Lunch

Egg and onion sandwich with homemade "crock" pickle.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

My wife declares this "the best" egg sandwich ever. It's made with a fresh pastured egg from Creekside Farm & Orchard in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Daughter and I walked to the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday and picked up a couple of dozen. (We used to get our eggs from farmer friend Brett's weekly winter CSA box. But we were unable to find a partner to share the CSA subscription this year. I feel terribly disloyal, but we must have our pastured eggs.)

The egg and its rich orange yolk were mixed with a bit of salt and pepper and quick-fried. We toasted slices of the multi-grain bread that we get delivered from our dairy, South Mountain Creamery. (It's a deliciously chewy bread that makes quite a trip, first baked in Ellicott City, Maryland, then trucked across the state to the dairy almost in West Virginia, then back to us in the District of Columbia. It arrives frozen but you'd never know once it is thawed.)

A little mayonnaise on the bread, some thinly sliced onion on the egg. The pickle is a sweet and sour variety that we put up last summer, just the thing to spice up this simple lunch.

Steamed Brown Bread

Steamed brown bread, a New England tradition, was a treat for us even growing up in the Midwest. We ate it out of a can (I never knew it any other way) and it was always something exotic and mysterious when it arrived on our dinner plate, almost on a par with getting chow mein carryout from the local Chinese restaurant.

My memory is of the B&M brand of canned brown bread. This is a proud company from Portland, Maine, that first opened for business in 1867 and was canning corn long before it thought to can brown bread or Boston baked beans, the company's most important product. B&M has since been bought up by a succession of bigger food corporations over the years. But the brand and the factory still exist in Portland. The beans, cooked in open pots in brick ovens, come in a can as well as a jar uniquely shaped to look like a classic bean pot.

Making steamed brown bread at home is simple, but the technique may be new to you as it was to me. Instead of baking in an oven, the bread cooks in a pot of boiling water, usually in some sort of tin can or similar mold. (You can even make it in a flower pot). To get the can, I had to buy a pound of coffee at the supermarket. We don't normally get our coffee in a can anymore. Then, after I had mixed the batter, I found that the recipe I was following in Aliza Green's The Bean Bible was much more than enough to fill the 1-pound can she called for. I see now that James Beard, who included an almost identical recipe in Beard on Bread, called for "cans," plural.

An iconic New England food, steamed brown bread typically calls for three types of whole-grain flours, starting with rye flour, corn meal and either whole wheat, graham flour, oat flour or, in my case, since it was what I had in the pantry, barley flour. The batter must contain molasses--a staple ingredient in bygone New England--to give the bread its distinctive color and sweetness. Baking soda and buttermilk react to give the bread its rise. Traditionally, it can be made plain or with raisins.

If you are using coffee cans to make the bread, you'll need to grease the inside or line them with parchment paper. You'll also need a tall pot ( or pots) to steam them in, with a wire rack or empty tuna cans or something similar (I used stainless baking rings) to put at the bottom of the pot so that the bread is not touching the heat source. Since I only had one coffee can, I improvised at the last minute with a small, high-sided cake pan. It worked just as well. Either way, the mold should be covered with a double layer of aluminum foil tied securely with a length of butcher's twine.

To make your bread, mix together 1 cup rye flour, 1 cup cornmeal, 1 cup oat flour (or substitute barley, whole wheat or graham flour), 2 teaspoons baking soda and 1 teaspoons salt. In a separate bowl, mix together 2 cups buttermilk and 3/4 cup molasses.

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour the batter into 2 greased, 1-pound coffee cans (I used spray canola oil) or molds lined with parchment paper. Each can should be about 2/3 full. Place the cans into tall pots with a wire rack or empty tuna cans on the bottom. Fill the pots with water to a depth halfway up the side of the bread can (or mold). Bring water to a boil, reduce heat and continue boiling for about 2 1/2 hours, or until a skewer inserted into the bread comes out clean. When the can is cool enough to handle, simply remove the foil, invert the can and tap the bread out onto a cutting board. You may have to use a thin knife initially to separate the bread from the inside of the can.

Note: Aliza Green suggests cooking the bread 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Meanwhile, James Beard calls for cooking the bread 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Quite a difference. We cooked ours for2 1/2 hours and it seemed fine. If two loaves seem like too much, cut the recipe in half and just make one.

My wife thinks the bread gains from sitting a day or two before being eaten. We agree that the only way to serve it is with a generous slather of cream cheese and preferably a bowl of Boston baked beans.

Kids Make Souffleed Corn Bread

For the second stop on our virtual world culinary tour, the kids in my "food appreciation" classes traveled to the Appalachian region of western North Carolina.

