I tried to resist ...

Every Friday night, Trish and I pick up Frankie and go out for dinner. It's a fun ritual I've come to look forward to. We dine at a variety of (kid-friendly = LOUD) restaurants; anything from the heavenly Pig Iron Grill to Whole World, a vegetarian place. Last Friday, we went to the latter. Frankie got a hummous platter (hummous and veggies), Trish got smoked beans in tomato sauce over cornbread and I got a tofu sloppy joe sammich topped with sprouts on a hamburger bun (whole wheat of course). The last three times we've been there, I've liked it more and more. I keep trying to resist so I can fulfill my meatly needs, but I just keep getting lucky with their menu.

A few weeks ago, I got their version of Gado-Gado. Gado-gado is and Indonesian dish whose preparation varies greatly depending on the source. Basically, it's steamed veggies on rice with a peanut sauce over it all. Whole World's variation made a stew of veggies in peanut sauce which was ladled over rice. Unbelievable. I still have fond memories of it. They also have a HUGE variety of veggie burgers (soy, veggie, lentil or rice-based). Every variety I've tried so far is pretty darn good.

So, if you crave meat, go to Pig Iron; if you can do without, Whole World won't disappoint.

Kale, sausage, gmelli, pine nuts, raisins & grilled cheese (and my failure to give my daughter a nutritious meal)

The other night, I had prepared a favorite of ours. Kale, braised with a touch of garlic for a couple hours, combined with toasted pine nuts, gmelli, sauteed Italian sausage and raisins with a healthy dose of olive oil. A good hearty meal for a cold night.

Instead of trying to get this meal past Frankie, I caved like a sopping-wet piece of cardboard and just made her a grilled cheese so I could enjoy my meal without a 40 minute negotiation session on eating a couple bites of the meal.

It worked, but I still feel the guilt.

Original recipe for this dish. Enjoy.

Sunday Morning Waffles

I'm one of the few who don't like Silverton's book. I think her starter preparation is tedious and unnecessary. Starters are robust and don't need to be fed and nurtured 3 times a day. You can let them turn green, shave off the mold and perk 'em up again with a few replenishments of flour and water. Catching them at their prime for optimal leavening ... now that takes a skilled baker and LOTS of practice.

The only recipe from her book I absolutely love is her sourdough waffles. It's robust and easy. A friend of mine gave me some of the starter prepared by her method and I've kept it for years (thanks Gary!). I refreshed it a bit this weekend in preparation for Sunday waffles. Kind of a regular thing in our house. I altered the recipe a tad to incorporate cornmeal to give the waffles an interesting extra flavor. They were unbelievable and we had plenty to freeze.

Silverton's Waffles - modified a bit by me.
Night Before:
white starter, ca. 1 cup
unbleached white flour, 1 C
cornmeal, 1/2 C
milk, 250 g (ambient temp)
butter, 114 g (melted and cooled a bit)
salt, 1.5 t
brown sugar, 1 T
-Mix and let sit 8-14 hours covered with a towel.

Next morning:
Add two whisked eggs and 1/4 t baking soda
Mix, will be a thick batter

Make waffles (I never lube the waffle iron)

Panini Press

Alright, this blog shits the bed in frequency of posting. And, now, in quality.

But, I couldn't resist disclosing this one. I love a hot grilled sandwich. Last night for dinner, I was pressed for time (as usual with both working, daycare, etc.) and I went for a quickie but goody. My Mom's panini press did the trick. We had cheese and mortadella on oat bran bread. Sounds weird, but kids like weird things. We had our sandwiches and a vast selection of crunchy veggies on the side and voila! Dinner.

So, toss those fancy panini irons and use a piece of foil and an iron on high. Butter the outsides of the bread, put favorite fillings in sandwich, place the sandwich in foil folded in half and grill a few minutes on each side. My favorite is thinly sliced cheddar and thinly sliced tomato on a good crusty white.

Thanks Ma.

The Results

In yesterday's post, I babbled about the opportunity to use of this nifty new pan and bannetton I was using to bake a boule with nice volume and crackly crust.

