Raisin Bread for Non Raisin Lovers

When You Really Need To Use Up The Raisins You Have, But Your Family Doesn’t Like Them.

Sometimes the weather is hot and unhappy, and it makes you miss your fall and winter foods. That's what's happening for us this week, so we decided to make some raisin bread.

There are a million and a half recipes for raisin bread. We're not going to get up on a soap box and tell you ours is better because... or ours is different because... That seems a little off the point, if nothing else. Your family may already have a standby recipe for this - but if not, you're welcome to try ours out!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup water, warm 

3 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon clove

1 teaspoon oil (we use olive, but sub whatever you like)

1/2 cup raisins, separated so as not to clump

Tools:

mixing bowl

measuring cups and spoons

spoon

parchment paper or silicone mat

kitchen towel

dutch oven or covered oven-safe pan

thermometer

While we know thermometers are not ubiquitous kitchen tools, we strongly advise using one instead of guessing on water temperature. Instant-read digital thermometers are only a few bucks at your nearest big box store. They are absolutely a justifiable expense, between food safety uses (ensuring meats are fully cooked) and baking tasks (like checking water temperature to proof yeast).

Before you get going, it's a good idea to heat up your water. You can run the kitchen tap until it's warm, or you can measure the water cold and heat it in the microwave if your measuring cup is microwave safe. We normally just measure cold water from the tap and zap it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so. Use the thermometer to check the temperature - it should be no colder than 105 degrees and no warmer than 115. Target 110 as the ideal temperature. If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast - but if it's not warm enough, the yeast won't do its job.

Once you're sure the water is the right temperature, mix in the teaspoon of sugar and add the yeast. Give everything a stir (the sugar will partially dissolve, and the yeast will saturate) and let it sit for at least five minutes. You'll know you did it right when the yeast bubbles and begins to increase in size.

Measure your flour, salt, cinnamon and clove into the mixing bowl and use a spoon to combine them. Add the brown sugar and make sure to stir it in - we know there will be some clumps at this point, but it's okay.

Stir in the raisins at this point, making sure they don't go in as one big blob that won't distribute through the dough. We often task a little helper with making sure they're not too stuck together.

Add your oil and the yeast/sugar/water mixture. Stir until you have something that sort of resembles dough - it'll be shaggy and have what look like huge pockets of flour, but don't panic. Get the spoon out of the way and finish the mixing and kneading process with your hands. Don't be afraid to get a little messy on this one (if you really hate the mess, remove jewelry and/or use gloves). Knead until it's mostly smooth and all the flour has been worked in.

Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and allow it to rest for an hour or so. Definitely set a timer. Please don't ignore it for four or more hours as we have accidentally done on occasion. Leaving it to rise too long yields a beer-y sourdough flavor that does not complement the raisins.

After the hour is up, preheat your oven to 375. Turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper. Knead it a bit more, with the goal of shaping it into a ball. If it's sticky, add some flour to the dough or to your hands, but avoid overdoing it. No one wants chalk instead of bread.

Now pick up that whole piece of parchment paper and plop it into the dutch oven. Put the lid on it and slide it into the oven on a middle rack. Let it bake for 45 minutes, covered. When your timer goes off again, remove the lid but leave the bread in the oven for another 15 minutes.

Around this point it will start to smell "done." Trust your nose. When it smells like bread instead of almost-bread, it's ready. Remove it from the oven and let it cool. Letting it cool is only really important if you want neat slices - if you're fine with them looking a little crumbly and rough around the edges, just go for it. We find it best served toasted and with a little bit of butter.

Let us know how your recipe turns out, we’d love to hear from you over on our Facebook page. 

And if you’re looking to learn more about how we can help you with your appliances, please let us know. 

Pepperoni & Canadian Bacon Stromboli

The most delicious recipe you’ll make all weekend.