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between Appalachian fare and what we loosely refer to as Southern Food. Sometimes the two intertwine. Corn is a staple of both and corn meal--the basis for hearty corn bread--in ubiquitous in this part of the country. Think grits, hush puppies, spoon bread--we could devote a whole book to this one particular grain and how it permeated the soul of America's one true cuisine.

My go-to reference for Southern baked goods is the classic Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, by Bill Neal. Originally from South Carolina, Bill Neal made a name for himself as a restaurateur in Chapel Hill, NC, with his wife Moreton Neal, then went on to become something of a scholar where Southern food is concerned before he died too young at the age of 41 from AIDS. Neal included no less than seven recipes for corn bread in Biscuits, Spoonbread. What they all have in common is corn meal, of course, and an iron skillet in which to bake the bread. Frequently, the recipe also calls for buttermilk and a chemical rising agent, such as baking soda and sometimes baking powder.

These are the essentials of true, Southern corn bread, not the cakey, overly sweet stuff you so often see in cafeteria lines.

A corn bread souffleed with beaten egg whites would be the kind of thing you'd put out when company came for dinner. (In fact, this is a variation on something Bill Neal called "Company Corn Bread.") Mainly, what I wanted the kids in our "food appreciation" classes to appreciate is the role rustic corn meal plays in our food culture and how it can be manipulated with a few simple ingredients into something ethereally delicious.

In some Southern households, it was customary to have at least one heavy iron skillet on hand devoted to making corn bread. From frequent use, the skillet would become well-seasoned and non-stick. You may not have an iron skillet devoted to making corn bread. If you don't have an iron skillet at all, can I suggest getting one? It is a great kitchen tool, something we use all the time.

1 1/2 cup white cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs, separated
3/4 cup creamed-style canned corn
3 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. In a large measuring cup, mix buttermilk, egg yolks, creamed corn and melted butter. (I melt the butter in the iron skillet in the oven, which has the added virtue of greasing the skillet. Simply pour the butter, once melted, into the measuring cup with the other wet ingredients, then put the skillet back in the oven to heat up again.)

In a separate mixing bowl, beat eggs whites to stiff peaks.

Meanwhile, pour wet ingredients from measuring cup into dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Then fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour the mixture into the hot skillet. If the batter bubbles around the edges, you know you are on the right track. Place the skillet in the oven and bake until the top of the corn bread is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

You could serve this bread with your favorite barbecue, with a bowl of Southern greens or beans, a salad or just an afternoon snack. If possible, serve it warm, perhaps with a drizzle of melted creamery butter or some local honey.

Braided Sweet Potato Bread

I'm not the baker in the family--that would be my wife. But I can make this sweet potato bread, which should prove that anyone can do it as well.

This is a versatile bread with a light taste of sweet potatoes, just the thing to help us use that huge haul of sweet potatoes we made from the garden recently. I made some for our recent "food appreciation" classes where the kids spread slices of bread with fresh apple butter. That's another great combination.

The first thing my wife noticed about this loaf was that I'd screwed up the braid. Oh, well. I guess I was AWOL when they were giving braiding instructions. But with an egg glaze nicely browned in the oven, no one really notices. This bread is especially good toasted for breakfast. I've been snacking on it lately, smeared with blue cheese.

The recipe, which I initially posted here, makes two loaves that can be braided or not. Start eating one now and freeze the second loaf for later. Another suggestion: consider replacing some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour.

Kids Make Apple Butter

Apple butter is just a hop, skip and jump from applesauce. So if you already know how to make applesauce, you are just a couple of steps from having apple butter.

There's no dairy in apple "butter." But it is thicker and darker than apple sauce--another of the thousand or so uses for apples our forebears came up with when apples were such an important part of the diet.

If you are looking for ways to store from the fall harvest, apple butter is a genius stroke as it can easily be canned and stashed in the pantry.

Use a flavorful, cooking-type apple such as Winesap or Jonathan. We chose Mountaineers from nearby West Virginia and Macintosh. For this recipe, you do not remove the skin of the apple (lending some pectin to help thicken the final product) but you do remove the stems and cores. A couple of helpful pieces of equipment are a food mill, as shown in the picture above, and a splatter screen for covering your cook pot.

To make four pints apple butter:

5 pounds apples, cored and cut into eight wedges each (skin on)

1 cup apple cider

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Place apples and cider in a heavy pot, cover and bring to a boil over moderately high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until apples are soft, about 10 minutes.

