died in the wool ______

To have no set purpose in one's life is the harlotry of the will -Stephen Mackenna-

Friday, February 17, 2006

stromboli

One of my friends is back in Minneapolis this week. He asked me if there was anything that I wanted from home. And there were quite afew things, there was one thing I really wanted. Stromboli from broders.

I remember taking out the long strombolis to fill the display. So long, you had to cut them in fourths, and they were still huge. The vegetarian one was excellent; it had spinach, tomatoes, artichokes, and provolone in it. I probably haven't had one in over five years.

Keeping that in mind, I went about collecting the ingredients. Potatoes and spinach are cheap at 100 yen a bag here. I used a can of tomatoes, which was 88 yen. Artichokes and provolone are hard to come by here, though, but I substitued a danish blue cheese that I picked up at Yamaya .

I used half of this Stromboli dough recipe. I halved the recipe, as one stromboli is about all that would fit in my oven and didn't want extra dough sitting in the refrigerator. I think I put a whole recipe of oil in the dough, which I was worried about, but it turned out fine. The final dough was actually a little crisp, like phyllo dough almost, so I might even do it again.

For preparation, I drained the liquid from the tomatoes, reserving it to make a simple red sauce from it for the stromboli (garlic, basil, etc.). I crumbled the tomatoes and sauteed them with the spinach until it wilted. I put all of the ingredients in a colander, pressing the mixture to remove as much liquid as possible. I used the juices in the red sauce. I sliced the potatoes thin on a mandoline. After the dough had expanded, I rolled it out, placing the potatoes down first. I then crumbled the blue cheese, and then spread out the spinach tomato mixture over that, sprinkling some basil and pepper over the top. Stretched the doug over the top, pinching at the side to seal it.Rolled the closed stromboli over so the crease was on the side on the bottom, and cut three slits in the top deep enough so the ingredients could be seen. Baked it in a 190C oven for 35 minutes.

The results were quite good, and looked almost exactly like the strombolis from broders! I would like to play around with different cheeses and even different ingredients. If there was a way to get a less rising dough that would be nice; the ones at broders were never puffy but flat and rectangular. I might bake it for a few minutes less, as it was a little crispy just at the top.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

span.shortpost {display:none;}