Warm lentil and kale salad

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Chelsea

I don’t know about you, but when I get home from vacation I feel at once heavier and lighter. Lighter, because the toil of dragging overnight bags jammed with clothes, a laptop, a camera bag, two backpacks, a cooler, a sun hat, hiking boots, a satchel bristling with electronics, a grocery sack full of road snacks, a suit bag of dress clothes for a wedding, another satchel, this one loaded with supplies spanning the randomness quotient from shampoo to a day-planner (seriously, how can we have this much stuff???), and the leash of a dog intent on smelling every single thing she’s never smelled before from parking lot to hotel room to parking lot every other night is finally over.

Heavier, because even though I didn’t cook much, I sure ate a lot. Plus, there’s that whole emotional withdrawal from the glory of vacation, but mostly I’m just shallow enough to be talking about my waistline.

In any case, upon our return from a trip we typically plan out a few particularly virtuous meals to combat the quantity of food we consumed, and the dubious quality of some of those choices – road food is always, alas, simultaneously necessary and a bit specious (take, for example, the Milky Way I bought at a gas station in Coos Bay to help myself stay away for the remainder of the drive to Brookings, which turned out to be open on one side. I threw it away. And then I almost cried). Simple rice and steamed broccoli is one of our go-to homecoming meals. Whatever can be scraped together from the garden and eaten with a light dressing and curls of Parmesan cheese is another.

But now we have a third, which might also become a side for roast chicken, a working lunch, or a base for seared tuna or poached salmon: a warm salad of lentils, tossed with lightly blanched kale, briny kalamata olives, and the tang of feta cheese.

A few days after our return, with pantry and fridge freshly stocked, I considered my starch choices. We eat a good bit of pasta and a fair amount of rice, but our consumption of legumes and pulses is way below par. This had to change. I picked out a bag of green lentils that had slowly been pushed to the back of the shelf as new and more exciting boxes were set in front of it.

Lentils are great for us. They are packed with fiber and protein and folate, which all make them filling as well as nutritious. But like most dried beans, on their own they just aren’t very exciting. They call for additional flavors and textures: chilies or acid or salt, crunch or freshness. Herby sharpness. Crumbly cheese. A dance of textures. You see where this is going.

To give them as much of a fighting chance at flavor as possible, I sautéed some onions and garlic before tumbling in lentils, water, a lone bay leaf, and a bracing hit of red wine vinegar. “And salt,” you’re surely crying, but no! Salt should be added to lentils only near the end of cooking. It can toughen them if you add it right away. I’ve also read that acidic ingredients – like the red wine vinegar I used – can contribute to this toughness, but I didn’t notice any particularly virulent refusal to soften, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

You want your lentils to be fully cooked – that is, not crunchy – but to still retain a bit of texture. They should soften but not fall apart into mush – taste a few to be sure they have achieved the level of tenderness you like, but be sure to do a good sampling – five or six – as isolated beans can cook at different rates.

Once done, add salt to taste, let them cool a bit, and then the magic happens, and it’s such easy magic, it’s worth doing any night of the week. Torn pieces of blanched kale, cubes of feta, and halved kalamata olives. A drizzle of olive oil if you think it’s on the dry side. Faced with this combination – salty, chewy, crisp and fresh and soft – we scooped spoonful after spoonful, and ended up eating most of the pot. So much for virtue.

Warm lentil and kale salad with olives and feta

Serves 4-6 as a side, 2-4 as a main lunch dish

½ cup diced onion

2-4 cloves garlic, minced fine

1 TB olive oil

1 cup small green lentils, picked through and rinsed

2 ¼ cups water, vegetable, or chicken broth

2 TB red wine vinegar

1 bay leaf

1 tsp salt (or to taste)

4 packed cups chopped kale, tough stems removed

½ cup kalamata olives, halved (or to taste)

½ cup crumbled feta (or to taste)

Additional splash of olive oil (optional)