Although, my recipe was only a quick rise dough, the results were very nice. The crust, initially was crackly and the interior tender; after cooling, because it was slightly enriched (with olive oil and honey), the crust became softer but still maintained some tooth.

The real victory of the day came using these tools and this kneadless process. I've been somewhat obsessed ever since I watched this video and I had an amazing success story yesterday. When I get reproducibility on it, you'll be the first I tell. I used the recipe, but my own cooking method.

On humidity, perforation and the Brotform

It's about frigging time for a new post. Giada's nuts was a good chuckle, but it's time to move on.

Historically, I've had problems achieving good crackly crust on anything but my baguette. I think it's primarily an issue of humidity attacking the new loaf on all sides in the oven when the yeast is experiencing its final gasp of life (a.k.a. oven-spring). The perforated baguette pan simply allows the steam to hit the loaf from the bottom (and all other sides are simply exposed, so they get it too). Today's experiment involves the application of a perforated, thin, flat pan I found the other day at good 'ol Giant Eagle. ANY size loaf could fit on this thing and best of all, you don't need stones in the oven or a peel to get the loaf in and out. This thin pan, I hypothesize, should heat up quickly and permit my steam shot (ca. 60 - 120 mL water, tossed into the hot oven floor or squirted from a bottle) to completely bathe my loaf in steam, regardless of shape, producing a crackly mosaic of crust surrounding a tender inside (a.k.a. "Papa's good bread" Frankie calls it and I stand proud).

Additionally, since I'm making a boule today (a round bread), I'm using a nifty item my love bought for me a year ago called a Brotform (2nd image). It's a bamboo-like bowl used for the final proof. There's surprisingly little (I've found) on the web for using these. Do they need extensive seasoning/use? Is a slack dough going to stick? I'll be exploring these and other questions in weeks to come.

Today's recipe is not a good control. It's not the simple baguette recipe; there are a lot of variables tossed in. Life is simply too short for rigorous factorial experimental design everytime you need some bread. So phthththth. And, I need this for dinner at Amy and Mario's tonight!

My recipe for today is:

water, 250 g
honey, ca. 1 T
olive oil, 1 T
Montana Sapphire unbleached white, 375 g
rapid rise yeast (Fleischmann's), 1 packet
salt (not kosher), 7 g

First kneading and rise in the bread machine (my kitchen slave), 2nd rise will be about 20 minutes and the final proof somewhere around 20 minutes (cold kitchen today, we'll deal with the final proof when it comes). Baking will be at 450-deg-F (convection) until deep golden color. I'll post the results.

Giada's Nuts

It's been a rough year. Family tragedy followed by moving to a new house (not a home yet). The move's good, but stressful. The family tragedy? Well, things will hopefully get better over time. Don't know.

Just wanted to log this recipe for an unbelievable looking mixture of spiced nuts that, if they turn out well, will be gifts next year. And, I hope they're good because no one, with the exception of Frankie and Trish, got a thing this year. Sorry all.

Here's to 2007 being a better year.

Coffee Roasting (expt 1)

I started roasting coffee recently. Click here for the larger size; very cool shot. Unfortunately, looks better than it tasted. I chose a Sumatra decaf green bean from Yeah, me too on Indianola (Columbus, OH) for starters. For roasting equipment I used an unmodified Hamilton Beach Poppery II (scored for $2.99 from Ebay) and roasted 1/2 cup of green beans for 10 minutes.

I conducted this outside at about 50 deg-F for a timed 10 minutes. Despite the satisfying color of the roasted beans, I think I under roasted them. After roasting them, I cooled them in a cast iron pan (to dissipate the residual heat; halting the roasting by removing residual heat is supposed to be effective) and waited a couple hours before grinding them for a cup of brew in my drip machine.

The final coffee had nice color, reasonable taste, but was a tad winey-tasting. I suspect they were a tad underdone. I also spoke to some friends about my results and they agreed the ambient outdoor temperature* was too low to get a good rich roast outside in only 10 minutes.

