Grape Focaccia – With Acknowledgement to Daniel Leader

We had an invitation to a July 4^th party and it involved a bit of a drive. So what to take? It's hot here in Texas, so didn't want something that needed reheating. Yet also didn't want something that was going to need coddling on the drive. The host is a bit of a foodie too, so we also had to make sure that the dish was interesting enough. Enter Grape Harvest Focaccia – adapted a bit from Daniel Leader's wonderful book, "Local Breads". Who would have thought that grapes, bread, sea salt, olive oil and rosemary would be such a good combination? The juice from the grapes permeates the focaccia, dissolving some of the salt. The heat of the oven intensifies the sweetness of the grapes. A truly wonderful dish – and impressive looking too.

 

Ingredients

300 gm room temperature spring water

1.5t active dry yeast

500 gm AP Flour (plain flour – not bread flour)

60 gm (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil + extra for oiling pan and moistening fingers

10 gm (1 ½ t) kosher salt

250 gm seedless black grapes – washed and dried

10 gm (3t) fresh rosemary finely chopped

7gm (1 ½ t) coarse sea salt

 

Method

Add the yeast to the water in a large bowl, and leave to stand while weighing the other ingredients. Add the flour, olive oil and kosher salt and stir with a plastic spatula until a shaggy dough forms. Turn the dough out onto the work surface and knead for about 15 minutes until the dough is very smooth and elastic. As usual, do not add extra flour to prevent sticking. While the dough will be a bit sticky at first, it eventually smooths out and the stickiness goes away.

 

Transfer to the dough to a lightly oiled bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Leave in a warmish (75-80F) place to ferment and rise.

 

Towards the end of rising time, lightly oil a rimmed baking sheet (half sheet pan) with olive oil. When the bread has risen, transfer from the bowl to the lightly oiled pan. Leave to settle for about 5 minutes. Oil your fingers and flatten the dough in the pan, pushing it gently into the corners. You should have the pan completely covered with the dough. Dimple the surface with oiled fingers. Press the grapes into the dough at intervals of 1 ½ to 2 inches (4-5 cm). This doesn't have to be precise. Do arrange them neatly in rows though since you will be cutting pieces between the rows. Evenly sprinkle the dough/grapes with the rosemary and sea salt. Cover lightly with a towel or plastic wrap and leave to rise for 45 mins – 1hour.

 

About 15 minutes to go before baking, turn the oven to 375F. Place the upper rack in the middle. I always keep a baking stone in the oven, so the temperature is evened out a bit. It also causes the focaccia to bake a little more slowly.

 

Place the pan into the oven and bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes. Mine needed more – about 35 minutes, but the baking stone contributed to the extra time. When I have made this without it is nearer 30 minutes. This is all in a conventional (not convection) oven.

 

You can tell that it is cooked when the grapes have partially burst – there is juice staining the surface and the dough itself is puffed up and a light golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 5 minutes. Transfer from the pan to the cutting board and cut (using a pizza wheel) into squares – 1 grape per square. For shipment to a party, transfer back into the pan and place in an insulated bag.

 

Comments

This is a very easy bread to make. It slips out of the pan, isn't particularly sensitive to exact times and quantities. You can certainly knead it in a stand mixer – or even using the knead cycle in a bread machine. You do need the whole 500 gm of flour though – it just covers the sheet pan nicely.

Using the tomatoes

We have had a good tomato crop this year. There are 2 varieties – red cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes. They taste divine and look beautiful when combined. For lunch today we decided to have some, simply prepared with croutons, garlic, mozzarella, basil and oregano. Talk about a taste bomb.

Recipe (serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course salad)

1 T Extra virgin olive oil

4 Slices plain white bread with the crusts removed, and cut into ½ inch croutons

1 Clove garlic (or more to taste) sliced thinly

2 t Coarse sea salt

36 Tomatoes (mixed cherry/pear), cherry tomatoes halved, pear tomatoes quartered

24 Basil leaves chopped finely + a few smaller leaves as garnish

1 3inch sprig of oregano (leaves only) chopped finely

4 Mozzarella Bocconcini – preferably buffalo milk cut into the same sized pieces as the tomatoes

1T Sherry vinegar

Method

Heat the oil in a small skillet – until it starts to look swirly. Do not allow to get to the smoke point. Add the croutons and toss to coat. Continue to heat over medium low heat until the croutons are just browned and are beginning to be crispy – about 4 minutes. Turn the heat off and immediately sprinkle the sea salt over the croutons. Add the sliced garlic and toss. Add the chopped tomatoes, the basil and oregano and toss until just warmed through.

Serve onto a plate, drizzle with the sherry vinegar, top with the mozzarella, garnish and serve slightly warm. We had it with a glass of Kim Crawford's unoaked chardonnay.

 

The tennis brunch

Madame and I had been threatening to do this for a while. We finally got it together.

The menu was pretty simple – mimosas, peppers stuffed with tomatoes, chiles, olives, capers (see here) http://seabirdskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/03/peppers-stuffed-with-tomatoes-and.html together with some eggs cooked with fontina/black truffles and prosciutto/parmesan. Since the link describes the stuffed peppers, I won't bother to expound on those here.

The egg dishes were adapted from something we saw on the food network a couple of weeks ago. I think it was the "Hearty Boys."

Ingredients (makes 24 individual servings)

48 Wonton wrappers

2Oz butter melted

24 eggs

Salt and pepper to taste.

Filling 1 – Fontina Cheese and Black truffles

2 oz Fontina cheese cut into 36 small cubes

12 thinly shaved black truffle slices

Filling 2 – Prosciutto and Parmesan

2 Oz thinly sliced prosciutto shredded finely

2 Oz Parmesan cheese

24 strips roasted red pepper

Method

Melt the butter in a small bowl. Prepare 2 12 muffin pans as follows:

• Brush each indentation with melted butter
  
• Lay one wonton in the indentation with the corners sticking up
  
• Brush the wonton with more melted butter
  
• Lay another wonton on top of the first, but rotated 90 degrees – making 8 points
  
• Brush the second wontons with melted butter.
  

For the fontina dish, place 3 small cubes of fontina in the wontons. For the prosciutto version place a small amount of prosciutto in the wontons. Into each indentation, break one large egg. Top with a thin slice of truffle (fontina dish, finely grated parmesan for the other dish). Place a little roasted red pepper on the prosciutto dish.

Bake the eggs in their pans for a total of 14 minutes at 375. Rotate the pans top to bottom and front to back at 7 minutes.

Serve nestled on a bed of spring greens .

The Pizza Dough

I have had several people ask me about this, so here goes. It has been a bit of an experiment. I used the same basic method as I use for ciabatta, but have adjusted the water down considerably (to 70% hydration).

This recipe introduces the concept of a starter – or biga. The The elapsed time is very long (20+ hours) because of the development of the biga.

The biga rests for 9-17 hours, most of the time in the refrigerator.

Ingredients

Starter (biga)

Ingredient	Volume	U.S. Weight	Metric Weight	Bakers' Percentage
Water (Tepid)	1/3 Cup	2.3 oz	65	65
Instant yeast	½ t	0.1 oz	2 g	2
Bread Flour	2/3 Cup	3.5 oz	100 g	100

 

Bread Dough

Ingredient	Volume	U.S. Weight	Metric Weight	Bakers' Percentage
Biga	1 Cup (approx.)	5.9 oz	167 g	33
Water (tepid)	1 1/2 Cups	12 oz	350 g	70
Instant yeast	1 1/2 t	0.3 oz	8 g	1.6
Bread flour	3 ¼ cups	17.6 oz	500 g	100
Kosher salt	1 ½ tsp	0.4 oz	10g	2

 

Note the overall hydration percentage is hard to gauge because the biga itself has both flour and water in different proportions to the dough. The biga recipe makes just enough for the overall bread recipe.

Method

The biga

Pour the water into a small mixing bowl and add the yeast. Leave to sit for a minute and then stir in the flour until a dough just forms. Scrape the dough out and knead for a couple of minutes to work the flour in. It will not be fully kneaded, nor perfectly smooth. Spray the bowl lightly with PAM and replace the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand for 1 hour. Place into the refrigerator and leave for 8-16 hours until ready to use.

Mix the dough

Remove the biga from the refrigerator and uncover it. Scrape it into a large bowl (ideally the mixing bowl from your stand mixer) and pour the water over it. Break it up into clumps with a spatula. Add the yeast and leave for 1 minute. Add the flour and stir with the spatula until incorporated. Sprinkle the salt onto the surface and proceed to the next step.

Kneading

With the dough hook, mix the dough on medium speed (6-8) for 13-15 minutes. Periodically stop the mixer and scrape down the dough.

Fermenting

Transfer the dough to an oiled box or bowl. Leave to ferment until tripled in volume (typically 3-4 hours).

Mystery Pizza Ingredients

Last Friday my good friend Gary McCants came by for lunch. I had promised him pizza and he accepted all too quickly. I typically make thin crust pizzas baked on stones on the grill outside. These were no exception. I had wanted to try a potato pizza for a while and this provided the perfect opportunity. I had some dried mushrooms on hand too, rosemary growing in the garden, some nice olive oil and sea salt in large crystals.

So, I reconstituted the mushrooms (they were porcini, wood ears, morels, shiitake) by soaking in boiling water. Par boiled some new potatoes (Yukon Gold) in their skins and tossed the dough into a nice thin crust. Added the potatoes sliced thinly, the rosemary, the mushrooms, some good Extra Virgin olive oil, sea salt and fontina cheese. Bake for about 3 minutes in very hot oven (about 650F) and serve immediately.

Magic – with good beer and excellent company

What to call this dish?

Madame and I went to the farmers' market on Sunday and now have ridiculous amounts of tomatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, beans, mangoes, lettuce, cucumbers, yellow squash and eggplants. So we have been steadily working our way through them.

One evening, I thought it would be fun to make a kind of veg casserole. However, not the normal thing – no canned soups, no nasty ingredients at all! This was essentially just a roasting of onions, yellow squash, eggplant and mushrooms, but with a twist. I also wanted this to be done in my customary 45 minutes.

The big question was how to make sure it all cooks. Luckily there is a fair bit of leeway. They key was precooking various ingredients so they didn't have to all warm up together in the oven.

Ingredients

1 Large eggplant, peeled and cut into ¾ inch (2cm) cubes

3 yellow squash (could use zucchini(courgettes)) sliced into ½ inch (1.5cm) thick rounds

6T Olive oil (divided use)

3 large ripe tomatoes (weighing about 2lbs/1Kg)

1 large onion (12 oz/300 gm) sliced thinly into rings

A large handful of unpitted olives (Nicoise and Picholine) making sure you have a good variety of size and color

A few sprigs thyme

4 Portabella mushroom caps (see treatment in method)

Salt/pepper to taste. Be careful, olives are quite salty in their own right

A drizzle of balsamic cream or balsamic vinegar

A drizzle of high quality (extra virgin) olive oil

 

To serve, 4 slices grilled bread – preferably artisanal and day old.

 

Method

Heat oven to 400F. Place gratinee dish and 2T oil in oven to warm up

In a large skillet heat 3T of olive oil. When smoking add the eggplant and squash, turn heat to medium and cook, tossing often, for about 10 minutes, The egg plant should almost cook through. While the eggplant/squash are cooking add the sliced onion to the hot gratinee dish and return to the oven. When the egg plant and squash are cooked, add them to the onion in the gratinee dish. Layer the contents roughly and return to the oven,

Heat the tomato slices in the skillet until they are hot through (about 2 or 3 minutes) and toss in the olives. Heat until the olives are warmed. Add the tomatoes/olives to the gratinee dish and mix to ensure the olives are well distributed. Add the thyme and mix in.

For each portabella, remove the stalk carefully, and then slice the mushroom cap horizontally so that you end up with two pieces each looking like a lid. These will become the lid of the dish.

Add salt/pepper to taste to the dish, then cover the dish with the portabella lids. Drizzle the remaining oil over the portabella lids, sprinkle a little salt/pepper on them, and return to the oven. Reduce the heat to 375 and bake for about 20 minutes – or until the mushroom caps are cooked.

 

To Serve

Grill some thinly sliced artisanal bread. Lay the toast slices in the bottom of a soup bowl. Spoon the vegetables onto the bread, making sure you get some juice to soak into the toast. Top with a portabella cap, drizzle some balsamic cream or balsamic vinegar and a little extra virgin olive oil.

Pickled Mushrooms and other Antipasti

On Sunday evening Madame wasn't due home until after 7 – she had been playing tennis and was likely to be hungry, but not to want anything terribly heavy. I also didn't know exactly when she would arrive, so figured that if I made a nice antipasti plate it would survive the unpredictability of her timing.

We had been to the Farmers' market in the morning and had lots of tomatoes (East Texas), red peppers (South Texas), Mushrooms (some rotting stump some where), mangoes (Mexico), grapefruit (The Rio Grande Valley) and some other local stuff. This wasn't all going to work, so I improvised with some of the wonderful 7 year old parmesan from Sigels, some salame, olives, roasted peppers, roasted tomatoes and pickled mushrooms.

Since we had so many mushrooms, I decided to pickle some myself rather than buy them. This was an experiment – one that worked out well, even if the flavors weren't very Italian.

Ingredients

1 Cup white vinegar

1 Cup water

4 T Kosher salt

2T light brown sugar

6 green cardamoms

1 inch fres ginger

1 inch cinnamon bark

1t cumin

12 black pepper corns

12 coriander seeds

24 button mushrooms washed with stalks trimmed

 

Method

Place all the ingredients into a sauce pot and bring to a simmer. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. Drain the mushrooms and allow to cool. Discard the cooking liquid.

 

What could be simpler?

Peppers stuffed with tomatoes and chilies

This recipe is an adaptation from Jamie Oliver's version. It was done from memory, so isn't exactly the same. It looked so good when he did it on his Jamie at Home program. It got the ultimate madame accolade, "We can serve this to people."

The Food Network didn't publish the actual recipe, but it is very straightforward and very adaptable. One comment that Jamie Oliver made was that "Mr. Pepper loves Mr. Garlic who also loves Mr. Tomato." I had some visions in the kitchen that I put out of mind as I was cooking.

I made the filling up (except for the basil) a couple of hours before stuffing the peppers and cooking the dish. The oven temp. will be 400F, the cooking time in total is about 50 minutes.

Ingredients
1 Red Pepper, halved lengthwise, deseeded and the stem left on
2 Yellow Peppers, halved lengthwise, deseeded and the stem left on
Kosher Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper
1 Clove garlic, peeled and sliced finely
18 Cherry Tomatoes, halved
½ green jalapeno
2 sweet chili peppers – not bell peppers but something like Italian sweet peppers
2 T Capers, soaked and drained
Handful olives, pitted – I used a mixture of green and black because that is what I had
A Bunch Fresh Basil, leaves picked
1 T Sherry vinegar
3T Extra Virgin Olive oil
6 Sliced Pancetta or Smoked Bacon
6 Slices bread, preferably rustic and grilled/toasted
3 Oz herbed goat cheese

Method
Make the stuffing by combining the tomatoes, garlic, finely chopped chili peppers, capers, vinegar, olives and oil. Season with a little salt and pepper. Set aside until you are ready to stuff the peppers. Letting the flavors combine doesn't do any harm.
When you are ready to cook the dish, preheat the oven to 400F. Remove the ribs from the pepper halves and season the insides with a little salt and pepper. In a deep cooking tray, lay the peppers open side up. Tear up the basil and put in the bottom of the peppers, and then stuff the peppers tightly with the reserved stuffing mixture. Make sure you use all the liquid that has collected in the bowl. Artfully drape a piece of very thinly sliced pancetta over the top of each stuffed pepper. Cover tightly with alumin(i)um foil and bake covered for 20 or so minutes. Uncover and bake for a further 20 or 30 minutes. The pancetta will become very crispy. Note: The yellow peppers cooked a little faster than the red peppers. The red peppers could have done with a bit longer – next time I will bump up the covered cooking time to 25 minutes instead of 20. Probably leave the uncovered time about the same.
To serve, place each pepper on its own slice of grilled bread. I used home made sourdough for this. Dab the top of each hot pepper with a little goat cheese. You can also decorate with some greens (e.g. arugula), but I served them plain – with a glass or 3 of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc.

Squirrelcam

This doesn't have anything to do human food and the kitchen, but I had to jot it down somewhere....

It was a nice day here today, so I thought it would be fun to set up the squirrelcam to take video of the squirrels as they cavort - feeding from a bungee suspended corn cake.

Easier said than done.

The video camera mounts onto a tripod, so that step was straight forward. The remote control for the camera is at the business end - in front of the lens. So any attempt by me to power it on would frighten the buddha tummied little buggers away.

No problem - in the most Heath Robinson way imaginable, I rigged up a mirror in front of the camera and aimed it so I could bounce the remote control signal to the receptor on the camera. Easy enough. So now we have the camera on a tripod, the mirror on a low table in front of it, artfully held in place with a rock to get the angle just right.

This is all just outside a living room window. The camera set to a suitable zoom, the mirror aimed perfectly - a pregnant pause while we await the arrival of Mr. Squirrel.

No sign. Then the camera goes into a snit and powers down - to quote the manual, "To save running the battery down, and to avoid wear on the tape." Well the camera is plugged in to a convenient outlet so no worry about the battery. But the tape wear - frankly I don't care. But as in all things that are done to protect you - it doesn't work quite right. Clearly the product designers in Japan had not expected squirrelcam.

As it happens, I can reach out of the window to turn the recording on and off, so I will have to do that. However to make sure the mirror does get some use, I can zoom the camera in and out when Mr. Squirrel does arrive and is practicing cartwheels on the bungee cord.

I wonder who is training whom?

What better way to spend a Sunday?

Boeuf Bourguignon Inspired Sliders

We made this dish to complement our wine choice for "Open That Bottle Night", 2009. The challenge was to turn boeuf bourguignon into finger food, so we served the braise inside small, home made ciabatta rolls.

Ingredients – for the braise

4 lbs English cut beef short ribs
2T canola oil
3 onions – peeled and chopped roughly
3 carrots – peeled and chopped roughly
1 stalk celery – chopped roughly
1 head garlic – individual cloves peeled and chopped
2T tomato paste
1/4 Cup flour
1/2 bottle Red Burgundy
1 28 oz can Italian style tomatoes –no juice, tomatoes chopped
1T Soy sauce (hardly traditional!)
6 prunes (hardly traditional)
3 bay leaves
Salt
Pepper
Ingredients – for the finish

1T canola oil
2 Oz guanciale (can substitute pancetta or non- smoked bacon)
10 oz pearl onions (I used frozen)
6 oz white or cremini mushrooms – cleaned and chopped into ¼ inch pieces
8 thyme sprigs
6T Dry sherry (Madeira would be better, but we had sherry!)

Method – Braise
Note: This can be done the day before – in fact it is probably better if it is done the day before. Separate the ribs into individual pieces and pat dry. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large skillet and brown the ribs for about five minutes on each cut surface. Do this in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
Remove the ribs, and pour off all about 1T of the fat in the pan. Add the chopped onions, carrots, celery to the pan and sweat the vegetables over medium low heat, scraping up the browned bits. After about 5-8 minutes, add the garlic and continue to cook until you can smell the garlic. Then add the tomato paste and ensure that it starts to brown on the bottom of the pan. This adds extra flavor depth to the dish. Once the tomato paste has browned a little, add the flour. Stir to cook. Add the tomatoes, wine and soy sauce and mix the contents well.
Transfer the contents of the skillet to a slow-cooker and sprinkle the prunes on top of the vegetables. Add the bay leaves and thyme. Nestle the ribs into the vegetable mixture thin edges first. You want the ribs pushed into the vegetables, not lying on top of them. Turn the slow cooker to low and leave cooking for at least 6 hours – or until the meat is fork tender. At first as you peer through the lid it will look dry, but then as the vegetables give up their juices, it looks pretty wet.
After it has finished cooking, extract the ribs and strain the juices into a fat separator. The goal is to collect all the juices, but none of the solids. The carrots, onions, etc. have no flavor left by this time.
Pour the juices back over the ribs, taking care to retain as much fat as possible in the separator. Refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, any surplus fat will have congealed on the surface. Scrape it off. Remove the ribs and trim the meat off the bones. Chop into very small pieces. Note if serving this as a main dish, you could leave the meat on the bone, but I wanted to put it into sliders.
Strain the liquids, pushing the prunes, tomato pulp etc against the strainer to extract maximum flavor. You should now have about 1 ½ cups thick, smooth liquid. Pour it back over the chopped meat, cover, and refrigerate.
Method – Finish
Do this after you have refrigerated the chopped meat.
Heat the oil over medium high heat, in a skillet until shimmering. Add the finely chopped guanciale (or pancetta) and cook on low until crispy. Pour off most of the fat. Set the cooked guanciale aside. Turn the heat up to medium, add the pearl onions (still frozen) and sauté (still on medium heat) until they are slightly browned. You will need to shake the pan frequently. Add the chopped mushrooms and the thyme and cook until the mushrooms have given up all their liquid. Add the guanciale back into the skillet. Turn the heat off while adding 3T sherry (or marsala). Turn the heat back on, and cook the mixture down until almost dry. Repeat for the next sherry addition.
Remove the thyme and allow to cool. When cool mix into the beef mixture.
Serving
Gently reheat the dish in a saucepot on the stove top. You will need to stir pretty constantly. Reheating in the microwave is not advised, the mixture is thick and tends to scorch and explode!
Slice some small ciabatta rolls (see ciabatta recipe in this blog) so that they have a hinge. Open each roll and insert 1-2T of the meat mixture. Close the lid on the roll.
Garnish with parsley and serve warm.