Sometimes you really want a pizza, but you don’t have a good place nearby, and you don’t need to make a giant pie. The answer is stromboli. Stromboli is a wonderful food for when you’re going out, as it’s very much like a hand pie, even if ‘out’ is just heading out to enjoy your yard. As with most recipes we share, these are influenced by your Blogger’s history, as a stromboli is a very Philadelphia thing. 

Ingredients:

1 packet pizza dough mix or 1 pound premade dough

(if packet: 1/2 cup water, hot, and 1 teaspoon oil, or as directed)

1/2 pack pepperoni

4 slices Canadian bacon

1/3 cup pasta sauce

1 cup shredded mozzarella

1 tablespoon butter

grated parmesan

Tools:

mixing bowl

spoon

parchment paper and/or aluminum foil

knife

baking sheet

spray oil

small heat-safe dish

basting brush

This recipe can be very messy. If you end up wearing some of it, no worries. It just means you've done it right.

To get started, either work your premade dough until it's soft and pliable, or mix together your dry ingredients, water and oil in a mixing bowl.

If you're making the dough, we recommend stirring it with a spoon until you get a shaggy, lumpy approximation of a dough ball - then knead by hand until you reach the desired consistency. If it's very sticky, add a little flour a spoonful at a time and work it in. If it's dry, add some water the same way.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that a little tackiness to the dough is actually helpful, and stops your stretched dough from rebounding immediately.

Working on a sheet of parchment paper is optional, but we find it to be extremely helpful, especially when transferring your finished product to the baking sheet. Feel free to make your own decision here. Some people prefer a clean countertop, some use a board or silicon mat, some (us included) like a piece of wax or parchment paper.

Turn your dough out onto your preferred work surface and make sure you've broken up any lumps to create a smooth ball of dough.

Your next step will be to shape this dough. You can make it a circle like you're working on a pizza, but we find a slightly more oblong or ovoid shape to be easier to work with when it comes time to fold it over. You can work the dough into a circle or oval right away if you like, but we often cover it with a clean kitchen towel and allow it to rest for ten minutes or so before we proceed.

If you're letting the dough rest a little, this is an excellent time to preheat your oven to 375. And if you prefer smaller pieces but have purchased the large slices of canadian bacon (the situation we found ourselves in), it's also a good time to grab a knife and chop those big slices up.

After you've stretched the dough out and it's staying where you've put it (which is why we mentioned a little stickiness being useful), kind of eyeball the halfway point of your shape. Spread a thin layer of pasta sauce on one half, and then add cheese and pepperoni and canadian bacon on top of the sauce. Be sure to leave yourself a little margin around the outer edge of the dough. You'll want plenty of filling there, but you also need to seal the two halves together into a half-moon shape before baking. Pasta sauce makes the dough too slick to seal, so if you drip some too close to the edge, be sure to wipe it up. Nobody wants all that melty cheese to ooze out the sides and go to waste.

Make sure you work all the way around the open edge, pinching the dough together and folding that pinched portion underneath the bulk of the stromboli. Folding it under ensures the weight of the dough and filling will hold the seal together instead of just hoping for the best.

Now you've got a lumpy looking half-circle of dough. It doesn't look very appetizing at the moment, we know. But don't fret, your final product will be beautiful.

Place a sheet of parchment paper or aluminum foil on the baking sheet. If you're using foil, give it a quick spritz with some spray cooking oil to be sure you don't leave the whole bottom of the stromboli on the baking sheet later.

It's time to transfer your dough to the baking sheet - if you've worked on some kind of mat, board or sheet, pick the whole thing up to avoid opening up your seal. Turn it over onto your outstretched hand, and then flip it onto the baking sheet. 

If you've worked directly on the counter, make sure you lift gently all the way around the edges before you try to pick it up, and support as much of the center as you can. The dough will stretch quite a way before it breaks, but there's no saving a stromboli with a hole in it without making a whole new ball of dough.

