Category Archives: bread

impromptu

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Friday, by the hours:

8am (or so… you know…): out walking the dog.  By the time I returned home, there was a message in my inbox from S., asking a few folks if they’d be interested in happy hour-ing that afternoon at 5.

9am: RSVPed  Absolutely. Affirmative.

9:05-3pm: The day got away from me a bit.  There was reading to be done, rooms to be tidied, and an unexpected nap to be taken…

3:30pm and I had nothing to bring to happy hour.  I shoved a bottle of wine into the refrigerator and riffled through my pages of Bittman options.  Then I set off to the grocery store to buy sun-dried tomatoes.

“82. Tomato Pinwheels: Soak 1 cup dried tomatoes in hot water, drain and pulse in a food processor with 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme (add water or oil if necessary). Combine 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon baking soda with 4 tablespoons cold butter (use food processor or fingers). Stir in ¾ cup yogurt or buttermilk and gather the dough into a ball. Roll into a large rectangle on a floured surface, spread the tomatoes all over the dough and roll it up lengthwise. Cut the log crosswise into 1-inch slices, put them on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees until puffed and golden, 7 to 10 minutes.”

By 4pm I was back in the kitchen.  With miniscule exceptions, I followed Bittman’s directions exactly. I added a few grinds of black pepper to the tomato mixture in the food processor, I used greek yogurt with a splash of cream to bring the dough together, and I floured my bread board with whole wheat flour, because I hadn’t checked my flour supply before my trek to the store for tomatoes, and as it turned out I had exactly two cups of white flour in the whole house.  I also ended up baking the little pinwheels a bit longer than Bittman directs.

I have a deep and abiding fear of dough.  You know this, because I’ve told you before.  I buy pie crust for every quiche I make.  I routinely tear giant, unfixable holes in the pre-made, refrigerated dough I purchase to make pizza.  I’ve tackled, successfully, a total of one dough+yeast products, which just happens to make focaccia AND pizza, and despite that it comes out a little differently every time.  And yet, when I was in a hurry and hoping for something company-worthy, I picked a brand new recipe based on dough…

As it turns out, this one was pretty unthreatening, minus a terrifying moment when my half-rolled-out-kinda-sorta-rectangle was losing crumbly pieces all over the place.  I tried patching it back together, I tried pinching the corners and kneading, and finally what worked was dropping the bits in the middle of the rectangle of dough and running a rolling pin over them violently a couple of times.  Since my fingers were deeply crusted with sticky, floury bits, no photographs were taken during the rolling-patching-pinching process. I should hire a photographer who promises to only take pictures of the food.

The best thing, though, was spreading the tomato filling over the dough.  It made this beautiful bright textured layer over the dough and it smelled like summer and warmth.  Savory frosting.  Doubting but gleeful, I carefully rolled it into a fat log, encasing the filling safely inside.

You need a sharp knife to slice this log.  A really sharp knife.  Otherwise, the dough tears and the log becomes flat and the tomato filling crumbles out and there is no earthly way of getting it back into the sweet little curlicues it creates.  I spaced them out on a greased cookie sheet and stowed it in the oven with great hope. 

4:45pm: Makeup applied and hair combed, I returned to the kitchen to check my pinwheels.  At ten minutes, they were barely golden and the dough felt a bit squashy.  I gave them two additional minutes while I found a pair of shoes that were a.) not dusted red from the bark trail I walk the dog on, and b.) not grubby flip-flops.  Happy hour is a serious thing, you see.

When I pulled them out the second time, they were gorgeous: puffed, golden, tender, and smelling like a bakery and a garden.  Glamour shots, aluminum foil, and a brief car-ride later, and they were ready for their debut.

5:15pm: These are amazing. The dough was flaky and tender with a suggestion of sourness from the yogurt.  The tomato mixture was tart and sweet and herbaceous, and each pinwheel was a lovely three bite experience of lightness and flavor and the barest crunch.

5:45pm: Plate empty and wine glasses refilled, we were already talking about other things you could do with this foundation.  Tapenade, any kind of pesto (basil, arugula, parsley, kale, spinach), onion jam, whole or mashed cloves of roasted garlic, maybe even cheese… the possibilities loom large.

8pm: This is a strong contender for this year’s Thanksgiving appetizer menu.  And maybe Christmas too.