OTBN 2009

We hosted an "Open That Bottle Night" party again this year. Same general idea as before – invite wine loving friends, ask them to bring something special and be prepared to share the experience. This year there were a total of 10 of us and we shared 8 different wines and a variety of delicious foods. A real treat all around.

To start the party we had some appetizers and some fun/light Prosecco. The Candoni which isn't as bone dry as some, but set the tone for the evening. Griff and Suzy brought a huge plate of cold meats, cheeses, etc. to have as appetizers. Charles/Tracey brought delicious stuffed artichoke hearts and Cathy produced a brie with a sweet glaze and gently hot peppers. Oink, oink!

Before getting into the wines (and they were all wonderful!), we went through a tasting exercise. I had made up some essences of some of the flavor compounds found in wines. These compounds ranged from sweet to tannin with bitter, sour, flowery, fruity, smooth, oak, and acetic. The compounds were made up to be very subtle, so we had to work quite hard to get the flavor profiles. The results were fascinating. Those who don't like Rieslings and Gewurtztraminers didn't care at all for the flowery compounds. Those that really like the big cabs really went for the tannin, and to a lesser extent the oak.

We were encouraged to compare the flavor profile with pure water in each case so we could really get the subtle distinctions. All in all quite an interesting exercise. It also made sure that the assembled gathering were pretty well hydrated before getting to the main event.

We arranged the wines in sequence – from lightest to heaviest. This year they were all red wines, so it was trickier than in years past. Here's what we had.

• Clos de la Roche (Burgundy 1er cru) 2000 – with a delicious baked chicken dish. Bryan brought this and explained that it was becoming pretty hard to get. What a terrific start to the evening – wish there had been more. That's going to be a familiar theme, by the way.
  
• Chateau de Pommard (Burgundy ) 1996 – with Boeuf Bourgignon inspired sliders. Madame and I provided this. It was one we brought back from our trip to Burgundy in 2002. While not the highest quality Burgundy we will ever drink, it still had sufficient complexity for the food. Interestingly it opened up very quickly in the glass.
  
• Baron de Barbon (Rioja) 2005. This is a 100% Tempranillo brought by Cathy. Delicious very characteristic Rioja with lots of tannin and some dried fruit bouquet – almost raisin like. That sweetness was in the bouquet, but not on the tongue. Cathy had found it while doing research – and she kindly brought a second bottle which we have kept to ourselves….
  
• D.V. Catena (Argentina) 2004. A 100% Malbec brought by David and Sandra. This was the last bottle from their personal favorite collection of Malbecs, so we were honored to share it with them. Sandra prepared an Asian flavored Kobe beef dish that was absolutely delicious (note to self, get recipe from Sandra!) It complemented the wine perfectly – causing of all things the spiciness of the dish to come jumping out.
  
• Veraison Synchrony (California, Napa) 2004. This is an interesting and complex wine. It is a blend of equal parts Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon (44% each) with 6% Malbec and 6% Merlot, so there is a lot going on. Charles and Tracey brought this to the party after tasting it at a local wine bar called Cru.
  
• Darjoush (California, Napa) 2005. This is a huge cabernet Sauvignon, with lots of tannin and an amazing amount of body. Somewhat oaky too. Griff and Suzie found this on their trip to Napa last year (for their 25^th. Wedding anniversary) – just about breaking their backs carrying the unbelievably heavy bottles home.
  

So that was it for the formal stuff – but to add to the fun we opened a bottle of our current favorite Shiraz – The Ausvetia 1998 which we had managed to buy on sale (just as well really!).

All in all this was a terrific party. Even though it looks like a lot of wine, the pours were small and we got to savor everything. Thanks to everyone for coming to a fun party.

Artichokes

I was inspired by a fabulous artichoke dish we had at a restaurant here in Dallas last week. It was a simple steamed artichoke, hollowed out with a sauce (Hollandaise based) poured into the middle with some chopped artichoke added.

So, here's what we did.

Ingredients
2 artichokes
4 egg yolks
6 oz butter, soft but not liquid
juice 1/2 a lemon
1T water
3 T white wine veniegar
2 Tdry white wine
1/4 cup finely minced shallots
1 sprig Thyme

Method
In a small pan combine the vinegar, white wine, shallots and thyme. reduce the liquid to about 1T and turn the heat off.

Trim the artichokes by cutting the top 1" off the cone, and trimming the stalk flat at the base.

Make sure each cut surace is covered lightluy with lemon juice to prevent browning. Stem the artichokes (cut side of cone down) for 35 or so minutes - or until cooked through.

Meanwhile make a hollandaise from the egg yolks, lemon juice, water and butter. Once the hollandaise is made, finish with the shallot reduction.

Allow the artichokes to cool, and scoop out the interior. Add any artichoke flesh to the hollandaise.

To serve, pour the hollandaise misxture into the well of the artichoke. It goes bery well with an extremely dry white (e.g. Sancerre)

Crackers

First it was Mark Bittman in the New York Times, and then Alton Brown on good eats. Both were extolling the virtues of home made crackers. I had made some about 3 weeks ago, and they were pretty good - I just needed more motivation. There is also a key insight - use the pasta maker to roll them out.

So today I made simple crackers rolled in the pasta machine. They turned out very well indeed.

Ingredients
1 Cup AP flour
2t baking soda
1t cream of tartar
4oz frozen butter, grated
3 oz Parmesan, grated finely
2T Hot Basil seeds
1/4 Cup quark
2T whole wheat flour
1/4 Cup 1% milk
2T Olive oil

Method
Preheat the oven to 425, and set the shelf to the middle rack. Pulse the flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar about 10 1 second pulses. Add the parmesan and pulse 3 more times. Then the basil seeds and a quick pulse. Mix in the quark, milk and add whole wheat flour to get the texture to that of shortcrust pastry.

Divid3e the dough into quarters. Roll each quarter a few times through the widest setting of thae pasta maker, then take it down 2 steps. Place the rolled ribbn on a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet. Score the dough so it will break cleanly and bake in a 425 oven for about 12 minutes, turning at the 6 minute mark.

Remove from the oven when golden brown and allow to cool on a wire rack. Once cool, store in an air tight tin.

Tea

It seems odd to write a blog post about making something as simple as a good cup of tea, but we got compliments about our tea over the weekend.

I would like to say that it was made from the finest leaves "SPECIAL FINEST TIPPY GOLDEN FLOWERY ORANGE PEKOE (SFTGFOP)". But oh no, not in our house.

The tea itself was the standard $3.75/lb generic tea from our local Indian supermarket. Nothing special there. It is however loose tea and not the nasty stuff in bags. So how to keep the tea leaves out of the cup? One way is to use a regular strainer, but the other is to use something like this..



and the traditional brown betty teapot

So having assembled the hardware, time for the process.

Use cold tapwater - I always let it run for a bit before putting it in the electric kettle. What's an electric kettle? One of these kinds of things. It is certainly preferable to using the microwave.


Heat plenty of water in the kettle until nearly boiling. Pour some of the hot water into the pot to warm it. Bring the rest of the water to the boil. I do allow mine to boil - some say it makes the tea taste flat, I prefer the taste when the water has been poured onto the leaves when it is at a full boil.

Into the strainer device put 1 heaping tsp of loose tea per person + 1 extra (1 for the pot). If you are just doing 1 cup, then use a single heaping tsp + a little bit.

Empty the warming water out of the teapot and put the strainer in, resting on the edges of the top opening. The body of the strainer is then dangling inside. Pour the water through the leaves in the strainer into the pot. Make sure that the water comes almost to the top - you want the body of the strainer in full contact with the water. Cover the pot and let the tea brew (steep) for about 3 minutes.

Remove the strainer, put the lid onto the pot and serve.

You can make a single mug using the same device/method. Just use less tea and dangle the strainer into the mug. Ideally the mug should be deep enough for the strainer, so it won't work with your best Spode tea set.

Roast Duck for Christmas

Madame and I stayed with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews for Christmas this year. We decided to have duck as the main course meat and then the usual raft of roasted potatoes, roast parsnips, sugar snap peas, carrots and braised red cabbage to cut through the duck's richness.

During our visit to London earlier, we had bought a pair of ducks from the local butcher (Lidgate), so we were assured of some nice birds.

#1 nephew and I made brandy butter and a cranberry relish using bitter orange marmalade and Ribena (an English blackcurrant drink) the night before.

On THE DAY, there was quite a complicated timetable of vegetable and duck prep starting at 09:00 for a 1pm lunch. While others were at Church, I was busy preparing the ducks, peeling onions, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, apples and chopping cabbage, while making sure that the ovens came on at the right times, the Christmas Pudding was properly cooking, my dad was getting his coffee. Somewhere in all of this I had to shower as well.

Most of the dishes were commonplace, but the duck was a new experience for me. Ducks are very fatty and require a lot of cooking time.

Roast Duck
Ingredients (To serve 8)
2 Good sized fresh ducks (about 4 1/2 lbs each)
4 Cups boiling water
Salt/Pepper to taste

Method
For 24 hours prior to cooking leave the ducks uncovered in the refrigerator. This helps the skin dry out and crisp up.

4 hours prior to serving remove the ducks from the refrigerator and allow them to come to room temperature.

Trim wing ends from the ducks. Prick the skin on the breast side of the ducks all over with a roasting fork. Just pierce the skin, do not go deeply into the flesh.

Remove the giblets and rinse the ducks thoroughly, inside and out.

Put ducks on a rack in a pan and pour the boiling water over the ducks allowing the water to collect in the bottom of the pan.

Dry the ducks thoroughly and cover the skin and inside the cavity liberally with salt and pepper. Put the ducks breast side up on the rack and roast in a preheated 425F (210C) oven for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, rotate the ducks so they are breast down and roast for a further 40 minutes. After the second 40 minutes rotate a second time so the breast is up again. Roast for another 40 minutes - or until the ducks are done. You can tell that they are done because the leg joint will loosen and any juices will run clear/yellow with no traces of blood.

Remove from the oven, allow to rest for at least 20 minutes, under a foil tent. When rested, quarter the ducks and serve on a bed of braised red cabbage, garnished with some rosemary stalks and thyme sprigs.

Coffee

This isn't a recipe posting just a paean in praise of a new (at least to me) way of making coffee.

I have long been a fan of the French Press as a way of making coffee, but don't like having to filter the grounds through my mustache (especially after shaving it off!) Also I was finding the coffee to be bitter and not really enjoyable any more. Same roast, same grind, but my taster was clearly not working right.

On a plane trip recently, I saw this http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress.htm.

Well, I thought $30 how good/bad can it be? I found out after buying one – it is exceptional. All the benefits of the French Press + easier clean up + tastier/less bitter coffee. Downside is that you do use more coffee (just like in the Starbucks Clover), but the rewards are well worth it. Hurry to your nearest Sur la Table and grab one!

Madame also pronounces it delicious – although the strength needs adjusting. It brews up very strong coffee which you ten need to dilute to make an Americano or Latte. It's got me convinced to drink coffee again.

We roast our own coffee (aged Sumatran from sweetmarias.com) to 2^nd crack (well a little beyond). I am hoping to roast the coffee a little less to get some of the more subtle flavors out, but without the accompanying acidity.

The Faculty Holiday Party Potluck

Apart from seeing how many nouns in a row I could use adjectively, this post is about the holiday party yesterday.

Madame's department chair is vegetarian, so whenever we go to a party where she will be, we like to take something vegetarian – because for vegetarians these events can be tricky indeed. Last weekend we had been hiking up in the Palomar Mountain State Park and had a pretty good vegetarian chili for lunch, so thought it a good idea to make one for the party. No it was nothing like the one up at Palomar Mountain, but it turned out well and it was all eaten up, so we did something right.

 

Ingredients

1T + 1t vegetable oil

2 Medium onions (Not sweet, use yellow or white), diced

6 cloves garlic, diced – not pureed

4 t Paprika

2 T cumin - ground finely

1 t dried oregano

2 t finely ground black pepper

1 t salt

2 Jalapenos or other moderately hot peppers - chopped finely

1 Chipotle – whole

3T Chopped parsley

1 Bay leaf

2 Medium carrots - rough chopped medium

1 Large green pepper – rough chopped medium

2 large (28 oz) cans plum tomatoes

2 15 oz cans red kidney beans – drained and rinsed. (Divided use)

1 15 oz can black beans – drained and rinsed

2 large packets frozen corn (not sure of the size, but about 2lbs in total)

Method

In a sauté pan, heat the 1T oil until shimmering and sweat the onions. After 3 or 4 minutes add the garlic and continue to sweat. The onions should not take on any color. In another (non stick) skillet heat the 1t oil and add the cumin, pepper, paprika and fry gently. When they begin to be aromatic, dump them into the onion/garlic pan and combine well. Toss in the carrots, green pepper, jalapenos and allow to warm through for a few minutes.

 

Place the onion mixture into the bottom of a "crock pot" or other slow cooker. Add the bay leaf, salt, chipotle, oregano, tomatoes (including their liquid) to the mixture and mix well. Puree 1 can of the red beans (I did it on the chopping board with the knife to save dirtying the food processor). Add the pureed beans and the remainder of the kidney beans + the back beans and mix. Add the frozen corn and mix again.

Set the slow cooker for at least 10 hours on low or 6 hours on high, cover and ignore the dish.

Serving

Remove the chipotle and the bay leaf and then serve piping hot with the traditional chili accompaniments of sour cream, raw onion and grated cheese.

Madame's birthday...

It was Madame's birthday yesterday, so it was time for something special for dinner. Rex's Seafood had some lovely red snapper fillets, so Snapper en papillote came to mind. However, that while visually appealing can be a bit dull, so what to jazz it up with? The plums in the store looked nice, and their sweetness would do good things for the fish - at least I hoped so. That turned out to be a good guess! The sweetness of the plums and the tartness of the lemons really served to coax out the gentle flavors from the fish - without overpowering it.

All in all a very successful dinner.

Red snapper en papillote with plums
Ingredients (for 2 people)
1 cup cooked couscous
2 red snapper fillets (6-8 oz each) (160-200gm each)
1 lemon, thinly sliced
2 red plums each cut into 16 thin wedges
1/2 of a sweet onion cut sliced thinly
1 large bunch of straight leaf parsley
3 T dry white wine.

Method

Preheat the oven to 400F

Cut 2 sheets of parchment paper into heart shapes. Divide the couscous equally between them and lay on one lobe of the heart as a bed for the fish. Lay one fish fillet, skin side down, on each couscous bed. Season the fish very lightly with salt and finely ground pepper. Cover each fillet with the sliced lemons. Tuck the plum slices under the edges of the couscous to hold them in place. Cover the lemons and fish with the parsley and onions. Pour the white wine over the top of the onions/parsley/fish and fold the parchment over, sealing the edges to make a bag.

Bake the bags on the center rack of the 400 degree oven for about 15-16 minutes. Don't worry - it will be cooked. If the fillets are very thin, then 14 minutes will suffice.

Serve with steam fried baby eggplant (aubergines) - recipe follows. The steam fried method of cooking the eggplant preserves (to some extent) their lovely purple. It also softens the skins a little and makes them less chewy.

Steam fried baby eggplant
Ingredients

8 baby eggplant (each weighing about 2 oz/55 gm)
4T olive oil (not extra virgin, divided use)
1/2 cup water
Salt/pepper
Left over lemon slices from previous recipe - especially the ends.

Method

Slice the eggplants longitudinally and brush the cut sides only with 1/2 of the oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Heat the remaining oil in a large skillet. When almost smoking, place the eggplant into the hot pan, cut side down. Turn the heat to medium and continue to cook until the bottoms of the egg plant are lightly browned. You will see the eggplant turning soft up the sides while this is happening. Probably around 5 minutes.

Cover the eggplants with the lemon slices, add 1/2 cup of water to the pan, and cover the panimmediately. Allow the egg plants to braise for a further 5 or so minutes until soft.

Serving
Place a pouch of fish on each plate, and arrange the eggplants decoratively at the edge of the plate. Cut the pouch with sharp scissors at the table, to allow the steam to escape.

This goes especially well with a crisp, dry white. We served a Sancerre, but any dry crisp white would work. I would not serve a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc because they tend to be too grassy.

Pavlova Redux

This somewhat messy dessert was for a party last night. This time we decided to take it fully formed - in the car for about 7 miles.

So we wrapped Madame in an apron, spread a towel over her lap, and bundled her into the car. When she was well situated, I gave her the cake stand with Pavlova on top for her to hold while I drove, gingerly, to the party.

We got there intact, much to our surprise and then came time for the dismount. I opened the passenger side door and tried to pry the cake stand and dessert from Madame's death grip. She was holding that sucker as if her life depended on it. I had these visions of being attacked by "the claw" afterwards. Fortunately her hands loosened up to grab onto a champagne glass and order was restored.

The dessert seemed to be a success, it was set upon by the gannets at this wonderful party.

Pavlova

Pavlova is a dessert made from meringue, whipped cream and tropical fruit. It is very simple to make and looks spectacular.

Ingredients: Meringue base

4 egg whites (making sure that there are no traces of yolk)

1 cup superfine sugar (granulated sugar pulverized in the food processor)

1t white vinegar (do not use cider or wine vinegar)

2 t corn starch

 

Method

Put the egg whites into the very clean bowl of a stand mixer. Best if the whites are at room temperature. Mix them slowly to break them up, and then beat at high speed until they form stiff peaks. Continue to beat while adding the sugar a little at a time. You know when they are done when if you rub a little of the egg white/sugar mixture between your fingers it doesn't feel gritty. Sprinkle the corn starch and vinegar over the surface and fold in to the mixture with a spatula.

On a sheet of parchment paper, place the meringue mixture in a circle, with the edges mounded higher than the center.

Bake on center rack of the oven set at 250F for about 75 minutes, and then allow to cool in the oven with the door ajar and the oven off.

This can be done a day or 2 ahead. Just store the cooked shell in a cool, dry, covered place.

 

Ingredients - Filling/topping

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

4t granulated sugar

1t pure vanilla essence

Some (total about 2 cups) of fruits - include at least one tropical fruit (e.g. mango). Choose among Kiwi, mango, raspberries, blue berries, peaches, nectarines, strawberries. Make sure there is a good mix of colors.

Method

Chill a medium mixing bowl in the freezer. Whip the cream in the chilled bowl until it is floppy with soft peaks. Cream whips better when cold. When whipped add the sugar and vanilla, whip more to incorporate. Be careful not to overwhip or you will have sugary/vanilla flavored butter.

Chop the fruits into raspberry sized pieces - trying to have the fruit even in size. Leave the raspberries whole.

Fill the center of the meringue base with whipped cream and decorate randomly with the fruits.

 

Serve immediately (it will hold for about 2 hours, but the meringue does go a bit soggy after that.

Lamb, pita and the grill

The bread compulsion continues. I thought it might be fun, interesting, delicious,… to make pita. I have taken to putting a pizza stone onto the racks of the outdoor grill and cranking the heat up. That's what pita needs anyway. Of course with pita you must have lamb, lettuce, onion, tomato, tzaziki and cheap red wine. That was dinner yesterday.

First the pita.

Pita is pretty easy to make. Takes some kneading, but nice and straightforward – wuick too.

Ingredients

500 gm bread flour (although next time I may use AP flour, it was a wee bit chewy)

325 gm room temp. water

1 ½ t active dry yeast

2T Olive oil

2 t kosher salt.

Method

When using active dry yeast, you need to hydrate it a bit first. You can't just dump it into the flour and hope. So stir the yeast into the water. Leave for the time it takes to weigh the flour. Add the water/yeast to the flour. Mix together and add the olive oil. Continue to until it has all come together. Turn out on to the work surface and knead until the mass is cohesive. About 2 minutes. Then add the salt – simply sprinkle onto the dough and knead smoothly and vigorously for 10 minutes. The dough should become shiny and elastic.

Transfer to your fermentation container and leave at room temp for a couple of hours (until doubled). If it is going quicker than you want, retard it in the fridge for a bit.

After it has risen, dump it out of the container onto the work surface. Pat the dough into a rectangle – about 8 inches by 5 inches (size doesn't matter here). Cut the dough into 8 pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a circle, and leave to rest on a lightly floured parchment lined baking sheet. Flour the top of each ball lightly and cover with plastic wrap.

Heat the grill with a pizza stone on it until the temperature is around 550 degrees. You will want to use low heat and letthis take at least 30 minutes – preferably an hour.

Rest the dough balls until they have increased in size by about half. Taking each ball, flatten it gently on the floured work surface, flour a rolling pin and roll the individual dough balls out until they are 6-8 inches in diameter. Transfer 2 dough rounds to a baker's peel or upside down baking sheet (having sprinkled some cornmeal onto the peel or sheet to prevent sticking)

Slide the dough rounds onto the hot pizza stone, and close the lid. Cook for 60 seconds – the sheets should puff up. Flip them over and give them another 60 seconds. The timing is not precise, so check carefully. When done transfer to a wire rack and cook the remainder – 2 at a time. For a final warming (if you want) sprinkle each pita with a little (few drops) of water and put back in the hot grill for a few seconds – while the meat is cooking.

