Lately

Still nothing much to write home about with regard to interesting new adventures in the kitchen but the wife and kid made the best cookies ever Saturday. Toll house cookies. Recipe from the bag of chips and no skimping on the butter. These cookies present me with a vigorous challenge every time I walk by them. They're wrapped in plastic stacked on a plate in our kitchen.

The first time I walk by the dish, I sneek into the plastic wrap and grab a half of a cookie because half is better than whole - right? Well, the second pass by the cookie plate I feel must take the second half because then I won't get caught leaving just half a cookie. Well, you can see where this is going. Let's just say these wonderful little miracles don't exactly get stale sitting on the counter. I look forward to their future efforts. Frankie seemed to help quite a bit. At the age of 2 yrs and 5 months, she's becoming quite comfy in the kitchen.

Aside from that and a tasty focaccia recently (I might elaborate on it in a future post), not much going on. But we're not exactly going hungry. Hope you're all keeping cool.

food toll house cookie

Intermittent efforts

Like many bloggers who are lucky enough to find themselves chasing down a 2 year old, my experimental food projects have taken a lower priority indicated by my frequency of posting. I'll always enjoy experimentation in the kitchen but haven't had the time to do as many of these experiments nor assemble the outcome for presentation here (I frequently fall asleep about a minute after Frankie). This is just a note to say, I'll be getting back to it soon, but when I get a chance.

On queue: I'd like to share my mega granola recipe (Frankie loves granola); this is utilitarian and good. I'm going to use my oven to try to make some sweetened, dried sour cherries from a neighbor (trick is how to sweeten them?). I'm totally into flax seeds lately - more with them later ...

In the meantime, I've been logging my food shots for recipes already covered on flickr. It's a good repository for me to put photos of stuff I do routinely but aren't worth a blog entry.

Hope you're all enjoying the Summer!

Viewer mail: pork shoulder cooking time

Lately, we've been eating light. Salads, bread, cheese, veggies ... lite fare for these humid days; not much to blog about. However, that doesn't mean 'Q emergencies don't exist. This one was from a man I'll call Jack:

I was going to smoke a pork shoulder picnic roast, and the recipe I have says to smoke it for 1 1/2 hours per pound. My roast is close to 9 pounds and if my addition is right that makes it close to 14 hours of smoking time. My question is: could I stick it in the oven at about 200 degrees for about 5 hours then move it to the smoker after I wake up in the morning? I really don't want to keep my smoker up to temperature by staying up all night.

A 'Q purist would've passed Jack's email address to the nearest online Viagra salesman and been done with it. But, I saw a person with a busy schedule, not unlike a busy parent, trying to achieve great results on a busy schedule and thought this was actually a great idea. Some oven, some smoking.

He was using a picnic roast (my personal favorite for pulled pork) and cooked it 8 hours in the oven at 200F and 9 hours in an offset smoker. Despite a few ups and downs regarding the temperature of the smoker (tending to other work-related duties, we'll forgive you this time Jack) he achieved a final internal temp of 180F (I believe that's as good as it gets for pulled) and said he got a roast that "cut like butter". Kind of driving you nuts isn't it.

He did comment on the fact it didn't pull with a fork, but I've observed similar results on some outstanding "pulled pork" myself. The picnic cut is a bit different and may not lend itself to a texture that pulls. So, once again, a reader comes up with a pretty darn good work around to the low 'n slow cooking that can sometimes challenge one's schedule. Good job Jack.

food bbq pork methodology

First time for everything

In my many years of cooking outdoors, I've never used a gas grill. I got one free from my few minutes of fame and finally got the nerve to take the helm the other night.

One of our favorite meals is a simple mix of roasted zucchini, fresh tomatoes, thinly sliced basil, lightly toasted pine nuts, cooked pasta and salt, pepper and olive oil. The residual heat of the cooked pasta gently cooks the tomatoes and the dish is best served at room temperature. And, it has hand size pieces for Frankie to grab (if you use amusing shapes of macaroni).