Heat the 1 TB olive oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and sweat them gently for 3-5 minutes, until the onion pieces are translucent but not vigorously browned.
Add the lentils, water or broth, red wine vinegar, and bay leaf, but not the salt. Salt added at the beginning of cooking can toughen the lentils. We’ll wait to season them until they have cooked.
Turn up the heat and bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer the mixture for 35-40 minutes.
After 35-40 minutes, the lentils will have sucked up most of the liquid in the pot and they will be tender but not mushy. You want a slight bite of resistance to remain. Add the salt, stir well, and then pour out the pot into a colander or strainer to drain off any remaining liquid. Pick out the bay leaf so there aren’t any unwelcome surprises later. Set the colander of lentils aside to cool.
Meanwhile (if you are proactive, or in the same pot you just used, if you are lazy like me), bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the 4 cups of kale and cook for 1-2 minutes, until the leaves are intensely green and barely tender. Drain the kale into the same colander as the lentils. Cool until just warm, or completely to room temperature as desired.
While kale and lentils are cooling, halve your olives and crumble your feta.
When the lentils and kale have reached your desired temperature, add the olives and feta and toss to combine. If the salad seems dry, add a splash of olive oil to moisten things up a bit.
Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

Photo Friday

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Chelsea

Pasta puttanesca with crumbled feta for lunch.

Jalapeño Cheese Rolls #TwelveLoaves June

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Chelsea

Last week I presented you with something both vegan and gluten-free. Dietary allergen-buster, that’s me! This week, to prove that I’m a ~~fickle~~ ~~equal opportunist~~ flexible sort of cook, I’m giving you something that is neither. But really, this is the kind of food person I am, and I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially given this post from Shauna at Gluten-Free Girl. I’ve thought, over this past year as I finished my Bittman Project and moved on to my exploration of dough, what kind of food blog this is, anyway. I don’t follow a specific dietary regimen. I don’t cook – or eat – specifically one type of food. So what am I? As I wrote to Shauna, what drove me to her blog, and what drove me to one of my own, was the expression of joy through food. I want food that tastes good and brings joy. And then, because it has given joy to the tongues and teeth and bellies of the people I made it for, I want to pass that on to people who weren’t in our little house with us. That’s you, people. So I guess what it comes down to is: this is a blog about food that brings you joy. At least, that’s what I hope you feel when you read, and when you eat, if you end up using the recipes here (and if you do, will you tell me? I’d love to know what you guys think).

These little rolls brought us considerable joy. They are cheddar infused, jalapeño studded puffs somewhere in between a rich, buttery brioche and a stern, crusty, segmented Kaiser roll. They are also, given this month’s Twelve Loaves assignment of buns, the perfect choice to slice equatorially, layer with mayonnaise or hot sauce or pickles or onion rings or dripping fresh tomato slices and then cram with a burger of your favorite juicy variety.

I started with my Nana’s sweet roll dough, replacing the sugar with a smaller amount of honey, opting for the tang of buttermilk rather than the roundness of whole milk, and injecting wafer-thin slices of jalapeno and cheddar cheese so sharp it made me – let’s not lie – basically drool when I sampled some.

Though you could just divide your dough into equal sections and let these rise into sweet, uncomplicated burger buns, I decided to take on the familiar lobed shape of a Kaiser roll. This is, as you might expect, not the most straightforward approach, mostly because there are numerous methods for achieving that instantly recognizable shape. You can score the dough as it rises, you can use a special press that creates the petal shape, can follow a complex procedure of folds, or, as I learned and executed to my delight, you can roll the dough into ropes, tie them in a simple overhand knot, and then tuck up the ends. I’ve attempted instructions and accompanying pictures below, but if you are lost, try this recipe, which explains the knotting and tucking process pretty clearly.

Sprinkled with more sharp cheddar and topped with a few more, probably gratuitous slices of pepper (you have to know what you’re in for, I think), these bake into all but perfect imitations of the jalapeño cheese rolls N. and I used to buy from Market of Choice as the occasional treat after a perfect sunny afternoon trip to the dog park in Eugene. We never put burgers on those, because they never made it through the whole ride home. But these little Kaiser-roll-buns of mine, burnished with cheddar and lip-tingling with heat, will carry anything you load them with.

Summer’s coming. That should bring you joy. If you can stand more, make these for your next barbeque. This recipe can easily be doubled, and once baked, these will keep in the fridge for a few days or, securely wrapped in airtight packaging, in the freezer for much longer.