Grilled lamb pieces

These are cut to go nicely into the pockets of the pita, above. For the 2 of us, I used about 1lb leg of lamb cut into ¾ inch cubes.

Ingredients

1lb leg of lamb in ¾ inch cubes

1 cup olive oil

A handful each of marjoram and oregano roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves

Salt and pepper to taste.

Method

Season the lamb. Mix the herbs, olive oil and garlic together. Add the lamb to the marinade and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Remove from the fridge and let stand for at least 30 minutes to warm up. This helps it cook more evenly.

When ready, grill the lamb pieces over the hot part of the grill, moving it around to limit flare-ups. Flaring is inevitable because of the olive oil. After a couple of minutes, the flare-ups stop and you can leave the meat to get nice marks from the grill.

Leave to stand while you tear some lettuce leaves, warm the pita and chop some tomatoes.

Serve with the pita/lettuce/tomatoes/tzaziki/raw onion and a bottle of light red wine – we had a chilled Beaujolais costing all of $7 per bottle!

Pizza….

I am getting more and more encouraged by the bread making. There is beginning to be consistency and I can mostly predict what is going to happen. Madame is visiting her mother this week, so since her mother is from Bohemia originally, I though a Czech rye would be a nice thing to take. It was – they devoured it apparently. But that isn't the point of this post!

While Madame is away, I like to experiment with ideas – it keeps me off the streets and out of mischief. I had made ciabatta yesterday – and taken a loaf to my physician so he would give me a clean bill of health! I got to thinking, "I wonder what would happen if I made pizza out of a ciabatta type of dough". It clearly shouldn't be as wet (the ciabatta comes in at about 81% hydration, and you need a spoon to move it around.). So I made up a dough at 70% hydration and added 2T of olive oil as it was kneading in the mixer. It had maybe a bit much yeast, so I will back that off next time. The biga had been fermenting for around 15 hours before it got used.

Now thinking about toppings. Well the farmers' market had a lot of local tomatoes very cheap, so they were a given. I had had prosciutto and provolone in my ciabatta sandwich last night so had some left. Thus the tomato/prosciutto/provolone and basil pizza was born.

A while back Williams Sonoma (the high end cooking equipment store) had sent me some details on the "pizza-que" – essentially a pizza stone for use on the grill. $99 seemed a lot, so I thought I would try one of the pizza stones from the oven on my gas grill.

I was all set to bake. So for lunch took 1/4^th of the dough, made a circle from it (it seemed just the right consistency), put the cornmeal on the peel and made a pizza. I cooked it on the stone on the grill and sadly the bottom became burned before the edges were nicely browned. Of course I ate the melted cheese, etc. anyway – and made another.

This time I made less of a rim to the crust by pushing the topping nearer the edge. Also formed the whole thing thinner, so there was less dough to cook through at the rim. Spread the toppings, some olive oil and salt and cooked it. It took 3 minutes to cook and was absolutely magnificent. Not quite wood fired oven delicious, but definitely worth repeating and suitable for company.

I don't know if it is bad for the grill to work this way, I don't know if pizza stones are set to explode when placed directly above such eat – and frankly I don't care! The results are so amazing, it's worth it.

Thai Beef Salad (Yum Neua)

It's been hot here in Texas – so hot that cooking indoors has been a non-starter. However, we still want things that taste good and we both had a hankering for meat. So, what better than a nicely spiced Thai Beef salad with the meat cooked on the grill. Everything else was raw, so didn't introduce extra heat to the kitchen. The dish is a pain to make – it elapses about 2 ½ hours, with serious attention needed for about 30 minutes. It doesn't meet my 45 minute concept to table at all. As can be seen from the ingredient list, there are some rather strange ingredients – some of which might be hard to come by. After all, who has roasted rice powder on hand?

The dish got rave reviews from Madame, including the premier accolade, "We can serve this to people". That is goodness in itself!

Anyhow, here goes (Serves 4 as a main course, 6-8 as an appetizer).

Ingredients

16 Oz Beef steak (sirloin or flank work well. Meat should be no more than ½ inch thick)

1 6oz can frozen pineapple juice concentrate

Vegetable oil spray

Juice of 3 limes

3 inches of lemongrass, minced

3 Thai lime leaves (kaffir lime) minced (or 2t lime zest)

1T Roasted rice powder

1T Roasted dried chile powder (e.g. de Arbol. Do not use chipotle, they are too smoky)

1 Cup dressing (recipe follows)

½ medium yellow onion

1 cucumber peeled (1/2 sliced thinly on diagonal, ½ shaved into strips with a peeler for garnish)

12 lettuce leaves, torn into bite sized pieces

12 cherry tomatoes halved

A handful of mint leaves

A handful of basil leaves (Thai basil is best, but regular sweet basil is OK)

A handful of cilantro coarsely chopped

Method

Marinade the meat in the pineapple juice concentrate for 1-3 hours. Spray the meat with cooking spray, and grill until medium rare (Total grilling time about 8 minutes depending on grill temperature). Allow the meat to rest until about lukewarm and then slice very thinly across the grain. Add the lime juice and leave to sit for 10-15 minutes.

Just before serving make up the salad. First add the lemon grass/kaffir lime) and toss lightly. Next the roasted rice powder and the ground chile – again toss. Pour in the dressing and toss. Next add the onion, sliced cucumber, lettuce and toss. Finally add the cherry tomatoes and toss again. Plate the salad garnished with the cilantro, basil, mint and shaved cucumber strips.

Serve while the meat is still slightly warm.

The Dressing

The dressing is an intense mixture of fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chile peppers and cilantro roots or stems

Ingredients

1t Kosher or sea salt

¼ cup fish sauce (nam pla)

2T light brown sugar

2T granulated sugar

Juice of 6 limes

At least 3 hot fresh minced chile peppers (cayenne) – more to taste. Depends on personal level of heat

1T minced cilantro roots or stems

1 Clove garlic minced finely (or pushed through a garlic press)

Method

Combine ingredients stirring to ensure that the sugars are dissolved. Let stand until ready to use.

Roasted Rice Powder

This adds body to the dish without imparting a lot of flavor. It is made by heating rice in a skillet until the rice is uniformly brown. Allow to cool and then grind in a spice grinder or pestle and mortar

Don’t try this at home

I was inspired by a television program to make a mango/avocado smoothie. It was ostensibly "simple and delicious". Simple it was, delicious it wasn't!

Take 1 avocado, 1 mango, some lime juice and blend until smooth. Top off with a little club soda (disgusting) or 7-up (almost as bad). Pour down sink and try something different.

Enough of the !@$#! bread already

The next foray is ciabatta. An entirely different kind of bread from the baguettes - it is made with a starter and has a long starter preparation period. The dough uses a lot of yeast and then looks more like pancake batter than bread dough. So lots of challenges.

Of course Dan Leader came to the rescue again, and we have turned out some very good looking ciabatta - and to please nic, I even remembered to take some pics!!!

So let's get the pics out of the way first.....

See how wet, flat and sloppy this loaf is before baking. It is about 11 inches long and 7 wide at its widest point. Shaping it is like shaping quicksand!

After baking we are left with this beauty... See how well it has puffed up. It stays that way as it cools. The crust softens a bit and the crumb is light, airy and holey!

So, how to achieve this magic? Again, I will borrow from Dal Leader's book called "Local Breads".

Ingredients - Starter
1/2 cup (65gm) water
1/2t (2gm) instant yeast
2/3 cup (100gm) unbleached bread flour - the stronger the better


Method - Starter
About 12 hours before you want to make the ciabatta, make the starter by mixing the water, yeast and flour in a small bowl. Then knead a few times to make it almost smooth. Cover and leave to rise 1 hour in a warm place (around 80F, 25C) and then refrigerate for the remainder of the time.

When ready to make the bread, remove the starter from the fridge.......

Ingredients - Bread
1 Cup (167 gm) starter (from before - the exact quantity of the starter recipe above is what you need)
1 1/2 cups (425 gm) tepid water (70-75 F, 21-23C)
2t (10 gm) instant yeast
3 1/4 cups (500gm) unbleached bread flour
1 1/2 t (10 gm) sea salt or kosher salt

Method - Bread
Place the starter and the water into he bowl of a standing mixer. Break the starter apart with a spatula. It does not need to be completely smoothed or dissolved. Stir in the flour, yeast, salt and mix until a dough forms.

Mix the dough in the stand mixer using the dough hook on a medium speed for about13-15 minutes. You will have to stand by because the mixer will likely start to walk around the counter. The dough won't really clear the sides of the bowl. Stop periodically and scrape it down and off the hook. After giving it about 13-15 minutes, turn the speed up to high and knead for a further three minutes. The dough mass will be quite creamy and shiny looking.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl that has room for it to triple in size. Cover with cling wrap and leave to stand at room temperature until it has tripled in size. This takes 3-4 hours.

In most household ovens it is unlikely that you will be able to bake 2 loaves at the same time, so here's what I do...

After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured board and immediately divide in half.

Cover a peel (or the bottom of a baking sheet) with parchment and make sure it slides. Lightly dust the parchment. Take one half of the dough mass and pick it up stretching it to about 11 x 7 inches and place it into the middle of the floured parchment. Press it flat gently with your fingers. Don't burst too many bubbles. Then wet your fingers and just dimple the surface. Do the same with the other loaf onto a different pan or peel. I do the first one on a peel and the second on a pan.

Leave to rest/proof at room temperature for 40 or so minutes - you will see bubbles forming under the top surface (they look like blisters).

1 hour before baking, heat the oven to 475F and ensure the stone is on the upper middle rack. On the lower rack put a cast iron container into which you can introduce ice.

When the bread is ready to bake, slide the first loaf onto the stone (still on its parchment paper), add 1 cup ice to the pan below and close the oven door. Add more ice 2 more times. Opening the door quickly. After 10 minutes turn the temperature down to 425F and bake until the loaf is a beautiful caramel colour. That will be another 13-20 minutes depending on your oven.

Remove the loaf (using the peel) and put on a wire rack to cool. Resist the temptation.....

Turn the oven back to 475F, slide the second loaf on its parchment onto the peel. Let the oven come to temperature (about 10 minutes). Bake the second loaf just like the first one. You do need to keep adding the ice to make steam. That is a key part of getting the crust nice!

We ate it various ways. Initially while warm with butter.

Then for supper, cut a large piece off the loaf and halved it horizontally. Toasted one side then added some ham (sliced and folded into a thickness of 4 layers), some Caerphilly cheese that Madame had brought back from England, diced tomatoes from the Farmer's Market all grilled under the grill (broiler) until the cheese had melted, with some hot English mustard on the side. No there are not pictures of that, we ate it before we could get to the camera!

It is so good to have Madame home..

Madame came home yesterday, so today we were abole to have a nice dinner. Our friend Bette came and we had a terrific time. I had bought some plump scallops earlier in the day, so it was a matter of preparing them so that they tasted really good. When you have great ingredients, often less is more. These were great! I made a wilted spinach salad dressed with an hot onion/grapefruit dressing and garnished with toasted almond slivers.

Ingredients
5 small red potatoes in 1/4" dice
3 grapefruit peeled and segmented, including all it's juice
12 Oz baby spinach
1 Medium onion sliced pole to pole
1/4 cup slivered almonds
6T High quality extra virgin olive oil
12 sea scallops (about 2 oz each)
salt/pepper to taste

Method

In a medium pan put 1T olive oil and the sliced onions. Cook over medium low heat until the onions are translucent.

In a small pan over low heat, toast the almonds until brown and nutty.

Cook the potatoes in simmering sated water until just cooked through. Drain and add 3T olive oil and 4T grapefruit juice while they are still warm.

Add all but 8 segments of the grapefruit and all its juice to the onion pan and leave to simmer. In a separate pan, heat the remainder of the oil until almost smoking and then put the scallops in carefully. Leaving the heat on medium sheck the first sid of the scallops for browning. When a good crust has developed (about 2-2 1/2 minutes) flip the scallops over, and brown on the other side. Do mot overcook.

Wash the spinach and make sure it doesn't have any stalks. Combine the spinach with the almonds, the potatoes and the hot dressing. Toss while the spinach wilts, top with the scallops, garnish withthe raw grapefruit segments and serve immediately

This bread thing is getting out of hand!

I have been so into bread making while Madame has been away. But now with the help of Dan Leader, I am turning out baguettes that are just to die for. No I don't (yet!) have a steam oven, but I am getting the really crusty outside with a tender crumb. I haven't asked Dan's permission to repost here, but I hope he won't mind. I have varied it a bit (adding cake flour), and I can't get it done in the 4 hours he says it takes. It usually takes me 4 1/2. But still that is not long for a really good tasting loaf.

So yesterday I baked, loaves came out of the oven at about 3:30, and of course I couldn't wait for them to cool. I had to try a piece. Yup! That hit the spot. So for dinner, I took 7" of baguette, split it lengthwise, layered some tomatoes from the Grapevine Farmers' Market directly onto the bread so the juice would soak in a bit, spread some fresh goat cheese (also bought at Grapevine Farmers' Market) fresh basil from the garden some salt and a little sherry vinegar. WOW a perfect sandwich.

So here's the bread recipe (adapted from Local Breads by Daniel Leader, published by WW Norton ). I would strongly recommend getting his book, he explains it so much better than I can - and he has pictures!

It is a very long recipe although it is easier to do than it looks.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of tepid water (70-75 degrees F, 21-23 degrees C)
1t instant yeast
3 cups Organic unbleached AP flour
1/4 cup Cake flour (not self rising)
1 1/2t Kosher salt
Cooking spray to grease the bowl

Method
Pour water into a large mixing bowl and add the yeast. Leave to stand for a couple of minutes until refreshed. Then mix in the flours and stir with a spatula until you have all the water involved and the dough is kinda shaggy. Leave to sit for 20 minutes so the flour hydrates.

Empty the dough onto the board, and sprinkle the salt over it. Knead for 12-15 minutes. Try to avoid flouring the board or your hands. It will feel a bit sticky, but persevere and it will come together into a nice smooth dough. Every now and again release the dough from the board with a bench scraper. If you prefer to use a standing mixer (and I have not tested this), put in the bowl of the mixer, attach the dough hook and knead on low (number 2 setting) for 8-10 minutes. You will still need to give it a few hand strokes at the end, so I am not sure what using the mixer would buy you.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap and leave to sit for an hour at 70-75 degrees (21 to 23C). It will not double, but it will have expanded some.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured (very lightly!) board and shape into a rectangle of about 6 inches by 8 inches (15x20cm). Fold the dough like a business letter from the short side. Plop the dough back into the bowl and allow to rise for another hour.

About an hour before baking you will want to heat the oven. Ideally you want a baking stone in there, but an upside down sheet pan will work too. The oven should be heated to 450F. The bread is quite sensitive to temperature so do check the oven. Make sure the rack is just above half way and on a lower rack there is a container into which you can put ice to create steam.

When the bread s ready to shape, place a sheet of parchment paper onto a peel or another upside down rimless pan. Flour the parchment.

Turn the dough onto the board and divide into 3 pieces each of around 10oz (280gm). Pat each piece into a small rectangle fold in half. Cover lightly with cling wrap and leave to stand for 10-15 minutes to relax.

Now we are ready to shape the dough. For each piece of dough, make a 3x5 inch rectangle (8x12 cm) and fold as follows. Take the long side, fold to about the center and press the seam lightly. Do the same with the bottom edge. Then quickly roll the dough into a 14" length (275 cm) (or however wide your sheet pan or peel are). Place the loaves onto the floured parchment 2-3 inches (5-8cm) apart. Then make a little pleat in the parchment between the loaves and pull it up sliding the loaves together, but still separated by parchment. At the outside edges roll up kitchen towels and use them to bolster the loaves so they are held in neat cylinders. (This is called a couche, by the way). Sprinkle a little flour on the surfaces and cover with cling wrap to rest. This resting will take around 45 minutes - until the dough springs back slowly when you press it lightly.

When you are ready to bake uncover the loaves, remove the kitchen towels from the sides and pull the pleat out of the parchment. The loaves will separate, but retain their shape. Score them with a very sharp knife - or use a single edged razor blade. Make the scoring about 1/2 inch (a little more than 1cm) deep. Make the score marks long - don't just cut straight across. Immediately slide the parchment off the peel or baking sheet onto the hot stone (or rimless baking sheet) in the oven and add 1/2 cup ice to the container. After 2 minutes add another 1/2 cup of ice and again after a further 5 minutes. You do need to add the ice in instlments to get a shot of steam. Adding all at once cools the container too quickly.

Bake the loaves for 15-20 minutes - until they are a light caramel color. Remove fom the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Devour greedily!

Breakfast outside

Today was the last day of the old patio furniture and the first day of the new. Madame is still in England, but I just had to cook - it has been too long and I get withdrawal symptoms. So the people who bought the old patio furniture came over and I made breakfast.

Hardly traditional breakfast fare perhaps, but I also wanted to practice a couple of things for when Madame does finally come home. So, we had a Spanish tortilla (except that I used zucchini and not potatoes, so it isn't really Spanish) , topped with allioli (that wonderful Catalunyan garlic/olive oil/salt condiment), a cup of chilled carrot/coriander soup, some freshly baked pain au levain (a new recipe I had wanted to try), and coffee.

First the allioli. Don't even think of trying this. It is serious work! It took about 45 minutes of serious mashing of garlic salt and oil in the pestle and moortar. Even after that, it wanted to break. So there was a little oil around the edges instead of a thick emulsion.

Allioli
This garlicky oil condiment is great on just about anything I haven't tried it on shoe leather yet, but...

Ingredients
8 Cloves garlic
2T Sea salt
1 cup high quality olive oil

Method
Peel and mash the garlic cloves. Add the salt and mash to a fine paste using the blade of your knife. Transfer to a mortar and mash with the pestle. Add 1 drop of the oil and pound until incorporated. Keep adding the oil a drop or 2 at a time until incorporated. This takes around 45 minutes. Do not be tempted to add the oil too quickly or the emulsion will break and I could find no articles on how to recover the situation when I was researching it. Probably the most interesting statement was that "many Catalunyan cheffs no longer make this because it is so hard to keep it from breaking." A lot of the chefs essentially make aioli - the French version that has an egg yolk.

Spanish Tortilla
Ingredients
1 medium zucchini
1T Kosher salt
1/2 medium onion sliced (leaving bite sized pieces)
4 eggs
6 strands of saffron
a little butter to cook the onions in
salt/pepper to taste (probably do not need much more salt)

Method
Peel the zucchini and slice into rounds about the thickness of a silver dollar. Transfer to a colander, sprinkle the salt over them and allow to drain for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile soften the onion in a little butter in a small (8") non-stick pan. Transfer the onions to a bowl when translucent and sweet. The onions should not take on any color.

Once the onions are cooked, rinse the zucchini and pat dry. With no extra oil, fry the zucchini in the pan that the onions had been in, in a single layer. They should just atrt to take on color.

Crack the eggs into a bowl, add a little salt/pepper and the saffron. Beat the eggs with a fork until they become homogenous. Leave to stand.

Place a layer of zucchiniin the bottom of the pan in which the onions had cooked. Cover the zucchini layer with the onions and another layer of potatoes. Place the pan on a med/low flame and warm them. Press the zucchini/onion mixture with the back of a spatula to squeeze out any air.

When the zucchini are warm, pour the egg mixture over them. Pull the cooked edge of the eggs away from the pan, allowing more raw egg to come in contact with the pan. Turn the heat to low and leave to cook for about 10 minutes - until set in the center. Invert the mixture in the pan and cook for a further 3 or 4 minutes - until the whole tortilla is fully cooked.

Serve at room temperature

Carrot and Coriander Soup
This soup appears to be a British staple. Madame has been eating it for about 6 weeks, so I am expecting an orange pallor and floppy ears when she gets off the plane on July 4. The version that I found has no fat added and counts 0 weight watcher points. This uses the seeds stalks and leaves of the coriander (cilantro) so has lots of hearty coriander flavor

Ingredients
1 Medium onion - diced finely
1 Carton stock (about 900 ML, I believe - or a bit less than a US quart) - divided use. Could be chicken or vegetable. If chicken, home made would be better!
2T ground coriander seeds
2 T ground cumin seeds
1/2 fresh cayenne pepper finely chopped
1 garlic clove mashed
Small handful Cilantro stalks and leaves
500gm (just over a pound) carrots peeled and roughly chopped into small pieces.
Salt/pepper to taste
Creme fraiche, quark or sour cream, soft goat cheese as a garnish

Method
Put the finly chopped onions in a sauce pan and just cover with the stock. Do not use all the stock at this stage. Bring to the boil and simmer until all the liquid has cooked off. The onion will be translucent. Add the coriander, cumin, garlic and the cayenne. Cook over low heat until the color has changed a bit. Add the chopped cilantro stalks, the carrots and the rest of the stock. Bring back to the boil and simmer until the carrots are cooked. Turn the heat off and leave to stand for a few minutes. Then puree the soup until it reaches the desired texture.

Either reheat and serve immediately, or chill and serve in icy bowls. Either way garnish with the white dairy product and sprinkle finely chopped cilantro leaves over it.