Loaded to bear

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Considering my avid distaste for filling either roast bird or pork chops with stuffing (with the exception of chicken cordon bleu, which I love), I often forget the merit possible in stuffing other things – namely fruits and vegetables.  The built-in cavities in fruits like peppers and winter squash, and the concave shape of stemmed mushrooms seems to call out to be filled with something delicious, and too often I am deaf to those calls.  Fortunately this week’s Bittman choice reminded me to open my ears a bit.

“38. Trim crimini or portobello mushrooms and chop stems.  Sauté stems in butter or olive oil with chopped prosciutto, onions, chopped fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, parsley, etc.) and coarse fresh bread crumbs.  Stuff spoonfuls of the mixture into mushroom caps; roast until tender.”

This dish was a clear win.  For those of you who don’t like mushrooms, I can see this same parade of ingredients marching well together in a hollowed out zucchini half, but you will be missing the earthy indulgence of mushroom – that rich, meaty, brown flavor that is so intriguing and so deliciously musky.

The collected players:

1 package (4 oz. or so?) proscuitto, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 green onions, white and green portions, thinly sliced

5-6 crimini mushrooms, chopped (I used these because I had some lying around.  If you didn’t have them, you could certainly omit them and just use the guts of the portobellos)

4 portobello mushrooms, stems removed, gills and insides excavated (you want only a thin shell so you can fit the maximum amount of stuffing)

scant tsp. each thyme and rosemary

black pepper

2 cups fresh white bread crumbs

olive oil

I turned the oven on to preheat to 350F and then set the prosciutto to cooking in a pan on medium high with just a touch of olive oil to help it along.  While it slowly rendered and crisped and crackled toward doneness, I prepped my vegetables.  When the meat was almost crispy, I added garlic, green onions, chopped mushrooms, herbs, and a bit more olive oil to the pan.  While that cooked down for a few minutes, I tore up half a loaf of leftover French bread and ground it into coarse crumbs in my food processor.

I dumped the crumbs into my skillet of veggie, turned the heat off, and added another tablespoon or two of olive oil to bind the ingredients together.  At this point I considered adding Parmesan cheese, thinking of both its binding power and its stellar flavor, but I tasted the crumbly filling and realized that the prosciutto was making it quite salty enough, and an extra pow of sharp cheese might be overkill.

I loaded the mushrooms to bear with heaping spoonfuls of filling, tamping it down in each cavity to fit as much as possible.  This was almost too much for four medium portobellos to handle.

With one last, loving drizzle of olive oil over the tops of my brimming vessels, I put the mushroom-laden casserole dish in the oven for half an hour.  Quick steamed green beans in the final minutes and we were ready!

Cutting into one of these roasted boats was an explosion.  The filling did not adhere to itself and instead came collapsing down onto the plate and covered the green beans.  This was not a bad thing.  In fact, the bread, now flavored with the porky richness of prosciutto and the fruity softness of olive oil, was a crisp and delectable crunch atop my barely tender beans.  As for the mushroom itself, it softened and took on a thick meatiness that was perfect with the prosciutto.  The crunchy bread crumbs soaked in the earthy juice of their vessel and we scarfed down all four mushrooms between the two of us.  And then I may have scraped the baking dish clean with my fingers.

Vignettes

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a vignette as

An ornamental or decorative design on a blank space in a book or among printed matter, esp. at the beginning or end of a chapter or other division, usually one of small size or occupying a small proportion of the space; spec. any embellishment, illustration, or picture uninclosed in a border, or having the edges shading off into the surrounding paper; a head-piece or tail-piece.

Very well, then.  If you’ll permit me, I present you a few vignettes, accompanied only by a smattering of explanatory text, of the food we’ve been playing with over the past few months, while my dissertation lengthened and my sad little blog slowly became emaciated.  Since this is a season of excess, I’d like to fatten it up a bit.  Here’s a start:

Serving suggestion for French Onion soup: hollow out a sourdough bread bowl, toast the inside, coat with a crust of Parmesan cheese, and flood with soup.  Top with Swiss cheese and broil until the bread crusts and the cheese blisters.  Try not to burn your tongue.