Jalapeño Cheese Rolls

makes 8 petite rolls, or 6 larger ones

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 TB warm water

½ cup warm buttermilk

2 TB honey

¼ cup room temperature butter

1 egg

1 tsp salt

2 cups flour (I like bread flour best for these, because it has a high protein content that stimulates gluten production. But I think all-purpose would create similarly fantastic rolls)

1 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese, divided

1 medium jalapeño pepper, thinly sliced

Stir the yeast gently into the warm water, set aside for five minutes to let the yeast wake up.
Add butter and honey to the warm buttermilk, stirring them together until incorporated. This will make the honey and butter easier to integrate into the dough, and cool the buttermilk so it won’t kill the yeast or scramble the egg.
Pour the puffy, bready yeast, the buttermilk mixture, and the egg into a large bowl (I use the bowl of my electric stand mixer), and whisk or stir together with a wooden spoon or the paddle attachment of your stand mixer.
Add the flour and salt to the mixture, and stir just until roughly combined.
Add ¾ cup of the cheddar cheese and half of the jalapeño slices to the rough dough and stir again, just until the cheese and peppers are well distributed.
If you are using a stand mixer, replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and knead on medium speed for 8-10 minutes. If you are not using a stand mixer, turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead by hand for about 10 minutes. Though I think kneading by hand will work fine here (I haven’t tried it, so I’m not positive), there are two things to take into consideration. First, this dough has cheese it in, so that may make it messier to work with than your average burger bun dough. Second, it contains jalapeño peppers, which can leach capsaicin onto your hands and sting delicate skin (read: don’t forget and wipe your nose!), so be absolutely certain you wash your hands really well after handling this dough.
In either case, the dough starts out sticky, but becomes smooth and stretchy as you continue to work it. Once it is elastic and supple and lovely, place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside in a warm room (if you have one handy) for an hour and a half, or until it has doubled in volume.
Remove the plastic wrap and punch down your doubled dough by gently but firmly pressing your fist into the center. It will almost gasp as the built-up gasses are released.
Divide the dough in 8 equal pieces (for petite buns), or 6 equal pieces (for big, beefy buns).
Now would be a good time to do some prep, while the dough-balls get some breath back. Preheat your oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. If you haven’t already, dust a bread board with flour.
Working one at a time, roll each dough ball into a 6-8 inch rope (Picture 1).

Picture 1: dough rope

Picture 2: overhand knot

Picture 3: tuck right side into top middle of knot

Picture 4: tuck left side under and into bottom middle of knot

Tie the rope into a simple overhand knot (the same way you would begin tying a shoelace). I tie mine left side through right side, probably because I am left-handed. If you are right-handed and you tie your knot the opposite way, reverse the L and R in the directions below. You will have a knot in the middle and some lanky excess on either side (picture 2).
Now, to form the segmented shape of a Kaiser roll, lift the length on the right side of your knot (which started out as the left end of your original rope) and pull it up over the knot, shoving the end of it down into the middle of the knot itself and pressing lightly to secure (picture 3).
Next, lift the left side and tuck it under the knot, pushing it up through the middle from the bottom. Sometimes it will poke through and make a little button in the top of the roll; sometimes it won’t. Either is okay (picture 4).
With all of your rolls knotted and tucked, set them on your prepared baking trays, spaced evenly. I did four per sheet tray.
Sprinkle each roll with cheddar cheese from the remaining ¼ cup. Top each with 1-2 slices of reserved jalapeño. Cover trays with a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes.
Remove kitchen towel, admire the puffy little buns you’ve created, and bake in your preheated, 350F oven for 20 minutes. The cheese will melt, the dough will rise, the color will deepen to a lovely golden brown, and the thinnest of your jalapeño slices will barely begin to caramelize.
If you eat these immediately, you will burn your mouth. And it won’t just be the good burn from the jalapeño. So do what you can to let them cool a little, and then load them up, or just eat them plain. I think you’ll be happy either way.