Man cannot live by bread alone..

But with Madame's absence from May 30 until July 4, I am doing my best. I have used the time to learn about breadmaking After all, how hard can it be? There are 4 ingredients (for most breads) - Flour, water, yeast and salt. A single baking temperature (well almost always at 450, but there are exceptions), a couple of simple techniques - and as I discovered to my horror almost infinite variety. o wonder there are learned tomes devoted to bread making. No wonder they all conflict with each other. Bread making is personal, your own styles and rhythms greatly affect the finished product.

Proportions matter, technique matters, ingredients matter, temperature matters. Every possible variable you can think of matters! So it has been an instructive month. Just the flour has been giving me fits. I have settled on using 1/8th (by weight - yes everything works better when you weigh it) of cake flour to all purpose flour in most breads. For every 100 gm of AP flour I use 12 gm of cake flour. I have not been using bread flour - although of course I have tried that. You can get a much softer, more delicate crumb with a great tasting chewy exterior this way. Of course there are some breads that demand bread flour - especially those that use other grains (like rye) as well. I haven't graduated to them yet.

I have made Ciabatta, I have made baguettes, I have made ordinary rustic loaves, I have made the no-knead bread. I have used sourdough starters as leaveners, I have made poolishes, I have made up couches (no not the kind I sleep on when I am banished), but the kind that shaped loaves live in when they are resting and recuperating after a hard knead.

Bottom line of all of this is that I now have massive respect for artisinal bakers. This is hard! However, with the help of Dan Reader's books and articles, a steady stream of absolutely delicious bread is coming out of the oven at last. The 4 hour baguettes are the current project - we will see what gives there, but I have high hopes for them.

Oh and during this orgy of bread baking, butter slathering, eating and drinking, I am down 9 pounds for the month. I must be pining away! Carbs who says carbs are bad??????

Iron Chef

The Event
Every year the Sports Club at the Four Seasons in Las Colinas does an "Iron Chef" competition. This year was no exception. The rules are simple - 4 teams, one secret ingredient, a shared pantry, countertop burners only (no oven), 90 minutes to make 2 or 3 dishes. How hard can it be? Oh, and of course the club members are wandering around, getting up close and watching carefully, and a film crew was filming it for television.

First, the staff at the Four Seasons are to be commended for arranging this excellent event. It was part of the regular theme of "Club Dinners", and about 95 people came to watch. I had the honor of being the captain of team 4. The other team members were Juan, Elena, and Kathryn. All good cooks, and a more compatible group would have been hard to find.

We knew ahead of time what the secret ingredients might be - it was going to be either "onion family", "pepper family" or "zucchini family". Zucchini are also known as courgettes (for European readers). We had done some work ahead of time thinking what we would make for each secret ingredient, so that when the ingredient was unveiled, we would have less time planning and more time to cook. Especially as we knew that if the ingredients were onions, we would need a lot of time - caramelized onions would play a strong part in our dishes and that is a good 45 minutes to an hour monopolizing a burner.

The general observations that I gave to the team were, "keep what we are doing simple and tasty, and the key is managing the time carefully."

The ingredient was unveiled and was onions, so here's what we did.

Asian inspired onion soup:
Inspiration
The idea for this was to have a clean tasting soup that clearly said "onion", but didn't have any of the tongue coating effects that sauteing the onions would leave. This dish was executed beautifully by Juan and Elena.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups diced sweet yellow (e.g. Vidalia or TX 1015) and white onions
10 scallions - white and 1/2 green parts
7 cups chicken stock
4T soy sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar+1/4 cup water mixed. (Should be rice wine vinegar, but not available)
1 cup dried mushrooms reconstituted and chopped
1 chicken breast cut into small bite sized pieces
2T dark sesame oil (divided use).
3 cloves garlic mashed to a fine paste
1 finely chopped chile pepper (we used jalapeno because that is what was there!)
Salt to taste
3 eggs lightly beaten with 2T water
Finely chopped red pepper for garnish

Method
Into a saucepot put the diced onions, 8 of the chopped scallions (white and 1/2 the green parts), chicken stock, soy sauce, vinegar, mushrooms (chopped into the same sized pieces as the onion and chicken), and the chicken. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 15 minutes. Towards the end of the time, add 1T sesame oil and the mashed garlic, chopped chile pepper and salt if necessary. That depends on the soy sauce you use. Set the soup aside.

Before serving (we did this with 15 minutes to go), reheat the soup to a simmer, swirl in the beaten egg. Serve in bowls garnished with diced red pepper, the remainder of the green onions (white and most of the green) cut on the bias and a few drops of sesame oil on the surface.

Tilapia on a bed of caramelized onion mashed potatoes, garnished with flash fried yellow squash peel and basil

Inspiration
This dish was designed to create intensely flavored mashed potatoes, but with no dairy. The dairy in a traditional mashed potato tends to overpower the delicate fish. The fish was rolled and served vertically with some quickly sauteed yellow and red peppers and green onions as a kind of visible stuffing. The yellow squash peel and basil were flash fried in 375 degree oil to make them very crispy and feathery. This dish was executed mostly by Kathryn, with help from me on some of the fiddly bits.

Ingredients
3 Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 8 pieces each
Salt to taste (divided use)
2 Sweet yellow onions and 1 white onion
2T Vegetable oil + 1T for the peppers/fish
2 cups Vegetable (peanut is better) oil for flash frying the garnish
3/4C Extra Virgin Olive oil (doesn't have to be the highest quality!)
1 yellow squash (or zucchini) peeled with a vegetable peeler - use the peel only
8 Basil leaves
Julienne strips of red/yellow pepper
4 green onions (green parts only)
4 tilapia fillets
Salt and pepper to taste
Small amount of very finely chopped lemon zest

Method
Peel and chop the onions pole to pole in thin slices. Add 2T of vegetable oil to a large saute pan, warm the pan and add the onions and about 1t of salt. Heat over medium until you hear a slight hissing, and then turn the heat to medium low and cook the onions down, stirring frequently. The onions will darken and sweeten. If you want a little more sweetness add a good pinch of sugar. This step takes almost an hour. This recipe will use 2/3 of the caramelized onions. Once the onions are caramelized, they need to be turned to a puree. For the contest we did this by turning them out onto a board and running a knife through them several times. This left a little texture in the onions.

Bring the potatoes to a simmer in a large pan of salted water until they are just cooked through. Do not overcook. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and put back on the heat briefly to drive out any remaining water. Rice the potatoes. and mix with 2/3 the caramelized onions. Stir in the warmed olive oil, add salt/pepper to taste.

Salt the squash peel for about 15 minutes and pat dry. Bring the 2C of oil up to 375 degrees. You can tell that it is hot enough when a small piece of bread dropped in browns very quickly. Put the squash peel into the hot oil (carefully it will hiss and spit) and leaving the heat medium high, cook until crispy. (3 minutes or so) Remove the fried peels, set aside to drain on paper towels. Leaving the heat medium high, add the basil leaves. These will spit and hiss even more! They take about 30 seconds to become crispy. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Gently saute the julienned peppers and the scallion ends in a little oil. Set aside.

Roll the fish fillets and tie. Season with salt/pepper. Cook them in the oil on all sides.

To serve, using a 3 inch diameter ring, make a round of the mashed potatoes. Gently set one cooked tilapia fillet so that it has a hole pointing upwards. Fill the hole with the strips of julienned vegetables. Sprinkle a little lemon zest onto the fish. Garnish the dish and the plate with the flash fried peel.

Caramelized onion ice cream with fresh mango

Inspiration

Heston Blumenthal would have been proud. We had some time left, and Kathryn is an ice cream fan. Knowing how sweet caramelized onions are, she thought it would be a good idea to make an ice cream using them. To freeze the ice cream quickly without an ice cream maker was the major challenge. The kitchen had a supply of dry ice, so we borrowed from Heston Blumenthal's approach and used the dry ice to freeze the ice cream. This was truly a team effort. Kathryn for inspiration and base recipe, Elena for mixing (adding the dry ice is a 2 person operation), Juan for harrying chefs to get vanilla, etc. Chris for ensuring that the onions were the right texture and sweetness and for the preparation of the mango.

Ingredients
2/3C Heavy whipping cream
1/3C Whole Milk
1/3C Granulated sugar
1Vanilla bean - seads scraped out
1/3 of the caramelized onions from the previous recipe
1 mango
1lb of dry ice pulverized in a plastic bag

Method
Chill a large stainless steel bowl in the freezer. Add the milk, sugar and vanilla bean seeds to the bowl and mix until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the cream and whisk the mixture incorporating a little air. Addd the cooled, pureed, caramelized onions and chill it in the freezer. Do not allow it to freeze or crystallize.

Pulverize the dry ice in a plastic bag. Make sure the dry ice is essentially powdered. Add the dry ice into the ice cream base 1 cup at a time. Taking great care because dry ice can cause "freezer burn" on any exposed flesh. All the while you are adding the dry ice, whisk the ice cream base. This incorporates extra air and prevents crystals from forming. The ice cream will foam slightly and set. You want to add enough dry ice so that the ice cream is soft set. Cover the ice cream and transfer to the freezer until ready.

Meanwhile on the serving plate, fan 1/2 a mango, dust with a little vanilla and immediately before serving (in our case with 1:30 on the clock) place a scoop of the ice cream onto the plate.

The Overall Experience

Sadly we didn't win :-(. We did have a wonderful time cooking together. We made new friends, our ie cream was the talk of the evening. We executed our dishes well, we achieved the goal of creating relatively simple dishes and were never under time pressure. So we felt we deserved our beverages afterwards!

Using rice wrappers

Last evening I went to a Yelp event at a Vietnamese restuarant in San Jose. Lots of people mostly Vietnamese there. What a terrific experience. But from my rather selfish point of view, I learned how to roll up those wonderful Vietnamese spring rolls. The kind that have a thin, translucent rice wrapping around tasty ingredients.

I had made these kinds of rolls before, but had always found it a bit finicky and not as successful as I would have liked. One of the Vietnamese guys at the event let me into the secret. I had been soaking the wrappers for too long in the warm water. My way they become slippery and quite fragile.

However by soaking them for less time - essentially until they are pliable, but not flaccid they are much easier to control.

So good food, great company and lessons too. The only thing missing was Madame - she was at home while I am gallivanting in San Jose.

Practice, practice, practice

For me, using a knife properly is very important, but it isn't the most natural of motions. Whether it be slicing, chopping, paring, carving or whatever. So, to get around deficiencies I practice continually.

For example, when I am going to eat an orange, I always peel it as if I am going to segment it for an elegant salad or dessert. In the words of Gordon Ramsay, "Using a small sharp knife, slice off the top and bottom of the fruit. Standing it firmly on the chopping board, cut along the curved sides of the fruit to remove the remaining peel and pith. Holding the fruit with one hand over a sieve, set on top of a bowl, cut along each side of the membranes to release the segments. Let each segment fall into the sieve as you continue segmenting."

Why when there is no real need? Because that way when I need to have elegant segments I have practiced enough to be able to handle the technique with confidence.

I was working on a project for 3 months - just outside Paris. The project hotel (The Marriott Courtyard near the airport) had a very good breakfast buffet. Anything that has unlimited smoked salmon and crusty bread gets my vote. They always had whole, unpeeled kiwi fruit in the fruit basket. I had seen Christopher Kimbell peel these whole using a spoon. Top and tail the fruit, and then slide a spoon between the peel and the fruit and rotate to loosen the peel. In Christopher Kimbell's hands this looked simple. It isn't! I practiced almost every day I was there - again not because that was the easiest way to eat the fruit, but because I wanted to have the technique in my back pocket. This of course became a project standing joke.

So practice in cooking techniques is like practice in everything. We do it to improve our abilities, but there aren't many opportunities. With food as expensive as it is, we want to be able to make sure we eat the results of our practising.

Now that warmer weather is here and the butter is impossible to deal with

Butter - my favorite fat(well fat/water combo). Nothing tastes as good on toast, in pastry, for cooking eggs, making cakes......

However butter is problematic to make usable. Keep it in the fridge and you can't spread it easily, keep it on the counter when the weather is warm and it spreads in a greasy pool all over the place. So, what to do?

Enter the butter bell. This is a clever little device that keeps the butter away from the air so it doesn't go rancid, and keeps it cool by immersing it in cold (icy) water.

So to use it, you follow the simple steps....

Step 1: put about 1/2 cup water into the base of the butter bell, and then begin to add the butter into the lid.

Step2: Push the butter firmly into the lid.

Step 3: Immerse the lid into the base. Store the butter bell on the counter. Do not put in the fridge - if you do all your good work will be for naught.

That's the instructions according to the official site. However because we live in Texas and during the day our kitchen gets kinda warm, we use a slight variant. I fill the base with crushed ice to the top. Then add chilled water. When I invert the top into the base, some water runs out. I place the whole butter bell close to the sink, so that as the ice melts, the top slips down into the water, displacing some water into the sink. This give maximal cooling, but because the volume isn't huge, the effect of the ice is minimized - i.e. the butter goes a bit hard, but we do this after breakfast, and by lunchtime the butter is nice and usable again.

Using the butter bell means we don't have to resort to whipped/processed/artificial/chemistry set tasting spreads on our toast - and we end up not using as much as we would if we attempted to spread it straight from the fridge.

The web site sells these, but any good kitchen store does too. We have used ours for 5 years now, and can't imagine being without it.

The Producers' picnic

All those hamburgers were for the picnic yesterday (Sunday). We were expecting between 30 and 40 people - and it topped out at 34. Since almost everyone is under 25, we were all ready for the hollow leg brigade - those people who can eat and eat!

We put out some home made guacamole, a jalapeno/quark dip, and chips for people to nibble on before the grill got cranking.

Since we doing both burgers and bratwursts, I needed a way to keep cooked brats moist and hot. The standard way of doing that is to make a caramelized onion/beer bath to put the grilled brats into. Brats and onions are such a good combination and beer? Well those folks in Wisconsin now something about that too.

The burgers themselves were pretty straightforward - grilled for about 4 minutes per side and they were done perfectly. I didn't season the meat prior to making the patties, so I simply had some ground pepper and salt in a small bowl beside the grill. As I put burgers on, I seasoned the top side, then when they were flipped I seasoned the other side. You end up using a lot less salt that way (maybe 2tsp for 64 burgers) and you get the hit of salt in the first bite. We put out traditional fixin's and were surprised that the raw onion (a Texas 1015) went faster than the tomato. Lettuce was (rightly in my opinion) of little interest to anyone. Ketchup, relish and mustard were used in about equal quantities. Surprisingly Swiss cheese proved more popular than "American" cheese for the cheese burgers.

I found it best to cook the burgers in batches of 6 or 8 - even though the grill has larger capacity. That way, I could ensure that we didn't have burgers sitting around drying out. And, oh yes the indentations did their thing - the burgers cooked up completely flat!

Onion and beer bath for brats.
Ingredients
4 large yellow onions halved (pole to pole) and sliced into wedges
1T butter
2T Vegetable oil
1t kosher salt
2x12 oz bottles of a well flavored beer (I used Shiner Bock. I would not recommend a light beer here, nor a stout)

Method
Melt the butter in a large sauce pan and keep the heat going until it stops foaming. Add the oil, then the onions and salt. Stir to mix and leave over low heat to gradually caramelize. Mine took about an hour - but I deliberately had the heat very low since I was doing other things. When much of the water has been driven off and the onions are golden brown and very sweet and soft, add the beer and bring to a simmer.

Keep the onion/beer bath warm on a cooler part of the grill, and put the grilled brats in there to keep warm. When you serve the brats, make sure you get a good helping of the onions too, leave the liquid behind.

Burgers for a crowd

Madame and I will be having the annual "Thank you for all your hard work" picnic for the producers and staff at the TV station. This is the 5th. annual and is our way of saying thank you to all who worked so hard.

This year promises to be the biggest yet, with many burgers to be made. I don't know if Greg's record of 4 burgers (tied with Chad) will be broken this year, but we are determined to make sure there are plenty of burgers and brats.

So I was faced with the rather daunting challenge of making 64 burgers. Those who know me will recognize some obsessive behaviors (roasting coffee, baking bread, everything from scratch where possible), and burgers are no exception. Well, even though we live in TX we don't actually raise our own cattle! I like my patties to be around 5 oz in weight. That way they are thick enough to have something to bite into, and they perfectly fit a standard bun. Also, I like to use 75% chuck and 25% sirloin. I want the fat of the chuck, together with sirloin's beefiness. No off the wall seasonings...Obviously I am not about to trust my "friendly neighborhood grocery store". The local Tom Thumb doesn't grind meat to order and pushed me towards packages of mystery meat. The Albertsons at Lemmon/McKinney wouldn't either. I did however find a butcher on Lemmon who would grind meat to order. He didn't have enough chuck, but suggested that if I brought some chuck in, he would trim and grind it for me. He would also grind some sirloin and then regrind both meats together. Deal! Off to the nearest grocery store for 15lbs of chuck.

Who was this person who understands customer service? His name is Greg Geerts, and his store VG's Butcher Shoppe at 3527 Oak Lawn, Dallas.

So now I had the meat, how to shape the 64 patties? I don't like those hamburger presses that you can buy at high end stores - they produce excellent looking burgers, but I find the burgers tend to be dry. I hit upon what might be the perfect technique - learned from baking. If I were to roll out the meat to the right thickness, then I could use a cutter of some kind to cut out the patties. The challenge was, how thick to make the meat. Answer, weigh 5 oz meat and pack lightly into the ring that you are going to use to cut the patties out.





See how thick that is, and pat the rest of the meat to that thickness. Then simply stamp out the patties. Voila! 64 patties in 30 minutes without breaking a sweat!




Of course, don't forget to make an indentation in the top of the patty, so that when the burger is cooked, it doesn't create a little dome. The indentation before ensures a flat patty afterwards.


Look for the cooking results in the posting from the party tomorrow!

Tzaziki

In the previous post, I promised the tzaziki recipe. This one isn't exactly traditional, but pretty close. I should have used yogurt, but I used home-made quark instead. It's what I had in the house and sometimes you just have to make do.

Ingredients
1 cucumber
1t Kosher salt - divided use
2 cloves garlic
1 cup loose packed mint - the fresher the better
1T high quality, preferably Greek, extra virgin olive oil
1 cup quark (or 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt, strained for about an 30 minutes)
juice of 1/2 lemon (more or less to taste)
freshly ground black pepper, also to taste.

Method
Peel the whole cucumber in stripes lengthwise, so that you have alternating peeled/unpeeled surfaces. You could completely peel it, but I likethe color and texture of a little peel. Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Discard the seeds. Chop the cucumber finely (1/4" dice) and salt in a colander for 30 minutes. This removes much of the liquid and makes the tzaziki less watery.

If using plain yogurt, strain it through cheesecloth for about 30 minutes. You should have a little more than a cup of strained yogurt.

Peel and make a paste out of the garlic. Using a press is fine, or simply running your knife over it on the curing board works too. Put the garlic paste into a small non reactive bowl. Add the olive oil. Set aside. Pull the mint leaves off the stems and discard the stems. Mince the mint leaves and add to the oil/garlic in the bowl.

Add the quark (or yogurt if using) to the mint/garlic/oil in the bowl and stir well. Rinse the cucumbers, pat dry (very dry) and add to the bowl. Stir and taste. Add lemon juice a little at a time until you have the flavor you want. Check for seasoning, adding a couple of grinds of black pepper.

Set aside (well covered) in the refrigerator for at last an hour.

Serve with lamb souvlaki, gyros, shoe leather, pretty much anything. It should keep the vampires away for a bit too.

strawberry season

April in North Texas is Strawberry time, so Madame and I always head to Gnismer Farms on Bowen Rd. in Arlington to pick them. Today was this year's pilgrimage, and what a wonderful day it turned out to be.

I had previously decided on Souvlaki for dinner, especially when I saw lamb shoulder at $1.99/lb this morning.

So I bought a chunk of lamb shoulder and boned it, cut it into 1 inch cubes and set it to marinate with olive oil, garlic, mint, thyme and oregano. It is so good having the fresh herbs to hand.

This afternoon we drove down to Gnismer farms to pick our own strawberries. It was a coolish ut sunny afternoon and there were several families already picking theer. It was wonderful to see how wxcited the kids were when they found ripe fruit. Also to see their happy faces and strawberry juice stained clothes. We picked about 14lbs of strawberries - some for freezing and some for eating now. Once we had paid for them, we engaged the farme owners in conversation to find out what else they had.

That opened the motherlode. We bought lettuce (by going down the rows of plants and pointing to the ones we wanted). Also they dug onions and leeks for us, found some honey comb taken from the bees on the property. What a treat.

So for dinner (and leftovers for Madame all week), we had the souvlaki (oh yes I made tzaziki for that, recipe in another post) and grilled eggplant, mushrooms, onions, leeks and cauliflower that I had bought before visiting the farm. A bottle of a Beaujolais Villages and we were happy campers.

It was so good to connect again with the growing of the food we ate and to marvel at the earth's bounty.