To celebrate, or perhaps provide an epitaph for, our pathetic tomato season this year, I made a roasted green salsa for Halloween.  Tomatillos, which flourished happily, green tomatoes, which did not, jalapeno, onion, garlic, and plenty of cumin.  Roasted, cooled, pulsed together with salt, lime juice, and cilantro.  Tickling and spicy and smoky, and perfect for a rainy Halloween.

Seeking fruit without the healthful feeling, I made crustless “apple pie” one evening with great triumph.  Apples sliced thinly, tossed with a tablespoon or two of flour, butter, and a hefty sprinkling each of sugar and cinnamon, bake in the oven for half an hour.  I left the skin on for color, chew, and nutrients, and we were both delighted with the syrupy excellence they eschewed.  It was not unlike the filling in an apple pie crepe from The Vintage which, if you haven’t visited, you should.  With haste.

Spurred toward the heady, heavy, comforting feel of winter food by this apple pieless dessert, we delved into the season of rich sauces, hearty vegetables, and warm fatty indulgences.  Perhaps yearning for protein in the darkness of November’s cold snap, we opted for a rich beer and beef stew replete with parsnips, carrots, and cup after cup of rich brown mushrooms spilling earthy thickness into the stew.  Whole grain mustard offered intrigue, a whole bottle of Jubelale provided dark yeasty flavor, and a glug of beef broth tied the flavors together.  Good stew meat from Long’s Meat Market (warning: the website has sound) was the clear star, and even the “low quality” stew meat I bought, intended to be cooked long and low to tenderize, was so juicy, so flavorful, and so ridiculously good, that I couldn’t stop myself from gulping down three or four pieces after only searing them crusty brown on all edges.  Lucky for us, I made a full recipe and froze half, so when the celebratory delectability of December ends and the long, cold middle of winter sweeps into Oregon, we will have reserves to bolster us until the sun appears again. 

Fortunately this same reserve will not have to serve this site.  Holidays approach, and with them a break from school, which means a break from dissertating, a break from grading, and a break from relentless reading.  Rather, I intend to poise myself in my kitchen and dart behind and before the camera, mincing, stirring, pouring, focusing, clicking.  And, inevitably, writing.  To you.  Happy December!

Experimentation

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N. and I rarely finish an entire loaf of bread.  Oh we try, but invariably those loaves of whole wheat, and sliced sourdough, and the occasional rye, end up shoved to the back of the freezer or refrigerator with only a slice or two left in them.  Then they just sit there.  For months, sometimes.  The same, as of late, is true of bagels.  In spurts of enthusiasm toward the noble meal that is breakfast, we buy half-dozens and dozens of bagels from various bakeries and munch our way through four or five before the lonely outcast remainder is slowly pushed behind Tupperware containers and plastic-wrapped leftovers.

Well no more.  I have been meaning to make bread pudding for some time now, in an effort to put to use the heels and scraps of bread that litter our freezer shelves, but I couldn’t find a recipe I liked and, in one of my odd and unfounded deductions, had somehow decided it was a difficult thing to make.  Yesterday, with no experience and only a handful of recipe ideas from the internet (google: “bagel bread pudding”; you’ll be surprised by the number of people who have tried it!), I liberated our stash of lonely, forgotten, individually bagged cinnamon raisin bagels and invited them to a custard party.

Here’s what you need:

3 cinnamon raisin bagels

3 eggs

3 cups milk

½ – 1 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you want it.  I wanted dessert AND breakfast, so I only added about ½ cup.

½ tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1-2 TB spiced rum (optional)

Here’s what you do:

Tear or cut the bagels into bite-sized chunks (or a little bigger), and settle them in a single layer in a square glass baking dish (8×8 or 9×9).

In a medium bowl, mix all remaining ingredients together and whisk well to blend.  This is the custard.

Pour custard mixture over the bagel pieces, top with a plate or pan (something to push the bagel pieces down into the custard), and refrigerate for at least an hour.

After at least an hour of chilling under pressure, move the pan to a preheated 350F oven and bake for around 45 minutes, or until the tops of the bagel pieces are browned and slightly crisp.

