The ravioli machine

Last night, I got about 4 lbs pasta dough mixed and put in the fridge. Today, Mrs. Davesbeer made the cheese mixture. I rolled dough, the kid stuffed and the Mrs. cut. About 200 made in about 2 hours with a side of noodles for the upcoming week.

Now, it's off to Studio 35 for the new Jim Carrey Christmas Story.

Food snobs we are not

In the early days of courtship, this was the food of the gods. Breadsticks and Rotel dip.

A few years later, we could not fathom such a lavish meal of "cheese," fat and starch without a fiberous antidote. For tonight's special movie night, we will introduce Frankie to this wonderful food with an accompaniment of lightly salted and blanched fresh veggies. It will be nostaligic and a wee bit healthier.

Our drink? Clos Normand French fermented cider. Should be interesting.

Merry smelt season

It's that horrid time of the year. One of the only things that takes the sting out of the pain and agony that is xmas is that it is also smelt season.

I don't know if smelt actually have a season, but the stores stock frozen smelts in the cold months and I can barely wait for them. Been frying these little guys forever, but this year, I changed my coating. I had always coated the little guys with egg and dredged in bread crumbs. This year I first dredged in flour, shook off excess, and then coated with egg and dredged in bread crumbs (seasoned with basil, salt and pepper).

Don't name them or you might hesitate to drop them in hot oil.

After breading them in this way, the crumbs stuck tenaciously. Don't know why the flour had such an effect, but it was great. I took the breaded little guys and stacked them on a plate and put them in the fridge for an hour or so while I cleaned up.

I prepared my faithful FryDaddy (I deep fry outdoors on my deck) and started tossing the fish in the hot oil. A batch of 6 or so only takes a few minutes. Cook them fast because you'll probably eat quite a few while sitting at the fryer on a cold night. Frankie dips them in ketchup and we dip them in a mix of ketchup and horseradish.

Yum

Interesting link on the smelt: seagrant.umn.edu/fisheries/smelt_mystery

Baking for the French Teachers

The kid goes to a French immersion school here in Columbus, Ecole Kenwood. The Europeans and Francophiles on staff were an irresistible gang to try a small bread baking production effort. Baking on a large scale has been tricky for me in the past, so I decided to use a retarded (cognitively disabled, sorry) rising to slow things down and gain control over the baking stage. I can't give all the details, but the pics show the sequence adequately and I wanted to use this entry to remind myself of things I did that I would and would not change.

This past Friday night, I mixed 4 batches of dough. Each batch was 400 g cold water, 1 packet rapid rise yeast, 10 g salt and 600 grams Montana Sapphire unbleached white. I plopped the 4 kg in a large stockpot for the weekend. Temperatures outside were 18-39°F throughout the weekend. I punched down the dough (it rose even at those temps!) during the weekend about 2 times. Sunday night at 8 pm, I plunked a probe in the middle and took it inside to my chilly home to warm up until 4 am the next morning.

It went from 38-50°F in 8 hours.


Very active dough, even at cool temps

The dough was punched down and scaled to 100 g and 200 g pieces. The 200 g pieces were formed into small baguettes and the 100 g pieces, boules and allowed to proof about 20 minutes each.

Scaled and proofing

While 4-8 pieces proofed, another batch were formed into loaves. The house temp was cold and the proof was sluggish. Once the loaves formed I had between 20-30 minutes to get them in the oven. If any piece had overproofed, I punched it down again, reformed the loaf and let it proof again. Eventually I got a rhythm and the first batch of 4 small baguettes came out nice.

First batch up.

The rest of the morning went well. I tried various shapes and docking methods to play around. After all was finished (2.5 hours), the loaves were placed in a basket with preserves, butter, napkins and left in the teacher's lounge.

Voilá

Notes:
• At one point, I realized a 200 g piece was a bit much for a morning snack and took a long baguette-shaped piece of dough and chopped it into 80-100 g pieces with my spackle knife (pastry knife) and docked the center. It was a nice shape. Kind of a pillow with a vent on top. I never reformed the freshly cut ends - working too fast.

• Once the dough started to warm up by forming it into loaves, it started get pretty peppy rising.

...

Granola

Back from the joy of holiday travel and cooking again. In one of the many airports we visited over the past days, we ate at an Au Bon Pain. My daughter is nearly fluent in French and informed me this translates to "Really expensive and mediocre food."