Cooking school day 3

If I thought day 2 was intense, I was in for a real shock on day 3. The menu looked straightforward -

• Beef pot roast
• Grilled rib eye steaks with a mushroom sauce
• Perfect mashed potatoes
• Greens and blue cheese dressing
• Green beans with a shallot vinaigrette
• Individual chocolate soufflees
• Blueberry muffins

Again 5 hours from start to cleanup. We missed this one it went almost 6 hours, there was so much to do.

This time the pressure was on to get it all done. Again planning and sequence were keys. Recognizing what can be done ahead and held, what has to be done right then and there, and what kinds of timing/oven collisions there might be so they can be avoided. For instance one of the ovens needed three different temps, with the souuflees being the most critical. They were at the very end of the meal, so we had to the temp. of the oven back to the right place for them. That meant cooking the muffins, then the bacon pretty early in the process to give the oven a chance to cool a bit.

Of course the pot roast was going to take 3 hours in the oven, let alone the amount of prep required. So that had to be done first, oh and the blue cheese dressing needed to chill a long while to let the flavors blend. My head was spinning.

Anyhow off to do it, and it became clear that the pressure was real. 2 potentially disastrous errors - one was I used the confectioner's sugar that had been measured for the muffin glaze instead of the granulated sugar. That meant that the quantity was wrong. Luckily I caght that one added granulated sugar to the muffins and baked them anyway. They came out fine. I was amazed that when recipes tell you that muffins don't require much mixing the really mean it. This was barely a batter. It didn't stay together at all, and when I scooped it into the pans it looked awful. Never mind they came out just fine with a lighter texture than I am used to. The Dallas Stars will have to look elsewhere for pucks.

The second error was that was about to make the world's first flourless soufflee. That probably would not have been a success. Fortunately the chef instructor caught that one and asked when the flour should be added. So good opportunity to see what happens if you add it late. It appeared not to matter, but of course it was a pain to add because I couldn't do it all at once for fear of lumps.

Everyting from that point on was a blur! It was nice to get my hands on a food mill for the potatoes - easier than the ricer I normally use.

Also interesting to use beurre manie to thicken the sauce from the pot roast. It is pretty straightforward to do and adds a nice richness. Another technique to add to the repertoire.

The result of all of this was pretty good, timing was a bit off, so things weren't as hot as I would of liked. However, it shows it is possible to get through this much work in about 5 hours. The extra time was the eating.

All in all, I got a lot out of the classes, thought they were good value and loved that attitude of Dianne and Emily. Of course I was lucky to have them all to myself.

Cooking school Day 2

Day 2 at the Milestone Cooking School proved as useful and interesting as day 1. I was still the only student, so was able to continue to work on weaknesses, while making the dishes that were on the menu for the day.

The pace certainly picked up and was more intense than day 1. Again, the dishes were expected to be made in teams, and probably each team would work on a single dish. Not so for this session.

The menu had the following dishes:

• Vegetable Soup
• Pasta with fresh tomatoes
• Chicken stuffed with Mozzarella
• Pork tenderloin with a dijon mustard glaze
• Rustic apple pie

all to be made, eaten and largely cleaned up in 5 hours.

When planning a meal of this size, the sequence is pretty important, so the first part of the lesson was dealing with just that. Surprisingly (or not if you were already thinking this way), the pastry for the appple pie was the first thing to be made. Followed by prepping the chicken. At least in this class we didn't have to fabricate a whole chicken, although at home I probably would.

None of the dishes was particularly complicated, but they were all fairly laborious - well all except the pork.

Again, lots of learning. Keeping the workplace tidy and clean. Many trips to the sink for washing/sanitization. The pastry was interesting - the tricks there were keeping everything really cold and using a whole lot less liquid than you think. When you turn it out of the food processor it is kind of a shaggy mess which really does come together quickly and easily. Lots of resting time in the fridge and rolling was a cinch. Well, rolling was a cinch once they showed me what I was doing wrong.

Making sure that the pork tenderloin was cooked just enough (I like it at 140, the FDA recommends something much higher, but with modern pork cooking it a little less seems to preserve the juiciness). However if you have any doubts cook it to the temperature your country advises. It was seared to build a nice crust and flavor and then cooked on a rack in the oven (350 or so for about 12 minutes). Your mileage may very depending on oven callibration.

Prepping the chicken meant making a pocket, so of course I tore one. The flour coating helped to seal it after it stuffing it. These needed to be refrigerated as well prior to cooking them. More opportunity to ensure that I used one hand to handle the chicken and the other to dip into the salt/pepper for seasoning. You don't want a chickeny hand in the salt - contamination you know!

Everything therafter was pretty straight forward, but since there was a fair amount going on, it was amatter of staying organized and paying attention.

Seabirdskitchen decamps to cooking school - day 1

This weekend I am attending cooking classes at the Milestone School in the Viking kitchen in Dallas. 3 pretty intense days. The class is supposed to take up to 12 people, but they had no shows last evening. I was therefore privileged to have a private class with a wonderful chef and a culinary school student.

Quite the treat. The first evening involved making 2 main courses (a crispy lemon chicken and an Asian marinated mahi mahi) with a rice pilaf and stir fried veges. For dessert a made from scratch raspberry shortcake. Normally, of course, this would be done in teams, but I got to do it all.

Lessons at several levels. First the reinforcement - especially for the stir fry - that size matters. Getting the piecs even in size so they cook evenly and fit well on the fork is critical. Second, the emphasis on hygiene, hand washing and general sanitization after handling the raw chicken. Third a great tip for pounding the chicken - put the breast into a zip-loc bag and pound it in that. It's a whole lot easier than using cling-wrap.

I got to try using panko for the first time, and yes it is worth it. So I can see that becoming a staple.

Today will be an intense day - I am looking forward to it. More posts to come.

Bread starter

I had been wondering how long my bread starter would keep without the normal care and feeding. So 2 weeks ago I put cling wrap on it and put it in the fridge. I then left town, leaving the starter in a state of suspended animation.

On my return home on Thursday evening, I took it out of the fridge, added a scoop of flour and some water, covered it with cheesecloth and left it to sit out overnight. In the morning I looked at it, it was nice and bubbly - all ready to use. I made up a batch of bread with it, and baked it in time for breakfast today.

Delicious.

So yes, you can keep the starter refrigerated and it works like it should.

The rites of spring

Spring has most definitely sprung. There are so many terrific things in the stores, it is hard to know where to start.

Today Madame was reading at the Easter service at 7pm, and it wasn't clear when she would be home, so dinner needed to be quite flexible with regard to time. It also needed to be light - it was likely we wouldn't eat until after 9.

I had had a mediocre Spanish tortilla a couple of weeks back, and had a hankering for a tasty one. I also wanted to make sure we had some nice lamb for Easter Sunday, so off to Whle Foods I went.

They had some local heirloom tomatoes - and the were as sweet as could be. So dinner was coming together in my head. The tortilla with som eof he left over olive/preserved lemon relish from the Mroccan feast and a simple salad of heirloom tomatoes, a couple of our new, tender, basil leaves, some toast strips, Mozzarella (from the Dallas Moxarella Co.) a hint of balsamic vinegar and some large sea salt crystals. It turned out wonderfully.

Now for the tortilla. There are a couple of keys. Mak sure that the potatoes/onions are pressed tightly together before adding the eggs. Make sure you cook the eggs really slowly. Oh and of course, don't forget the saffron.

Spanish Tortilla
Ingredients
1 large russet potato
1/2 medium onion sliced (leaving bite sized pieces)
4 eggs
6 strands of saffron
a little butter to cook the onions in
salt/pepper to taste

Method
Peel and cut the potato into 8 pieces. Immerse in salted water and simmer for about 15 minutes - or until just cooked through (no rsistance to a knife). Meanwhile soften the onion in a little butter in a small (8") non-stick pan. Transfer the onions to a bowl when translucent and sweet. The onions should not take on any color.

Crack the eggs into a bowl, add a little salt/pepper and the saffron. Beat the eggs with a fork until they become homegenous. Leave to stand.

Drain the potatoes and slice very thinly. Place a layer of potatoes in the bottom of the pan in which the onions had cooked. Cover the potato layer with the onions and another layer of potatoes. Place the pan on a med/low flame and warm them. Press the potato/onion mixture with the back of a spatula to squeeze out any air.

When the potatoes are warm, pour the egg mixture over them. Pull the cooked edge of the eggs away from the pan, allowing more raw egg to come in contact with the pan. Turn the heat to low and leave to cook for about 10 minutes - until set in the center. Invert the mixture in the pan and cook for a further 3 or 4 minutes - until the whole tortilla is fully cooked.

Invert on the serving plate and garnish with some greens. Shake a little smoked paprika over the surface and serve.

Luckily there are left overs!

Spring time in Texas

The danger of frost has not completely past, but we are feeling safe now. The weather has been spectcular this weekend, so I have been filled with the desire to get the herb garden going again. Also the tomatoes . Probably a bit early yet for peppers.

So, I have been playing in the dirt. Lots of young basil, thyme, cilantro plants in. The oregano and mint are coming back nicely and even the parlsey is beginning to wake up.

We are so looking forward to home growwn tomatoes with home grown basil and home made bread. We don't grow olives here, or I might be tempted to make our own oil to go with it. Buffaloes (for fresh mozarella) would look a little out of place too, sadly. Oh well.

OTBN

Open That Bottle Night – Feb 23, 2008

The event

For the Wall Street Journal Open That Bottle Night party we chose to invite some friends over (originally planned to be 12, but because of flu season, reduced to 9) with the following instructions. “Please bring a bottle of a wine that is special to you, an appetizer that goes with it, and be prepared to share with the group why it is special.”

Everyone who came entered well into the spirit of the event with some delicious wines, excellent appetizers and much swapping of stories and general camaraderie.

The guests

· P* Phyllis and Christopher (hosts)

· ** Kat and Dan

* ·* Bette and John

· S* Suzy and Griffin

· C* Kathy

The party of the first part

The evening was divided into three quite distinct sections. The “Party of the First Part” was some general mixing/mingling and getting to know people. We held this in the kitchen with some relatively boring wines (provided by us!) and some appetizers – a caponata with toasts and garnished with olives carved to look like baby rabbits on a some mixed greens, and baked cheesy puffs called gougeres.

We played a variant of the guess who I am game where a label with a name is placed on your back and through elimination you have to figure out who you are. In this case we put grape varieties on the labels so everyone needed to figure out what kind of grape they were. The Gewürztraminer caused the most difficulty.

As people arrived, we placed their appetizers on the dining table which had been tastefully(!) covered with pages of a Wall Street Journal. The wines were sequenced for tasting, and the appetizers assigned sequence numbers. The mixing/ice breaking certainly worked well! After about 5 minutes there were no strangers.

The party of the second part

The “Party of the Second Part” was the main event. It was here that we were tasting the wines and listening to their stories. Now this was not a sophisticated tasting. It was as much about the stories, the reasons why things were special, the sharing of experiences, and the food pairings. We arranged the wines in the optimal (or close to it) tasting sequence.

First Pairing - Phyllis and Christopher

The wine

Domaine Du Duc De Magenta – Puligny Montrachet Premier Cru 2004

The food

A salad of baby spinach, oranges, toasted almonds, tomato, avocado and grilled chicken served as a summer roll in rice wrappers. The salad dressing was a mixture of orange and key lime juice with a little extra virgin olive oil. The wraps were softened in the dressing instead if the more normal warm water.

The story

This specific bottle was not in itself special, but the style and vineyard is. When Phyllis and Christopher were “dating” this was the first expensive bottle of wine that Phyllis had had. In fact it was the first bottle of white wine that benefited from being served warmer than ice cold. The experience of having something that luxuriant opened her palate to the delights that can be discovered in a bottle of wine.

Second Pairing – Bette and John

Bette and John brought 2 wines (one red and one white) from Oregon.

The wines

King Estates Pinot Gris - 2002

Firesteed Pinot Noir – 2006

The food

Bette had made some dense crackers with gorgonzola baked in. These crackers helped prepare our mouths and greatly enhanced the wines.

The story

In the 1960s when John was at the University of Oregon, all the land around was “truck farms”. Fresh peaches, plums and other fruit in the late summer – a really wonderful place to eat from the land. Bette was an East Coast Girl, so when John introduced her to the delights of Oregon, she was amazed. Move on to their 40^th. Anniversary and they went back to Oregon. The area is now planted with vines, and making high quality wine. They tasted their way up and down the valley, settling on the Firesteed winery as a favorite. The story ends with a knock on the door about 2 weeks after the trip, and there is a delivery for Bette – 2 cases of the Firesteed Pinot Noir.

Third Pairing – Suzy and Griffin

The wine

Senorio D Las Vinas Rioja Crianza

The food

Suzy and Griffin brought puffs filled with a little white cheddar and shrimp. The wine was light enough to go perfectly with the puffs. They were much admired and few left!

The story

One of Suzy and Griff’s children had been in Spain last year. On a visit, they had become quite taken with this wine, and wanted to bring some home. Cutting to the chase – 17 bottles of it. So the bottles were packed in checked luggage (of course since security prohibits carrying liquids – especially 12 liters of liquids) on the plane too. Come to customs on reentry to the US, and they nonchalantly admit to having 17 bottles of wine – no problem for the inspector, and they were in – and able to share a bottle with all of us.

Fourth Pairing – Kat and Daniel

The wine

Sister Creek Reserve 2004 – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec blend

The food

Kat cannot eat dairy or wheat, so she always finds innovative ways of preparing things that would typically use bread or cheese. This evening she made stuffed mushrooms – stuffed with hot Italian sausage and topped with crushed tortilla chips – instead of breadcrumbs. The group was pretty quiet (for a change) while chowing down on these!

The story

Kat is a Texas girl through and through. On a road trip she discovered this little winery in Texas (near Sisterville) , and while she didn’t hold out much hope for it, she gave it a go. It was surprisingly well balanced and full flavored. It certainly gave the rest of us a new appreciation for the wines of the second largest state.

Fifth Pairing – Cathy

The wine

Long Meadow Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon 2003

The food

Moroccan meat balls with plum sauce. The wine is such a big Cabernet Sauvignon that something with really bold flavors and, as advised by Chef Syre, the Executive Chef at the Four Seasons, without tomatoes. The small lamb balls were spiced with fresh mint, garlic, cinnamon, and cumin. The plum sauce added a little fruitiness without being overly sweet or cloying.

The story

Cathy is a “California Cabernet girl”. One day she was eating at Café Annie in Houston (one of the best restaurants in the state of Texas) and wanted a bottle of the Silver Oak Cab. To the restaurant’s embarrassment they were out of the Silver Oak. The sommelier suggested that she try the Long Meadow Ranch Cab, and that even though it was more expensive than the Silver Oak, he would let her have it for the same price. He thought it was a better wine.

The trouble is that the 2003 is now sold out, so Cathy had to scramble to find a bottle to bring. A few years back she had given a bottle to one of her better customers, so she called to ask if he happened to have any. Now we understand why there is none available, the customer had bought several cases. Fortunately he was delighted to return the favor to Cathy – thus giving us all a terrific experience.

The party of the third part

Now that the tasting was over, the party moved on to the conversation and carousing stage. We had placed some dark chocolate M&Ms on the coffee table – so it seemed natural to drink something bold with them. Since we had not yet had a Shiraz, I pulled one out from the collection – in this case an Ausvetia 1998 from South Australia. It was a bit long in the tooth, but went absolutely beautifully with the chocolate. While Zinfandel is often the chocolate choice, I really like a full-on Australian Shiraz.

Even the clean up wasn’t terribly hard – we had used disposable bamboo plates, so it was easy to toss them. Just a lot of wineglasses to wash!

The Moroccan Dinner

Our Sunday dining group (Sundays at 4) met this weekend for a dinner that had a Moroccan theme. The idea of the event is for all of us to research some things to do that fit with the theme, make the dishes, share them and talk about the food - how we did it, what the challenges were, where we found the recipes, etc. We also settle up at the end of the evening so that we have all paid for everything. A great way to enjoy friends and to extend our food repertoires.

For this event, Bette and John brought some "Moroccan Cigars" and spiced carrots as appetizers. Judy and Rocco brought 2 salads served prettily together in a single large lettuce leaf. The main course was a beef brisket tagine. Judy and Rocco also served a coconut/banana/pineapple dessert that was to die for, and some orange stuffed dates. The dates were not the only things stuffed at the end.

The group has rules about what is allowed to be charged for wine - no more than $20 per bottle may be added into the final total before we split the bill up.

Because the food was pretty bold, and would kill subtle flavours, we served a Beaujolais Villages with the Tagine and a Matua Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand for everything else. Total cost including wine for the dinner was around $90 or $15 per head including wine.

This post has all the recipes that we followed for the dinner. Some as links to other sites, some as inline recipes.

First Judy's Red Pepper Salad:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/109005
ROASTED RED PEPPER SALAD WITH HARISSA
Ingredients
6 medium red bell peppers (2 lb)
1/4 cup raisins
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/4 teaspoons harissa* (spicy North African condiment)
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts, toasted

Method
Preheat broiler. Arrange peppers on a broiler pan and broil peppers about 2 inches from heat, turning occasionally with tongs, until skins are blackened, 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap, then let stand 20 minutes. When cool enough to handle, peel peppers, discarding stems and seeds, and quarter each lengthwise. While peppers are broiling, soak raisins in 1 cup hot water 15 minutes, then drain well in a sieve. Whisk together lemon juice, harissa, and sea salt, then whisk in oil until combined well. Toss peppers with dressing and sprinkle with raisins and walnuts. Cooks' note:Roasted peppers can be tossed with dressing 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring to room temperature before proceeding.

Moroccan Carrot Salad


http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_31954,00.html


PINEAPPLE AND BANANA COUSCOUS PUDDING
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106128


Ingredients

3/4 cup water
1/2 cup plain couscous
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 large banana, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 tablespoon (packed) golden brown sugar1
1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons chilled whipping cream
5 tablespoons sweetened cream of coconut (such as Coco López)
1 tablespoon triple sec
1/2 cup candied pineapple, minced
1 1/2 cups diced peeled fresh pineapple


Method
Bring 3/4 cup water to boil in heavy medium saucepan over high heat. Stir in couscous. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand until water is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Fluff with fork. Melt butter in small nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add banana and sugar and sauté until banana is soft, about 1 minute. Cool. Using electric mixer, beat cream in large bowl until soft peaks form. Fold in cream of coconut and triple sec. Reserve 6 tablespoons whipped cream mixture for topping. Fold candied pineapple, couscous, and banana into remaining whipped cream mixture in large bowl. Divide mixture among 6 parfait glasses or dessert bowls. (Can be made 4 hours ahead. Cover whipped cream mixture and puddings separately and refrigerate.) Top each pudding with some of reserved whipped cream mixture. Sprinkle each with fresh pineapple and serve.

Sweet Stuffed Dates

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_86409,00.html

Tagine of beef brisket with a preserved lemon relish, served over plain couscous

I don't have a tagine so I used a slow cooker for the next recipe. It turned out well and the cleanup was a snap (for which Madame thanked me!). The recipe was adapted from several sources. However there were some minor challenges! I had bought the couscous at Whole Foods in bulk and didn't know ahead of time how long it would take to steam. Answer about 90 minutes. I should have bought the instant packet cousous from the grocery store. Luckily I tested it out ahead of time, so it was cooked. The measurements are not nearly as precise as the recipe below describes. I mention 1/2 an onion because that is what we had left over from something else. You don't want to use more than 1/2 a raw onion at the end - the flavor would be too overpowering! So if you don't have a spare 1/2 onion, justadd more to the first step.

Ingredients
3-4 lbs beef brisket - leave most of the fat on
6 cloves garlic - halved
2T Finely ground white pepper
2T finely ground coriander
2T finely ground cinnamon
1T dried ginger
2T finely ground cumin
1/4t freshly grated nutmeg

1cup beef stock
1 cup dry red wine
2 bay leaves
several strands of saffron
2T honey

4 1/2 large yellow onions - divided use
6 carrots
2 ribs of celery
1 cup dried apricots
1 can plum tomatoes (divided use)
5T neutral oil

1 cup pitted green olives
2 preserved lemons
1/2 cup each parsley and cilantro - divided use

1 1/2 cups couscous
up to 1 quart of water

Method
24 hours before serving, mix all spices together and rub 1/2 of the spices onto the meat, rubbing deeply into the fibers. Also stud the meet with garlic cloves. Leave to rest in the fridge overnight (covered unless you want spicy flavored butter and eggs!) 10 hours before serving, remove the meat from the fridge, heat 2T oil in a large pan (dutch oven skillet or whatever) and brown the meat on all sides - total about 8-10 minutes. Remove the meat and set aside to rest. Into the same pan, add 2 more T of oil and the rest of the spice mixture. Stir to toast the spices and then put in the 3 of the onions (sliced), the celery in 3/4" pieces and the carrots in 3/4" pieces. Cook slowly mixing well to ensure the spices are well into the vegetables. Add a sprinkling of salt. You will be salting at various stages, so go lightly at this stage.

Heat the beef stock, and bloom the saffron in it. Add the wine, honey and bay leaf and mix well.

Once the onions are translucent, add 3 of the canned tomatoes diced. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes. Transfer the vegetables to the crock pot. Rest the beef onto the vegetables and pour over any drippings. Place the dried apricots all around (and under) the meat. Pour the stock/wine mixture over the meat and cover.

Set the crockpot to the medium setting (6 hours) and leave to cook on its own.