Thanks to the cinnamon, the pumpkin pie spice, and the rum, after about twenty minutes our house filled with that holiday-season smell.  You know what I mean.  After 45 minutes, I peeked in the oven and saw that the top pieces, the edges that poked out over the custard, were dark brown and crispy, and when I touched them lightly the whole beautiful pudding jiggled slightly and then sprang back into shape after my touch.  The top had puffed up as the eggs cooked and expanded, and when I took it out of the oven I could hear it hissing and whining softly as air released.

I couldn’t wait very long before digging in… so I did.  Bagels exiled to the back recesses of our freezer will never go to waste again.  The custard was soft and sweet, but the real stars were the bagel chunks.  They had soaked up a lot of liquid and had the consistency of very firm, chewy French toast.  They were moist and soft but still had pleasing texture, and I could have eaten the whole casserole dishful right there in the kitchen, leaning over our petite table.  But I resisted.  Because I wanted some for breakfast this morning too…

Will go barefoot for onions

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Over the past year or so, Ina Garten and I have become good friends. She doesn’t know this; she doesn’t know I exist. Her Food Network show at first struck me as pretentious, with its demands for homemade chicken stock, Dutch process cocoa, and all the highest quality and therefore highest priced ingredients. The reminders of the Hamptons and the floral arranger and food photographer guests were a bit heavy to me. For a graduate student, Ina’s lifestyle and, I thought, her food, were beyond my budget.
In continuing to watch, however, Ina grew on me. Maybe it was by comparison to the other increasingly noisy newcomers to the network, or maybe it was my building confidence in my skills as a cook, but she is now among my favorite of the TV chefs. She cooks like me. Or, perhaps more accurately, she cooks the way I would cook if I had the means. She speaks plainly, but you can tell she is well educated in her field. She is messy. She doesn’t mind the occasional drip of batter onto a white counter-top or puff of flour onto a silk shirt. She looks like she enjoys food, and feeding people, and eating with them. Without really realizing it, I also found that more often than not when I turned to the Food Network website to find recipe suggestions, the recipe I ended up choosing was hers. I have made her Italian Wedding Soup, I have made her lemon bars, I have made several of her vegetable side dishes, and as of last week, I have also made her French Onion Soup.
This soup has, for almost a decade, been one of my restaurant go-to items. I love it. I love how it looks when it arrives at the table, with crusty bubbled Swiss cheese enameled onto the side of the soup crock. I love how it smells, with the fragrant sweetness of long-cooked onions steaming out once you break that crunchy-chewy protective cheese blanket. And really, an aromatic soup of sweet onion tendrils in rich meaty broth with the accompaniment of bread and cheese? I hardly even need to extol the flavor.
As seems to be a recurring theme here, however, I was always intimidated by the thought of making this soup. I don’t know why. I had every intention of doing so for a number of years, even registering for (and receiving) a pair of red French Onion Soup bowls as wedding gifts. It has been almost three years since I added these bowls to my kitchen collection, and yet it took until last week to put them to their intended use. With gigantic onions in my pantry, Swiss cheese in my fridge, and two-day-old baguette slowly getting crunchy on my counter, I went trolling for recipes and, to no great surprise, ended up with Ina’s. In addition to the dozens upon dozens of good reviews, it looked easy, and it looked really good.
In addition to halving the recipe, I made only minor changes. As several of the reviews note, it took longer than the 20 minutes allotted for the onions to get really brown and caramelized. I didn’t have the bourbon or sherry that Ina calls for, so I used a mixture of red and white wine, which I found to add depth and rich flavor. I didn’t have, nor would I want to use, veal stock, so I mixed beef broth with homemade chicken stock as a substitute. Since I am getting reacquainted with my garden as the weather slowly, grudgingly warms, I also added two big sprigs of thyme from my thriving little soldier.
When the onions had browned down in my soup pot and were delicate, pliable, and dark gold, I added red wine and let them simmer together. I brought a little piece of onion in to N., who was sitting on the couch and sniffing appreciatively, and he said only “ooohhhhh” after slurping down the offering. It was unlike the onion it had once been in almost every way. Soft, melting against the tongue, sweet but dizzingly rich with the addition of the red wine flavor. No bitter harshness, only mellow tenacity. Then I added beef broth, and white wine, and left the whole thing to simmer. As Ina says, “how bad could that be?”
It was far, far from bad. When the pot had simmered sufficiently (translation: when the smell was too enticing for us to resist any longer), I wedged a piece of toasted sourdough baguette into the bottoms of the aforementioned bowls, ladled steaming soup on top, and then mashed on as much grated Swiss and Parmesan cheese as would fit across the top. I broiled these little offerings until the cheese began to brown and crisp, and then we ate.
It was amazing, and I am again astounded by how inexpensive the ingredients are that make up this luxurious soup. As I have already mentioned, the onions softened but still held their shape, and became like oddly shaped little sponges for the flavors of the wine and broth. The cheese was melted in stringy gooey strands on the bottom, against the broth, but hardened into a crunchy crisp on the top, making two different flavors simply thanks to its textural change: toasty and salty on top, creamy and reminiscent of fondue on the bottom.
I am already devastated that I only made a half recipe, because we wolfed down our servings, we scarfed up the leftovers, and now sitting here typing, with a Spring headcold making my sinuses pound, I am overwhelmed by desire for a big steaming bowl of this rich, comforting composition. Thanks, Ina.

