Broa

Broa is a Portuguese yeast cornbread. I've eaten it in the Azores and made it a few times from Jean Anderson's The Food of Portugal. This loaf turned out especially well. I served it for the first course of a dinner with the neighbors, accompanied by Iberico cheese and Black Olive Pate.

Broa

Make a sponge by mixing 1 package dried yeast, 1/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal, and 1/4 cup warm water. Let work for about 40 minutes. I do this first step in the bread maker, and then add these remaining ingredients:

2/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup scalded milk, or reconstituted evaporated milk

1 tablespoon olive oil

Scant teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups unbleached flour (more or less depending on humidity)

Mix and knead in bread maker, and let rise until puffy. Form a round loaf and let rise in a greased pie pan for 20 or 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 475 degrees--get it really hot!-- turn down to about 425 when you put the loaf in and then bake for 30 or 35 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool on rack.

For the Olive Pate: Wrap a whole head of garlic in a a double layer of aluminum foil and bake for an hour at 300 degrees. Let cool, and then squeeze out the softened garlic into food processor bowl. Add 1 cup pitted Kalamata olives and some fresh black pepper and puree. Serve with bread.

Olive Update

Back in January I posted about curing the olives from our backyard tree. It took a long time, maybe about two months total, but they were delicious. I used this marinade featuring vinegar, garlic, and lemon:

1-1/2 cups white wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon salt dissolved in 2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

3 lemon wedges

2 cloves garlic

Olive oil to cover

Next time I wouldn't cover them with olive oil. They tasted best after a whole month of marinating. I wish I had some left!

Pictures above is our herb garden. Mostly you can see parsley, sage, and rosemary, but maybe there's tarragon squeezed in there. The sage is blooming with purple flowers. Since most things are in their prime now, I plan to dry big batches of each. Sage and tarragon are especially fragrant and palatable when dried.

Our Olives

We have an olive tree behind our house and this year for the first time since we moved in, it had abundant olives. Dad picked a couple of quarts and I looked on the internet for instructions. This article seemed reasonable.

I slit the olives and am brining them now. We are into the 5th week and they are still bitter, but there's progress: after the first week I had to spit out the one I tasted. Now they are tasting rather olive-like. I'll give them one more week and then marinate them.

I used a jar to weight down the olives in the brine, and I stored them in our laundry room, which is cooler than the rest of the house.

Fish Curry and Accompaniments

This was a typical Saturday night dinner for two: a green curry of fish (frozen albacore); a cucumber and tomato salad with basil, green onion, lime juice, and Kalamata olives from the Middle Eastern market; brown rice; and pear chutney from the freezer, which I made last Christmas season.

I was very impressed with the olives. I had gotten in the habit of buying pitted Kalamatas for convenience, but these were whole and unviolated, and they were so flavorful and firm.