Heat the remaining 1T of oil in the pan and soften 1 finely diced onion until translucent. Add the remaining tomatoes chopped finely and cook for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, thoroughly rinse the preserved lemons. Take the onion/tomato mixture off heat and add the chopped olives and preserved lemons . Stir in 2T each of chopped parsley and cilantro. Leave to cool. This mixture will be quite salty, so do not add salt to it.

2 hours before dinner, steam the couscous (if using bulk) or 30 minutes before cook it according to the box (if using instant).

1/2 hour before serving, remove the meat from the liquid, slice into 1/4" slices and reserve. Drain the fat from the pan liquid (there will be a lot) reserving the vegetables. Return the sliced meat to the pot and set to keep warm. Slice the remaining 1/2 onion and add it raw to the pot. For serving, place a mound of couscous in the serving bowl, and pile the meat/vegetables over it. The couscous will absorb some of the juices.

Garnish with some sprigs of cilantro and parlsey. Serve family style with the olive/lemon relish handed separately

Bread tribulations

In previous posts, I have described the no-knead bread. (http://seabirdskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-fun-with-bread.html). We have had our share of hockey pucks and loaves that were too moist. I think we may have finally got to the root of the problem. The standard quantity of dough makes a batch that is really too small for the dutch oven that we use. So it has an irritating tendency to spread sideways until it reaches the edge of the oven while rising. This leaves a strangely domed loaf that looks more like a viking burial mound than a loaf of bread.

Trying an experiment using miniature dutch ovens (actually soup bowls with lids) and small quantities of dough, we were able to get loaves that were more evenly formed and had better texture. So for the most recent normal loaf, we made a double batch of dough and baked it all at once in the standard dutch oven. This loaf rose beautifully, had a nice loose crumb, a delicious crust and will be responsible for us both gaining weight at an alarming rate. It was made, as usual, using a starter, there hasn't been an addition of yeast now for 6 weeks. The flavors are developing to be deeper. All in all this experiment has been worth it.

Carved olive garnish

As a garnish for the caponata (http://seabirdskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/01/caponata.html)

I thought it would be fun to lay out some leaves (basil and cilantro) and then have some carved olives formed into the shape of rabbits.

The end result was much admired.

The best olives to use are kalamatas - you want to choose a kind of olive that has plenty of flesh and a pit that doesn't go all the way to the end. To make a rabbit, slice a sliver off the edge of the olive, leaving a flat surface for it to rest on, Cut a v-shaped notch at one end of the sliver. This will leave the piece that will become the ears. At the non-stem end of the olive, cut a slit across the olive, all the way through to the pit. Place the cut sliver into this slit so that the points of the ears are sticking up.

Valentine's Day 2008

Madame has decided that winter is too long and that she is tired of winter vegetables and hearty dishes. So she muttered something about a sald with oranges and fresh flavors. That wasn't a lot to go on, but I can take a hint with the best of them! I was also thwarted because the gelato store - Paciugos on MacArthur/114 seems to have closed down. I had planned to have some nice gelato to finish our dinner - instead I went to marble slab and got some white chocolate/raspberry swirl with nuts and caramel. The main course had better be light.

As those who know me will testify, I will not generally order a salad but since it was V-Day and Madame had made a specific request, I thought I had better honor it. So some thinking, a trip to Tom Thumb, and an inspection of the wine stocks gave me the following idea:

A salad with chicken strips, avocado, orange, toasted almonds, baby spinach and tomato with an orange, lime dressing served with a bottle of Chassagne Montrachet. Usual goal was for it to be made in less than 45 minutes.

The key to this sald is for the various ingredients (except for the spinach leaves) to be the same general shape as each other, and to keep the size appropriate. The only ingredient whose shape I couldn't really control was the slivered almonds, so they defined the ingredient shape.

The list of ingredients is pretty formidable, bt if you want you can substitute a scant 1T of your favorite rub for the individual spices. It wants to flavor the meat, not pervade it.

Ingredients
1 cup almond slivers - toasted
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts pounded until they are about 1/4" (5mm) in thickness .
1/2t paprika
1/4t ground cardomom
1/4t ground ginger
1/4t ground cumin
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4t finely ground black pepper + extra to taste for seasoning the dressing
1/2t kosher salt + extra to taste for seasoning the dressing
2T vegetable oil
1/4 of a preserved lemon rinsed, skin only, cut in small dice (optional)
2 oranges
juice of 1 lime
1 avocado
1 medium tomato
2T Extra virgin olive oil
Coarse sea salt crystals and coarsely ground black pepper to taste and decoration.
2 cups packed baby spinach leaves (raw), trimmed of stalk ends and washed thoroughly

Method
Put the almonds in a single layer in a non stick frying pan and heat over medium heat, tossing and stirring constantly until they are an even brown. They burn really easily, so watch them like a hawk. This is not the time to multitask! You could do this in the oven, but I did not want the oven on for just this task. Set the almonds aside to cool.

Make up the spice rub by combining the paprika, cardomom, ginger, cumin, pepper, salt, garlic powder in a small bowl.

Pound the chicken flat - easiest between 2 sheets of cling wrap. Use a smooth hammer (I use an empty wine bottle - after all we have plenty of those) - you are pounding it thin not breaking really tough fibers apart. Once the chicken is flat, sprinkle both sides with the spice rub and leave to rest for about 10 minutes.

Peel the oranges and extract the individual segments. Squeeze the juice from the remaining membrane into a small bowl, and add the lime juice. Cut each orange segment in half lengthways. Set aside

Halve the avocado, remove the peel and the pit, slice the halves lengthwise into thin strips. You should aim for about 12 strips per half. Set aside.

Core the tomato, halve longitudinally and slice each half lengthwise into thin strips. Don't worry much about the seeds etc. Some will naturally fall away, others will stay, it doesn't matter. Set aside.

Put 2T vegetable oil into a skillet (preferably not non stick), heat until the smoke point is reached and gently lay the pounded, spiced chicken breasts in the pan. Leave them (don't touch or move them) for 2 minutes over medium high heat. Turn the heat down if things look like they are going to burn. Turn the breasts over and do them for 2 more minutes - until they are cooked through. Remove from pan, turn heat off and add the preserved lemons to the pan (if using). Gather up the lemons and the fond and pour over the chicken - leave to cool.

Add the olive oil to the juices and mix lightly with a fork. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the spinach leaves in a mound in a serving bowl, add the almonds, oranges and tomatoes. Slice the now cooled chicken into thin strips a bit thicker than the almonds) and lay the strips like spokes on the spinach. Lay avocado slices the same way - between the chicken strips so the spinach is mostly covered. Mix the juices/OO one more time quickly with a fork, pour over the chicken/avocado salad mixture and simly let it drizzle through the spinach. Shave a few salt crystals and coarsly ground pepper over the dish and serve. I prperaed it up until the point at which I added the dressing and held it at room temp. for about 20 minutes since Madame was a bit late getting home. It held up fine. I added the dressing as she walked in, so that by the time we were ready to eat, the dressing had been in contact with the salad for about 10 minutes.

Serving
Serve with a nice, complex white wine - it needs a bit more richness/complexity than a Sancerre, the NZ Sauvignon Blancs are too grassy in general for this dish - and the citrusy notes interfere with the orange/lime clean flavors. That's why we used a white Burgundy (a Chassagne Montrachet, Premier Cru) for this. For once we didn't drink the whole bottle! Half of the bottle was enough given the complexity of the wine, the complexity of the dish and the wonderful flavor combinations.

There were left overs, so Madame took them to school next day. Apparently, it was almost as good on the second day as it had been the night before.

Warning
Don't forget that you have been handling raw chicken so please make sure you really carefully sanitize everything - yourself, the board, the hammer, any knives used for trimming, etc.

An unnerving experience with flour

I was setting up yesterday morning to make bread. That was going to be a white loaf with a little pasta flour to give some extra texture and richness. I was planning to use Hodgson Mills pasta flour because it was what my local grocery store had. Imagine my surprise when a newly opened package of pasta flour had all manner of critters in it. Below is my letter to Hodgson Mills.

All,

I called yesterday (Saturday) to describe an issue with one of your products. This mail is just to provide detail that I didn't have handy when I called. To recap, I bought a 2lb package of your "Golden Semolina $ extra fancy durum Pasta Flour" from my local Tom Thumb store a couple of weeks ago. In my phone message I said I couldn't find the lot number on the package. Since then I have found it. It says 0124091 on the top of the package. The issue was that when I opened it to incorporate it into some bread, there was - in the first 1/2 cup that I poured 1 winged insect (probably around 3mm across) and some stick like things - each about 5mm long. The stick like things were about the color of cinnamon bark.

I immediately poured that 1/2 cup of flour into a sealed plastic bag to to return the contents to Tom Thumb. On viewing the product through the window of the package, I see at least one more flying insect and several more of the stick like things and some wiggling larvae - at least that's what they look like. Tom Thumb, of course, did the right thing and refunded my money. I kept the package of flour, wrapped in a zip lock bag so that when you call me, I can fully describe what the packaging looks like, etc.

This is the second time that I have had issues with this flour. I generally keep my flour products in sealed plastic containers to prevent odors, bugs, etc. On a previous occasion, I had the remains (probably around 1/2 lb) of a package stored in a sealed container. When I came to use it in a bread mixture, it had little holes in the surface and on further inspection some of the same wiggly things that I saw in the current package. I thought with the first package that I might have done something to contribute to the issue, but the second, unopened batch convinced me that the problem was likely to be at the production/distribution end and not in my house.


The store at which I bought the product was the Tom Thumb store in the 75038 zip code.

Regards

Chris Bird

I will keep this thread up to date with tesponses from Hodgson Mill.

Butternut squash

With some inspiration from Jamie Oliver (The Naked Chef), I did some butternut squash in the oven a couple of days ago. A quick, easy dish that works well in the winter. I served it along with a flank steak that had been rubbed with Nonya spices from Penderrys (oops spelling might be an issue here) and then grilled to medum rare on the cast iron griddle. It was too miserable to hke to the end of the yard and tun on the outdoor grill.

Ingredients
1 large butternut squash
3 T vegetable oil
1 1/2t garam masala (an Indian spice blend)
a sprinking of large sea salt crystals

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 375F and place a rack on the center shelf. Cut the squash into 3/4" chunks - no need to peel it. Spread the squash chunks on an ovenproof dish in a single layer. Dust with the garam masala, and then sprinkle with the oil. Bake for 20 minutes in the oven, and then turn the heat up to 425 until they are cooked (about another 15 minutes). The dual oven temperature was because I misjudged the time that Madame would be home and needed to speed up the process.
Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with salt crystals. Serve as an appetizer or a side dish.

Note: I like the skin of butternut squash when cooked this way, so I always eat it. Madame does not, so she discards it

Chicken, leek and potato soup

It was cold this evening in Dallas, so a warm soup seemed like a good idea. Also, I wanted it to fit into my tight schedule so it would be ready when Madame came home from school - famished as always. There were some nice looking leeks in the grocery store, so a chicken/leek/potato soup seemed like a good idea. It was! We ate it and Madame did her Oliver Twist impersonation, "More Please". so I guess it was a hit.

Ingredients
2T vegetable oil
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
4 medium leeks
1/2 cup dry white wine
2lbs red (waxy) potatoes
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup half and half (light cream)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Heat the oil in a large soup pan (or dutch oven) until smoking. Place the salted and peppered chicken thighs in the oil to brown. Turn the heat back to medium and allow to cook. Trim and clean the leeks, then chop them into 1/2 inch strips. When the chicken is browned on all sides, tmove from the pan. Add the leeks and stir them in the hot fat for about 5 minutes - until softened. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces, lay them on top of the leeks, place the chicken and any drippings on top of the potatoes. Cover the potatoes and leeks with the stock, leave some of the chicken exposed. Putthe lid on the pot, bring the contents to a simmer, and then turn down the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes - or until the potatoes are cooked. Remove the chicken from the pan, and dice into bite sized pieces. With a stick blender (or a regular carafe style blender), puree the soup roughly. You want to leave some bits of potato and leek as texture. This is a rustic soup. Put everything back in the pan, bring to a boil and turn th heat off. Wait for the boiling to subside and add the cream. I tempered the cream by adding some hot liquid to the cream first rather than subjecting it to the total heat of the soup. Stir, adjust the seasoning, and serve in heated bowls.

Shrove Tuesday

Where I am from it is traditional to have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Traditionally it is thought that pancakes were a good way to use up the fat, eggs, etc. prior to the denials of Lent. To my American friends this kind of pancake is a crepe - a thin griddle cooked item, not the thicker breakfast style pancake often seen over here. We always served them with lemon and sugar and had them as a dessert. I hadn't had pancakes on pancake day for many years, so this year decided to do them. Being at home and having the time was a major contributing factor.

Ingredients
3/4 cup flour
1/2 t salt
1t baking powder
2T icing or confectioner's sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup milk (1% in this case)
1/2 cup water
a few drops vanilla essence

Method
Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl
Lightly beat the eggs and add the milk and about half of the water. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the liquids. Whisk until the liquid has been incorporated. The consistency of the batter should be like thin (single) cream. If it is too thick, thin with a little more water.
Heat a small non=stick skillet with a little buttter until the butter just browns. Wipe the skillet. With the skillet still hot, pour in about 2 T of the batter, rolling it around to make a circuloar crepe. When it is cooked on the first side (about 30 seconds, top layer dry), flip and leave on the second side for about 15 seconds. Store the cooked crepes in a warm oven (200F) in layers with parchment paper between the layers. When all the crepes are cooked, fold them into quarters (or roll them up) and place them on warmed dessert plates (3 crepes per person), sprinkle with powdered sugar and lemon juice. Eat immediately!

More fun with bread

We now haven't bought bread for over a month. The no-knead variety has been working well for us - except for some occasional lapses. I used white wholewheat flour one day and ended up with something you could use to go curling with.
However, as I have become more practised and am able to judge the texture better, I have started to use a pre-ferment instead of the yeast. Now, when I bake a batch, I make a little more than the recipe calls for, make sure I use spring water (no chlorine) and keep a little of the dough back. Add some fresh flour to it, a little more water and let it sit in a quiet room for a couple of days. Using that instead of the yeast in the next batch adds an even greater depth of flavor. I have also stopped using a parchment sling. It is easy enough to get the bread into and out of the dutch oven by rolling it off the towel. The crust is more even and the overall shape and texture better.

Caponata

This story goes back a fair distance. Rocco (a Sicilian), Judy, Madame and I went to eat at Daniele Osteria in Dallas a couple of years back. Good Sicilian food with an especially tasty caponata. I figured it should be possible to deconstruct this, so tried for one of our "Sundays at Four" events. It came out well, but of course I have forgotten what I did.
Fast forward to this year. We came home from shopping to find a jar of caponata that Rocco and Judy had bought in Chicago and left for us. It was delicious.
Ever up for a challenge, I decided to make more. There seem to be a couple of keys to this.
First, cook the ingredients separately. Even though the dish eventually comes together, the major ingredients require different amounts and kinds of heat. For example, the eggplant is fried at a high temperature to get some browning, while the onions and garlic are sweated in extra virgin olive oil to develop flavors, but no browning.

Ingredients
6-8 sticks celery, cleaned chopped into 3 inch lengths
4T Extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced finely
some red pepper flakes
1 28 oz can plum tomatoes (I used Muir Glen Organic). Keep the juice handy you may or may not need it
4T Capers - rinsed and drained
8 oz olives (green, Sicilian if possible) chopped roughly into quarters
A few basil leaves in chiffonade
2 T neutral oil for frying
1 1/2 lbs eggplant (Italian preferably)
2T sugar
4T red wine vinegar
Salt/pepper to taste

Method
Put the celery into a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes - until tender. Set the celery aside
Meanwhile, in a large pot warm the olive oil gently over low heat, add the onions, garlic and hot peppers.
Drain the tomatoes reserving the juice. Break the tomatoes into a pulp - I used an immersion blender, but you could equally use a food processor or a regular blender.
Cut the eggplants into 3/4" (2cm) cubes. Do not bother to peel them first.
Heat the oil over medium heat until almost smoking. Add the eggplant and fry tossing occasionally until fairly browned.
Meanwhile drain the celery and cut into fine dice
When the onions are translucent, add the tomatoes. Stir and then add the chopped olives and capers. Simmer for a few minutes, then add the chopped basil leaves.
Add the eggplant, celery and stir
Mix the vinegar and sugar together and add the mixture to the cooking pot. Stir again, put the lid on and simmer for about 8-10 minutes - until thickened. If it is looking too thick, you can add some of the reserved tomato juice - otherwise make bloody Marys!
Turn the caponata out of the pan into small bowls and chill overnight. Serve inverted garnished with carved olive rabbits, orange slices, basil chiffonade and some sea salt, with fresh crusty bread or crackers

Chai

Last week I was in the land of the chai drinkers - Silicon Valley. Since I don't drink coffee and I needed to be sociable, I learned to drink chai at $starbuc$. To my surprise, I liked it - maybe a bit sweet but steamed milk and spiced tea was a great combination - except for the price. At $3 for a medium sized drink, I wasn't going to have many of those.

So time for deconstruction. Reading the label told me that there was lots of sugar, but more importantly a nice mixture of spices and black tea. So, on coming home, I thought I would give it a go. I have most of the interesting spices at home, so made up a recipe. If there are no posts following this one, it means I have poisoned myself!

Typically tea in hot water takes 3-5 minutes to brew, and I knew this would not be long enough to extract the flavors from the spices, so I let them stand much longer.

Ingredients - the quantities are not (yet) very precise
4 quarts (that is 1 US gallon, .8 of a UK gallon, a little under 4 litres) of water.
2T whole cardamom - preferably green, they taste stronger than the bleached white cardamom
1T whole white peppercorns
1T whole black peppercorns
5 inch piece of cinnamon - broken up into pieces
6 cloves
pinch of salt
2T whole coriander
2oz crystallized ginger
6T strong black loose tea (English breakfast is what I used).

Method
Lightly crush the whole spices in a pestle and mortar. Put the water, spices and salt into a nonreactive saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 30 minutes and allow to cool (overnight in my case). Strain out the spices, put the spiced liquid back into the pan, bring to the boil and add the tea. Turn off the heat, and allow to steep for 5 minutes. Strain, allow to cool and serve with the appropriate amount of hot milk and simple syrup.

When Celestina delivers lemons....

Celestina, one of Madame's former students, is a girl from the "Valley" that fertile stretch of South Texas down near the Mexican border. She has provided us with some of the sweetest, juiciest lemons imaginable. So many that we were wondering what to do with them all. After all one can only drink so many gin-and-tonics!

At various times, I have wished I had some preserved lemons to go with some of the middle eastern dishes that we like to eat. Unfortunately when the middle eastern muse strikes there isn' time to make preserved lemons. They do, after all, take about 30 days to mature.

So, with the bounty from Celestina and a bit of forethought, preserved lemons are under way. They are simple to make - you just need salt, some common spices and time (yes time, not thyme).

Recipe
8-10 lemons
1/4 cup of table salt (1/2 cup of kosher salt)
2 inches of cinnamon stick
a few coriander seeds (whole)
a few whole peppercorns
1 bay leaf

Method
Wash the lemons thoroughly

Slice a little off the top and tail of each lemon - enough so it will stand on the chopping board either way up. Stand each lemon up, and make a vertical slice through the middle almost to the bottom. You definitely want to make sure that the halves are still attached. Turn the lemon the other way up and do the same from the other end - at right angles to the first cup. So now you have the 4 quarters still somehow attached, but with their innards exposed.

Sterilize a quart jar, dry it and put a table spoon of the salt in the bottom and a few of the coriander seeds and pepper corns together with a chunk of the cinnamon stick. Sprinkle salt on each cut surface of the lemons, and push the lemons into the jar, pressing down firmly. When the jar is about 1/2 full add the remaining spice bits. Make sure you fill the jar well, and if necessary add fresh (yes I mean fresh...) lemon juice to cover. There should be a small gap between the top surface of the juice and the rim of the jar. Cover the jar tightly and leave to rest in a warmish (i.e. not the refrigerator) place for at least a month. Turn the jar over every week or so to make sure the ingredients are well combined.

When you use them, make sure you rinse them pretty thoroughly. You will be eating the peel, so you can discard the juice/pulp, although I imagine you could reuse that juice for covering the next batch..

Thanks Celestina!!!!

New Years Day 2008

We had a simple celebration of New Year's day. Vince and Gayle, and Steve and Ellen came over. Starting with tea and Christmas cake at 5, moving on to dinner of b;ack eyed peas and a French salad, finishing with a plate of cheese (Lincolnshire Poacher, Stilton, Brie and Manchego) and a bottle of port. This was an excuse to use the new crock pot for the first time. We are now all feeling incredibly lucky for 2008.
The vinegar in the recipe is to keep the contents slightly acidic (hardly noticeable in the finished dish) but it does keep the black eyed peas from going mushy or gummy. According to Alton Brown (and Shirley Corriher), acid in legumes is a good way to ensure that the legumes retain their texture even when cooked for a long time. Hence the use of molasses in Boston baked beans.