Process the cooked apples finely through a food mill. Pour the apple puree back into the cook pot and mix with sugars and spices. (Note: use 1/4 cup sugar for each cup of puree). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and continue cooking uncovered, stirring frequently and scraping the bottom of the pot so that the puree does not scorch. Keep in mind that the thick puree, rather than quietly bubbling, tends to burp and burst and send hot material flying into the air. This is where a splatter screen over your pot comes in handy. You don't want a big mess, but you do want the moisture to evaporate so the puree can thicken.

Continue cooking for an hour or more, until the apple puree has thickened and caramelized to a nutty brown. It should mound up in a spoon.

Now you can ladle the hot apple butter into sterile pint jars. Seal the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

The kids in our "food appreciation" classes had great fun cutting the apples and grinding away at the food mill. Our treat was spreading the finished apple butter on slices sweet potato bread, freshly baked from some of the sweet potatoes recently harvested from our garden. Talk about a tasty snack for fall....

Lunch

All this talk about pickles and rye bread made me hungry for a corned beef sandwich.

Unfortunately, the District of Columbia is not exactly known for its Jewish delicatessens. So this menu required a trip to the Parkway Deli, almost in Silver Spring, Maryland.

It was a pleasure to stand in front of the display case and ogle the chopped chicken liver, the white fish salad, the brined herring. I also found a bag of Utz potato chips cooked in lard, which would be our new preference over cooking oils such as processed sunflower or cottonseed. I grabbed some of the herring, along with the corned beef and a pint of cole slaw.

To construct the sandwich, I spread Dijon mustard on two slices of fresh rye bread. A goodly amount of corned beef was piled on one slice, then drizzled with a homemade Thousand Island dressing (mayo, ketchup, pickle relish, rice wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce), followed by a slice of Swiss cheese and a layer of cole slaw. It's too hot to light the over, so I placed the sandwich in an iron skillet over low heat and covered it to melt the cheese. After turning the sandwich once, it was beautifully toasted on each side, the cheese running.

Serve with the chips and one of our own deli-style pickles. Close your eyes and you are transported to the Carnegie Deli. The only thing missing: a cream soda.

Our Favorite Banana Bread with Chocolate Nibs

There are so many things to keep track of in this life and bananas are just one of them.

Is there a single household in American that doesn't have a banana or two sitting somewhere on the kitchen counter? I doubt it. I can hardly remember a day when there wasn't a banana within easy reach. We used to slice them into our Cheerios. Now we reserve them for fruit smoothies.

Bananas continue to ripen after they're picked and do require a certain amount of vigilance once they've found a spot to rest in your kitchen. A perfectly yellow banana beckons to children, even though it might not have reached the apex of ripeness. A dark blotch here or there, on the other hand, becomes a major defect in the eyes of a pre-adolescent. Such a banana may be lost to the usual peel-and-eat routine and enters a kind of fruit limbo. No one in the family is quite sure what to do with such a banana. It may go uneaten for a long period, getting darker and darker as bananas are wont to do.

In our house, I've seen bananas turn almost black just sitting in the fruit basket. Then they begin to ooze. You may notice fruit flies hovering about. This would be good time to consider putting the banana in the refrigerator to slow the ripening process. Often as not, my wife has already designated this banana for a banana bread and will put the lovelorn fruit in the freezer with a number of its kin.

Yesterday my wife cleaned out the freezer and, lo, there was more than one bag of overripe bananas in there. Within a short time, the aroma of banana bread baking in the oven wafted through the house. Then out came two loaves, destined to last not very long. One of them went off to school this morning with our daughter. Friday is special treat day in her class. The other is very quickly getting smaller. It sits on a cutting board with a chocolate-smeared bread knife nearby, subject to being reduced even further at any moment.

We are huge fans of banana bread. My wife, the baker in the family, otherwise detests bananas. She will turn away from the faintest whiff of bananas. But for some reason she loves banana bread. She used to add chocolate chips to her banana bread occasionally. But about a year ago she discovered chocolate nibs. These are pebbly, unsweetened bits of cacao that add a bit of chocolate crunch to things without the cloying sweetness.

"You know me," says the wife. "I'm all about crunch."

They might even do as a substitute for nuts in your banana bread, if you have an allergy or just don't like nuts. Our last purchase of "roasted cacao nibs" was from The Spice House in Chicago.

To make one 9-inch loaf, adapted from The New Best Recipe:

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups walnuts, chopped coarse
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe, soft, large bananas mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs beaten lightly
6 tablspoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate nibs
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Place an oven rack in the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan and dust with flour.

