United States. The good news is, the oversupply of cheese, particularly European cheese, is driving the prices down. So EAT MORE CHEESE!

I wonder how my Dutch-American ancestors pronounced the name of this cheese? Gouda, I learned from a site called cheese.com, is not pronounced the way I thought it was. Instead of GOO-da, try “HOW-da.” That’s the Dutch way to say it. Of course no one in the U.S. would understand what you were talking about, so maybe just stick with Gouda.

We nearly always have Dutch Gouda cheese at our house, and so when I saw a recipe for a simple cheese sauce made with Gouda, I had to try it out. (Cheese.com tells me that we’re not the only ones who love the smooth, tasty Gouda. It accounts for half of the cheese consumed in the world.) We like smoked Gouda, which has a brown, edible rind, but any Gouda is good Gouda.

If you want to get into the fine points of selecting a Gouda cheese, check out Cheese,com or search youtube.com for videos on how it is made.

I mentioned this chicken with Gouda sauce in my post last week about Dutch Hutspot,and confessed that I cheated on the authentic Dutch way of serving the smashed potatoes by spooning some Gouda sauce on them. The sauce is super easy because it is not like the usual Behchamel (white sauce) in that there is no flour–so no worrying about lumps.

I adapted the recipe from a couple I saw on websites, and made it for two people. You can easily expand the recipe, and the sauce will be good on a variety of things.

Gouda is a wonderful melting cheese, and is great in mac and cheese, by the way.

Dutch Chicken with Gouda Sauce

Print recipe

Serves	2
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	25 minutes
Total time	35 minutes
Allergy	Milk
Dietary	Gluten Free
Meal type	Main Dish
Misc	Child Friendly, Serve Hot

Dutch smoked gouda cheese makes a quick and delicious sauce for chicken.

Ingredients

3/4 cups gouda cheese (shredded)
3/4 cups evaporated milk (OR use Half and Half)
2 garlic cloves (minced)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon dried parsley (OR 1/4 Cup fresh parsley)
salt and pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1-2 boneless chicken breasts (Depending on size of breasts)

Directions

Marinade
1.	Cut chicken breasts into serving size if they are oversized. Mix olive oil, paprika and a dash of pepper and salt. Marinate chicken breasts in this mixture in the refrigerator for at least one hour. Overnight is fine.
Brown and cook chicken
2.	Brown chicken in butter or olive oil in skillet on medium heat, turn heat to low and let cook slowly while making sauce.
Make Sauce
3.	Melt 2 Tablespoons butter in saucepan, stir in cream or evaporated milk over low heat. Slowly stir in the shredded cheese. Continuing stirring until the cheese is all melted and sauce is slightly thickened. Stir in parsley.
Serve Chicken with Sauce
4.	When chicken is cooked through, put on platter or individual plates and spoon sauce over chicken. Sprinkle with more paprika for a small dash of color.

Note

I used smoked Gouda cheese, which has a richer flavor than plain Gouda but either would work. All you really need is gouda cheese and milk or cream. The parsley and paprika add a bit of zing. I like to use evaporated milk for sauces, because it makes a smooth, easy to mix sauce with no curdling problems. Plus you can get it in low fat if you are counting calories.

This recipe is easily doubled or tripled, but this is my adaptation for two people.

I absolutely hate the overbred chicken breasts that you get in the store these days. If you are stuck with those enormous chicken breasts, you may want to cut them in pieces for serving, as I did. One of those giant breasts made plenty for my husband and me, with seconds and leftovers! This sauce would be just as good on all cuts of chicken, so don't hesitate to use it on dark meat as well.

I served the chicken with hutspot and spooned some of the cheese sauce onto the smashed potato dish for a bonus.