Wild Honey

Whole Wheat Cream Cheese Snails go Pumpkin

2009-10-12T13:59:00.009-04:00

How I love fall. Of course I love spring and summer too, being a locavore in Rhode Island where each crop has such a short, sweet time in the spotlight. I remember bringing home the first asparagus and fiddleheads of the year, feeling as if reunited with a long lost love. All the money in the world can't buy Rhode-Island-grown asparagus for all but a few weeks each year.

At least we'll have pumpkins for a good while longer.

This recipe I adapted from a post on The Fresh Loaf. I just substituted 7 oz soft white wheat and 7 oz hard white wheat for the 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and added pumpkin to the filling. Last night I mixed and proofed the dough, put it in the refrigerator and roasted a little sugar pumpkin.

Step 1: Roast pumpkin.

1 sugar pumpkin, skin on, cut up and cleaned

1 Tablespoon butter

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

Rub the butter and olive oil all over the cut up pumpkin slices. I put mine in the oven at 425F, but after 30 minutes it was starting to burn on top, so I would use a lower temperature next time. The burning might also have been a result of an interruption in the baking that may have allowed the tops to dry too much. Next time I'd put it in at 375F for as long as it takes to get soft - I'm guessing about 45 minutes. After peeling the skin off, I squeezed the chunks of pumpkin into a ziploc container, pushing most of the liquid out, and left it in the refrigerator overnight.

Step 2: Puree pumpkin with cream cheese and flavors.

6 oz. roasted pumpkin chunks, squeezed of excess water (about 3/4 cup)

6 oz. cream cheese

3 Tablespoons granulated sugar or Rapadura

1 Tablespoon brown sugar or Muscovado

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine everything in a food processor and puree until smooth. This pumpkin cream cheese would be awesome on bagels or toast, or - I confess - straight off the spoon. In this case, I put it in the middle of the pain-au-lait snails. I took out half of the dough, cut it into eight strips, coiled them into circles, brushed them with egg wash, made wells in the middles, and put a dollop of pumpkin cream cheese in each one. After baking them at 400F for 14 minutes, I sprayed them with a sugar glaze (2 T water, 2 T sugar and a few drops of vanilla). I put the sugar glaze in my Misto, as my one basting brush had already been messied by the egg wash and I wasn't about to reuse it on freshly baked pastry. One negative effect of the Misto was a sticky film of sugar on the kitchen floor afterwards.

Constructing the snails was a bit messy because the dough was so soft and sticky, but soft sticky dough makes for tender whole wheat pastries. Whenever the dough strips break, it's easy to pat them back together again and it always looks (and tastes!) fine in the end. The dough recipe on The Fresh Loaf plus the pumpkin cream cheese recipe above will make enough for 16 snails. These were totally awesome and well worth the effort.

Love is Pizza

2009-02-14T21:28:00.003-05:00

When is food more than food? When it comes in fun shapes! American culture doesn't exactly put the greatest emphasis on presentation - except in magazines telling you how to get your kids to eat healthy food - but it sure adds a special touch.

This year we celebrated Valentine's Day by eating at home. We had heart-shaped egg sandwiches for breakfast, heart-shaped pizza for lunch, and spaghetti and meatballs for dinner - comfort food all the way! And it really was food from the heart. The bread and cheese were homemade, and the eggs, bacon and beef came from local farms. We topped it off with a box of out-of-this-world artisan chocolates from Farmstead. Now that's love.

Something Approaching the Best Mozzarella on Earth

2009-01-25T10:09:00.004-05:00

Good mozzarella is expensive. Even bad mozzarella is expensive. Since I am a lover of good milk and good food, I invested in a cheesemaking kit to try making it myself.

Now that I have made one batch of mozzarella, I am glad to have purchased the kit even though I now know it is not really necessary. It is self-contained and pretty cute, but not really cost-effective. It would make a fantastic gift for an unsuspecting food-and-cheese-lover. If you don't purchase the kit, such as if you already have a good thermometer, the essential mozzarella items can be purchased individually as follows:

Thermometer: $5.95

Food-grade citric acid: $5.95

Rennet for 40 batches: $6.50

Cheese salt (optional, included with kit): $2.95

Total: $21.35

Cost of kit (with shipping): $36

The kit also comes with butter muslin (for ricotta) and an instruction booklet. The instructions are disappointingly vague at times. The thermometer is just a plain, mercury-free rod with no clip - you have to hold it while taking the milk's temperature. The kit also advertises itself as "30-minute," but it took me closer to an hour on my first try.

The first step in cheesemaking is to sterilize everything as best you can. I washed everything with soap and water, but didn't do anything too special as I didn't feel I was relying so much on bacterial action for mozzarella as I would for yogurt.

Next I measured 1 gallon of farm-fresh cow's milk into a big stainless-steel pot. In two separate cups, I dissolved a quarter of a rennet tablet in a quarter-cup of filtered water, and a teaspoon and a half (about 4 grams) of citric acid in a cup of filtered water.

I mixed the citric acid solution into the milk and heated the mixture to 90 F while stirring. Once it hit 90, I added the rennet solution, stirring constantly for 30 seconds with an up-and-down motion. Then I covered it and left it alone for five and a half minutes. When I removed the cover, the milk looked completely unchanged, but when I touched it, it was solid like soft custard or tofu. I think I should have let it set longer, because my whey was very milky.

Next I cut the curds with a clean bread knife into roughly half-inch cubes. This was probably the worst curd-cutting job in history, as they were all different shapes and lengths.

Then I strained the curds into a sieve that was just a bit too small. I kneaded the moisture out of the curds, pouring off (and saving) an enormous quantity of whey.

In another pot, I heated about a half-gallon of the whey to 180 F, poured it into a glass bowl off the heat, plunked the curd-ball into it, splashing hot whey everywhere, and started kneading the curds under water with my attractive yellow gloves. The curds need to be around 130-135 F in order to stretch properly. I never quite got it to stretch like taffy, as I was afraid of breaking it, but it got smooth and shiny as promised. As with any recipe that says to add something while doing something else (i.e. add salt while kneading curds) I forgot to do it. To compensate, I put the finished cheese into salty water in the refrigerator.

I tasted the curds right after kneading and they were rubbery, chalky and bland. I was really disappointed and, after some online research, decided that I'd overcooked and over-kneaded the curds. Until I tasted the mozzarella again this morning. What a world of difference! After a good night's rest, the cheese was supple, soft and creamy, flaking off into little layers when torn. I could eat this with anything and can't wait until tomato & basil season. In the meantime, I think I will incorporate it into my miso sandwiches.

In the photo above, I am holding just one-half of the batch. See how shiny it is! This would cost $15-20 in a store and would have traveled much farther from cow to kitchen. One gallon of milk produced just over 20 ounces of mozzarella. I have heard ranges from just under to just over a pound, but this yield exceeded my expectations. I used very local, very fresh milk (with very undamaged proteins), which I think accounts for the performance. I have already used some of the surplus whey to cook rice and oatmeal and can't wait to use it to make bread.

Unidentified Flying Ovum

2009-01-12T19:00:00.004-05:00

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ... the tallest yolk I've ever seen, courtesy of a baby-blue Araucana egg from Zephyr Farm. Delicious, too.

Best Yogurt Ever

2009-01-12T18:05:00.004-05:00

The key to yogurt is maintaining the right temperature. There are plenty of tricks out there - hot pads, crock pots, dehydrators, coolers packed with hot water bottles, various configurations of home ovens - but none of them worked for me. My yogurt was inevitably chunky and bitter, and rather than fiddle with the techniques, I'd opt for the $3.50 organic yogurt at the store. Enter the $15 Salton yogurt maker.

For a simple job, this baby is spot on. All you have to do is heat the milk, cool it, add a culture, and let Salton do its magic.

Another key to making quality cultured products is to sterilize all of your equipment so that no other bacteria are competing with the cultures you want to win. The first time I made this yogurt, I sterilized all of my tools in a 450-F oven (I was making bread at the time) and the second time I just boiled them in the same pot I used later on to heat the milk.

I started with 1 quart of fresh, whole, non-homogenized milk. I heated it to 210-F, then set the pan in a big bowl of cold water to cool it to 110-F. The second time around, I accidentally let the milk boil, with no noticeable damage to quality in the finished product. I used a regular candy/deep-fry thermometer for the measurements. In a separate bowl I mixed 3 oz of Stonyfield plain yogurt with a little of the hot milk to thin it before stirring it gently into the big pot of milk. It is important to thin the culture with milk so that it isn't necessary to stir the milk vigorously after adding it and to ensure that it is evenly distributed. Finally I poured the warm, cultured milk into a glass mason jar, put it in the Salton and left it for eight hours. Then I refrigerated it for at least two hours before opening it.

This yogurt is like pudding! It's thick, smooth, creamy and not too tart. It's so thick it can stand up on its own. The 8-hour yogurt was so mild in fact that I think I will try incubating it for 10 and 12 hours in the future to get a little more tang. There's a heavenly cap of sour cream on top that's great spread on toast, since it's basically thin cream cheese. Or eat it straight.