She got yogurt and granola. I think it was about $12, but it was a good size and I figured I'd get her leftovers. Thought I'd make my own granola for mixing with yogurt when I got home. Here's one version.

I dried some fruit a week ago. The easiest method to dry fruit is toss a bunch of chopped and/or frozen fruit on a baking sheet, sprinkle some sugar on it and bake at 170°F (the lowest setting on most ovens) until they all look like raisins - soft, but not hard, still moist. 170°F is kind of high for fruit dehydration, but if you don't overdo it, the fruit will dehydrate and not bake. The fruit was reserved.

Pre-drying stage for mixed berries

The granola was tossed together quickly. To a large roasting pan (enamel on steel) I added: rolled oats (8 C), wheat bran (1/2 C), oat bran (1/2 C), sunflower seeds (1/2 C), flax seeds (handful) and slivered almonds (1/2 C). On this mixture I poured on a mixture of melted butter (1/4 pound), brown sugar (1 C), trace salt and vanilla extract (2 t) and stirred it all up. I baked the pan in a 350°F oven giving a thorough stir every 10 minutes - set a timer! I did this until the mixture had dried to a near crispy stage (about 50 minutes total). It cooled and the reserved dried fruit was mixed in. Yum.

Note the little fingers grabbing the goodness as it cools

Desperation Dinners: The potroast

The cheapest cuts are the best, originally uploaded by Seligmans Dog.

Sunday I plopped a chuck roast into a pan, added salt and pepper and put it in a 225°F for 4 hours. Then I took it out, placed assorted roots around it (turnips, carrots, potatoes and brussels sprouts), a tad more salt and pepper and tossed it in the fridge.

I heated the entire pan covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 30 minutes at 350°F. Nice meal for a weeknight.

General purpose chocolate sauce

Hot chocolate season is upon us and we're out of Hershey's syrup. So, I took a shot at my own:

heated and immersion blendered:

dark chocolate unsweetened powder, 3/4 C
sugar, 1C
water, 1C
sweetened condensed milk, about 3 oz

It's a little thin but tasty. I added about 2 oz of this and 4 oz of milk and steamed it using one of these.

Anyone else got a good general purposed chocolate sauce recipe?

Loot from Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati

click image for better view

The past week had FAST meals going on. Scallops and couscous with some veggies, leftover lasagna, etc. Nice but nothing blogworthy. Today we decided to get some inspiration, shlep the kid for a 3 h round trip to Jungle Jim's and get some fun things to eat. Didn't get the oh so stinky Dorian though. Wasn't that bold.

Pizza Grand Prix postmortem

webercam.com is largely a lab notebook of my adventures in cooking and amateur food science. Tonight I was invited by Jim of CMH Gourmand to attend the Pizza Grand Prix held at Wild Goose Creative and show off my cool toy, a modified grill that cooks pizzas. I had a blast. I love to share pizzas I make and gain feedback.

Hardly a well composed post, I just wanted to record some quick notes (I'll keep the post going a few days).

•I made a total of about 18 pizzas in 2 hours, 225 g crust each and mostly topped with Dei Fratelli crushed tomatoes, basil and mozzarella.

•Bethia brought some lovely ham from Thurns for a topping. Very nice. I snuck a few pieces of ham for myself too - thanks much Bethia.

•Lorence of Lorence's Kitchen brought some provolone and a nice mixture of sauteed mushrooms and shallots. It made great pizzas and Lorence was lucky that mixture made it to the pizza, it was very nice. I also enjoyed swapping parenting stories with him.

•Quantities: I only used about 2-3 lbs mozzarella (just BelGioso - a favorite commercial "fresh"), 1 28 oz can tomatoes (lightly salted), big bunch of chifonnade of basil, 9 lbs of dough [multiples of: water 400 g, flour 600 g, salt 12 g, olive oil 30 g, sugar 10 g].

•My contraption needs a good 40 minutes to come up to full temp (ca. 680-700°F).

•Karl of Wild Goose suggested lump as a fuel in between charcoal briquettes and wood in order to get another boost in temperature. Thanks Karl, I'll be trying this next time I get a shot (if my family's not too sick of my experiments).

•Jason gave me a Pumpkinhead Ale from Shipyard Brewing Co that I saved until all was shut down, put away and I was relaxed. I savored each and every mL. Thanks Jason.