After you have the stromboli on the baking sheet, put it into the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Put that little bit of butter into the heat-safe dish and stick the dish somewhere close to the oven vent. This will allow the butter to melt without using any more energy than you already have to (and also prevents popping everywhere, like heating it in a pan or the microwave can sometimes cause).

Check in at the 15 minute mark to be sure your oven isn't overzealous today. Once the top of the stromboli changes color to lightly golden, turn the oven off. Pull the baking sheet out of the oven and use a basting brush to coat the top of the stromboli with melted butter, then dust with parmesan cheese (you can also add herbs here, if your family doesn't panic at the sight of green things). 

Put the whole thing back into the oven for five more minutes, even though the oven is off. We just want the residual heat in the oven to melt the cheese into the butter so it sticks to the stromboli.

After the five minutes are up, remove your meal from the oven and let it cool a few minutes before serving.

Let us know what you think about this delicious meal over on our Facebook. We’d love to hear from you! 

Healthy and Flavorful: A Caponata Recipe That You'll Love

Because who says you can’t have both in one recipe? 

Have you ever realized that a lot of companies that claim to make healthy food, also make it really bland? It’s flavorless and lacks texture, and the best you can say is that it doesn’t leave you feeling sick. 

Yeah, we know those meals, and we hate them. SO, we’re offering up this recipe for Caponata, an easy veggie recipe that is packed full of flavor and will leave you full. If you want you can also pair it alongside a smaller portion of pasta or polenta for a more filling meal, or as a lunch made up of leftovers. 

Ingredients:

1 lb eggplant

1 cup pine nuts

1 red bell pepper

1 yellow bell pepper

2 carrots

3 green onions

1 rib celery

1/2 cup currants

1/3 cup olive oil (+/-)

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 tablespoons parsley

1 tablespoon basil

1 tablespoon sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Tools:

Baking sheet (1/2 size for toaster oven)

Cutting board

Knife

Bowl (x2)

Cheese grater (optional)

Large frying pan with lid

Measuring cups and spoons

Fine sieve or colander

Can opener

Timer

Serving spoon

Let us start off by saying that caponata is a very flexible recipe (sub things in or out as you wish), but it is not a picky eater approved recipe. Please do not attempt to feed this to fussy small fries or to the family members whose gut-check reaction to anything vegetable is "why?" or "ew." We will not be held responsible for the griping.

Be prepared to spend a good deal of time cutting vegetables for this recipe. We highly recommend toasting the pine nuts (just as they are, don't be tempted to oil or season them) in the oven for about 15 minutes while you chop your many veggies. At least that way you're making progress on two fronts while you bore yourself chopping, and it adds some nice depth of flavor to the final product.

As always: be sure to wash your produce!

Start with the eggplant. Trim the top off, and halve it down the center so you have a flat side to set it on while you cut. No one likes escaping veggies, or nicking fingers trying to catch them. Your goal is to cut this large, funny-looking vegetable into a half inch dice. Once you get it diced, move it to one of the two bowls.

Next up will be your green onions. Trim them up and just roughly chop them, then dump them into the bowl with the eggplant.

Mince or slice your garlic (some families have strong feelings about a preference here, but we don't much care as long as it lands in the pan), and toss it in with the eggplant and the green onion.

That lonely single rib of celery goes next. We find it easiest to cut it lengthwise into thirds before we start the widthwise cuts, that way the chunks of celery aren't so big they end up accidentally taking over the meal. Once it's cut, those pieces go in with the rest so far.

And the carrots you've got can either be chopped or shredded. The regular carrots at our grocery store were sad looking this week, so we subbed in a double handful of baby carrots and shredded them for uniformity. The carrots join the others in the bowl.

That bowl is looking pretty full, isn't it? Time to start on the next.

Take the tops off your peppers and remove and discard the seeds and ribs. Chop down to half-inch dice like the eggplant and move them to the second bowl. 