I have yet to see how the yogurt performs with successive generations of cultures. The Salton manual says that the cultures only stay strong for about five batches, but other recipes suggest they'll last forever. I suppose it's not the worst thing to have to shell out an extra dollar for every ten quarts of yogurt - especially yogurt this good. This yogurt doesn't need a single thing - no sweeteners, no fruit, no granola - it's perfect as is. I can't wait to use the whey to bake bread!

A Side of Beef from Stonyledge Farm

2009-01-11T14:58:00.008-05:00

In the middle of December, Stephen and I brought home one-half of Steer 42.

First, I would like to summarize my philosophy that leads me to eat "outside the box" (or, "outside the bun," to borrow a phrase from Taco Bell):

Food is basically the only thing I buy that becomes a part of me. My bones, organs, muscles, skin, hair, blood - everything - started out on my plate. If I were building a house, I wouldn't use poor-quality materials or cut corners to save time and money. The raw materials that go into the animals I eat are just as important.

In nature, bovines eat grass. For a few weeks of the year, they may eat the seed heads that sprout from the grass. In industrial farms, cows eat chewing gum, "spent hens," bits of other animals, urea, stale candy, doughnuts and heat-treated garbage in addition to their main staple: commodity corn. As the price of corn goes up, so does the amount of non-food "filler" in the feed. A high-corn diet makes cows sick, so they receive antibiotics, plus hormones to make them grow faster.

While food quality is important to me, so is money. With grass-fed beef starting at $8.00/lb at the farmers' market, I can hardly afford to have it regularly. To cut costs but not quality, I purchased a whole side of organic grass-fed beef from a local farm, bringing the average cost per pound down to $4.80. That's still high when you compare it to supermarket meat, but satisfies my concern for quality.

I began staking out the local food scene as soon as I found out we were moving to Rhode Island. I built a spreadsheet of the farms I found, comparing products, prices and distances from Providence. As I was a business major and a job seeker for quite a while, I have found that the mantra of "networking, networking, networking" thus drilled into my head also applies to sourcing local food. I have e-mailed and visited many farms, and in the process learned about others, and so on. Many were dead ends due to prices or locations, and that's all part of the search. I found Stonyledge Farm via the Footsteps Farm website. While organic certification isn't as important to me as overall farming practices (example: I would rather eat a non-organic grass-fed cow than an organic corn-fed cow), I am delighted to add that Stonyledge is certified organic.

For beef, I decided on Stonyledge because they had the lowest prices. In 2008, they charged $2.95/lb for hanging weight plus processing costs. Hanging weight is the weight of the animal minus head, hide and organs. After cutting, the actual meat you receive is usually projected to be 70% of hanging weight. For us it was actually around 84% because I requested many bone-in cuts of meat as well as organs and bones. The bones contain a lot of flavor! From a hanging weight of 350 lbs, we brought home about 295 lbs of meat and peripherals.

Processing costs include a $65 slaughter fee for the whole animal ($32.50 for half) plus $0.93/lb to cut and cryovac the meat with a USDA label, description and weight on each package.

I started an email conversation with Belinda at Stonyledge in April. I immediately got on their waiting list for a half-side of beef. The terminology was confusing to me, because I was under the impression that a side of beef was half of the animal - which it is - and that a half-side was therefore a quarter - but no, it is actually still half. Going back through the emails, I see that Belinda was clear about how much meat I was in for, but I didn't understand until the week of delivery. Belinda has been extremely helpful with answering all of my questions.

The day before the slaughter, Belinda patiently walked me through the cut sheet, which I also didn't understand. You do not need to know how many pounds are allotted to each cut (i.e. sirloin, ribeye, roasts), just specify how many pounds you want of each cut per package. Since there are just two of us in this household, I requested the smallest possible number of items per package. For example, our strip steaks are individually wrapped one to a package so I can thaw and cook just one at a time. The largest packages of the regular meat were the chuck steaks, with the biggest weighing in at 4.71 pounds. The most numerous were the ground beef packages, with 87 units averaging 1.21 pounds each. Notice I wrote 'regular meat' in reference to the chuck steaks. I also received, among the organs, an unlabeled item weighing five and a half pounds. They were pretty sure it was a heart since it looked like the two other heart packages which weighed around two pounds each. The important thing is that it was free! Remember - organs weren't included in the hanging weight.

When we arrived at Stonyledge Farm, Ed showed us around while we waited for Belinda to arrive with the meat. We were followed by a cooing flock of chickens as we met some pigs, calves, and a rebellious heifer that we helped corral back into the appropriate pen.

The meat arrived in five large boxes. It was already frozen solid when we got it and remained so the whole way back to Providence.

The box of organs was missing at the time of the first pickup. This was the fault of the processing facility, not Stonyledge. They had set the box with a different order and hadn't labeled it. The facility also apparently did not give us the exact cuts we had asked for. Belinda mentioned that they'd been having problems with this processor and might use a different one in the future. I don't know the name of the processor. I didn't remember what I'd asked for anyway and was very happy with the meat I received. For example, they gave us semi-boneless ribeye instead of bone-in. It was still fantastic. With a quick sear on each side and ten minutes in a 425-F oven, those steaks just melt in your mouth. Did I mention that grass-fed beef is also cleaner than factory-raised?

They found the box of organs about a week later, and just yesterday I returned to Stonyledge Farm to pick it up. I also bought some cuts of pork and two dozen eggs. I'm waiting until Stephen gets back into town to try the pork, and the eggs have been terrific.

The beef cuts were distributed as follows, in pounds:

Ground Beef: 105.27

Stew Beef: 20.32

Bones: 16.8

Top Round: 16.75

Tenderloin: 3.95

Flank Steak: 1.71

Shoulder Steak: 11.87

Sirloin Tip: 10.15

Shanks: 13.93

Brisket: 7.52

Hanger: 1.04

Skirt: 0.96

Short Ribs: 9.93

Ribeye: 16.14

Chuck: 20.27

Sirloin: 9.67

NY Strip: 6.42

Liver: 4.96

Heart: 3.68

Tongue: 3.37

Mystery Organ: 5.54

Pig Liver (free): 4.52

I recommend having a 14-cubic-foot freezer for this amount of meat. We plan to keep about a month's worth of meat in our regular freezer (the one attached to the refrigerator) so that we only have to open the chest freezer once a month. It's a worthwhile investment if you plan to buy meat in bulk, or have a prolific garden, or both.

All of the meat has been fantastic so far. Before now, I rarely cooked beef because of the expense and difficulty of finding good quality. Some cuts, like the steaks, I had never prepared. Grass-fed beef is extremely lean (comparable to skinless chicken breast, I've heard) so it gets dry and tough very easily. I have been experimenting with a Jaccard meat tenderizer and find that it takes five or six passes to tenderize the good steaks. Roasts and stew beef need to cook very slowly for at least three hours, after which they become perfectly al dente - neither mushy nor tough. The Cook's Illustrated goulash recipe worked perfectly with the stew beef. It required little more than onions and beef in a covered dish in a 300 degree oven for three hours. One final word on cooking times: grass-fed beef is exceptionally high in omega-3 fats. Omega-3s come from eating green things. They tend to lose their health benefits when heated too long. There isn't really a way around long, slow cooking for the tough roasts, but steaks and ground beef should be cooked as little as possible to preserve the Omega-3s.

Again, all of these cuts averaged to $4.80/lb. Grass-fed ground beef tends to run around $6-8/lb and strays upwards of $20/lb for the nicer cuts. Even "Naturally Raised" bones and organs at Whole Foods can cost $4-6/lb, and these animals usually have spent up to a third of their lives on feedlots (approved feedlots, but feedlots nonetheless). Grain-finished beef quickly loses the nutritional benefits of grass-feeding.

Buying this amount of beef hasn't exactly saved us money, since we normally wouldn't buy the nicer cuts, but has rather allowed us to raise our standard of living for not as much money as it should cost. I have bought some exciting heirloom beans with which to spread out the beef, and it should last us a few years. It's a significant investment, and as far as health is concerned, a worthy one.

Symbiosis: What has Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream to do with Breakfast

2008-10-21T17:37:00.014-04:00

This morning, I made two breakfast pitas, ten cups of granola and a quart of rich, dreamy chocolate-hazelnut ice cream that Stephen has since declared his favorite. All that and I still arrived early for my 9:30 interview downtown.

Oddly enough, these three recipes are all related, starting with the ice cream. The recipe calls for steeping a cup and a half of precious hazelnuts in hot, sweet milk and then... discarding the nuts! And that's not all. As is typical of custard-based ice creams, it also calls for egg yolks only - so what to do with the whites?

Make omelettes and granola, that's what. Although I'm not intentionally a fan of the egg-white omelette (Nina Planck calls it a culinary abomination), I can consider it a whole food when we'll be eating the yolks later. So for breakfast we had homemade pitas stuffed with cooked egg whites, Dutch Gouda and local (Pat's Pastured) bacon.