Spread walnuts on a baking sheets and toast until fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and walnuts. Set aside.

In a bowl, mix mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter and vanilla. Fold banana mixture, nibs and chocolate chips (if using) into the dry ingredients until just combined. The batter should look thick and chunky. Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan and bake until the loaf is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, or about 55 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Note: My wife likes a smaller loaf. She increases the recipe by 50 percent and makes two 8-by-4-inch loaves. If you don't have chocolate nibs handy, just increase the chocolate chips--or not, as you prefer. You don't have to use any chocolate at all. The bread will still come out fine.

Dark Days: Meal 6

Turkey left over from the 31-pound Thanksgiving bird we butchered at our friend Mike Klein's farm in nearby Prince George's County. Here some dark meat is piled on a thick slice of yeasted sweet-potato bread (using sweet potatoes from our CSA package), smeared with mayo and gingered cranberry relish. Everything is then smothered with giblet gravy. In the background is a simple salad composed of the many lettuce varieties, arugula, mizuna and baby mustard greens we have growing in the garden.


The sweet potato bread is from Bill Neal's classic Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie.

To make two loaves in standard loaf pans (9 x 5 x 3 inches):

2 pkg. dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1 cup milk

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1 1/2 cup mashed, cooked, cold sweet potatoes

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup rolled, uncooked oats

Dissolve dry yeast in warm water.

Heat milk with sugar and salt, stirring until dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Cream butter and sweet potatoes well. Add dissolved yeast, milk mixture and then all dry ingredients. Beat very well, then turn out onto a floured surface. Knead vigorously until satiny, about 10 minutes.

Place dough in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down and divide into two portions. Roll into loaf shapes and place in greased loaf pans. Cover and allow to rise about 1 hour or until doubled.

Before baking, glaze the loaves with 1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons milk. Place loaves in a 400-degree oven and bake 45 minutes. They should emerge a deep honey color.

Note: These loaves can also be braided before placing in the loaf pans.

Pumpkin Nut Bread

Cook some pumpkins and you're bound to have leftovers.

That was the case this week as we were preparing pumpkin for our wild rice pilaf. My wife has a serious itch for making bread lately. The leftover pumpkin was a natural contender for a pumpkin bread.

For a recipe, she turned to a recent issue of Cook's Illustrated. This is quick bread, meaning it uses chemical rising agents rather than yeast. We are very fond of quick banana bread and this bread is similar, right down to the walnuts. Except there's no banana, of course, and the bread embodies everything we like about fall, including the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and, of course, pumpkin.

To make one 9-inch loaf:

2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups pumpkin, mashed (or 1 15-ounce can pumpkin)

1 cup (7 ounces) sugar

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup toasted pecans or walnuts, chopped coarse

1 cup dried cranberries

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle positions and heat over to 350 degrees.

Generously coat a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and ginger together in large bowl. Whisk pumpkin, sugar, melted butter, eggs and vanilla together in separate bowl until frothy.

Gently fold pumpkin mixture into flour mixture with rubber spatula until just combined. Fold in nuts and cranberries. Batter will be very thick.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth surface. Bake until golden and toothpick inserted into center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 45 to 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool at least 1 hour before serving. (Bread can be wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

Try this smeared with cream cheese, but don't tell anyone.

Cooked Oatmeal Bread

There is an ongoing dispute in our house over oatmeal.

Specifically, my wife disagrees with my method of cooking rolled oats.

"It looks like snot," she says.

"It's not snot," I reply. "It's porridge."

"It looks like snot and it's disgusting," is her retort. "I'm not eating anything that looks like snot."

My wife, you may have gathered, is sensitive to certain textures in food. She also does not like squash. Too much like, well, squash. Her disapproval of my oatmeal has affected our 7-year-old daughter as well. Now when I call her downstairs for breakfast, her first words are, "It better not be oatmeal."

The difference in cooking methods is extremely subtle. Only one little step separates my method from my wife's method. And that is, I place the oats in the water before bringing it to a boil. I know enough to remove the pot from the heat once the mix begins to bubble. My wife, meanwhile, first boils the water, then adds the rolled oats and removes the pot from the heat.

"If you'll notice," she likes to point out, "my oats are still flaky."

In other words, not like snot.

The other day I made a pot of oatmeal, but rather than just throw it in the garbage, my wife had a brilliant idea. Why not turn it into bread? For some reason, she was in a bread making mood. She located one of our favorite bread baking books--Beard on Bread, by James Beard--and set to work.