Now you're finally done with the cutting board and the knife, just in time to need a measuring cup!

Measure out your currants and toss them in with the peppers.

Take the capers out of their jar, but don't add them to the bowl yet. These little guys are STRONG, so plop them into a sieve or colander and rinse them thoroughly. Once they're drained, they can join the currants and peppers. 

Toss your parsley and basil on top of that second bowl.

And right about now, the timer should be going off for those pine nuts. Just turn off the heat and let them sit for a while; their turn will arrive soon enough.

Now we move our attention to the frying pan on the stove. Pour enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and light the burner. Set to just over medium and heat until the oil starts to shimmer. Be careful not to set it too high - olive oil has a low smoke point, and you do not want the smoke detector to give you an unnecessary wake up call.

Once the oil is hot, dump the eggplant bowl into the pan. We know it looks like there's not going to be room for anything else - don't worry, it will cook down. Give it a quick stir, then cover the pan. Set a timer for six minutes. Stir occasionally during that time.

When your six minutes are up, push the eggplant mixture to one side of the pan. Add a little more oil, then the bowl of peppers. Stir again and let it cook, uncovered this time, for another three or four minutes.

As the peppers soften up, you're safe to add the pine nuts. Just pour them all in there and give everything another stir. You'll probably need to add another splash of oil at this point, along with the red wine vinegar, the tomato paste and the sugar. (Adding the sugar here offsets the funky smell of the vinegar and helps balance the acidic, tinny taste of the tomato paste.)

Stir. A lot.

We know that tomato paste looks like it's never going to stop being a blob in the middle of the pan... But give it time, and don't quit stirring.

Once everything is incorporated (finally!), use a serving spoon to scoop out a serving to enjoy. We put ours over polenta, but that part is totally up to you.

Let us know over at our Facebook page what you thought of this recipe. We love hearing how they turned out for you. 

And if you need new appliance performance, preferably also without the jumbo-sized price tag, maybe reach out to our service department. You can reach them through our contact page, or by giving us a call at ((214) 599-0055)

Blending Your Own Teas

If you were here for our post earlier this week, you'll be excited as this week's post is all about how to blend your own teas! Will be taking a look at several different varieties of herbal tea that you can make from the plants we mentioned in our last post.

Like we said in our first post, please do not take anything said within this post or are growing your own herbal garden post as medical advice, and Appliance Rescue Service is not to be held liable in the event that you do choose to do so under your own cognizance. 

However, many of these teas can help with various medical issues as much medicine derives from our natural world. Therefore we would suggest, if you do find yourself interested, to discuss it with your primary caregiver not as an alternative to medicine but to be used in conjunction as part of a whole-body healing approach.

We prefer not to repeat ourselves when it's possible to avoid it, so although many of the herbs and spices are used in several different teas we'll talk about the benefits of them when they're first mentioned rather than repeating it for each tea. If different benefits are used in different teas we will of course talk about them where relevant.

Courtesy of Frantiska Ambrozovya

Headache B Gone
1 part spearmint
1 part black tea
Orange zest to taste

Medicinal Properties – this tea is particularly good when you have headaches. The combination between the spearmint and the black tea would be similar to taking Advil or Tylenol. Spearmint specifically is good for treating headaches, while black tea adds a hit of caffeine that is seen in many headache treatments.

Lemon Sunshine
1 part lemon balm
1 part lemon verbena
½ part lemon thyme
⅛ part lemon zest

Courtesy of anna-pou

Medicinal Properties – this tea is a good all-around pick-me-up. Lemon balm, lemon verbena, and lemon thyme all have effects on various parts of the body. Working together, they can soothe everything from heart palpitations to soreness to indigestion and nausea. With all of these various lemon-flavored herbs Plus actual lemons zest, you also get a very nice morning tea to help you kickstart your day.