I'll be trying this again soon. It's fun, Frankie likes to watch and the final results are never wasted. I think I just need a more reliable endpoint to shoot for. The first crack was faint and barely detected and I don't even know if I made it to the second crack.

Results will be disclosed as experiments continue.

*I did this outside because of warnings from friends about big plumes of smoke when the beans start to achieve a dark roast. I never noticed this. Again, possibly indicative of too cold an environment to get the full roast.

Update 08-Jan-07
I repeated the roasting indoors (ambient temp ca. 64-deg-F for a full 12 minutes. I was hearing the second crack when I stopped the roasting (first crack around 5-6 minutes). Dumped the batch (1/2 C) into cast iron and it was all shiny and dark. Here's the final product. Tasted as good as it looked.

Come hither our victim

Sadly, it's winter and the end of fresh herbs from the garden (sage seems to be surviving still). We saw this cool mini-christmas-tree looking rosemary plant the other day at Whole Paycheck Foods and decided to take it home.

And subject it to a slow, mold-induced death.

Ideally, we'd like it to thrive indoors until spring and maybe even have some to harvest for our focaccias and roasted roots. But, we don't have good luck with these things. They generally look ok for a couple weeks. Inevitably, mold sets in and it's just a matter of time from that point.

So, if anyone has luck wintering these things, shoot me some advice via the comments. I'll keep you posted on its "progress". Currently, it's a week old and it has a surprising amount of new growth. I'm afraid to water it.

update
Time of death, early december.

Pizzas: Kneadless Expts.

In a previous post, I tried some focaccia dough using a kneadless technique to make the dough. It's from this book No Need to Knead and I thought it was a perfect application for a focaccia dough.

This night, I decided to take the same dough, divide it into two 250 g lumps and make pizzas out of it using 9" cake pans. My usual pizza prep involves fairly extensive kneading of the dough. But, I'm a wicked busy parent and looking for any possible way to get good food to the table in a shorter amount of time. I thought this expt. would be pretty fun too.

I made the dough as in the previous focaccia, post, divided it, plopped each lump into a 9" cake pan (dark, non stick), topped them with pureed tomatoes, oregano, good mozzarella, salt, pepper and tossed them in a 450-deg-F oven (middle) for 15 minutes.

Results
Crust was, like the focaccia, soft, not too chewy, cooked well all the way through (kind of a thick crust), and tasty but far, far from the robust crust of a well-kneaded dough.

My next foray into this kneadless stuff will be tonight when I apply the method to our night's baguette; a very lean dough (it's bread, cheese and salad night in our household). I'll post results.

Now vote, damnit.

Roasting soon

I'm racing up the stairs from lunch the other day and mention to a guy who I know who roasts his own coffee that I'm going to start doing the same soon. First words out of his mouth was a recommendation to get green beans from Sweet Maria's.

The web will never cease to amaze me in it's breadth, but in every niche, there's a surprisingly limited vocabulary that's used. Almost everyone who does this sort of thing knows Sweet Maria's and also knows the Hamilton Beach Poppery II is one of the best hot air poppers to use as a primitive roaster and it does a darn good job. And, there's about a million people who've modified these things to fine tune the roasting process ... another post.

I also got a tip that in some way, the proprietor of the Columbus coffee shop Yeah, me too (on Indianola) is in someway related to Sweet Maria's and their beans pass muster with the best of them.

All I need now is a burr grinder and I'm ready for coffee heaven.

Punk'in seeds

Punk'in seeds

One of my favorite spices is ancho chili powder.

Anchos are nice and spicy but not hot. Perfect for good flavor but don't scare away Frankie. I use it making chilli, spicing up beans, etc. I usually buy the dried smoked chilis and cut out the white parts, remove the seeds and pulverize them in a spice blender. They keep forever. Once in a while, the particular lot I buy is still kind of moist and I'll have to dry them in the oven at about 170-deg-F for a couple hours.