What came out of the oven later that day were two of the most perfect loaves of oatmeal bread. Soft, lightly textured and sweet smelling--I can't remember when I've had a more delicious bread. Better than anything you can buy in the store. We immediately cut a couple of slices and smeared them with butter, a rare treat for us in these days of heart-healthy cooking.


So if you have a pot of oatmeal that looks like snot, or if you just happen to have some leftover oatmeal doing nothing better in the fridge, or if you're just in the mood to make a great loaf of bread, I can recommend this bread to you. Here is the recipe as published by James Beard in 1973.


1 cup coarse rolled oats

1 cup boiling water

2 packages active dry yeast

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1/2 cup warm water (100 to 115 degrees approximately)

1 cup warm milk

1 tablespoon salt

1/4 dark brown sugar

4-5 cups all-purpose flour, approximately.



Cook the oats in the boiling water until thickened, about 3 minutes. Pour into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool to lukewarm. Meanwhile, stir the yeast and teaspoon of sugar into the warm water until dissolved, and allow to proof. Add the warm milk, salt, brown sugar, and yeast mixture to the oats and stir well, then stir in 4 cups of flour, 1 cup at a time.

Turn out on a floured board. Knead into a smooth pliable, elastic dough, if necessary using as much as 1/2 to 1 cup, or more, of additional flour to get it to the right feel. (This will take about 10 minutes, unless you do it in an electric mixer with a dough hook, which is what my wife did). Shape the dough into a ball, put into a well-buttered bowl, and turn to coat on all sides. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Punch the dough down. Knead for 2 or 3 minutes and shape into two loaves. Thoroughly butter two 8 x 4 x 2-inch tins. Place the dough in the tins, cover, and let rise in a warm place until about even with the top of the tins, or almost doubled in bulk.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, place the bread in the center of the lowest rack, and bake for about 45 to 50 minutes, until the loaves sound hollow when tapped on top and bottom with the knuckles. Return the loaves without the tins to the oven rack to bake for about 5 minutes and acquire a firmer crust. Remove the loaves to a rack to cool.

Note: If you want a very soft top crust, brush the loaves with melted butter when you bring them out of the oven.

Lean Times

We are seeing signs of spring everywhere. Nature is taking its course. But this is still a transitional time of year for food. The larder is confused: it's telling us we're in winter.

You would hardly know it from the huge displays of fresh produce at the grocery where every possible variety is on display. But if you are eating locally, the pickings may be limited to what overwintered in the garden and what you can scrounge from your pantry.

Here in the District of Columbia, the lettuces are only and inch or two out of the ground. The mustard greens and radishes are coming along, and we are seeing the beginnings of carrots and chard.

Meanwhile, our farmer friend Brett was hit hard by this year's fluky weather. Brett's strawberries bloomed first in January when it was so mild, then again in March. Then all the blooms were killed off by April freezes. Ditto for his early plantings of sweet corn and green beans. Then migrating starlings swooped down and gobbled up his English peas and sugar snap peas.

Elsewhere in this part of the world, many farmers saw their peaches, their blueberries and other fruit crops devastated.

In other words, in the real world of the outdoors where most of our food grows, it's still a struggle.

So I'm not going to pretend it's spring. Instead, we're going to meditate on the change of seasons with a simple soup. Time to dig into the pantry again. I have a big chunk of rustic bread sitting on top of my refrigerator. So I think I'll turn that into a bread and garlic soup. This is a simple yet satisfying meal, a reminder that food doesn't have to be complicated--or bright green--to be good.

Garlic and Bread Soup

Serves Six Persons

This is a primitive and aromatic soup. Nothing could be simpler, the ingredients consisting of a basic stock, sliced garlic cloves and bread. The bread seems to melt like cheese into the broth and despite its rudimentary qualities, the soup has great depth of flavor and makes a meal all by itself. If you like, crack some eggs into the hot broth to poach just before serving.

Note: This soup should be eaten immediately after it has been made. It does not keep well, as the starch in the bread tends to make a pudding-like consistency over time.

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

generous pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon mild paprika

½ loaf country bread (about 8 ounces) cut into ½-inch slices and torn into bite-size pieces

7 cups chicken stock (preferably homemade brown chicken stock)

1 teaspoon salt or to taste

chopped parsely and grated cheese for garnish (a hard Spanish cheese would be good with this. Otherwise, use a Parmesan or Pecorino.)

In a heavy pot or Dutch over, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic until it softens and just begins to brown. Stir in the pepper flakes and paprika. Then add the bread, stirring to coat with the other ingredients and soak up the olive oil. Pour in the stock and raise the heat. Season with salt and serve hot, garnished with parsley and grated cheese.