You say focaccia, I say Fugassa...

So if you remember from last time, I managed to show you the mess I made out of our kitchen making fugassa.  I thought I'd share some pictures of how it turned out.

Fugassa, warm and just out of the oven

So it looks like I was able to snag a picture before it got devoured with it looking all golden and crispy yet soft at the same time, right?

Not so much.  By the time I managed to get the camera we had already done damage:

The bread never had a chance

That pizza stone had about twice as much bread on it as shown.  The diameter of that stone is not less than 15".



Three Hours. 



Three hours is how long, total, that these survived.  The answer is yes, this bread is delicious.

 

Fugassa and roasted veggies with wine

I had mine pretending I was at a sidewalk cafe in a cute downtown area (maybe not in this city...).  Complete with wine and roasted veggies.  What was special about these roasted veggies?  I roasted radishes.

Yep, roasted radishes.  Also, I forever want to add an extra "d" in there to make it raddishes.

Roasted radishes with potatoes and garlic, don't mind the roots

I made this after trying to find something else to do with them aside from "toss them in a salad" and came across this recipe.  It couldn't have been simpler, really.

  I cut the raddishes (I left the strangely roots in, that's not needed, no one ate them anyways) and put them in a dish with whole garlic cloves and quartered potatoes my roommate had brought home pre-cooked.  

  They were tossed with olive oil, some salt and thrown in the oven until they looked done.

  When they looked golden and tasty, I put some soy sauce and sesame seeds on them and threw them back in the oven until it looked like the soy sauce had almost burned.

  The recipe said to toast the sesame seeds separately, but I figured throwing it on last was probably doing the same thing?  Okay, maybe it's because it would have dirtied another pan and you've already seen my husband's face with the mess I had made...

And this is what came out:

Roasted radishes with garlic and potatoes

The original recipe came from a south beach page, which is probably why there were no potatoes in it.  I found it made it a main dish instead of a side.

The roasted garlic was soft and a little sweet, almost caramelized and so were the radishes.  I'll let you in on a secret to our fall and spring gardens...we don't water them almost at all, ever.  So our radishes are hot.  Our lettuce is a little on the bitter side and we don't know much about the carrots yet.

But the radishes were sweet cooked this way.  The saltiness of the sesame seeds/soy sauce was a nice contrast to the sweet smooth flavors of the root crops.  

This too, was gone within the three hours (probably less), maybe except for the little dangley roots I left in...


What's a dish in your house that never makes it to leftovers or is gone before you could ever think to get a picture?  I had never had roasted radishes before, have you?  And what was your experience?

Easter squashlings

Happy Easter for the folks it's Easter for, and I hope you were able to enjoy the giddy weather!  We've had a few rough storms come through this spring and the plants seemed to have made it through just fine.  I wanted to do some update shots on the different parts of the garden.

 Here are the early shots of the garden with little in it. This, I think is either late February or early March.

Early spring after the bed was put in.  Radishes and peas are planted but not yet sprouted

Tiny garlic sprouting in the corner of the raised bed

Here's what's growing in the corners of the raised bed now:

Garlic!

Onion, Garlic, and a volunteer of purple lettuce. 

Notice how full and lush looking the center of the raised bed is?  We added some soil amendments from our compost pile we've made since moving in.  We've now got some unexpected residents---squash!

Squashlings

At first we saw a few come up, then a few more, and then about 20!  Then we had a hailstorm and a bit of a cold snap and they all died.  I turned over the soil and now....

We've easily got over 20 squashlings again.  I call them squashlings, not because it's necessarily correct, but because we have no idea what they are.  We've eaten cucumber, watermelon, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, pumpkin, maybe even some zucchini?  They all look the same when they first sprout.

Squashlings

 And there are coming up as if they were meant to own this spot.  My husband has grand plans for peppers in this raised bed, so there will either be some selective thinning, or he'll get really good at training these melon squashy things.  They're even coming up from the compost after we turned that over.

Squashlings coming up from the compost

I wonder if they're is more than one type.  Does anyone know how to tell these little guys apart before  they start fruiting?  Well, before the fruit starts changing color?

Spring 2011 Garden

So spring sunshine has peeked its way through, and though it's a bit chilly out today, I think its worth showing off our tiny garden.

Raised Garden Bed

This was my Valentine's present from my husband.  It took some shoveling, some buckets of old compost, and carrying cinder-blocks across the yard, but I think it may have been the best present ever.

Hopping across the space-time continuum really quickly and here's some of what's growing!