This time, the only difference I made to the recipe is I grilled the zucchini and summer squash. I cut them in quarters, tossed them with oil and grilled them for a while on medium on a cast iron platform. It required 60 grams of propane (in case you were interested in ridiculous details). It was fun, quick and I might even use my gas grill with some regularity. Totally inappropriate for the low 'n slow thing but quite handy for the lightning fast dinner preps.

food grill zucchini vegetarian desperation dinner

Lentils, peas, rice

A while back, Sasha posted this simple recipe of lentils, peas and rice. I barely modified it but re-posted it as an endorsement if nothing else. A great contribution as a room temperature potluck dish. It's a regular part our nighttime scramble to get healthy food to the table. I simmer 1 cup dry green lentils in in (ca. 3 C) stock and about a teaspoon of fenugreek, caremelize thinly sliced onions, cook about a cup of basmati rice and combine everything into a bowl containing a 10 oz bag of frozen peas (the residual heat of the lentils, rice and onion warms the frozen peas and the frozen peas stop the lentils from further cooking, or, as a chemist, I can't resist saying the whole mess equilibrates nicely). I add a liberal slosh of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and let it set for a while and serve with yogurt/lemon juice on the side. We love it and I hope our gathering today does too. Thanks Sasha!

Sourdough on my schedule?

Update: 6.24.2005
The resulting dough stayed in the fridge for 72 hours. I warmed it up about an hour, shaped it into a loaf and let it proof 2 hours. Here's the result. Totally sourdough but possibly underproofed. It looks a tad dense. We'll be hacking into it for tomorrow's b'fast. Next time I'll be using a poolish variant (using 2 x 1/4 t shots of yeast for a boost) of the same recipe. I like the graininess of the loaf I just think I'll be wanting more volume, we'll see tomorrow. I'm just not a sourdough type guy. I need the volume. Click on the image for a bigger view.

Original post: 6.22.05
I'm not dead yet.

Summer travel, simple meals with easy to handle and fling food have kept me from disclosing anything exciting on the food front.

I have been itching to get back into sourdoughs though. I got my starter from the fridge (kindly prepared via Silverton's method by my good friend Gary), scraped off the mold and refreshed it by taking 2 tablespoons of it in 200 g flour and 200 g water and letting it rise in a ca. 70-deg-F basement for about 12 hours (massive volume expansion; definitely still alive), disposing half of it and replenishing with 100 g of flour and 100 g water. The resulting starter was deemed ready for use after an additional 12 hours fermentation.

Next, I mixed 300 g of starter with 300 g water, 400 grams unbleached white and 100 grams of mixed grainy flours (spelt, wheat, rye, flax seeds and rolled oats) and salt (10 g). I tossed this mess in the pan of my bread machine and gave it a good 10 minute knead, rounded the slightly tacky dough ball and tossed it in my fridge inside of a plastic container bearing an exhaust hole. My intention is to take 1/3 of this mixture out at a time over the next week and let it warm for about an hour or so, shape it into a loaf, proof it and bake into grainy baguettes. I'll keep you posted on the results.

baking sourdough multigrain

Kitchen Scraps + Leaves -----> Tomatoes

Compost Update: 6.23.2005
Well, the fornicating worms weren't enough. I'm afraid my composting activities have sensed my deep-seated Republican thoughts and just won't decompose. I dumped the worms and pilot size compost into my big composter and churned it up. I found a zillion ants! I suspect my balance is simply off. It's about 2/3 moist leaves and 1/3 kitchen waste. I'll keep churning but I think I just have a pile of waste.

Compost Update: 5.12.2005
Well, one co-worker a million of you have asked about updates on this post. For about 3 weeks I shook my mini-composter of kitchen waste and leaves about once a week and kept it moist. No change. Yesterday I put in a pile of worms from my neighbors compost heap and put the mini bin in my garage (so it wouldn't overheat in the sun) and will keep an eye on it. In the 7th comment, a reader gave me this link for composting recipes too. Thanks!

Original Post: 4.19.2005

	worms currently ravaging leaves and kitchen waste and hopefully mating like rabbits
Before	After

Here at Dave's Beer we are enamored with all things fermentable.

It's getting close to the time when we plant our favorite fruit, the tomato. Unfortunately, our compost heap died this winter. We set it up by layering leaves and good old food scraps. It was pretty hot for a couple months but then died. The heap is mostly still in the form of leaves rather than nice rich compost. I guess we buy some topsoil this year. But, in the meantime, I'll be experimenting with a small-scale tumbling composter; a hole-punched plastic container that I shake daily for aeration. Before I dump over a hundred bucks on something like this, I want to verify the turnaround they claim (in the order of weeks).