Loaded Baked Potato Biscuits

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Chelsea

I’m not going to say that my mom was a hippie or a health nut. She didn’t stock her pantry with wheat germ or homemade granola, and she didn’t feed us sprouted grains or tempeh (in fact, she probably didn’t know what tempeh was). But she did make a definite effort to keep food choices healthy when my sister and I were kids. Her rule for me when picking out breakfast cereal was that sugar had to be third or lower on the list of ingredients tapped out in tiny letters on the side of the box. I think the first time I tasted Lucky Charms was when I was in high school, where I was quietly surprised that anyone could think of eating this candy for breakfast rather than dessert. The first time I saw someone put sugar into a bowl of Corn Flakes, I was stunned. The only kind of cereal I’d ever put sweetener onto, besides oatmeal, was Shredded Wheat.

Despite the commercials I drooled over for Sunny Delight (back when it wasn’t just a D) and Capri Sun, nothing but 100% juice (and the occasional lemonade concentrate) entered our fridge for a very long time. Brand name Fruit Roll-ups didn’t fly, but the occasional real pressed fruit leather was okay. My sister, seven years my junior, somehow managed to get Mom to buy Squeeze-its, but not until they had a “real juice” component. She also ended up with Lunchables to take to school (I didn’t find out about this until a visit home from college. I was shocked and felt a weird kind of betrayed jealousy – I didn’t want to eat Lunchables now; they looked disgusting! But I wanted to have been allowed to have them when I might have thought they tasted good. Is there even a word for that feeling?).

Given all this, as you might imagine, white bread was not something that appeared in our (paper, please) grocery bags. But my sister and I were not sold on the breads my parents wanted us to eat. Whole wheat was pushing it a little, especially if it had cracked wheat spattered across the top crust. Oatnut and any kind of seven or nine or even five grain compilations were out. And then Mom found Country Potato bread. Do you remember it? It’s golden and mild, slightly sweet but still savory enough to taste good with ham and cheese. The top was often lightly dusted with some residual flour, which was somehow not offensive in the way the cracked wheat pieces were on the bread we refused. We ate potato bread for years. It was soft enough that, once you ate the crust off, you could roll the rest of it up into a mushy little ball, or tear the slice in pieces and make a whole pile of little dough-balls, and then eat those. They squished against our teeth.

In the years since sourdough replaced potato as my bread flavor of choice, I’ve thought again about that bread my sister and I ate. How did they (whoever “they” were) get potato into bread? In what form? Was it mashed? Was it baked? Was it a flurry of potato flakes? Was it potato flour? At the farmers’ market in Eugene, OR my husband and I discovered potato donuts: dark brown, dense, sugar-crusted rings that were mercifully only available once a week, and I wondered about these too. Two beloved starches, baked together, could only be greater than the sum of their parts.

This is all an extremely long way to introduce the idea of putting potatoes in a biscuit. If they can produce bread and donuts, and of course pasta – gnocchi is not, when it comes right down to it, really so tremendously different from a row of fluffy little miniature biscuits that you boil instead of baking – why not a tall, leavened biscuit?

A little internet research showed me numerous methods of incorporating potato flavor into my biscuits. I decided early on that I wanted to use a fresh potato, rather than the instant potato flakes some recipes recommend, which meant I had to be careful about moisture. The potato needed to be cooked and mashed or pureed before adding it to the flour, so that it mixed in easily. However, boiling potato chunks to mash them does add water, and I wanted to keep my potatoes dry so that the moisture could come from something with additional flavor – I was thinking buttermilk. Here, gnocchi was the answer. To avoid adding too much water, here or in those pillowy little nuggets, the potato is baked and then grated into crumbly, starchy strands, which are then easily smashed into smoothness.

I’m rarely contented with a plain old buttermilk biscuit, so I decided some add-ins were in order. Since I was already playing with the potato idea, I started thinking about loaded baked potatoes: cheese, broccoli, bacon bits, sour cream, green onions… I had a roommate once who liked to top hers with salsa and cubes of fried tofu. In the end, though, I decided to keep the excess to a (relative) minimum: crisp shards of prosciutto, sharp cheddar, and a pile of roughly chopped roasted broccoli florets.

This produced a dough that clung together reluctantly, given how jammed with additions it was. But I was patient, after I’d finished throwing flour everywhere, and gentle, and managed to punch out 12 biscuit rounds jammed with bits of green and pink poking out every which way.