Black Eyed Peas
Ingredients
2 12 Oz packets fresh black eyed peas
2 8 oz ham hocks
4 Oz bacon, fried crisp
2 medium red onions sliced (not chopped or minced)
4 cloves garlic (sliced thinly)
1 Bay leaf
3 Cups water
2 Dried cayenne peppers
1t Cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Cilantro for garnish

Method
Place black eyed peas in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for an hour. Meanwhile in the crockpot place the onions, ham hocks, garlic, salt, pepper, cayennes and bayleaf and 3 cups of water. Bring the crock pot to a high setting and leave on high until the beans have finished simmering.
Stir the beans (without the cooking liquid) into the crockpot and add the vinegar, leave on high until bubbles start to form on the surface. Stir the contents and cook in the crockpot on then turn to low and simmer for 7-9 hours. Once cooked through, shred the meat off the hock bones, discard the bones and serve, garnished with shredded cilantro leaves..

We have some small (12 oz size) individual Staub enamelled cast iron bowls, with lids. They are idea for this kind of dish because they can safely be heated in the oven ubtil they are really hot. They then manage to keep the individual servings piping hot - just what is needed on a raw winter evening.

When will it be cooked?

This posting is a bit technical, but it is all to do with predicting when something will be cooked/ready to serve. Let's assume that we want to eat at 8pm, and the dish is some giant thing like a turkey which is to be roasted. It's going to need to rest for about 30 minutes for the juices to redistribute and while you do the other things that have to get done. That means you want it leaving the oven at 7:20 - to allow for time to carve it. Now the big question, how do you know whether it will be done at 7:20?
I use a "rate of change" based method. I use a probe thermometer, and look at what rate the temperature is rising. Because the probe is deep inside the roast, the temperature will rise very slowly at first. So for the first hour of cooking, you may only see a 5-10 degree increase in temperature. However, now imagine it is 6pm - you want to take the thing out of the oven in 1 hour and 20 minutes, but you notice that its current temperature is 140 and it has risen 30 degrees in the last hour. A quick, back of the envelope calculation suggests that it will be ready in about 20 more minutes - a whole hour sooner than you would like. So, what to do? Turn the heat down - in this case quite a lot! So if you were cooking it at 350, back the heat off to 275 and pay attention. After 30 minutes longer, see what has happened. If it has reached its target temperature, take it out and let it rest longer. If not, see how much it has moved. If it has risen another 15 degrees or so, you are well on track.
So the thinking process is, don't just look at the instantaneous temperature, look at how fast the temperature has been rising - remembering that the temperature rises faster the nearer the thing is to being cooked. If it looks like the temperature is rising too fast, turn the heat down some. If it is rising too slowly, turn it up.
It is better to use a permanently inserted probe than one of the pop-ups. A pop-up will tell you that something is done. What you need is to be able to predict is when it will be.

Oven temperatures

My friend Judy, from Germany has asked that I post temperatures in Celsius and Fahrenheit. She mentioned that she had ruined a dinner because of an error in conversion, so here goes. Oh, and while I am about it, I have added the gas marks that are used widely in British gas ovens. The "Cooking Instructions" column is imprecise, so a bit of judgment is needed if you are to rely on it. Of course, the conversions are not directly accurate - they are all rounded. So if you are using Celsius, you may need to check more frequently/earlier.

Cooking Instructions	Fahrenheit	Celsius	Gas Mark
	500	260
Very Hot	475	245	9
Very Hot	450	230	8
Hot	425	220	7
Quick/Fairly Hot	400	205	6
Moderately Hot	375	190	5
Moderate/Medium	350	175	4
Warm	325	165	3
Slow/Low	300	150	2
Very Slow/Very Low	275	135	1
Very Slow/Very Low	250	120	1/2
Very Slow/Very Cool	225	110	1/4

Warmed plates

At this time of year, especially, when things cool quickly it is so important to warm the serving dishes and the eating dishes too. If things are to be served in bowls, then heating with boiling water does the trick. Otherwise you have to get a bit more ingenious. I use the infra red lamps in the warming racks, but you can also microwave the plates as long as theer is some liquid or gel pack available. It makes such a difference to have hot food on hot plates. It keeps your interest so much longer.

Mashed potatoes - with a difference

For dinner tonight we had some simple grilled steak, steamed carrots and mashed potatoes. One of the best flavors for carrots is ginger, so I thought maybe we should have ginger mashed potatoes.
A couple of weeks ago we paid a visit to Penderry's spice shop in Fort Worth and bought a large bag of crystallized ginger. The fresh ginger on the fridge had grown a bit of a beard and needed to be tossed out anyway!
So the potatoes were simmered, the carrots steaming above them, with a few slices of crystallized ginger. When the potatoes were cooked, I fished out the now soft crystallized ginger and chopped it finely. Rice the potatoes, add some butter, milk, salt, pepper, and the chopped ginger. Stir, adjust seasoning and serve on warmed plates with the carrots and steak. Delicious!

Christmas dinner

Madame and I thought we would be on our own for Christmas this year. Our neighbours, John and Lydia called at the last minute and asked if we would like to eat Christmas dinner with them. When John invites, it would be a very foolish person who turns him down. The food is always good!

So we made some cranberry sauce, a warmed goat cheese salad, green beans and roasted potatoes to go with their appetizers, a beautifully roasted turkey, a light and delicious dressing, and gravy. Lydia had made some rouille which we had as an appetizer - with of all things some peach champagne (Madame's favourite).

For dessert, a cheesecake, with a blueberry sauce made from blueberries, simple syrup and a little cassis. All in all a terrific time.



Cranberry sauce
Ingredients
12 oz package frozen cranberries
1T Seville orange marmalade (the kind made from bitter oranges)
7/8 cup white sugar
1 cup water
2T Creme de Cassis


Method
Bring sugar/water to the boil. Add marmalade and cranberries. Simmer for 10 or so minutes. Take off heat and allow to cool for a few minutes (doesn't have to be completely cooled). Add the creme de cassis. Refrigerate overnight.


Warmed Goat Cheese Salad
Ingredients
4 Rounds of fresh goat cheese 1/2 to 1 inch thick
1 Egg beaten with a few splashes of hot sauce (to taste)
1 Cup fresh breadcrumbs (not toasted)
1/2t Paprika
1/2t Salt
1/2t Pepper
1t Neutral oil
4 Tomato slices - each the same diameter as the rounds of cheese.
Mixed salad greens (try to include some mint, tarragon, basil)
Juice of 1 large lemon.
2T Rice wine vinegar
1T neutral oil

Method
Mix salt, pepper and paprika into breadcrumbs and put into a low bowl. Into another low bowl break the egg and beat lightly with a fork. Coat each round of cheese first with the egg and then breadcrumbs. Leave to sit for 15 minutes to 1 hour at room temperature.
Heat the oil on a griddle or other flat surface until shimmering. Put the rounds of goat cheese flat side down onto the skillet and allow the crumbs to brown (about 2 minutes). Flip the cheese over to the other side and cook until the second side is brown.
Arrange the tomato slices on a large plate, and put one toasted cheese round onto each tomato slice. Mound the greens on the plate separate from the tomato/cheese rounds. Make a quick dressing from the lemon juice, vinegar and oil. Combine thoroughly and pour over the greens.

Roasted Potatoes
Ingredients
2 Large baking potatoes (russets in the USA). Use starchy not waxy potatoes
1T salt
3Oz butter.

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 425F. Make sure that the rack is on the middle shelf.
Peel the potatoes and cut into bit sized chunks. I typically get 8 pieces per large russet. Cover potatoes with water in a large saucepan and add the salt. Bring the potatoes to a simmer and simmer for about 7 minutes. Meanwhile put the butter into a roasting pan and put in the oven to melt.
Once the potatoes have simmered for 7 minutes, drain them and dry them thoroughly. Dry them in the original pan over very low heat. When they have dried, put the lid back on the pan and shake the potatoes vigorously. This roughs up the outsides and helps create a really nice crunchy crust. Tip the potatoes into the melted butter and make sure they are coated on all sides. Put into the oven and roast for about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, turn the potatoes over so that they brown evenly, and put back into the oven for another 25 or so minutes. Depends on the size of the potatoes. They are cooked when the outside is evenly brown and crunchy.

Green Beans
Ingredients
2 slices of bacon across into 1/4 inch strips
1lb green beans topped and tailed and cut on the bias into 1 inch lengths

Method
In a lidded skillet over low heat, gently render the fat from the bacon. Once the fat has rendered, but before the bacon is crisp, turn the heat up to medium and add the green beans. Stir the beans and bacon until the beans are covered in a thin layer of bacon fat. Add 1/2 cup of water to the pan, put the lid on, and turn the heat to low. Allow the beans to stem for about 7 minutes - until the water has completely evaporated. Serve immediately.
Note there is no reason to add any salt, the bacon is probably salty enough.

Eggs

We typically buy our eggs at the farmers' market in Dallas. They seem to taste better and appear fresher. However they don't come with the sell by date on the box - they are in open flats. So when I bring them home, the challenge is to remember which are the old eggs (the stragglers left over from the previous trip) and which are the new ones. An easy way to deal with this is to alternate colors. On one trip I will buy white eggs, on the next trip brown ones, etc. That way I can easily tell which eggs have to be eaten first (or if I want a very fresh egg, which eggs are the freshest).

A trip to the Farmers' Market

In Dallas we have a year round farmers' market and it carries some locally grown produce at the right season. Many of the stalls are just dealers though. We always try to buy tomatoes there - seconds if possible because the taste is so much better and the value spectacular.

Yesterday we went down looking for root vegetables, winter fruits, etc. and were pleased to discover some tomatoes which were local (hot-house). These were at a stall run by a delightful Hispanic family. Many of the stalls cut up some of their better offerings to try. These clever people had made a salad of tomoatoes, apples, vinegar, onions and cilantro to lure prospective purchasers. It was fantastic and was the deal closer. .

For lunch today I tried to recreate the salad. It was well worth it. It needed some tweaks...

Ingredients

1 medium apple (Gala or Pink Lady)
4T Sherry vinegar
6 green onions - whites and light green parts chopped into small pieces on the bias
2 whole tomatoes
1/2 cayenne pepper finely minced
1T light oilive oil
1/2 bunch of cilantro roughly chopped - leaves only
1t sugar (more or less depending on ripeness of tomatoes)
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Halve and core the apple. No need to peel. I use a melon baller to core it Chop the apple into 1/2 inch cubes. Pour the vinegar over the apple immediately to prevent browning. Mix in the green onions. Core and chop the tomatoes into the apple sized pieces. Add the tomatoes to the apples/onions/vinegar and mix. Mix in the chopped cayenne pepper and the cilantro. Taste and add sugar, salt and pepper as desired.

Leave to set for an hour or so. Serve with croutons . We dressed it with a little goat cheese.

No wimpy food!

I have just come back from a few days in Boston - well Cambridge really where everything I had to eat could be summed up in one word - wimpy.

The Marriott used a kind of yellowy offering from a chemistry set to make a rather bland omelet - have they never heard of salt, I wonder? Anyway this yellow egg-like liquid made some of the worst tasting, rubbery breakfast food ever. The last day, I went to Sebastien's across the street - at least I knew they would use real eggs and the eggs were better. The fried potatoes were OK, but the textures were all off - and, again no salt. Anyone would think it had been the Boston Salt Party, not the Boston tea Party back in 1773.

Even the much vaunted Legal Sea Food was off its game a bit. My tradtional favourite there - the baked scrod - was no longer the work of art that it had once been. It now tasted like it was mass produced in some central kitchen where they had again lost the salt cellar.

I was therefore much relieved on Friday evening when our neighbors invited us for Tamales, which of course, are traditional amongst the Latino culture here for Christmas. Aha, at last food that tasted of something! Good hot sauce too, and some wonderful charro beans. Washed down with a couple of beers - ahhhh yes.

The second loaf

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had made a double batch of dough. So, you might wonder, what happened to the second loaf?
I had stored the sloppy dough in a bag in the fridge for 36 hours before attempting to shape it/bake it. When I took it out, it was very cold (37 degrees), and didn't seem to want to spread so much. So, I let it warm up a bit, it became sloppier. I covered it with flour, shaped it, put it onto the parchment paper, into a small skillet and let it rise. This time it rose and didn't just spread!
Followed the usual baking process (450 degrees, backed down to 400 for 30 minutes, took cover off and baked 20 minutes more until internal temperature of 210).
Hallelujah, it rose! No longer a hockey puck, but a real loaf! Fantastic flavor, fantastic crust, fantastic crumb. Only problem was it didn't stick around long! So, I don't feel that I need the vinegar and beer. So, if this is repeatable, I'll be in tall cotten!

The bread saga continues

The first couple of loaves were pretty good - great taste, but the overbrowning was annoying me. I went back to the original NY Times recipe to start again. So I made a double batch of dough - doubling each ingredient, but substituting 5 oz (1 cup or so) wholewheat flower for the equivalent quantity of AP flour.

The consistency of the dough reminded me of being a "bricklayer's mate" - the poor schmuck who has to move barrow loads of wet cement around so the brickie has a ready supply of "muck". The texture of this dough was just like the same texture as the cement. I was not encouraged.

Now I understand why the original recipe calls for towels and not parchment. The towels allow flour to be incorporated into the weave, and they wick a little liquid away. I didn't use towels :-(

After the 17 hour rest, the dough had great bubbles, it shown a propensity to rise, but was still more starter consistency than bread dough consistency.

Dumping onto a floured counter, it immediately spread as wide as it could. So I dusted it with four, folded it a couple of times and let it rest. After it had occupied the whole space, and rested well, I shaped it (more like corralled than shaped) into parchment paper in a small skillet for the final rise.

The final rise was more of a 2-dimensional affair. It did rise vertically a bit, but not enough. However it spread widely.

No matter, I though, all this extra water will create extra steam - gotta be good for the crust So into the pot (this time 450 degree going to 400) dutch oven and it was baking. This time, although it didn't rise enough, it also didn't overbrown. The flavor was excellent, although to my surprise, I think the addition of beer and vinegar in the Cooks Illustrated recipe, gave a deeper flavor. So the result is a loaf that is about 8" in diameter and 2" high. Great crust, good flavor, fairly open crumb, but not what I would call a loaf. More a giant hockey puck.

Major lesson learned here is not to use cooking spray. It seems as if cooking spray actually helps the crust to overbrown. So for this one, no spray and a better crust. However, I changed so many things that I don't know if the cooking spray made a difference or not.

A celery trick

I like to try to do things efficiently in the kitchen. One of my pet peeves is dealing with celery. The ribs are long and cumbersome and variable in width as you go down towards the root. So rather than breaking off a single rib and chopping that, I leave the bunch (head, or whatever the word for the whole celery is) intact and slice crosswise across all the ribs. That way, I can get the pieces even in size quite simply. The main downside, of course, is that you have to guess at the amount of celery you are using. That isn't usually a problem, since most stews, braises, etc. are not that critical. Also you don't get suitable length pieces for stirring your bloody mary.

French Bistro Chicken in a Pot

I tried another recipe from the recent Cooks Illustrated last evening. This was the French Bistro Chicken in a Pot. The idea is that if you cook a chicken in just its own juices inside a dutch oven. It will come up moist, juicy, flavorful and all round excellent. Again the folks at Cooks Illustrated are right. This is extremely straightforward and absolutely delicious. Here's what I did.

Ingredients
1 5lb roasting chicken - innards removed, patted dry inside and out and salted/peppered liberally
1T canola oil
1 Red onion - medium dice
2 Stalks celery - medium dice (more on celery in the next posting)
2 Bay leaves
1 Head of garlic, individual cloves peeled and kept whole
1 Sprig of rosemary


Method
Pre-heat the oven to 275F. Put a rack low in the oven (and make sure it is not on a pizza stone or other heat store). Heat the oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat until smoking. Brown the chicken breast side down in the oil. After 3 or 4 minutes in the hot oil, toss in the aromatics. After another few minutes, turn the chicken over and allow the back to brown. Make sure the garlic doesn't burn by occasionally scraping the aromatics around. You want some caramelization on the onions and celery for extra flavor. Cover the top of the dutch oven with foil and then put the lid on. This provides a better seal than just putting the lid on. Put the dutch oven and contents into the oven and leave it there for 1 hour 40 minutes. It is cooked when the breast meat registers 165 on your thermometer.
Remove from the oven and set the chicken to rest on a carving board. Tent it with foil (I used the foil that had been sealing the dutch oven). Strain the pan juices into a fat separator and press all the liquid out of the aromatics. Discard the aromatics - they have given their all. Leave for a few minutes for the fat to rise to the top. Decant the pan juices into a small saucepan and put over very low heat to stay warm.
After the chicken has rested for 15 or so minutes, carve it. The skin will look awful, by the way, so I serve it without the skin. I removed the breasts whole and sliced them crosswise. Take the juices pan off heat and squeeze in the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Serve the chicken breast pieces on hot plates with a little of the pan juice poured over them.
When I made this, Madame and I shared a single breast (the advantage of a large chicken), and we served 1/2 a spaghetti squash that I had microwaved with salt, pepper and a little butter.
This was a spectacular treatment for chicken - definitely worth repeating.

Note
The dutch oven has to be a pretty big one, since you want to be able to get the whole chicken into it. You can use a pottery oven, but since you can't use that on top of the stove, you have to dirty another pan. The Emerilware cast iron dutch oven that I bought for the bread is too small for this recipe :-(. I reverted to my trusty Le Creuset pan (with the broken knob on the kid)

Leaving comments on blogs

Several friends have told me that it is not obvious how to post comments to a blog. It is a bit weird, and the design of the form is poor. So here are the instructions.

Press the little comment text under a posting and a small pop up window opens. This window cannot be resized (at least not under Internet Explorer). You put the text of your comment into the box. Then you need to scroll down. You are asked for some identification and you have choices. You can put your own blogger id in the email and password combination, but that isn't something most would probably want to do. You can also post anonymously by checking the anonymous button. The other choice is to press the "nickname" button, and put your nickname in there. That should not be an email address or anything that is directly traceable back to you, but is likely to be known by me or the small community of folks reading this. So for example, Madame comments under that name or occasionally as Mme.

You are also asked to enter a security string. This is a collection of characters (sometimes numbers too) that are displayed on the screen in a way that can easily be read by people, and are hard to read by machines. By entering that string of characters, you are essentially saying, "This is a human entering the information, not a bot". Try it and see.

Caraway seeds

When I was about 8 years old, I was living with my beloved grandmother .We lived in a small town in Dorset on the south coast of England. She had a very good friend (an ancient spinster, called Miss Gilbert) who lived next door. Occasionally we would walk to Miss Gilbert's house for tea. There was always cake!!!
On one fateful afternoon we went to Miss Gilbert's house and she produced a seed cake. Seed cake is (was?!) a popular English cake for serving with afternoon tea. It is essentially a pound cake with caraway seeds mixed into the batter prior to baking.
I had never had one of these before - and it tasted disgusting to me. Of course, being the polite child, I thanked Miss Gilbert for the cake, choked the piece down (after even the dog turned up its nose when I offered it surreptitiously). I must have been too enthusiastic in my thanks. Seed cake was now "Christopher's favourite" and offered every time we went there for tea. These visits became steadily less frequent - at least for me.
Fast forward 40 some years. Madame tells me that she likes nothing better than sauerkraut with caraway seeds - or rye bread with caraway seeds. I think that if I pulverized caraway seeds with the sole of my shoe, she would eat that too.
As soon as the bread had been pronounced a success, I heard, "Honey, you can make me some rye bread with caraway now, can't you?" I'll wait until I have a head cold, wear a face mask, and make sure all the windows are open the vent fan on before that happens

The bread

In previous posts, I have been anticipating the making of bread the (almost) no-knead way. After the dutch oven trials and tribulations, we finally made a loaf. Breakfast this morning became a very special occasion as we sliced into the creation. It looked like a little rustic, not quite as perfectly shaped as a professional baker would have done . The crust was quite firm, and nicely browned. The bottom crust was a bit overbrowned and tough, however. The crumb had a nice slightly dense texture with very even air pockets and a really deep, complex, not too yeasty taste. Of course, I immediately shared the crust with Madame, while toasting a couple of slices to try with marmalde (me) or jam (Madame). It was fantastic! Was it as good as the bread from the Breadhaus? No, not quite. But I can at least handle this in pajamas. Emeril's cast iron dutch oven did the trick.

Experimentation will take place. I think I will lower the initial temperature to 475, and cut back the cooking temperature to 400 for the next one.

Some obvious substitutions - add some pasta flour, and coat the loaf with sesame seeds.

Replacing some of the AP flour with wholewheat.

Using bread flour instead of AP - I suspect I may have to adjust the liquid proportions a bit.

Warming the water/beer/vinegar mixture a little. I added them cool which made the lazy yeast take a long time to wake up. Since the recipe only calls for 1/4 tsp of yeast for 1 lb of flour, getting them motivated is probably a good idea.