Lady’s Cup
1 part chamomile
1 part red raspberry leaf
½ part peppermint or spearmint
Just a pinch lavender

Courtesy of işıl-agc

Medicinal Properties – this soothing floral tea is wonderful at the end of a rough day. Although red raspberry leaf does aid in several feminine issues there is no reason that a male cannot drink the tea. All of these together have a very calming and relaxing effect on both the nervous system and the brain.

Courtesy of Bru-nO

Stomach Soother
2 cups of water
2 teaspoons peppermint leaf
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 inch knob of ginger 

Medicinal Properties – if you're having stomach issues such as nausea or diarrhea and can't stand to keep much down this is a good tea to turn to. As we mentioned in our garden post, Ginger is a fantastic stomach soother for most people. Combined with the fennel seeds and peppermint leaves into a tea that will perk up your appetite but it also will help in calming most stomach issues.

Elderberry Tea
2 cups of water
2 tablespoons elderberry syrup (or one heaping tablespoon dried berries)
1 cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods
Simmer for 30 minutes.

Courtesy of pasja

Medicinal Properties – the cinnamon and cardamom in this tea are flavor additives rather than being part of the medicinal action. That comes from the elderberries which support a healthy immune system thanks to all of the antioxidants that are packed into the berries. Depending on how you decided to preserve your harvest you can use a syrup or a heaping tablespoon of the dried berries while making this tea. Many suggest drinking One 8 oz cup of this a day during flu and cold season.

 Rosemary-Mint Tea
Two (4 inch) sprigs rosemary or 2 teaspoons dried
About ¼ cup dried mint, either peppermint or spearmint
Pinch green tea

Medicinal Properties – Rosemary has been shown to have a positive effect on the prevention of aging in the brain as well as protecting the brain from damage due to free radicals. It has also been shown to help improve recovery in stroke patients. Combined with green tea and peppermint, this is a wonderful tea for studying and during a long day of work. 

Garden Tea
1 part Purple sage leaves
1 partLemon balm
1 part Peppermint or spearmint
1 part Rose petals 

Medicinal Properties – this tea is another general pick me up combining the benefits and flavors of several different herbs and spices. Sage is ideal for many different throat-related issues and is commonly used in gargles. It also acts as a wonderful digestive stimulant which means this could be an ideal after-lunch tea.

Lavender-Mint Midnight Tea
1 part lavender
4 parts peppermint (or spearmint if you like a milder mint)

Medicinal Properties – as we said earlier, peppermint is a very soothing and calming flavor, and combined with lavender, this is an ideal middle-of-the-night tea. If you're having trouble falling asleep or falling back to sleep after having woken up, this is a tea we recommend. Lavender is regularly part of different cures for insomnia, both as a tea and as aromatherapy. It helps to calm the mind, which is why many use it in this fashion. 

Summer Sunshine Tea
1 part chamomile 

¼ part lemon peel
1 part peppermint
1 part sage
Pinch clove

Medicinal properties: This is very much a calming tea while also feeling like you soaked up the sun. The warmth from the clove and lemon combined with the calming effects of the chamomile and peppermint make this tea a wonderful one to have on hand in the middle of winter.

Which one of these tees are you most eager to try? Let us know over on our Facebook page, as always we love to hear from you!

While you wait for your tea to brew, you might need someone to take a look at your ice maker to get you through the summer heat and cool down that delicious tea. (All of these can be served over ice! You'll just need to double the recipe to ensure the flavor isn't lost.) Fortunately, Appliance Rescue Service does indeed service ice makers. You can reach out to us via our contact page, or by giving us a call ((214) 599-0055). We'll work with you to choose a date and time that works best for your schedule. 

Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprints

The Best Cookies for Any Bake Sale

Sometimes the weather just calls for cookies.

While it is very firmly spring now, we sometimes get late cold fronts and even ice storms into April, where we are. We've had hard freezes as far into the year as mid-May, even. And cold days like that are an excellent excuse to make cookies. 