This is a dense biscuit, so it doesn’t rise a tremendous amount when it is baked, but it will still puff a bit as the chunks of butter struggle to support the spudsy weight. It emerges speckled with bits of broccoli and browned cheese, and it’s totally worth it in every way. Guys, you have to try these. It’s rare that I run out of food words to describe something, but this is one of those times. If I jammed all the superlatives I was thinking of using into this post, you probably wouldn’t believe me. I’ll keep it at this: the cheese and the broccoli and the prosciutto all lend a crazy-good saltiness (the prosciutto could easily be taken out to make this vegetarian). The flavors are perfect together, and though the potato doesn’t have a lot of flavor on its own, it does make this biscuit fairly substantial. Paired with a salad (as we had), or a nice bowl of soup, it’s basically a complete meal.

As with all biscuits I’ve ever tasted, these are best on the first day, as hot out of the oven as you can stand to touch them. They are perfect on their own, though if you wanted to split one open and add a pat of butter, I’d completely understand. They are, after all, related to baked potatoes. And if you wanted to top them with a roasted garlic or a white pepper gravy, well, I don’t think I’d be in any position to stop you.

Loaded Baked Potato Biscuits

(for flour and potato quantities, I started with Deb’s sweet potato biscuits, and improvised from there. This seems like a lot of steps, but trust me…)

For the potato:

Bake a medium to large russet or other fluffy, starchy potato at 400F for about an hour, or until a fork sinks easily through the middle. When it is cooked through, let it cool completely. Splitting it in half will hasten this process.
Using the largest holes on a box grater, grate the potato flesh away from the skin. In a large bowl, smash or crush the crumbly bits of potato into a smooth mash.

For the broccoli and prosciutto:

1-2 medium heads broccoli, cut into small florets

6 slices prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 425F. On a baking sheet, toss the broccoli with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast for 30-45 minutes, flipping the broccoli pieces over halfway through the cooking process. When done, they should be well browned on the outside and tender in the middle. The flowery bits will be crisp, like broccoli popcorn.
Remove the broccoli to a plate or cutting board to cool. When cool enough to handle, chop into ½ inch pieces.
Place prosciutto strips onto the now-empty baking tray (yes, there will be some broccoli bits and residual oil there. Don’t worry about it – they are all going into the biscuits together!). Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until prosciutto is crisp. Watch it carefully: it burns easily.
When crisp and dry, set aside on paper towels or a wire rack to cool and drain a bit. Once cool, cut or crumble into bits.

For the biscuits:

2 cups flour

2 TB baking powder

½ tsp salt (this doesn’t seem like much, but remember, the broccoli, prosciutto, and cheese are all salty already. If you’re a salt fiend, go ahead and use a full teaspoon, but otherwise, start small)

1 cup grated baked potato, mashed smooth

5 TB unsalted butter, cut into cubes

½ cup buttermilk

1 – 1½ cups chopped roasted broccoli florets

Crumbled prosciutto from 6 strips (you could easily substitute an equal quantity of bacon)

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, as sharp as you can find

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, mashed potato, baking powder, and salt. You want a homogenous mixture: no big potato chunks.
Using a fork, two knives, or (my favorite) a pastry blender, cut in the butter until it is the size of large peas. This will also help break up any remaining hunks of potato.
Add the cheese, prosciutto, and broccoli, and incorporate until they are distributed evenly.
Add buttermilk and stir with a fork. You are looking for everything to combine into a rough, shaggy-looking dough.
Turn your dough out onto a well-floured board and knead it a few times with the heels of your hands until it is more willing to cling together. Press it out into a rectangle or circle about 1 inch thick.
Using a biscuit cutter or the floured rim of a drinking glass, punch out biscuits by pressing straight down, NOT twisting. This will help the biscuits rise better by not disrupting their layers.
Once you have punched as many as you can from the dough rectangle, gather the scraps, knead them together once or twice, and press the dough out again. Continue until no more dough remains (making one or two funky-looking biscuit bits is totally acceptable: you can call those the cook’s tax and gobble them while no one is looking).
As you punch out biscuits, place them on a greased or parchment lined baking tray.
Bake in a preheated 425F oven for 15-18 minutes.
Eat while hot, warm, or room temperature, if you can wait that long.