As for the sweet, sticky hazelnut bits that had flavored the ice cream, they blended perfectly into a batch of granola. I would summarize my granola formula as "half an ounce of sweet and one-fifth of an ounce of fat per cup of stuff." My favorite sweeteners are equal parts honey and brown rice syrup. Honey is sweeter than brown rice syrup, while the latter is extra-crispy after baking. As for the fat, I use equal parts organic grass-fed butter and coconut oil. Both of these have a bad reputation for their saturated fat content, but when they come from non-industrial sources, I believe their health-promoting attributes far exceed the negatives. Now for the "stuff" I use oats, puffed brown rice, and nuts.

Today's recipe looked like this.

The stuff:

3 1/2 cups thick rolled oats

3 cups puffed brown rice

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup sunflower seeds

1 1/2 cups hazelnuts, roasted, chopped in a blender, then steeped in sweet milk during ice-cream-making process

The glue:

2.5 oz honey

2.5 oz brown rice syrup

1 oz coconut oil

1 oz butter

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp Stevia powder

Preheat oven to 300 F. Toss the stuff together in a large (4 qt) bowl. In a small saucepan, combine the glue ingredients and bring to a gentle boil. Let it bubble for a minute to intensify the butter flavor. Pour the glue over the stuff, folding with a wide spatula until it's evenly distributed. Spread the sticky granola all over two large cookie sheets, using wet hands to push it down to a uniform thickness a half-inch deep all around.

Put the granola in the 300 F oven for about twenty minutes, then turn the heat off and leave the granola in the cooling oven for two hours [while I go to my interview]. After two hours, reheat the oven to 300 F. Remove the granola from the oven and stir it gently. If the granola has fused into a solid layer, use a metal spatula to break the pieces and flip them over. Return the granola to the oven for another 20 minutes at 300 F, then turn off the heat and wait another two hours. When the granola is completely cool, dry and crispy, store what is left [after I've been sneaking bites of it during the day] in an airtight container. I do not know if it will last more than a week at room temperature.

Last but not least, the cause of it all: Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups hazelnuts

2 cups half-and-half (Rhody Fresh)

3/4 cup unrefined sugar (Sucanat)

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup cream (Butterworks Farm)

2.5 oz 60% dark chocolate chips (Ghirardelli)

4 egg yolks (Sunset View Pastures)

2 Tbs liquor (optional)

Toast the hazelnuts: Spread the nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them in a 300 F oven for seven to ten minutes. When you start to see the papery skins separating from the nutmeats, take them out of the oven and rub them briskly in a clean kitchen towel to remove most of the skins. Finely chop the nuts in a blender.

Warm the half-and-half, sugar and salt in a small saucepan until little bubbles appear around the edges. Remove it from the heat, add the hazelnuts, then cover and let steep for an hour at room temperature.

Put the chocolate chips into a quart-sized (or larger) bowl. Heat the cream just to boiling, then pour it over the chocolate chips, whisking until they melt into the cream.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together.

Strain the hazelnut-infused milk into a medium saucepan. Squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the hazelnuts, then set the nuts aside for granola or cookies. Reheat the milk, then pour it over the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, stirring constantly over low heat until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Making a stovetop custard is sometimes tricky - if heated too quickly, the whole thing can curdle. Some recommend using a double boiler, but I don't bother. The point is to bring it just below a boil to cook the yolks without causing them to separate from the milk. The end result should be a colloid. It should be smooth and creamy, slightly thickened, but not like scrambled eggs.

Pour the custard into the chocolate-cream, then add the vanilla and liquor (optional - if you like spiked ice cream). I used Bailey's only because it was all we had, but Frangelico would have more appropriate. Alcohol does not freeze, so adding liquor helps homemade ice cream (which is notoriously hard) keep a softer texture after freezing. Chill the custard in the refrigerator for at least four hours, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

So there you have it - one wasteful recipe and two economical ones to pick up the pieces. Even though the ingredients are extravagant, I consider this a nod to our culinarily thrifty forebears.

No-Frills Flatbread

2008-10-02T13:25:00.002-04:00

Cooks Illustrated just ran an illuminating article about a bread called 'Pizza Bianca,' a sauceless, cheeseless flatbread that turned out to be the most practical bread recipe on earth. It is simple, inexpensive, flexible, and delicious. For weeks around our move, this was the only bread I made. We would cut it into squares for sandwiches, shape it into mini-rounds for personal pizzas, twist it into bread sticks, cube it for strata, make it with spelt, durum, red wheat, buckwheat... as bread recipes go, this one pays a big reward for a small effort.

One caveat: the first time I made it, it came out like shoe leather because I hadn't given it enough time to rise. It still tasted great, but the texture left something to be desired. Every batch after that, however, was perfect - crisp crust, soft bubbly crumb, ready when I needed it.

Another caveat: I have made this recipe with some buckwheat, but have not tried a 100% gluten-free version. This being a flatbread, it's conducive to GF-adaptation and I'd be curious to see how that turns out.

Here we go:
8 ounces sourdough starter (100% hydration)
11.5 ounces wheat flour, any kind
9.5 ounces water, filtered if you live in Philadelphia
1 1/4 (one and one-quarter) teaspoons salt
Oil for the proofing bowl
One overnight rest in the refrigerator
One 2-hour rise at room temperature
One 30-minute pre-bake rise

Mix everything together. No need to knead - just mix, plop in the oiled bowl, and toss it in the fridge overnight. It doesn't have to be "smooth and elastic;" one big sticky mess is just fine. An overnight rest is key to getting amazing flavor out of whole wheat. If you made the same recipe with the same flour, minus the overnight soak, it would taste suspiciously like cardboard. I think that is how whole wheat got a bad reputation.

At some point between the mixing and the baking, it's necessary to give the dough a two-hour rise, followed by a thirty-minute rise just before baking. Keep in mind that bread will rise more slowly when it's cold from the refrigerator and will need a little extra time to de-chill.

Sometimes I break up the two-hour rise into an hour in the morning before work and another hour after work, so that the bread will be ready in time for dinner. After the two-hour rise, I might also split the dough - some to bake now and some to save in the refrigerator for tomorrow or the next day. After three days in the refrigerator, the yeasts start to die, giving an off-flavor to the bread.

When you're ready to bake your proofed bread, preheat the oven to 450 F. If you have a baking stone, put that in the oven before preheating. Spread the dough on a baking sheet to a thickness of about half an inch. The dough should be so wet that it's just a matter of pouring it out and guiding it into a roughly rectangular shape or mini pizza rounds. If you want to cut the dough and save some to bake later, kitchen shears can do a neat job of this. Try not to pop too many of the air bubbles while shaping/cutting the dough. Let it rise thirty minutes while the oven preheats.

When the oven and dough are ready, put the dough into the oven and leave it alone for about fifteen minutes. Start checking after fifteen minutes, but don't pull the bread out of the oven until the crust is a rich brown and the bread sounds hollow when thumped. I'm sure many things are less appetizing than underbaked bread, but I don't want to go there.
Depending on thickness and hydration, this bread should take 15-25 minutes to bake at 450 F.
Once you master the basic technique, get creative!

Our Daily Bread

2008-09-08T10:31:00.000-04:00

It's been a long and beautiful summer. I spent it in three different kitchens, the last of which is just starting to feel like home. I took my sourdough starter with me on each move, along with my trusty mill and grains.

After many months’ experimentation, I thought I had nearly perfected my standby bread recipe (shown above). I normally made at least one batch a week to stay in practice, with more or less consistent results. No two batches ever come out exactly alike, since my sourdough culture is a living thing that reacts differently to ambient heat, humidity, and how frequently it’s fed. Like many people, it gets sourer the longer it goes without eating.

Then, after our first move, I ran out of my favorite wheat - hard white. No problem. I bought some spelt and plugged it into the usual formula and behold - soup! My first batch of spelt buns, made with the exact same weights of flour, water and starter as always, could not even hold a shape. I tried the same with durum wheat, which was a little firmer, but still not as shapeable as my last batch of hard white. No matter what kind of wheat I use, nor how blobby the dough, the taste is always phenomenal.

This is a very versatile and forgiving recipe. I tend to prefer a wetter dough because it makes an airier, bubblier bread that’s fun to tear apart. I almost always make mini rolls instead of loaves so that I can pop them one at a time from the freezer to my lunchbag.

I can personally vouch that my previously-frozen rolls, whether thawed at room temperature or toasted, taste just like fresh-baked. I have often wondered about the nutritional aspect of previously frozen bread versus stale unfrozen bread. At what point in time do nutrients lost at room temperature surpass those lost by freezing, if ever? I would expect frozen bread to lose a lot of nutrients initially, when those cell walls burst, and then more slowly due to the stability of the frozen environment. I can be fairly certain that since baked bread has such a low moisture content and retains its texture after thawing, it does not lose as many nutrients to freezing as, say, a vegetable, which becomes a limp and sodden shadow of its fresh self. Then again, it probably had fewer to start out with, but I think it’s safe to say that freezing does less damage to a roll than to green beans.