This time we ran a little short on butter and had to get creative. So we combined the idea of cream cheese snowball cookies and shortbread thumbprint cookies and ended up with this sweet little hybrid: chocolate cream cheese thumbprint cookies.

Ingredients:

1 8 oz block cream cheese

1/2 stick butter

1 egg

1/4 c bakers cocoa

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour

1 c sugar

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 tsp vanilla extract

2-3 tbsp raspberry preserves

Tools:

Cookie sheet

Parchment paper

mixing bowls

microwave safe dish or saucepan (to melt butter and cream cheese)

measuring cups and spoons

spoon

ziploc bag

toothpick or scissors or sharp knife

Before we get started here, you should know that two of your ingredients are going to be your problem children. The butter and the cream cheese are going to be solid when you start out, but they really need to be liquid in order to do their jobs here. So we need to melt them - carefully. Most people use the microwave to accomplish this, but we have had terrible luck with that in the past (think exploding and/or scorched edges and untouched centers despite careful timing and frequent stirring). We prefer to use the stovetop and a saucepan over the lowest possible heat and stir every minute or so.

Cream cheese does melt, it's just stubborn. This is definitely not a recipe where you can substitute in cream cheese's lower-fat sibling, Neufchatel cheese. Leave it over the heat until you have no more lumps. You'll need to be extra patient with this step, sorry.  

As with any doughy recipe, mix your wet ingredients in one bowl (be sure to break the yolk on the egg, you want it to incorporate fully) and your dry ingredients in another. This helps prevent finding big lumps of crumbly, un-mixed flour or globs of sticky egg when you go to work the dough into individual cookies.

Stir together the contents of your two mixing bowls in the larger of the two bowls. Don't overdo it, because the cookies will be tough if you get carried away.

Once everything is mixed well, divide your dough into 36 balls. We know, three dozen feels like a weird number to shoot for, but it's what our test batch turned out to have after we split off comfortable serving-sized pieces.

Put down a layer of parchment paper on your baking sheet and preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Place each of the dough balls destined to become cookies on the sheet. They don't spread much at all, so as long as there's some space between them to press them, you can really pack them in.

Press lightly on each one with your thumb (or a spoon, or literally anything that will slightly flatten the dough and create a little well for your raspberry preserves). The goal here is to flatten the ball of dough into a thick disc, leaving a little divot in the center that doesn't create a slope to the outside edges of the cookie. If you like runny messes of preserves, that's your business - but we'd very much prefer it stay where we put it. 

Once all the cookies are shaped and ready for the preserves, fill a ziploc bag with the preserves and use something sharp to cut or poke a little hole in one corner. Utilize it like a piping bag, squeezing a little bit of preserves into each cookie. Try not to overfill any of the wells, as they'll make an epic mess if you do.

Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Allow them to cool on the cookie sheet for at least ten minutes before you try to move them - they'll still be very soft when you take them out of the oven, and they'll need that extra few minutes to firm up a little.

We know it's tempting to eat them right away - they smell so good, after all! - but please, please give them time to cool. Otherwise, you'll be like us and burn the roof of your mouth on what feels like molten lava.  

We won’t ask if you’re going to try making them this time. These are too good not to try. So instead, let us know over on our Facebook, what other types of jam do you think you could pair with this? 

Since you wound up here, and you’ve read all the way to the bottom, when was the last time you had a maintenance check for your appliances? If you haven’t done it in at least a year, you might consider having one. Spring and fall are the best times to have your appliances checked out, rather than the chaos of the holidays or the heat of the summer. Getting an experienced technician to walk through all of your problems now can mean your appliances are less likely to fail during the heat of the summer. 

If that type of preparation is something you’re interested in, give us a call ((214) 599-0055) or reach out to us via our contact page. We’ll work with you to set up a time and date that works for your schedule and send out one of our technicians to work with you. At Appliance Rescue Service, our goal is to keep your home running smoothly.