So, last night, while the wife and kid were working on the jack 'o lantern, I grabbed the seeds and went to work. Cleaned them up, sprinkled them with ancho chili powder, salt, pepper and gave 'em a quick squirt of olive oil and baked them at 250-deg-F until crisp. Yum.

Focaccia, kneadless

Sunday evening meal. Like to make it a special one. Sunday nights should be special. Everyone gearing up for the week. We were having italian sausages simmered for several hours in tomato sauce over pasta and we wanted some fresh bread (or as Frankie calls it: "Papa's good bread") to go with the meal, but after a long day of parenting, I was bushed.

I read a book a while back called No Need to Knead. Her basic premise is you get more rustic looking breads (big irregular holes and such) with less kneading. I don't think the premise is valid but it sure sounded appealing when I wanted a fresh loaf. So I weighed out water (200 g, warm tap), a T or so of honey, 1-2 t of dry yeast, olive oil (2 T) and swirled the mixture in my plastic bowl I use for raising dough. Then, I tossed in unbleached white flour (300 g) and salt (5 grams) and mixed the mixture with a metal spoon until it came together, and mixed another couple turns and closed it up (this container I use has a 2 mm diameter hole in the top for venting the gas) and went to wrestle Frankie.

Within an hour and a half, it had risen nicely. I sprinkled on some flour and squashed it down. It wasn't as sticky as I thought it would be. I let it rise a second time only about a half hour. Then I plopped the mass into a 10 inch dark, non-stick cake pan (oiled lightly) and preheated my oven to 450-deg-F.

I pushed the blob out to fill the pan, Frankie painted the surface with oil, I sprinkled rosemary and coarse sea salt on it and let it sit uncovered for 15 minutes. Then, I docked it and pushed it in the oven for 15 minutes. Wow. What a focaccia for very little work!

However, it was very soft. Very flavorful but very soft and chewy. A great bread but don't know if I'd like it as a staple in our repertoire of breads. Definitely fit the bill for an exhausted parent.

food foccacia baking kneading bread

Chicken 'n Noodles (wicked fast)

A neighbor of ours makes the absolute best chicken and noodles we have ever had the luxury of tasting. She makes her own noodles and even invited me to witness this stupendous dish being prepared. There's really no big secret. She made a tender noodle using flour, some oil, water, salt and hand rolled them. No biggie. The chicken soup was also nothing secretive. A good stock derived from a bone-in chicken, veggies, etc. I kept looking for the secret ingredient. She told me it was the Knorr's cube she used. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find anything unconventional that made her soup so special. I left after the tutorial. A few days later, we were talking about the soup again and she mentioned "oh yeah, and a stick of butter" (was added towards the end of cooking). Bingo.

She essentially "mounts" the soup with butter. I don't think this is mounting as it's usually used, but the end result is still decadent richness.

The other day while driving Frankie to school, she requested chicken 'n noodles for dinner. I thought, great, a weeknight and all I have is some frozen boneless chicken in the freezer and some dry noodles in the cupboard. Butter to the rescue and voila! A wonderful fast chicken and noodles in a flash was born. We use it pretty often now and is it yummy.

Quick Chicken and Noodles
onion, 1, chopped,
garlic, a few slivers
olive oil, about 1-2 T
carrots, a bunch, chopped
1-2 chicken breasts, frozen, boneless
water, ca. 2-2.5 quarts
parsley, dried, 1T
salt, 2t
pepper, to taste
oregano, dried, 2t
egg noodles, most brands are good, 1/2 lb, dried
butter, 3T

Saute onions, garlic, carrots a few minutes, toss in hunks of frozen chicken and water, parsley, salt, pepper and oregano; bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Remove chicken and chop, return to pot. Drop in noodles and continue simmering 10-15 minutes. Finally, stir in butter and serve. The butter takes care of all your shortcuts (boneless breasts, no stock, etc.) and since we don't throw in gobs of it, it's not even that unhealthy since it yields at least 4 healthy servings. Enjoy.

food chicken+noodles soup comfort food