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!