This image is a shot of a plastic container with holes in it so it can get moist. It contains a weeks worth of scrap food and about 3 times as many leaves (in mass). I'll water it and shake it daily to promote the microbial decomposition. I'll post the final appearance when it turns.

compost tomatoes food

A way to cook greens

A friend asked me for some suggestions for simple recipes that can be done in the course of the daycare/workday scramble; we call them desperation dinners. Here's one we got from a Martha Stewart Good Food issue sometime ago and now it's a regular part of our repertoire. Greens are pretty bountiful this time of year and thought I'd toss this in.

Saute in this order in a large wide (ca. 6 qt) pan (serves about 3-4):
1. sweet italian sausage with a little olive oil
2. a huge pile of greens (we use swiss chard most often), add some water and cover for ca. 10 minutes till the greens wilt to your desired tenderness),
3. toss in freshly toasted pinenuts, raisins and cooked pasta (1/2 lb dry).
4. add more olive oil, salt and pepper and serve. It's good warm to room temperature.

It's amazing how much greens condense when cooked so it's a good recipe to use up those bountiful subscription greens.

food greens swiss chard desperation dinner

The Butt

Last weekend I made some pulled pork. My favorite cut to use is the picnic roast, another part of the shoulder. Unfortunately, the only thing I could get was a 6.2 lb butt roast (bone-in of course). The first time I learned what a butt roast (or boston butt or blade roast) was, an energetic butcher placed both hands on my latissimus dorsi to describe exactly where the butt and picnic roast were. I was quite happy the butt roast was a misnomer.

I used the same rub I use for ribs and smoked this using Royal Oak lump for 10 hours running at about 225F +/- 25F. I did one mop with cider vinegar and unlike past times, I smeared a bit of bbq sauce (just commercial stuff) over the exterior one hour prior to taking the roast off to rest an hour before pulling. I then mixed the meat with a bit of my own sauce composed of ketchup, cider vinegar and smokey rendered pork fat (5:1:1). It was quite a meal. We made sandwiches with pulled pork, colelsaw, pickles and sauce.

I posted this to remind me a 6.2 pound butt roast produced an adequate yield for 8 hungry adults with a bit leftover. Happy 'qing this weekend.

Vesuvius

I used to strive for bubbles on my pizzas and, more the better. The other night, I stretched a 500 gram ball of dough to about 14-15" diamater, covered it with a dish towel and played with Frankie a while before topping it. Then I topped it with a simple tomato sauce, mozzarella and a bit of reggiano (kid special) and popped it in the oven. It practically exploded with bubbles. I think it was the long rest that did it. It was pretty cool looking. Just thought I'd share.

food pizza method

Frankie's First Pizza

Friday nights are becoming pizza night in our house. It's the end of the week, we're a bit tired and need a fix for dinner. I prepped the dough Thursday night and tossed it in the fridge. I took it out about an hour before dinner while I preheated the oven (to 550F). I plopped the dough out of the rising container and start pressing it into a 15" round (500 grams dough).

Frankie got into pressing out the dough into a circle and flapping it over and over. Great technique. She did pretty good. We had a nice round pie with her help. And that thing on her wrist is a compass she got from some happy meal (but we won't admit we got it at Wendy's the night before).

Bees and Salad Dressing

I think Alton Brown's Honey Mustard dressing is the best ever. It's a simple mixture of honey, Dijon Mustard and rice vinegar. I can make it on my electronic balance in a minute. It's calorically dense but the amount needed to bring a salad to life is scant. As good as it is, I couldn't help tampering.

Here in Columbus, we have The Bee Lab cranking out honey in different types and textures (you can mail order it on their site, check out the creamed honey!). So, using Sunflower honey, and, because I was in a rush the other night for dinner, I used yellow mustard because it was faster to squeeze into my salad dressing bottle, and the usual rice vinegar to make an outstanding variant on Alton's recipe. Give it a shot. Or try any substitution to the general recipe of honey, mustard & vinegar and see what you get.

Honey Mustard Dressing
Honey, 5T (100 grams)
Mustard, 3T (45 grams)
Rice Vinegar, 2T (30 grams)
Shake until uniform. Use sparingly.