Trouble with heat

We had a weekend of quite rich food, so Madame was a bit out of sorts yesterday evening. I had made a fairly rich stew that had been simmering nicely in the oven, but come time for dinner and she wasn't interested. It was cold enough overnight so I could leave the dutch oven outside - well covered and weighted so it could cool and allow any fat to rise to the surface and congeal. After breakfast I portioned some of the stew so she could take it to school for her lunch, refrigerated some and froze the rest. At the same time I made the dough for the (almost) no knead bread. All this and it wasn't yet 7am.
I was a bit startled at around noon when Madame phoned and told me that the stew was too spicy hot to eat. So much so that it made her tongue swell. I tasted the portion in the fridge and there was no spiciness at all. Quite the mystery. Since the only seasonings were salt, pepper, bay leaves and reconstituted dried porcini, I couldn't figure out the issue.
At round 2pm, I shaped the dough for the bread, and set it to rest. At 4:30 or so, I followed the directions for the bread recipe, heated the oven to 500 degrees and put my trusty 30 year old Le Creuset dutch oven into it to preheat. Back upstairs to work for a bit. Imagine my surprise when there was a loud pop from the kitchen. On opening the oven door to see if everything was OK, I saw that the knob on the lid of the dutch oven had exploded. The kitchen was full of acrid phenolic smells. This didn't look good for the bread!
So, off to buy a suitable dutch oven. Cooks Illustrated recommended a Tramontina cast dutch oven - but the only one I could find at my local Target had a plastic knob too. So, continuing the search at Linens and Things (nothing suitable), Macy's - a nice Calphalon enameled pan for more than $200, Williams Sonoma had a deal on Le Creuset for close to $300.
Eventually I tried Bed, Bath and Beyond, and saw a wonderful range of $200 pans there too. Over the weekend I had casually remarked that I thought celebrity endorsement was a scam. The Wolfgang Puck's apologies for restaurants in Chicago's O'Hare airport being great examples of such scams. So, I had no intention of buying a celebrity endorsed dutch oven - that it until I saw the Emeril Lagasse branded 6qt. cast iron dutch oven for $49.95. That was it. I needed a pan, the dough was rising inexorably and I didn't know what would happen to it if I didn't cook it.
The stories end happily, Madame brought home the spicy remnants of the stew - and indeed it was extremely fiery. I have no idea how that happened - especially as the rest of the stew was not all spicy. The dutch oven withstood the heat of the oven, and turned out a beautiful looking loaf. It is still cooling, so we won't know until tomorrow what the bread is like. The house smells like a bakery - a great improvement on earlier in the day when it smelled like a plastics factory.

A much anticipated event

Every couple of months the America's Test Kitchen crew publish Cooks Illustrated Magazine. It is my favorite publication - their unrelenting tracking down of the best way to make a dish are like reading detective fiction. So, no surprise, when the latest issue arived last week I couldn't wait to dive into it.
This time I was not disappointed at all. There are 3 must try recipes + some great tips.
The most intriguing of these was a no knead bread recipe. The recipe was first published in the New York Times by Mark Bittman, but needless to say the test cooks had to mess with it. The results, as reported, are wonderful. Anyhow the method is so intriguing that I just have to try it. I'll post the results when I have given it a go.
There is also an interesting way of cooking chickens (French Bistro comes to mind), some fascinating looking oatmeal cookies, and a whole treatise on the making of stew. It looks as if the dutch oven will be earning its keep!
The Cooks Illustrated recipes can be found on their web site at http://www.cooksillustrated.com/. I will see about getting their permission to reprint the bread recipe in the blog.

A seasonal cocktail...

At this time of the year, clementines are cheap and prevalent. They are juicy, have a great sweet/tart citrusy flavor and are seedless. So, how to use them in a cocktail?

Ingredients (for 2 quite potent drinks!)

6 pieces of candied ginger (+2 pretty pieces for garnish)
5 OZ Vodka (being in Texas, we use Tito's)
a few mint sprigs
2 OZ simple syrup
Juice of 2 Clementines

Method

Steep the candied ginger in the vodka for about 30 minutes. Put plenty of ice in the cocktail shaker, and add the mint and simple syrup. Muddle together for a while until the mint has infused the syrup. Add plenty of ice, followed by the vodka (leaving the ginger in) and the Clementine juice. Put the lid on and shake hard until thoroughly chilled - about 6 hard shakes.

Strain into a small martini glass, and garnish with some candied ginger on a cocktail stick.

Note use less mint than you think, the aggressive mint flavor can overpower the Clementine. Yes we did learn that the hard way and had to make a second drink

What to do with left over vege trays?

We hosted a wedding shower a week ago. Lots of food, including the mandatory vegetable tray (lots of cut up raw vegetables with a dipping sauce of some kind). There are always left over vegetables, and even the rabbits get sick of them after a while, it seems.

So, what to do?

They are not cut conveniently for cooking - they won't all cook at the same rate. However with a little ingenuity, something tasty can be done

Ingredients
1 T vegetable oil
3 Oz salt pork/pancetta/guanciale/bacon chopped into small pieces
1 Medium onion peeled and cut into wedges (do not mince finely)
8 Small red potatoes cut into equal sized pieces
1 Sprig of rosemary
The vegetable assortment - long strips broken in half
Put the baby carrots with the potatoes and onions
Other vegetables in a heap together
1 Can Italian tomatoes - flesh only, no juice
Some tarragon leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
In a large skillet heat the oil and add the pork product. Cook gently until the fat has rendered and the meat is a bit crispy - about 5-7 minutes.
Add the potatoes, carrots and onions and fry over medium high heat getting some brown coloring on the potatoes. You will need to stir to prevent sticking, but move the contents around as little as possible.

Leaving the heat on medium high and add all the rest of the vegetables (except the tomatoes). Now you do want to keep the vegetables moving so they pick up the flavors in the pan. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Now add the tomatoes and tarragon. Break the tomatoes up with a spatula, bring almost to a boil, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes. The potatoes should just about be cooked. Leave the dish uncovered, and evaporate some of the liquid - the dish should be almost dry. This will finish the cooking of the potatoes. Season as necessary with salt and pepper - remembering what the FDA has just started telling us about salt!

Serve as a side dish - we did it with some grilled strip steaks that our neighborhood grocery store had reduced to $4.99/lb. So we weren't expecting magic, but they came up pretty tasty!

An emergency dip..

In a previous posting, I described the making of quark. One use is for an emergency dip. So you might wonder, what is an emergency dip?
In our house, when I cook steak, Madame can hardly wait for the meat to rest before she wants to try a piece. I have learned to distract her from this by quickly assembling a dip. Last night's used some delicious pickled jalapenos that she found on a recent excursion to Granbury.

1/2 cup quark
1/4 cup mayonnaise (not the NO FAT apology for mayonnaise)
3 heaped tsp pickled jalapenos
1T pickle juice (from a jar of baby dills)

Combine and serve with crackers/toasts/bagel chips or whatever. It wants to be something crunchy.

This worked well to distract Madame from the resting steaks - at least for 10 minutes!

What have I learned from...

I am a cooking show addict - not for the recipes, but for tips and tricks that make things go faster, make clean up easier, or just make me think, "Wow that's interesting."

The most useful trick of them all has come from Rachael Ray. She always has a large bowl to put the cut off bits and pieces, the trash (wrapping, cans, etc.) right there on the counter. So as she is doing the prep work, she has a quick and easy place to toss the scraps. If I were cooking in sufficient volume, I would have multiple bins - one for meat bits, one for vege bits and one for general trash. After all, I should make stock from the meat and vege bits, but usually don't.

From Alton Brown, the use of different chopping boards for raw meat, veges, etc. This took some getting used to, but now it is a matter of routine. One fewer risk to have to deal with. Also from Alton Brown the brining and cooking of turkeys.

From Jacques Pepin? There is so much. His technique is immaculate. In the recent TV series, 2 things stand out. The first was making kalamata olives look like rabbits for garnish. The second was in making a parchment paper base so I can bake a pie crust blind.

From the America's Test Kitchen cooks - again so much. The importance of the size of the ingredients perhaps most of all. There will be a future posting called "size matters" where I talk about that more. Their whole approach to freeing yourself from the tyranny of recipes and allowing some free form thinking has proven inspirational

From Emeril Lagasse - safety while frying a turkey. I have no desire to fry a turkey, but Emeril's attention to the safety details have made me look critically at my own practices.

From Giada de Laurentiis how to roast vegetables.

From Shirley Corriher - all about flour.

It isn't about recipes for me. There are thousands of recipes out there. It is about becoming more competent and confident in the kitchen

It's cold now....

It is finally cold enough in Dallas for the time of the year. So the tomato season is over - replaced by "hot chocolate season".

No more pa amb tomaquet until next year :-(.

However hot chocolate made simply with milk and Mexican chocolate provides a similar degree of comfort!

Pa amb tomaquet.
A Catalunyan appetizer very simply made. Takes about 5 minutes - the longest part is the toasting of the bread.

A few slices of country bread - 3/8 inch thick - cut into planks about 3 inches wide
Some tomatoes preferably very ripe beefsteak
I clove garlic (optional)
Extra virgin olive oil (Spanish of course for this dish)
Large sea salt crystals
Thinly sliced Manchego cheese - cut in planks to match the shape of the bread (optional)

I buy my bread at the Breadhaus in Grapevine, TX. A bit of a trek, but fantastic bread and wonderful people.

I buy tomatoes at one of the nearby farmers' markets - always trying to get local produce. Since we go through so many of them, we always buy seconds. At about $1 per pound you can't go wrong. Sometimes you have to remove some nasty bits, but not often. They don't keep as long as the firsts - partly because they seem riper, and partly because they can be a bit bruised. Remember, of course, never to keep fresh tomatoes in the refrigerator.

Toast the bread - on a griddle preferably, but the toaster works too.
While the bread is toasting, cut the tomatoes in half around their equators (i.e. not through the stem end).
Do not bother to peel the garlic, but cut the garlic clove in half cross-wise (if using). When the bread is toasted on each side, rub the cut side of the garlic across the bread (optional step). Now press the cut side of a tomato into each slice of bread. Smoosh it around so some of the seeds and liquid permeate the bread. One tomato will do about 3 slices of bread (depending of course on the size of the tomato and the size of the bread!).
Once the bread slices are all coated with tomato, arrange them in layers on a plate, sprinkle the olive oil over them, and then a few large sea salt crystals top get an extra crunch.
If you are feeling especially decadent, lay a slice of Manchego on each - but it is pretty good all on its own!
Serve with a good rustic red wine, lots of people and you have a terrific evening started. Sadly though we will have to wait until the tomato harvest next year.

Hot Chocolate
This is Madame's favorite bed time drink - we have it during the winter instead of dessert. For 2 mugs of hot chocolate, heat together milk and 1/2 a tablet of Mexican chocolate (currently we are using Abuelita). The heating should be slow - the chocolate doesn't melt easily. Keep stirring throughout and don't let the mixture boil.
Pour into heated mugs (1/2 fill with water, microwave until hot - taking care because microwaved water can superheat and leap out of the mug when you move it).

Sundays at 4

A group of friends - John, Bette, Rocco, Judy, Madame, and I get together occasionally to put together a themed dinner every couple of months or so. We do it at early on Sundays - appetizers, etc. at 4 and eat a little after 5.

The idea came out of a Fine Cooking contest - Fine Cooking wanted an original recipe using some prescribed ingredients. I created a recipe (a braise using lightly smoked beef dredged with porcini dust, roasted shallots served over polenta). I created the recipe, and then asked friends over to taste it. Took their comments, refined and tried again. We did this early on a Sunday evening - it was the only time we could all get together easily, and we didn't want the formality of a dinner party. This was all about tasting.

The group thought it would be a good idea to expand our cooking skills and repertoire in a safe environment - with each other, so we developed the concept of the "Sundays at 4". It is like a gourmet dining club with a few important differences: First we agreed to total up the cost of the dinner and split it immediately at the end of the evening; Second we would meet ahead of time and jointly choose a theme; Third the household responsible for the main course is also responsible for the wine - however the maximum amount that can be charged to the group is $20 per bottle even if the wine actually costs a lot more.

The format works well. One household responsible for appetizers, the host household responsible for the main course, the third household for the dessert. Sometimes we sneak in a cheese course, sometimes a soup course, it just depends.

We choose themes at the "planning parties" typically held a month or so ahead. Really the planning parties are an excuse to get together again! Sometimes we do them in a house, at others we will try a local restaurant to see what they are like.

Once we have a theme, we encourage each household to come up with something in that theme. Themes are typically country or regional styles. Because the goals are to improve our understanding of food, to learn or practice techniques and to experiment with flavors, the results are not assured. That doesn't matter so much - there is always McDonalds (TM) on the way home if things are too awful.

We have tried the following themes:

New England Food (Clam chowder, an indoor clambake, fruit pies)
Greek
Italian (multiple times)
Singaporean (not my most shining moment - too spicy and pungent!)
Spanish

For me the learning has been wonderful. Discovering ingredients (guanciale in an Amatriciana, galangal in the Singaporean food.....). Discovering techniques (the clambake according to the America's Test Kitchen method http://americastestkitchen.com/). Forcing myself to make pasta - rather poor at first, but improving with each attempt. Discovering that the ravioli attachment on the pasta machine and I will never be friends!

Each of us has gained new skills, new recipes, new appreciation of food with the best group of "foodie" friends I can imagine.

A Quark like substance

In my travels, I found a delicious dairy product that seemed like a cross between yogurt and cottage cheese. In Germany this is called quark (pronounced kvark). In looking for something similar in the US, I happened upon the following. It is delicious - not as acidic tasting as yogurt, and not as bland nor as granular as cottage cheese.

Bring 1 gallon of milk (I use 2%, but Madame prefers it with 1%) almost to a boil, and then allow to cool to about 100F. When it has cooled, stir in 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk. Decant into plastic containers, cover and leave overnight (12 hours at least) in the oven with the light on. That is 116F in my oven.

After it has set, remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temp. Strain through a double thickness of cheesecloth in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours - so it thickens up nicely.

Store in a container with a tight fitting lid.

I use it in almost any recipe that calls for yogurt, but it does especially well when mixed with mayonnaise, roasted garlic and a little tarragon or cilantro for a spectacular dip.

Then of course you can make elegant parfaits with it too. or some pureed raspberries, sieved with a little sugar, heated through to dissolve the sugar and drizzled over it, perhaps with some cassis......

We keep a batch in the house at all times - one never knows when an emergency dip is called for.

French Salad...

Well the idea came from time spent in France a couple of years ago. I often say that, "Life is too short to eat salad", but of course there are salads and then there are SALADS.

I do like composed salads where the ingredients play off each other and especially those that contain potatoes.

So here goes a master list and technique for a really tasty composed salad. A bit fiddly, but fits well into my 45 minute window.

Almost hard cooked eggs (1 1/2 per person, cut vertically into quarters)
A cooked protein (pork belly lardons, guanciale, flank steak, tuna, chicken)
Boiled red potatoes - skin on, but cut into 1 inch chunks. Best if you can buy them that size
A soft cheese (Brie, Epoisse, even Roquefort, Tallegio, soft goat cheese...)
A dressing (normally a simple vinaigrette)
Spring onions or scallions
Some suitable salad greens. I like to use Mesclun, but pretty much any greens will work.

Simmer the potatoes until they are cooked. With about 7 minutes to go with the potatoes, put the eggs into the water. Eggs in the US are washed, so I don't think there is anything to be concerned about. Anyway the temp is 212 and the eggs will be in for 7 minutes.

Take the eggs out, place immediately in lots of cold water. Strain the potatoes, allow to cool for about 5 minutes (they should still be warm)and toss with the vinaigrette. Slice the eggs into the vertical quarters.

Put the greens into the bowl with the potatoes and vinaigrette. Toss. Note dressing the salad this way means you use less dressing than pouring the dressing over the greens. My waist line appreciates it!

Compose the salad, adding whatever ingredients you want - making sure that you mix in the protein. For example you might want to add roasted red peppers, or tomatoes, - you certainly want something red in there. Radishes work. Cooled steamed green beans are nice as well. They can be steamed on top of the potatoes.

Finish the salad with the cheese, eggs and green onions as decorations. You can make this a mound of salad in a large bowl for family style eating, or do them individually.

There are no quantities in here because it really doesn't matter a whole lot. Just make sure that it isn't all lettuce! The potatoes in vinaigrette really make this dish.

The Dr. on standby

I was given Heston Blumenthal's wonderful book, "In Search of Perfection" for Christmas last year. Even though Heston Blumenthal can be quite intimidating, his method of cooking steak intrigued me. It also provide me with an opportunity to acquire a hithertoo banned piece of kitchen equipment - namely a blowtorch.

The method involves cooking (?) the meat (a 2 bone rib) very slowly indeed. The oven temperature during the process must not rise above 120 degrees (or about 50 degrees Celsius). The meat has to be held at this temperature for around 16 hours. Madame's first thought was this is ideal bacteria colony temperature! Hence the blow torch.

The recipe calls for the outside of the rib roast to be seared with the blow torch - unseasoned. That should kill any surface bugs. Then the meat is transferred to the oven, and cooked for 16 hours after the internal temperature has reached 115-120. In my oven it takes about 8 hours for the meat to get to 116. I warm the oven before the meat goes in (at the lowest setting) and then turn the light on. That holds it at the right temperature for the requisite period.

Once the meat is "cooked", it is sliced off the bones, and then recooked to the desired doneness on a grill or cast iron griddle. We typically eat medium rare, so I cook the meat on the grill to an internal temp of 135.

Madame was, of course, not impressed by all of this. She was convinced that she would be poisoned, so we invited our family doctor to dinner as well. He came armed with great wines (the ulterior motive for inviting him) and the emergency room telephone number. Other friends were advised of the dangers, but they were up for the experience too. Their appetizers and desserts provided the perfect start and finish to the dinner

The meat was the star! Blumenthal was right. Tender, juicy, flavorfull, Perfect. Served with mushroom ketchup (also from Blumenthal's book), Pommes Anna (from the Cooks Illustrated recipe - www.cooksillustrated.com) and an iceberg salad. Wow! Who needs to go to a steakhouse?

It takes a long time, but little effort. And it gives an excuse to buy a blowtorch. What more could a guy want?

The Parmigiano Reggiano - and where it led

My favorite cheese store in the Dallas area is Sigels - on Inwood Rd. and Beltline in Addison. The heart and soul is Theresa Magee who stores wonderful cheeses and is always ready with a story (or 3). The Saturday before Thanksgiving she cracks a wheel of aged Parmigiano Reggiano and gives all the assembled company a taste. This year it was a 7 year old wheel. Of course Madame and I had to be there. Naturally, while we were there, we had to taste what was on offer and buy some other cheeses too. We came away with some beautiful Colston Basset Stilton, an Epoisse, and of course the some of the Parmigiano Reggiano. It was the Stilton that provided inspiration for Monday's dinner, though.

I had been recently to the Dallas Farmers' Market as well and had bought some rather disappointing pears. So, the question was "How do I make the pears edible, and incorporate them into a dinner?" With the Stilton it was a no brainer. Poach the pears (the left over red wine from the night before helped here), toast some walnuts, make a simple salad, and pan cook chicken breasts, using the pear poaching liquid as the sauce for the chicken. Shopping time (for the salad ingredients and chicken 35 minutes), prep+cooking time 80 minutes. The pears were poaching while I was at the store buying the salad and the chicken.

Ingredients:
3 firm pears
1/2 bottle dry red wine 6 oz Port
1 dried red chile pepper
1T Sugar
5 oz walnuts (toasted)
2 oz Stilton (could use other blue cheese)
Assorted salad leaves
3T Vinaigrette (made with a mild vinegar and no onion/garlic)
2 Chicken breasts (skin and bone on)
1T Canola or other neutral oil

Method:
Peal and core the pears - I use a melon baller from the bottom of the pear to core them, leaving them whole. Bring the red wine, port, sugar, and chile to a simmer, and lower in the pears. Poach for about 30 minutes. Turn the pears over after about 20 minutes to ensure they are poached evenly.

When the pears are poached, remove and reserve the poaching liquor.

Toast the walnuts until slightly crunchy on the outside. Be careful, they burn easily.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 - the chicken breasts will finish in the oven.

Remove the bones and the tenderloin from the chicken breasts. (I buy the breasts with bone and skin because I want the skin). Save the tenderloins and bones for another use - I freeze them and make stock, but then I am a bit compulsive! Pat the chicken breasts dry and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. The breasts need to be dry or they don't brown properly.

Add the oil to a hot skillet (preferably not non-stick). When the oil is showing wisps of smoke add the chicken breasts skin side up to the hot oil and sear for about 3-4 minutes. Flip the chicken over and sear the second side. Once the chicken has seared on both sides, transfer to the oven and cook until done. This depends on size of chicken breasts and their starting temperature, but for the cold, medium sized breasts that I used it was about 7 minutes in the oven.The FDA recommends an internal temperature of 185 for poultry.

Remove the chicken from the skillet, and leave to rest - covered with foil. While the chicken is resting, empty most of the chicken fat from the skillet, and then deglaze with the reserved poaching liquor. Reduce the liquor to around 3/4 cup - it should become quite syrupy. Transfer the chicken back to the skillet and coat with the sauce.

Assemble the sliced pears, Stilton, and walnuts on a plate. Make a small pile of the salad leaves, and drizzle the vinaigrette over. Take the chicken out of the pan, remove the skin and slice the breasts across the grain in 1/2 inch slices. Place the hot chicken on top of the dressed salad leaves, and serve.

For further eye appeal, some redness - maybe some cherry tomatoes or roasted red pepper would be appropriate.

Serve with the same red wine as in the poaching liquid.