Invisible nutrients aside, I can answer to the sensory factors. Within three days of baking, unfrozen bread has significantly deteriorated in flavor and texture and is all but inedible by the end of a week. My previously-frozen rolls smell, feel and taste just like fresh-baked, even after sitting in the freezer for a month. It's a wonderful treat to open my lunch drawer at random during the day and get a waft of that homemade sourdough.

Here goes. This is adapted from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads book, which revolutionized the way I approach bread. While I've simply reproduced a recipe here, Peter Reinhart spends three chapters explaining the chemistry of all this before getting to the formulas. And it really does make whole wheat taste amazing. I heartily recommend it.

Biga (yeasted pre-dough)
8 oz. 100% hydration starter, fed yesterday
4 oz. hard white wheat, freshly ground
2 oz. filtered water

Combine all in a medium glass bowl. Cover and refrigerate 8 to 72 hours.

Soaker (yeastless pre-dough)
8 oz. wheat, freshly ground
6 oz. filtered water
½ tsp. sea salt

Combine in a small glass bowl. Cover and leave at room temperature up to 24 hours; refrigerate up to 72 hours if schedule demands.

The next day, combine:

Both pre-doughs
1 oz. honey
1 oz. oil
½ tsp. salt (lately I have been leaving this out by mistake and find that the bread tastes just fine without it - your call)

Knead all of the above ingredients together until they form a smooth, elastic dough that pulls away from your hands. Put the dough into a clean, oiled bowl; cover and let rise at room tepmerature for two hours. When the dough is done rising, it should be roughly doubled in size and will not bounce back when poked. Turn the dough onto an oiled work surface and slice it cleanly into sixteen wedges if you wish to make dinner rolls. Don’t tear the dough or you’ll lose precious air bubbles.

I always shape my dough into spirals that pull apart easily. Starting with the broad end of a wedge in one hand and the narrow end in the other, twist the dough like a rope. With the broad end at the center, wrap the twisted dough rope around and around, finally folding the narrow end underneath. Place each roll on a baking sheet lined with parchment, cover with plastic wrap and let them rise for another hour.

During the second rise, preheat the oven to 400 F. At the end of an hour, remove the plastic wrap from the rolls, turn the oven down to 350 F, and place the rolls in the oven for thirty minutes. Rotate the trays after fifteen minutes if your oven has hot spots.

The variations are endless. When you use different wheats – hard white, hard red, spelt, triticale, durum - you may have to adjust the water content. Your bread will still rise if you substitute up to a quarter of the flour with gluten-free alternatives like buckwheat, oat groats, quinoa, t’eff or rice. Yum. Try different oils – coconut oil, homemade mayonnaise, egg yolks, melted butter, olive oil. I wouldn't go with fancy flavored oils in the dough, since they'd lose their flavor during baking and taste so much better for dipping anyway. Different sweeteners – honey, molasses, dark muscovado, maple syrup, maple sugar. Add herbs, spices or crushed garlic. As for me, I prefer bread to be plainer, a canvas for delicious accompaniments, equally conducive to savory and sweet applications.

Asparagus with Boiled Egg and Miso Butter

2008-06-11T19:09:00.000-04:00

This morning I happened upon an extraordinary breakfast. Asparagus season should have met its natural end two weeks ago, but there it was again at the farmers' market last week. And when you have fresh, local asparagus but one month out of the year, it's worth having for breakfast.

It occurred to me that the way I cook asparagus and the way I hard-cook an egg are so compatible that they can be done in the same pot. I have also been experimenting with miso lately.

Miso is a fun condiment made of fermented soybeans. It has a distinctive nutty, wine-like flavor, and is much less intimidating if you think of it as a salt substitute. Keep in mind that table salt has fifteen times more sodium per teaspoon than white miso. White miso is mellower than red or black miso, which I haven't tried yet. To get the most out of your miso, never heat it or you’ll lose valuable enzymes. At the end of this post I’ve included a recipe for miso-honey vinaigrette, in case you’re wondering what else you can do with it.

Per serving:
1 egg
8 asparagus spears
1 teaspoon butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon white miso

Fill a medium saucepan with enough cold water to submerge an egg. Put the egg in the water and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Meanwhile, chop the asparagus spears into roughly one-inch lengths on the diagonal. Sort the stems and the tips into separate piles. In a little bowl or ramekin, whip the miso and soft butter together with a fork and set them on the table as a condiment.

As soon as the water (with the egg in it) just begins to boil, turn the heat off and slide the asparagus stems into the water. Cover and wait two minutes. Then add the asparagus tips, cover again and let everything sit for another three minutes. Drain the water and remove the asparagus to a small bowl. The asparagus will be bright green and just tender; the egg will be hard-cooked with a still-moist yolk and no green halo or sulfur smell. Pour cold water over the egg, crack it in the pan and peel it as best you can. Serve the boiled egg on top of the asparagus and garnish with miso butter to taste. Or serve it all over rice for lunch.

Honey-Miso Vinaigrette for Two

½ tsp honey
1 tsp yellow miso
½ tsp granulated kelp
1 T fresh basil leaves, sliced
1 T brown rice vinegar
2 T olive oil

Blend all ingredients until emulsified and pour over fresh garden salad.

Chocolate Pecan Pie

2008-05-11T11:57:00.000-04:00

During my childhood, no summer was complete without a trip to Camp-of-the-Woods: a week of sandcastles, penny candy and, of course, the signature chocolate walnut pie. Chocolate walnut pie has since become a family favorite. I haven't made it in years, since the average recipe is predominantly sugar and corn syrup. The result, to paraphrase Debra Lynn Dadd, is something that tastes more like sugar than nuts.

So I took Debra's pecan pie recipe and ran with it. She recommended replacing the sugar and corn syrup with brown rice syrup and barley malt syrup. Brown rice syrup, produced by sprouting brown rice and boiling it down to a thick golden goo, is mostly maltose. In the sugar world, maltose takes the longest for the human body to absorb, which is all around better for blood sugar and insulin levels. For extra sweetness and flavor, I used maple syrup instead of barley malt syrup and halved the amount. I also added a half-cup of Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips and I must tell you - this pie is out of this world.

Choose whatever pastry crust recipe you like. There are so many pastry recipes out there it hardly makes sense for me to reproduce one here. I used 6 oz freshly ground soft white wheat, a combination of organic unsalted butter and lard totaling 4 oz, and a few splashes of creamy fresh milk. I accidentally left out the salt, which I don't advise. My recipe called for salted butter. They were right.

Here's the most important part:

The Filling
5 T (2.5 oz) butter
1 cup (8 oz) brown rice syrup
1/4 cup (2 oz) maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups (6 oz) chopped pecans
1/2 cup Ghirardelli 60% cacao dark chocolate chips or other delicious dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 8x8 square pan with your unbaked pastry shell of choice.
Melt the butter in a little saucepan over low heat. Turn off the heat, pour the butter into a medium mixing bowl and stir in syrups. Add eggs, vanilla, cinnamon and salt, beating until smooth. Stir in the pecans and chocolate chips. Pour all into your prepared pie shell. You will notice that the chocolate chips try to cling to the bowl; scoop them out and sprinkle them evenly over the pie. They'll sink straight to the bottom anyway.
Bake 50 to 60 minutes until the filling is just set.

This pie is utterly fantastic. I would like to try it with even less sweetness and perhaps a touch more salt. I've got to admit it's pretty close to perfect as is.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Naan

2008-04-29T17:44:00.001-04:00

Sourdough is a wild, living thing. Like snowflakes, no two loaves are ever alike, and we like it that way. I've been working with whole wheat sourdough for about a year now and never stop learning.
While there's no substitute for hands-on experience, I can't overemphasize how much books and blogs have helped me along in my bread-baking adventures. Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads was by far the most helpful as far as the chemistry is concerned. The Sourdough Home has also been instrumental in my bread-baking education. While the experts can't tell you how the dough should feel or smell or sound, even the smallest tip can save hours of frustration [and pounds of wheat] lost on trial-and-error.
Last weekend I made two batches of Peter Reinhart's Whole Wheat Naan using a sourdough starter instead of instant yeast. I've never gotten the instant yeast to perform quite as well as my starter, which I got for the price of two stamps. This recipe makes a soft, buttery pita-like bread that makes every food you eat with it taste better.

Begin the recipe the day before you plan to bake the naan. Refrigerating the dough overnight, as Reinhart explains at length, is the key to making whole wheat taste good.