Deep Dish Pizza

In all my baking years, I've never made deep dish pizza. When we lived in Evanston, we used to frequent Giordano's for a sausage "topped" deep dish. These things are built upside down and are a hearty meal indeed. I used essentially Emeril's recipe with a few modifications. I didn't have any semolina flour on hand and left it out. I will repeat it including the semolina. But, duty calls, it's Friday night and the gang demands pizza. Also, my pizza sauce is much simpler and milder than the sauce of that wild man "Bamming!" everything in sight. He's a scary man.

Dough
water, cold, 200 g
olive oil, 25 g
salt, 5 g
honey, 5-10 g
unbleached white flour, 300 g
Fleischmann's instant active dry yeast, 2 t
Kneaded 5-6 minutes in my bread machine, rounded the dough and let sit in the fridge. I did this the night before we used it.

My Thick Sauce
Simmered "6-in-1" brand chopped tomatoes, a couple slivers garlic, olive oil (ca. 1-2 T), oregano, salt and pepper. There is always a stash of this in my freezer. I use a pretty thick brand of tomatoes and usually don't use paste. If the brand of tomatoes used is thin, just cook it down.

Assembly of Pizza
The oven was preheated to 450F (I always preheat excessively). The dough (about 500 g) was warmed about an hour. I punched it down and let it sit on the counter in a squat ca. 8" disc covered with a moist towel for about 20 minutes. It was then stretched to a 14-15" circle. I chose a heavy duty aluminum 10" diameter cake pan. Because of the high temperature and long duration baking (450F/30 minutes), I thought a dark pan would burn the crust; hence, the choice of shiny aluminum. The dough was draped over the pan and allowed to come over the edge a bit. I let it rest again for a few minutes and began topping in this order: sliced mozzarella, crumbled sweet Italian sausage (raw), tomato sauce and parmesan cheese and baked it in the center of the oven for 30 minutes. I originally intended to use 400 grams of dough per 10" pie but ended up using the full 500 grams. That resulted in the huge wave-like crust. Next time I might end the crust at the pan's edge.

Results
I've been known to take freshly baked bread and launch it out the back door when I'm not pleased with the results. This was not one of those occasions. Trish, Frankie and I attacked this with a small salad on the side and there was some left over. I thought it was pretty awesome. Too much crust and all. Next time, I'll use less dough (like I mentioned earlier) and also use the semolina flour that was called for in the original recipe. I suspect that will result in a more appropriate crackly-crisp crust. But overall, a success. Wish you could've joined us.

Tofu "Meat"balls? - just say no!

Update:
Below is a proposed experiment. I won't use the term "miserable failure" because I'll just get more hits than I'm comfortable with but I think you get the gist. Tofu just doesn't have that fleshy, moldable feel like meat and all it did was crumble and never held together despite the milk and egg and cracked wheat. Oh well, cheap experiment. The turkey ones were made in short order so we could have something to eat during the week. Yum. Can't wait. And, neither can Frankie, they're her absolute favorite.

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Original Post:
This is more of a note to myself than it is something you might find interesting (but just in case, here it is).

Cooking lately has been more for utility than show. However, I thought of something I have to try. Usually, recipes that try to substitute tofu for meat fail miserably (at least in my hands). That's the result I get when I've attempted some Moosewood preps. Texture just isn't right.

One of my recent modifications to the meatball was so good, I almost got a copyright for my site, I (and the gang here) liked them so much. Basically, I modified the mouthfeel of ground turkey with cracked wheat. And when I made them again more recently, I accidentally added more liquid than usual and had to add a ton of cracked wheat to get them to stick together. I was worried at the time but they turned out pretty awesome. You can't detect the presence of the cracked wheat yet they don't taste like ground turkey either. I made this modification because ground turkey is just too soft a protein and feels too, too . . . just can't describe it. Too tender and soft I guess. From the title of this post, I guess you know where this is going.

Here's my next recipe creation:
tofu, 1/2 lb, firm, crumbled
egg, 1
parsley, bunch, chopped
onion, 1/2 finely diced
milk, couple tablespoons
salt & pepper
enough cracked wheat to keep 'em together in golf ball-sized lumps

How will I cook them? Those who cook meatballs are in two camps: sear the exterior followed by braising and the lazy braisers. I'm a braiser. Just plop them in a basic tomato sauce and simmer for a couple hours. That's how I'll do these.

Why bother with this if I'm NOT a vegetarian? Curiosity mostly and I have this love/hate relationship with vegetarian cuisine. I find it challenging to get good flavors without the aid of meat. I'll let you know how they turn out.