•I got to speak to a co-owner of Surly Girl. Wow. I didn't even know it. How cool.

•Can you believe a French Ph.D. candidate was even present? How cool is that?

...

I'm ready

Tonight's the Pizza Grand Prix. My Firedome, 10 pounds of dough, simple toppings and I will be in attendance.

I heard Padma and Colicchio may also show up.

ps Sorry Jim, I had to pack the car early; still there will be some good photo ops @ 5. I also get to the airport 3 hours early.

Meatloaf on the grill

I walked by my cafeteria's meatloaf entre today and felt a rush of inspiration.

On the way home I dropped in to Weiland's Gourmet Market to get meatloaf mix. Meatloaf mix is 1/3 beef, 1/3 pork and 1/3 veal. I don't know anywhere that has it except Weiland's. I got a few pounds, separated it into 1 lb portions and went to work on tonight's dinner.

I took 400 grams of the heavenly mixture, and added 7 g salt; Ruhlman salts meat at a reliable rate of 40 g / 5 lbs. I use this ratio a lot in cooking. Cooking meat you only get one shot to get it right. Can't really eat the meat raw to check spices, can't salt after it's cooked, just have to get it right. After salt, anything goes. I added milk (1/4 C), my bread crumbs (fu#k Panko, mine are better, 3/4 C), pepper, oregano, basil, egg, parsley, mixed gently and tossed on the grill with a think skim of bbq sauce on top. Vents full open, indirect and cooked 40 min to an internal temp of 160°F, wrapped and let rest for 15 minutes or so and served with tater tots and broccoli. What a dinner. Nothing left.

Firedome using Stubbs charcoal

Firedome using Stubbs charcoal, originally uploaded by Seligmans Dog.

It's (Pizza) Grand Prix week! We're prepping the kettle for a very short road trip to the Wild Goose Creative (bicycle rack transporter and all). Last night I did a quick dry run to check out the fuel I'll be using while making Pizzas.

I ran my Firedome through a dry run to check the fuel, condition a new piece of clay and take some measurements. The dome ran for 3 hours at 600+ °F which was about the same temp as the clay surface. Great temperature uniformity. After the PGP, I'll be trying seasoned wood chunks to boost the temperature. For now, I'm ready. See you there.

I'm going to start making myself one of these

When Sodexo serves mini corn dogs, she jumps at it. Kills me.

cracked wheat bread

cracked wheat bread, originally uploaded by Seligmans Dog.

I like to bake whole grain breads, but often have problems. When I say whole grain, I don't want all rough milled flour, I want a significant fraction of the grain to be whole grain just hydrated to soften it. The biggest problem? I like my grainy bread to be for sandwhiches and enjoying with cheese; for that I prefer a boule shape. The inherent challenge with this shape and having whole grain in the ingredient list is often a doughy undercooked center. The whole grain retains so much moisture (which is great for shelf life), but it creates two different environments of cooking, the exterior and middle. Kind of like breast and thighs on chicken.

I tried a recipe I really liked recently. Inspired by Bittman's Food Matters (thanks Bethia!). I use more water than Bittman's recipe and let the grain steep for a long time prior to mixing to insure no crunchies in the final bread. I made this Sunday afternoon and it's still as good as the day it came out of the oven. This is a big deal for me. I like Frankie to have her bread from home and don't always have time to bake bread daily.

Cracked Wheat Bread
• In a bowl used for rising add:
Cracked wheat (coarse or fine), 1/2 C
Boiling water, 2.0 C
• Let sit until convenient (an hour or so, I let it sit all day).
• Add:
salt, 1.5 teaspoons
grain flours mix, 1/2 C (I have a tub of spelt, wheat and rye flour mixed)
unbleached white (need some structure), 2 Cups
vegetable oil, 2 tablespoon
dry yeast, 1/2 teaspoon
• Mix until the thing forms a ball and kind of knead with wooden spoon in bowl
• Let rise at least 12 hours.
• Form into a boule and let sit on parchment covered with a dry dishtowel for about 8 hours. The dough's not very sticky, typical of nice grainy doughs. Use a bit of flour to prevent any tackiness if you need while shaping.
• Slide into a 425°F oven; I cooked it on a sheet pan that preheated in the oven and toss a 1/4 cup of water into the bottom of the oven.
• Bake 45 minutes at 425°F, remove and let thoroughly cool.