Special equipment: baking stone
Ingredients:
12 oz. whole wheat flour (freshly ground for ultimate flavor and nutrition)
8 oz. 100% hydration starter (equal weights flour and water)
9 oz. yogurt
1 oz. melted butter
1 tsp. salt
Mix everything together with your hands, adding the salt last. The dough should be soft and a little sticky. Work the dough with your hands, folding it in two, rotating it a quarter-turn, folding it again, and so on. You will feel the dough begin to build resistance; this is the gluten (structural wheat protein) developing. After kneading for a few minutes, the dough should begin to pull away from your hands. Ball it up and drop it in an oiled, otherwise clean bowl, cover it and refrigerate overnight.
Note: during the kneading step, Reinhart recommends flouring a work surface and kneading it on that, but I find that too messy. I always knead dough in the air. I prefer wetter doughs in general, since as I learned from Cook's Illustrated, wetter doughs produce bigger air bubbles, which are hard to get with whole wheat.
The next day, take the dough out of the refrigerator and chop it into eight pieces. It will have risen a bit. Roll each piece into a tight ball, cover them with plastic wrap, and set them aside to rise for about two hours, depending on the room temperature. You'll know the rolls have risen sufficiently when they do not bounce back when poked.
About an hour into the rising, position a baking stone in the top third of your oven and preheat it as hot as it will go - mine goes up to about 550 F. Authentic naan are baked in 1000 F tandoors, which the average American household tends not to have. Positioning the stone in the top third of your oven is essential for heat distribution. The ceiling of the oven radiates a substantial amount of heat, which helps the dough inflate.

Now we get to flour the work surface and make a big mess. I use white flour for this. It is essential to use a rolling pin at this point. The smooth surface you get with a rolling pin versus hand-stretching creates the surface tension that allows the dough to puff beautifully in the oven. Roll the dough to about 1/8" thickness and hand-stretch it a little further. You should be able to see a little light through the dough, but it shouldn't be paper thin or it (a) won't inflate and (b) will burn on the thin spots.
Note: Reinhart says to dock the dough, or prick it all over with a fork, to keep it from inflating all the way. Personally, I just love seeing it blow up, and the pocketed version gives you twice as much surface area to play with.

After your baking stone has preheated for thirty minutes to an hour, slap one of those rounds of dough onto the stone and shut the oven as quickly as possible. Turn the oven light on and keep an eye on the dough while you roll out the next round. Within three minutes, the dough on the stone will begin to inflate like a pillow. As soon as it is completely inflated, remove it with a metal spatula and slap the next dough-disk onto the stone. Some rounds may not inflate all the way if they're rolled too thickly or too thinly. If the dough doesn't inflate all the way, let it bake until it stops inflating or develops brown (caramelized) spots.

After baking, slip the naan onto a cooling rack. If you're having them right away, spread them with butter or flavored oil and serve hot. I usually cut them into fourths. If you've prepared them in advance, grab one while they're hot anyway. After the others have cooled completely, keep them in a not-quite-airtight container at room temperature for up to a day. Just before serving, melt some butter in a wide frying pan and swab each piece of bread in the butter before setting them in a warm (200 F) oven for about ten minutes.
These are so soft, sweet and pillowy that you'd never guess they're whole wheat. I am so pleased with this recipe - it promises to be a lifelong standby. This bread is pure heaven all on its own, and even better with a good curry or souvlaki.

What's a Bobotie?

2008-03-05T20:09:00.001-05:00

Bobotie (ba-BOO-tee) is a traditional South African meatloaf. It starts with a symphony of toasted, freshly-ground curry spices. Milk-soaked whole wheat breadcrumbs soak up the flavors in a custard base. The final dish is studded with raisins and almonds.

The recipe came from a love-at-first-sight library book entitled Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant. It is a hefty 730-page tome with eighteen chapters highlighting specialties from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Southern United States.

This Bobotie recipe was originally vegetarian, calling for tofu instead of [grass-fed organic] beef. It also employs two to three times the volume of spices I'm used to seeing in traditional Indian and Thai curries. I was a bit hesitant, but it works well. This dish is flavorful, complex and satisfying. It's also a great way to use up leftover bread, which we often have.

The curry spices:
1 Tbs cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 Tbs coriander seeds, toasted and ground
5 cloves, toasted and ground
1/2 tsp black peppercorns, toasted and ground (I used Szechuan)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp turmeric

2 large yellow onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbs organic lard, butter or olive oil
1 lb ground beef

2 Tbs brown rice vinegar or white vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup peach, apricot or mango chutney (I had none of the above, so I used Trader Joe's pineapple salsa)

1 1/2 cups whole wheat bread crumbs or chunks, toasted
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/2 cup raisins or currants
1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Blend the curry spices and set them aside.
In a large frying pan, sauce pan or chef's pan, saute the chopped onions and garlic in the oil over medium-low heat until soft - about 20 minutes. Add the beef and curry spices and cook, stirring constantly, until the beef is browned. Remove from heat and add vinegar, soy sauce and chutney or salsa. In a separate bowl, soak bread crumbs in milk. Moosh them with your fingers (or a food processor, but not both at the same time) to help them disintegrate. Mix in the sesame oil and mix well. Lastly, add the onion-beef-curry mixture, raisins and almonds.
Spread the bobotie in a large pie dish, or cute miniature ones if you have extra. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and milk and pour it over the top of the bobotie. Cover with foil and bake 15 minutes. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes or until the custard is set. Serve over brown rice and enjoy!

South Indian Feast

2008-02-01T19:43:00.001-05:00

If there's any food I love nearly as much as fresh cows' milk, it's coconut milk, and there's plenty to be found in great South Indian cooking. We had a little mela at our place the other night, with the dishes almost exclusively drawn from Ruta Kahate's cookbook 5 Spices, 50 Dishes. Her recipes are disarmingly simple and approachable. She "interprets" them for American kitchens, suggesting canola oil instead of ghee, cayenne pepper instead of Kashmiri chilli powder. I changed them back.

The menu was as follows:
Cauliflower in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Butternut Squash and Green Bean Curry
Black-Eyed Peas in a Goan Curry
Meatballs in (not-so-) Spicy Malabari Curry
Cucumber-Cilantro Yogurt Raita
Whole Wheat Naan, from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
Steamed Brown Basmati

This meal was an adventure. I'm very proud of it still. From slapping naan dough onto the baking stone in my 500-degree oven to symphonizing flavors in smooth curries, the preparation techniques were as diverse as the meal itself.

I decided to try the cauliflower in spicy tomato sauce because it's so much like a curried cauliflower my mom makes. This dish came out the spiciest, even though I only used one serrano chili with the seeds scraped out. It brought intense flavor and a light counterbalance to the creamy curries.

The butternut squash and green beans taught me that fresh green beans taste so much different from the frozen ones that the latter should not rightly be called by the same name. This dish is so simple it doesn't even need a recipe. Peel (with a vegetable peeler, not a paring knife!) and dice a butternut squash and steam it until tender (about 10 minutes). Trim and slice a pound of green beans and steam them until tender as well (6 minutes). In the meantime, heat a cup of coconut milk with salt to taste. If you like, add a minced serrano chile or two. I left them out, but I can't remember if it was deliberate. Chop three tablespoons of cashews and toast them in a dry skillet. Toss the squash cubes and green beans into a serving dish, pour the coconut milk over, and garnish with the cashews. Stir carefully if at all to avoid mashing the squash. This combination is utterly delicious.

The Black-eyed Peas in Goan Curry was a little bland, probably because I doubled the volume of beans in the recipe but kept the same amount of spices. Silly. Here's the recipe with the right amount of beans:

1 cup dried black-eyed peas, cooked (or two 15-oz cans, drained)
2 Tbs ghee (or oil)
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 tsp coriander seeds, toasted and ground
1 clove garlic, grated
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne (or Kashmiri Chilli powder)
1/4 cup diced tomato
1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp sugar
1 cup canned coconut milk
2 Tbs minced cilantro leaves
1 Tbs lemon juice

I used a slow-cooker to cook the peas ahead of time, only I used a whole pound, as mentioned above. Once they're cooked, drain and set aside.
Heat the ghee or oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat and saute the onion until brown. Add the coriander, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder or cayenne, and cumin. Stir for two minutes, then add the tomato and stir 2 minutes more. Add the drained peas and mix well. Pour in the water, add salt and sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer about 20 minutes. Stir in the coconut milk, uncover and simmer another 10 minutes. I cooked this one in the morning and let the flavors mingle in the refrigerator all day. Just before serving, stir in the cilantro and lemon juice and simmer one minute longer.

The other curry, the Malabari meatballs curry, had fantastic flavor and plenty of extra gravy to use on other dishes afterwards. It really woke up the leftover lentil soup!

For the meatballs:
1 pound ground beef or lamb
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 green serrano chile, minced
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
3/4 tsp salt

Mix gently, shape into golf-ball-sized meatballs, and set aside.