Garlic Fontina Flatbread

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Chelsea

I have a thing about garlic bread. Achingly soft butter, a scattering of herbs, pungent, sharp garlic paste, spread thickly on sourdough baguette and broiled until the butter bubbles and browns and the garlic takes on a toasty depth; what’s not to love? I make it in the oven, I make it on the grill, I’ve even tried turning it into a sandwich. But all too often, the process of toasting leaves the edges of the bread blackened and the crust just too crunchy for my taste. I want crisp toastiness, but I don’t want mouth-scraping shards of bread shrapnel.

Enter flatbread. I don’t mean the dry, cracker-like stuff carelessly sprinkled with toppings and served up as an appetizer. I mean something a little puffier, a little richer, a little cheesier. A few months ago, I dabbled with a Food Network recipe for Spinach and Cheese Flatbread, and was delighted by the elastic dough that bubbled up into a soft-but-crisp rectangle. It is chewy and golden, but not quite as sturdy as a pizza dough. The bottom, slapped against a well-oiled sheet pan, gets just crisp enough to support all but the most ridiculously sized slices (don’t ask me how I know this. Thank you), so you aren’t left with a square that wilts as you hold it.

As soon as I ate the FN version, I realized this was the answer to my garlic bread dreams. The dough would be smeared with a loving, excessive layer of garlic-butter-herb-are-you-drooling-yet?-paste, sprinkled with fontina, which melts beautifully and has a mild funk I really enjoy, and baked until crispy toasty nirvana resulted.

My results approached sublimity, and the shortcomings were entirely human error, which seems fitting. The paste didn’t spread very evenly because this is a soft dough: it threatened to tear when I applied a spatula, so I ended up smearing and dolloping my mixture with my fingers. You could easily solve this by melting your butter instead of just softening it, and then pouring the mixture evenly over the dough. Then, because I was afraid the butter and garlic would burn at pizza-cooking temperatures, I was pretty liberal with my cheese application, which meant that the toasty roasty golden color I was expecting didn’t quite happen. Another minute or two in the oven might have helped, but we were hungry. A little less cheese might have helped too, but seriously, less cheese? Totally unreasonable.

In any case, the bread itself was puffy and buttery and decadent. The garlic loses some of its pungency during baking, but retains that addictive sharpness and bright tingly aroma that makes it so good. The dollops of butter became dimples of puddly richness that, upon reflection, reminded me a little bit of the center of a really good bialy. The bottom of the crust is like an old-style pan pizza: golden with burst air bubbles and just oiled enough to leave your fingertips in need of a napkin.

This is a great happy hour snack. Since it heats up the house, it gives you a great excuse to sit out on your patio, or deck, or picnic blanket, or camp chair. It pairs well with a crisp, summery wine, and equally well with a frosty pint of beer (or maybe, since, you know, Cinco de Mayo, a classic Corona with lime, or a salt-and-cayenne-rimmed margarita). You can use any combination of herbs you like. I chose what was happening right outside my back door:

Oregano – I love the fuzzy leaves on this little guy.

Basil – back in late fall, I relocated a few stalks of basil from the supermarket clamshell container to a vase of water, and instead of wilting, they grew roots! I shook my head, still in Oregon mindset, while planting them – they would never make it through the winter – but this is Southern California, so of course they did, and are now flourishing. I’ve read that plucking the blossoms off encourages them to keep producing leaves, so every day or so I faithfully scatter the delicate white blooms.

Parsley – my parsley plant is looking a bit wild these days; it has bolted thanks to the heat.

But if you peer down inside, amidst the sunburned jungle, you can see there are still some stems worth serving!

As for additional toppings, you could add sundried tomatoes or thin rings of bell pepper or even jalapeno to the butter paste if you want to get fancy about it, and it would certainly fare well dipped into a bubbly saucer of marinara, if that’s your thing. Either way, I think you should make this.

Maybe today!

Are you making it yet?

Garlic Fontina Flatbread

adapted from Food Network’s Spinach and Cheese Flatbread

For the dough:

2 tsp sugar