Caramelized Onion Roasted Tomatoes Foccacia Bread

Caramelized Onion Roasted Tomatoes Foccacia Bread

During my foreign student’s life in Tokyo I still remember well one of the incident that shocked the entire class when one of our Japanese professor confessed something in front of the class. He said that he would never wish to live a longer life. It definitely shocked us because it is contrary to the norm were people would do anything to search for this elixir that will give us the eternal youth. But eventually, of course we understood what he meant. You see his already on his 60’s and apparently he is the youngest in their siblings and everyone else is still alive including his parents and grandparents. (Don’t ask me how old they were? :-)

Japanese indeed surpassed almost any human being when it comes to life’s longevity. Imagine, in the average Japanese ages between 50-60 years old a truly aging society. I am not an expert but I do believe that food plays an important role in prolonging one’s life or cutting it short. But then again science has contributed a lot in making our life easier and longer to live. I know that science has its own evils too but we cannot eliminate the fact on how science saved lives a million times.

One fascinating aspect of it is the organ transplant: from heart to skin grafting we have come to perfection this technology that dates back before Christ. In some big hospitals in a lot of developed nations operating organ transplant comes to a banality that operation is just simple a routine. The great problem that’s confronting organ transplant is the lack of organ donors. The worst story of this is that desperation has given way to international traffic of organs from poor countries selling their precious organs for for few hundred dollars. I witnessed how in Sri Lanka, were each member of the family were forced to sell their kidney due to poverty. And this is just but one example.

I believe that there is only one solution to all these problems that we have and that is love. It may sound so pathetic but it is the truth. If we could only love and care the same value for everyone else, whether we know them or not, whether they are poor or rich, whether they are white or black, whether they are ugly or pretty, fat or thin. Giving would be a lot easier. After all we all weight the same value in the eye of the Great Creator.

This delicious and definitely a very healthy recipe of Foccacia bread is my entry to Equal Opportunity Kitchen's Tried, Tested True Take 2 blogging event. That first one was so succesful that they are doing it the second time around. There are prizes at stake and you have until the 21st to send in your entries. This event also aims to rasie awareness on the importance of organ donation.

Roasted Tomatoes, Caramelized Onion Foccacia Bread

Serving for 4-6 persons

2 big onions sliced
3 big red tomatoes
Some olive oil
Herbes de provence: fresh thymes and rosemary

For the bread: 350 g of flour (type 45 all purpose)
20cl of water
5 g of salt
4 tablespoons of olive oil
10 g of dry yeast

Place the tomatoes in a baking dish, shower with a little bit of olive oil (about 2 tablespoons) and herbes de provence and roast in the oven at 200° Celsius for about 20-25 minutes. This will depend on your oven, tomatoes needs to be beautifully roasted and that skin is easy to remove, the tomatoes are done. Once it’s cooled off remove the skin and seeds. Chop the roasted tomato, set aside. Heat a pan and place olive oil and onion. Cook for about ten minutes over low fire or until onions are soft and golden, set aside. For the foccacia bread, put the flour on your working table and make a well in the middle and pour ¼ of the water that you have (you will have to control it depending on the consistency of your dough later). Dissolve your yeast in a tablespoon of water and add it in the middle of the well. Add the salt, as much as possible avoid direct contact with the yeast. Start handling your dough, add more water if needed. Knead the dough for about five to ten minutes or until the dough becomes elastic and does not stick to your hands anymore. Add about one tablespoon of herbes de provence directly to your dough. I love to do this because the flavor of the different herbes gets even better when cooked inside the bread. Over a parchment paper, put directly the dough. Make a square shape depending on the size of your baking dish. Cover it with a towel and let the dough rise for minimum of an hour. Preheat the oven at 200° Celsius. Brush the surface with olive oil and put your roasted tomatoes and caramelized onion on the top. Sprinkle more herbes de provence. Bake for about 30 minutes. It will be ready when the top becomes golden brown. Let it cool and cut the edges to have a perfect square. You can cut it the size and shape you want eventually. You can serve it perfectly accompanied by arugula salad or a simple carrot soup.