2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 Tbs ghee (or oil)
4 shallots, sliced thinly
5 cloves garlic, grated
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli or cayenne
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 14-oz can coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1 green serrano chile, seeded and minced
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs minced cilantro leaves
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

See any common ingredients? After making a few curries, you may notice that the technique is similar from one to the next.
Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, then cool and grind in a spice (coffee) mill. I toast them together for simplicity; most cookbooks say to toast them separately. Considering their different sizes, it makes sense that one would burn sooner.
Melt the ghee in a large saucepan over medium heat. Saute the shallots, garlic and ginger, stirring constantly until the shallots turn golden brown. Add the coriander, cumin, cayenne, and tomato paste. Simmer 5 minutes.
Add the coconut milk, water, chile, and salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and gently add the meatballs. Simmer until the meatballs are cooked through, about 8 minutes. Just before serving, gently stir in the cilantro and vinegar. Simmer one minute more and serve.

Raita, for Indian food lovers, is the blessed respite and counterpoint to the very spicy foods at the table. I based mine on a recipe from Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, which simply combined whole yogurt, a diced cucumber, a handful of cilantro, and salt.

The Naan was a very hands-on recipe requiring a slow-fermented yogurt dough, several rollings-out and restings of said dough, a beastly hot oven and an afternoon of sweat and burns. All told it was a delightful experience. An essential part of the naan flavor and texture is a quick swab of melted butter just after cooking/before eating (preferably the same time).

All told, this spread did take all day to put together. But when cooking is your choice of entertainment comparable to someone else's reading books or gardening, I consider that a day well-spent. I come away with a new appreciation for Indian culture, a better mastery of culinary techniques I haven't thought of, and a great meal to share with friends.

Liver Hoagies

2008-01-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

All together now... yuck!
For most Americans, liver is right up there with Brussels sprouts in the hall of childhood terrors, and harder to find in the supermarket. On top of that, due to its function as a waste-processing plant, most commercial liver represents a compaction of all the unhealthy pesticides, antibiotics and unnatural additives that found their way into our food's feed.
But if you can avail yourself of chemical-free or preferably pasture-raised liver, it is an unparalleled source of vitamins (A, B6, B12 and C), copper, folate, iron, niacin, phosphorus, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin and zinc - depending on the animal's diet, of course. I would expect a grass-fed cow liver to have more folate than a corn-fed chicken's, for example.
Stephen's reactions to the first few times I made liver were like finding out that Christmas was canceled. The first breakthrough came when I marinated lamb liver in teriyaki sauce and stir-fried it with bell peppers. Stephen actually liked it. This time, I employed a two-layer flavoring technique, first marinating the pieces in a Chinese sauce, cooking them with browned onions, and then tossing them in a Dijon vinaigrette. Served with crunchy cucumber slices on crusty sourdough bread, chicken liver finally became delicious. Stephen loved it.

The Marinade:
1/4 lb. chicken livers, chopped into 1/4" strips
1 Tbs hoisin sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp Chinese Shaoxing wine (or sherry)
1 Tbs brown rice vinegar
1 tsp dark Muscovado sugar or honey
1/2" ginger, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped

Rinse the livers, then combine all marinade ingredients and pour over in a shallow dish. Cover and refrigerate about 6 hours.

The Vinaigrette:
1 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon-style mustard
1/4 tsp salt

Whisk together ingredients and set aside until the liver is cooked. While you're at it, cut four slices of hearty sourdough bread, and toast them if you like.

The Assembly:
1 onion (if you like it 'wit')
1 tsp organic lard, olive oil or butter
1/2 cucumber, sliced

Slice one onion as thinly as possible (I used a mandolin for gorgeous paper-thin slices!) and saute over medium heat. When the onion is browned, remove the liver from the marinade, taking care to discard any chunks of ginger or garlic. Add the liver to the pan and reduce heat to low, stirring constantly just until the pieces are no longer pink. Remove from heat and toss with vinaigrette. Lay the bread slices on two plates, topping them with the fresh cucumber slices and a generous heap of liver and onions. Enjoy them hot! Were I to make it again, I would add some thinly-sliced hard cheese (not Wiz!) for a more-or-less proper Philly experience. You won't find this one at Geno's!

A New Year Tradition: Bundt Cake

2008-01-01T23:06:00.000-05:00

Once a year, the world comes full circle in its orbit. That is probably not what our forefathers were thinking when they designated the circle as a symbol of the New Year, but I'm sure they were quite pleased when they found out about this cosmic coincidence.
So to continue celebrating the New Year, I baked a delicious chocolate Bundt cake - without a grain of sugar. Impossible, you might be thinking, or perhaps, you're lying about the delicious part. No, really. No sugar. No honey, no maple syrup. No artificial anything. And Stephen loved it.
I got the recipe from Stevia Sweet, a whole foods cookbook centered around the little-known, seldom understood title ingredient. Stevia is a sweet herb that's been used for thousands of years in South America and has been gaining popularity around the world as a sugar substitute for the last three or four decades.
Cooking with stevia is a tricky business. It isn't as boldly sweet as table sugar, and if used in excess, has a bitter metallic aftertaste. It is only used in tiny amounts (a teaspoon of stevia has about the sweetening power of a cup of sugar), and lacks the structural, textural and preservative qualities of sugar. On top of that, some brands of stevia are sweeter than others, some contain fillers, some are liquid, others powder. In Stevia Sweet, Jeffrey Goettemoeller has gone ahead of all of us, navigated these pitfalls, and developed many reliable recipes like this one:

Chocolate Date Cake

6 oz water
8 oz dried pitted dates, chopped

4 oz buttermilk
10 oz freshly milled soft white wheat flour, sprouted if possible (or 5 oz each whole wheat and white flour)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup carob powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp stevia powder (I used Sweetleaf brand)
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a Bundt pan or two 9-inch cake pans.
Boil the water, remove from heat, add dates and cover. Let the date mixture cool to room temperature, then add buttermilk and puree in a food processor. In a small bowl, sift together the flour with the other dry ingredients except the coconut - cocoa, carob powder, baking powder, baking soda, and stevia powder. Add the coconut flakes and pecans.
In a medium bowl, beat butter and egg yolks until fluffy. One at a time, add vanilla, applesauce and date puree, beating well after each addition. Add the buttermilk-flour mixture and stir gently. Add half of the dry ingredients, stirring gently until incorporated, followed by the other half.
In a large, scrupulously clean bowl, beat egg whites to stiff (but not styrofoam) peaks. Fold into rest of batter, which is quite thick.
Pour batter into prepared pan(s). For Bundt pan, bake 60-70 minutes; for 9-inch cake pans, 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy! We had ours with yogurt, but it would be delicious with ice cream, whipped cream or any kind of frosting, ganache, syrup or glaze, especially of the chocolate persuasion. It would also be fantastic with dark chocolate chips mixed into the batter.
There is a magically satisfying texture that comes from the combination of carob powder and whole grain flour. I find this cake tastes sweeter cold, but shouldn't be refrigerated because it is a butter cake. Refrigerated butter cakes turn dry and tough.
From all of my experience with stevia, I think it performs best when combined with one or more sweeteners that actually taste good on their own, like dates, honey, maple syrup, applesauce, and unrefined cane sugar. One gets into trouble when approaching stevia from an all-or-nothing stance. Its slight bitterness seems well-suited to lemon and other tart fruits, but clashes with cinnamon. I would like to play with some regular cookie and cake recipes, substituting stevia for up to half of the sugar, based on the 1 teaspoon per cup substitution. I will let you know how that goes!

A New Year Tradition: Noodles

2008-01-01T20:42:00.000-05:00

I wanted to prepare something traditional to celebrate the New Year. After perusing options like sauerkraut and black-eyed peas, I decided to make homemade sourdough noodles, which are symbolic of long life. I also made a delicious all-natural sugarless chocolate Bundt cake (circular cakes being traditional for the New Year), but that is another post.

For the pasta:
4 ounces freshly ground wheat
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 tsp organic lard
2 ounces sourdough starter
1 egg, beaten
white flour for dusting

Mix the flour and salt, then cut or rub the lard into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix in the starter and egg, then let the dough rest for 8-24 hours. It should be quite dense and not sticky.
On a lightly floured work surface, with a lightly floured French rolling pin (there are special rolling pins for pasta that resemble broom handles, but I do not have one), roll out the pasta to a thickness of 1-2 mm. For noodles, roll it up like a tube and cut the narrowest possible slices. Carefully unroll your noodle slices and either dry them on a rack or cook them right away. For lasagna, cut into wide strips and lay flat to dry. When dried first, fresh pasta cooks in about five minutes. When fresh, it cooks almost instantaneously.

This was my first ever experience with making fresh pasta by hand. It was really gratifying to roll out the pasta, cut it into noodles, dry them on a cookie rack, boil and finally eat them, lightly dressed in butter, fresh tomatoes and cheese. Fresh pasta is one of the greatest and simplest of life's pleasures.