The Week of Magical Eating days 3 and 4: Soup and Salad

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Since sharing lunch with my friend S. a few weeks ago, I have developed a minor obsession with Caesar Salad.  The crispest romaine, whether to add the Parmesan by shreds, crumbles, grates or curls, the perfectly textured crouton: crisp and golden on the outside, with the barest hint of residual chewiness deep within.  But mostly, the object of mystery and allure is the dressing.  It’s tangy but creamy and rich but still light, and pulls the flavors of the salad together to make it a phenomenon.  I decided to make it.  In the gloom of winter, I don’t have the opportunities I’d like to find farm-fresh eggs, and locally grown egg yolk is all I would feel comfortable using without cooking it.  Besides, N. gets worried about raw foods sometimes, and he doesn’t care for the idea of fish in dressing, so egg and anchovy were out.  I poked around online and found some vegan Caesar salad dressings with interesting suggestions, including the addition of brewer’s yeast and tamari to add the salty richness of anchovy.  I collected ideas and then, as usually happens, ended up making my own.

Mayonnaise, lemon juice, brown mustard, tamari, pepper, and garlic went into the mixing vessel that came with my immersion blender.  I pulsed these ingredients together a few times until the garlic was chopped and things were looking paste-like, and then streamed in some olive oil with the blender running until it reached a more dressing-y consistency.  It’s a work in progress, and I didn’t take note of amounts, but it began to capture that lofty Caesar flavor as I added additional spoonfuls of mayo here and lemon there… a bit too much mustard in the first squeeze.  Over-enthusiasm, you know. Tossed with fresh greens, lemon wedges, and sourdough croutons from half a baguette, it was almost right.  Almost there, but close enough for a weeknight.

The next night, inspired by a recipe request I couldn’t fulfill from D., I scoured the ‘nets for a suitable looking black bean soup.  Our salad accompanied a slow cooked chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, and I saved the garlic-infused broth our chicken expelled in the crock pot, so I had a wonderful flavorful stock to use for soup.

After sliding a pan of batter in and a loaf of cornbread out of the oven half an hour later, I commenced to create Dave Lieberman’s black bean soup, found here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/black-bean-soup-recipe/index.html

I made a few changes to his recipe, for one reason or another, which I’ll share because I thought the result turned out well.

I cooked my bacon until crispy before draining out some of the fat (which ended up mixed with dogfood; Lucy was ecstatic!) and adding only 1 ½ onions.  Instead of Dave’s can of chicken broth, I used the leftovers from our chicken, which were about 1 ½ cups, and about a third of a bottle of New Belgium 1554 for a little extra flavor and fizz (then I handed the remainder of the bottle to N.  Beer and bacon = happy little family!).  I eliminated the ketchup and forgot the lime juice, and added my cilantro right at the end rather than letting it cook.  I decided I wanted a fresher green flavor, so it would serve as a garnish.

Then we went a little crazy with toppings.  I crumbled up some queso fresco, which I am having a deep affair of intrigue with, and used up my single-serving ramekins providing serving dishes for cheese, sour cream, green onion tops, more cilantro, and lime wedges.  The photo below isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing composition, but it was belly-warming and hearty, and tasted marvelous.  We usually have trouble finishing up leftovers from soup, but it has been only four or five days since I made this, and the remains are already gone.  That should tell you something.