Our Pet that Lives in the Refrigerator

2007-12-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

Not that I would recommend keeping most pets in the refrigerator, but this one finds it the best environment to sleep in. When I take it out and feed it, it springs right awake, ready to jump out of its jar and just leaven something.
Our pet is a thriving yeast colony fabled to have once traveled the Oregon Trail. Because yeasts constantly multiply and regenerate, it is possible for the same strain of bacteria to survive hundreds of years - millions of generations - with proper care and feeding. Refrigerating or even dehydrating the starter just puts the little bugs to sleep, ready to spring back to life with the right amount of food and warmth.
It is possible to "catch" a wild starter using plain flour and water, which capture yeasts from the air. I tried that; it really isn't as easy as it sounds. I recommend, for beginners like myself, to start with a successful sourdough starter, whether it be from a friend, a mythical vendor like King Arthur, or a nonprofit operation like Carl Griffith. Carl's friends supply the Oregon Trail starter for the cost of two stamps. It arrives in powdered form, to be reactivated with flour and water, and has superior flavor and rising power than anything I've made myself.
I maintain my starter with 100% freshly ground whole hard white winter wheat at 100% hydration, which means I feed it equal weights flour and water. I store it in a mason jar, as pictured above, with a paper towel over the mouth secured with a rubber band.
A good starter should smell like bread baking. When fed, it should bubble up and double in size over several hours, then shrink again. There are as many different types and techniques of sourdough as there are people on earth. They're like snowflakes - no two loaves are alike. Slight changes in timing, temperatures and ingredients can produce an infinite variety of breads.
Sourdough Home was influential in teaching me the fundamentals of sourdough baking, as was The Fresh Loaf, but as they all say, there is really no substitute for old-fashioned hands-on experience.
My most recent sourdough experiment was with mini pizza rounds, which I prepared as follows:

Day 1:
Remove starter from the refrigerator and feed with one ounce each freshly ground flour and water.

Day 2:
Add twelve ounces each flour and water to a bowl containing four ounces of starter. Mix and allow to rest in a cool place (not the refrigerator) overnight.

Day 3:
Add three ounces freshly ground flour, two teaspoons sea salt, a tablespoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of Muscovado sugar or honey, and half a teaspoon of baking soda to the dough. It should feel the way a marshmallow looks while it toasts over the fire - puffy and soft - smooth, but not sticky. Knead it gently for a few minutes to ensure all of the ingredients are mixed; the dough really doesn't need that much attention. Over-kneading can cause the loaf to turn into a perfectly flat brick in the oven. Clean out the mixing bowl and oil the inside. Gather the dough into a floppy ball and return it to the oiled bowl, smooth side up. Cover and allow the dough to rise about two and a half hours or until doubled in size.
Divide the dough into sixteen equal pieces. Cut four squares of parchment paper the size of your baking stone if you have one. Place the baking stone in the oven and preheat it to 400 F and get an edgeless cookie sheet or pizza peel ready. Meanwhile, stretch and shape the little dough pieces into 4-6 inch rounds or rectangles. Place four on each piece of parchment and let them rise about an hour until slightly puffed. I didn't cover them. Slide the pizza peel (or cookie sheet) under one sheet of parchment and transfer it to the baking stone, and shut the oven for five minutes. Remove the baked rounds from the stone and replace with another batch of dough. Cook each for five minutes.
Now you have 16 pre-baked pizza shells, ready for toppings. After letting mine cool, I put them in a bag in the freezer. We had two of them the other night, topped with a little tomato paste, fresh spinach and mozzarella cheese, baked for 10 minutes at 350. They're perfect for a quick snack or a make-your-own pizza party, such as I used to have with English muffins when I was little.

A New Tradition: Cioppino!

2007-12-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

Last year, my dad and sister made Cioppino the day after Christmas. We did it again this year, and twice in a row makes it a family tradition! With a meal as delightful as Cioppino, one hardly needs a reason to make it. It's very festive with its red base and bright green parsley on top.

Cioppino is said to have originated among Italian fishermen in the San Francisco Bay area, who 'chipped in' their surplus catch to the common pot at the end of the day, which evolved into 'cioppino' as words do. Another story says it is derived from the Ligurian word 'ciuppin,' meaning 'fish stew.'

My sister got the recipe from elise.com, and we made it as follows:

1/2 cup olive oil
2 medium yellow onions, diced
4 diced bell peppers (two green, two red, all organic!)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
28 oz canned diced tomatoes
1 bottle clam juice
2 cups tomato juice
2 cups red wine
2 bay leaves
1 bunch parsley, minced, reserving 1/2 cup for garnish

3 pounds tilapia, cut into one-inch cubes
1 pound cooked shrimp, peeled
2 pounds littleneck clams, steamed, reserving liquid

In an 8-quart stockpot, saute onions and peppers in olive oil until barely tender. Add garlic and saute a minute longer. Add salt, tomatoes, clam juice, tomato juice, red wine, bay leaves, and parsley, reserving some for garnish. Simmer 20 minutes.
Add the tilapia and simmer until barely cooked (3 minutes), then add pre-cooked shrimp and clams and simmer until heated through. Serve in warmed bowls with crusty sourdough bread, lots of napkins, and empty bowls for the shells. Go back for seconds. Bon Appetito!

Our First Christmas Tree

2007-12-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

...is already a few sprigs short. Since we're going to be out of town for Christmas and live in a small apartment, we have no need for a full-size tree. To bring in the festive spirit, I found the perfect little tabletop rosemary bush at Whole Foods and decorated it with snowflake-shaped brads! It's adorable, fills the apartment with a warm piney aroma, and will season many meals to come. It has already found its way into a batch of chicken stock and chestnut stuffing. I don't often use rosemary, but now that it's growing in our living room, I can't wait to start playing with it!

Book Review: Real Food

2007-12-10T21:15:00.001-05:00

This book is for anyone who has ever raised an eyebrow at the many unpronounceable ingredients gracing today's packaged foods. The bottom line: put the box down! In Real Food, Planck builds a case for returning to the whole, natural foods that nourished humanity for thousands of years.

Planck begins by sharing her personal history with food, from childhood on a Virginia farm to veganism to eating "meatloaf, bacon and eggs with impunity." The rest of the book serves as an extended definition of the title: what is real food?

While mainstream nutrition tends to treat certain foods as homogeneous, i.e. milk is milk, Planck asks: which milk? She asserts that it is not the food itself that is healthy or harmful, but how it is produced. Raw milk from healthy, grass-fed cows is perfectly suited to human nutrition, whereas milk from confined cows fed grain, animal byproducts, hormones and antibiotics is not. Planck goes on to distinguish between "real" and industrial meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, fats, eggs, grains, salt, and chocolate. Even vilified foods like lard, when prepared as they have been for thousands of years, can be part of a healthy diet.

It may be true that anyone interested in reading a book of this genre is already capable of distinguishing between old-fashioned and processed foods. For me, Real Food summarized most of the conclusions I had already made via self-directed research. The value of the book, however, is just that; Planck synthesizes the available research on traditional foods and delivers it with flair. The questioning reader is free to scrutinize her endnotes and test the legitimacy of her citations.

In a field where extremists are not hard to find, this book is a cool-headed treasure. Some nutrition writers will make you afraid to eat anything - Planck, however, rejoices in [unadulterated] food and has the opposite effect. She encourages readers to eat all the natural foods they like and thoroughly enjoy them without counting calories, fat, or carbohydrates. While she is clearly passionate about the subject matter, she doesn't stray into sensationalism or scare tactics, but remains objective in all the right places. She praises locally grown, fresh vegetables supremely, and makes a substantial case for dietary reprobates like liver, butter and eggs.

Planck takes a controversial and compelling position on saturated fat and cholesterol. Not being a Masai tribeswoman myself, I would not attempt a meat-milk-and-blood diet, nor does Planck recommend it, but I am persuaded that our bodies and foods are more complex than the reigning "if-then" science of fat, cholesterol and heart disease. It is true that every body is different; some can thrive on a vegetarian diet, others on steak and eggs. In addition, Planck does not fail to highlight the importance of exercise for health.

I recommend Real Food as an ideal introduction to the traditional foods lifestyle. There are more scientific works on the subject, but Planck's friendly, conversational tone makes real food approachable and attractive. Her personal experiences and practical advice take the "daunt" out of incorporating traditional foods into very modern lifestyles.

Mole!

2007-12-09T21:03:00.000-05:00

The theme for today's lunch was Mexican. The menu featured Mole Poblano with chicken, black beans in chipotle sauce, Spanish roast vegetables with pinto beans, yellow corn, crumbled Colby cheese and sticky brown rice.
Let's begin with the word mole. It may refer to a small burrowing mammal, Avogadro's number, or a traditional Mexican sauce said to have originated in the Convent of Santa Rosa. The original Mole Poblano contained over a hundred ingredients drawn from Spain, Mexico and Asia. The version I made yesterday was much simpler, but still full of surprises and incredible flavor.

Mole Poblano

1/2 - 3/4 cup organic lard (or olive oil)
1 lb tomatoes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
7 pasilla chiles, seeded and torn into chunks (I found these long, dried chiles at Whole Foods)
2 Tablespoons ancho chile flakes (the recipe called for whole ancho chiles, but I was only able to find the flakes in the spice section - packaged as a pizza seasoning)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup walnuts
1 ripe plantain, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup green pumpkin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 cloves
2-inch cinnamon stick
2 quarts homemade chicken stock
3 ounces dark chocolate (I used Ghirardelli 60%)
Sea salt to taste
Equipment: spice grinder, blender, sieve

What an ingredient list! Many of these are not common to the average American kitchen, but I was able to find them all at Whole Foods. Unfortunately, Whole Foods did not have the whole ancho or mulato chiles called for in the original recipe, so I substituted extra pasillas. All of these are dried chiles; see pictures here. Plantains look like giant bananas. Look for green pumpkin seeds or pepitas among the nuts.
Begin by oven-roasting the tomatoes, onion and garlic. Slice and spread them on a baking sheet, drizzled with olive oil, and bake in a 350 F oven until soft.
In a heavy pot like a cast-iron wok, fry the torn pasillas and ancho flakes over medium heat for about thirty seconds. Remove chiles from the pan, cover with hot water, weigh them down with a plate and let them soak for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, fry the raisins, walnuts and plantain slices in the same pan in batches, then set them aside.
In a dry frying pan over medium heat, toast the sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, shaking the pan constantly until they are fragrant and golden - about two minutes. Set these aside in a separate bowl. Toast the coriander seeds, cloves and cinnamon stick in the same dry pan, shaking constantly until fragrant - less than 30 seconds. Add these to the bowl with the sesame and pumpkin seeds. In batches, grind the seeds and spices to a powder and set aside.
Return to your chiles; puree them in a blender with the soaking water. Heat 6 Tablespoons lard or oil in a heavy pot and push the chile puree through a metal sieve into the pan, scraping with a spoon. A food mill would also work well for this. Discard solids. Fry until the puree is thick enough that you can see the bottom of the pan when you scrape it. Add two cups of chicken stock and keep everything at a simmer.
Puree the roasted tomatoes, onion, garlic, raisins, walnuts and plantain in batches, adding a cup of chicken stock to each batch. Add to the simmering chile mixture together with the ground spices. Lastly, add the chocolate and simmer for an hour.

I refrigerated the mole overnight and baked the chickens on Sunday morning. The chickens, which I purchased at the farmers' market on Saturday, had been sitting in brine in the refrigerator all day. To bake them, I cut them into large pieces, piled them in my 6-quart stockpot, put the lid on and baked them at 300 F for about 4 hours. I removed the meat from the bones and mixed it with boiling mole sauce and some of the roasted onions and peppers and garnished it with crumbled Colby cheese and parsley.

For the rest of the menu, I sliced and roasted eight bell peppers, three pounds of onions, a butternut squash, four green zucchini and a pound of crimini mushrooms. I also cooked a pound each of black and pinto beans, which had been soaking at least eight hours. I mixed the pintos with the roasted vegetables and seasoned them with smoked Spanish paprika. The black beans received a deliciously smoky, garlicky...

Chipotle Sauce

1 lb. roasted tomatoes
2 dried, grated chipotles soaked in a Tablespoon of cider vinegar
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon oregano

Puree in a blender.

My purpose with this menu was to expand my perception of Mexican food beyond the usual fajitas, burritos and enchiladas, fantastic as they are. It was a marvelous learning experience that I loved sharing with our guests. The process of preparing food is about so much more than just eating - it's sharing a culture and a tradition. There's a whole world of culinary traditions to explore and I can't wait to try more.

Sourdough Buckwheat Waffles Take II

2007-12-09T09:05:00.000-05:00

As promised, we had sourdough buckwheat Belgian waffles again this morning. This time I added a half-teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of a slightly bolder cinnamon - Korintje Cassia. It's worth it to make these just to smell them cooking, let alone eat them. We topped them with fresh apples stewed in a little butter and Ceylon cinnamon, yogurt and local honey.

Sourdough Buckwheat Waffles

2007-12-08T20:47:00.000-05:00

Since I began experimenting with traditional food, these were the best waffles I have ever made. It was originally a Belgian waffle recipe, which called for yeast, that I adapted to use a sourdough starter instead. My starter is made of equal weights flour and water, so I just replaced an ounce each of the flour and liquid called for in the recipe with two ounces of starter.

I started last night by soaking 2 ounces starter with 1 1/2 ounces freshly ground organic buckwheat and 3 ounces fresh milk. In the morning, I mixed in a teaspoon of Muscovado sugar, a Tablespoon (half-ounce) melted butter, an egg, a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda.

These puffed up like crazy in the waffle iron, oozed all over the counter, and came out perfectly soft on the inside and crisp on the outside. The cinnamon really made them special. We had them with blackberries (out of season, but on sale), yogurt and local honey. I will definitely make these again. In fact, my batter is already mixed and we're having them tomorrow!

Feast of Keangs

2007-12-02T22:50:00.000-05:00

Today we celebrated the first snowfall of the season with a tropical Thai feast. Since my shrimp adventure, I have learned more about the proper way to prepare homestyle Thai cuisine, even without a mortar and pestle. The flavors themselves, in addition to the ways in which they are layered and contrasted, make Thai food unique.
The menu for today's lunch, from Cracking the Coconut, consisted of cucumber salad, stir-fried pork with shrimp and pineapple, red curry with roasted pork and plantains (Keang Pet), Thai-Indian chicken curry (Keang Kari Gai), and sticky brown rice.
The cucumber salad was crisp and refreshing, made of two cucumbers sliced on the diagonal, two green onions likewise prepared, and a few splashes of dressing made from a half-teaspoon sea salt, a quarter-cup each of fish sauce and Muscovado sugar (not packed), and the juice of five limes.
The stir-fry, besides the obvious ingredients, was distinguished by its seasonings of fish sauce, bird chiles and dry-roasted freshly ground white peppercorns.
My primary occupation on Saturday was the preparation of chile pastes. Chile pastes are the cornerstone of Thai cooking and mixing them is an art passed down through generations. When made from scratch, the depth and complexity of flavors is out of this world. They are time-consuming, but worth every second. Just make big batches and freeze the leftovers!
My two curries, Kaeng Kari (pictured above) and Kaeng Pet were seasoned with these homemade chile pastes, cooked in coconut milk with vegetables, and finished with fish sauce, sugar and fresh chiles.

Keang Kari (Thai-Indian Curry)

6 heads garlic
3 shallots
1 inch fresh ginger

Slice tops off garlic and shallots, toss with olive oil and oven-roast at 400 F until soft. Squeeze softened garlic and shallots from their skin into a bowl; mince ginger in as well.

1 Tbs. coriander seeds
1/2 tsp. each cumin and coriander

Dry-roast seeds in a skillet until fragrant and grind in a spice grinder.

1 tsp. sea salt
7 bird chiles
2 Tbs. curry powder
1 stalk lemongrass, hard outer layers removed, minced
1 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. fermented shrimp paste (find at Asian markets)

Using the end of a French rolling pin or other blunt object, pulverize softened garlic, shallots and ginger together with sea salt. Scrape into food processor and blend. Crush chiles and lemongrass likewise, toss in and blend. Add ground spices, curry and turmeric, blend. Lastly, blend in shrimp paste. The shrimp paste adds a unique flavor and binds the paste together.

1 whole chicken
22 oz. (1 1/2 cans) coconut milk
1 Tbs. Muscovado sugar
2 Tbs. fish sauce
2 yellow onions, diced
1 pound potatoes, diced but not peeled
1 kabocha squash, peeled and diced
5 bird chiles, julienned

Cut chicken as best you can into bite-sized pieces and simmer in a saucepan with coconut milk. I find it easier to separate the meat from the bones after the chicken is cooked. Meanwhile, add 3/4 cup of the curry paste to a skillet with a tablespoon of coconut oil, cream or milk. Add the chicken parts to the curry paste with a little coconut milk and stir to coat, then return everything to the saucepan of simmering coconut milk. Bring it to a boil and add sugar, fish sauce, onions, potatoes, squash and chiles. Simmer until potatoes and squash are tender. Squash cook faster than potatoes! Garnish with julienned red chiles and cilantro leaves. This curry was milder than the Keang Pet and one of the most delicious I've ever made. I think it was the guests' favorite.

Keang Pet followed a similar technique. The curry paste included white peppercorns, lots of chiles, nutmeg, galangal and lime zest, and left out the curry powder and turmeric. The pork was marinated in crushed garlic, ginger, soy sauce and unsweetened mango jam, then roasted and fried with the curry paste and coconut milk as the chicken was in the previous recipe. It simmered together with sliced plantains, an onion, three green peppers, fish sauce, salt, sugar, and lime zest, then received a garnish of julienned green chiles. This one was very strong and spicy. Next time I would use green bananas instead of plantains, which I found too mealy and bland.

So play with your food! Break out the mallet and crush your garlic, ginger and chiles. Dry-roast whole spices and grind them yourself. Build layer upon layer of flavors and bold contrasts: salty, sour, sweet and spicy - and that's just the beginning.