Category: Food

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Fire and rain

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end… James Taylor

Finally, rain! Real rain as in not just mist or rain that lasts 2 minutes.

It was dark and off and on rainy on Thursday.

Friday, it rained all day.

It didn’t pour, it was a nice gentle, soaking rain. I felt like things were damp enough that I could have a fire in the woodstove.

So I did.

First fire of this Fall-Winter season.

And as it was Friday and we had our Friday work session early, i.e. my time was flexible for the rest of the day … I had my lunch in front of the fire.

Not everyone was as thrilled as me about the rain.

Especially Auggie.

Oh, dear … seriously sad face.

But on the bright side, there was a warm fire to curl up in front of…

… or to be silly in front of.

And then today… more rain.

“Maybe if I don’t look, it will go away”.

I was grateful for an excuse to avoid yard work.

I baked – perfect occupation for a dark and rainy day!

Sourdough crackers – this recipe uses starter that is unfed and to be discarded. One of the things I find difficult about the maintenance of the sourdough starter is the “throw away half and feed more” part of it – particularly the “throw away half” part. I saw this recipe and not only does it use a good amount of discard starter, but it makes great crackers – YEA!

Usually Thanksgiving creeps up on me and then it is only 4 weeks until Christmas and I feel like the holidays are over before I have had time to anticipate, prepare and enjoy. But, this year, I am ready. It feels holiday-like already.

I wanted something molasses-gingery.

The biscotti jar has been empty for a good while.

Gingerbread Currant Biscotti. They are pretty good. They are especially good dunked in hot, spiced apple cider.

Fire and rain.

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Sourdough v1.0

First Sourdough loaf ala starter and bread recipe from Emma Christensen of The Kitchn.

I haven’t given much thought to sourdough, even as my artisanal bread baking self-education has progressed. (Progression outlined at the end of this post) But, on the tail of the The Kitchn Cure that was responsible for spurring me to install kitchen cabinet hardware, there was The Kitchn Baking School. I did not do the lessons, but I did follow the posts, the linked instructions and the comments. Last week was bread and end of the week was sourdough. I still wasn’t thinking I wanted to fool with starter, etc. but a blurb somewhere about the process bringing out flavor… I decided to give it a try.

The starter is made by combining flour and water and letting it sit at room temperature. Normal yeast and bacteria in the air combines with the bit of yeast that is naturally in flour (and the air) and the mix begins fermenting. The basic starter recipe is a daily feeding with the starter being ready for use by day 5. As the week progressed, I did further reading from other sources and found bakers vary on length of time and how much starter to discard daily – yes, you discard some and then feed on. One of my favorite sources: Della Fattoria Bread by Kathleen Weber, suggests 10 days and goes on to say that really 3-4 weeks is best to develop full flavor.

I started this first loaf at day 5 per the recipe instruction and how the starter looked and smelled and because patience is NOT one of my virtues.

Right out of the oven!

I did not carefully read the slashing instruction – for sourdough, you are to slash almost horizontally to give the finished loaf the characteristic “ledge”. I slashed the way I normally slash so my loaf looks like a normal boule. It doesn’t affect taste, but next time I will remember.

Inside, things look good…

…very good!

A nice crunchy crust, a soft crumb with good air holes and texture. The slices make good toast AND they are soft enough to make a great sandwich as well.

This morning: sourdough toast with lox, onion, capers, goat cheese and a scrambled egg. Friday started deliciously!

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Weekend Projects

Saturday started with sunshine…

… and a loaf of bread. This bread … it is a continuation of my pursuit of the perfect pumpernickel/dark rye. This one is very, very close. The flavor is perfect, the crust is crisp, the interior crumb just needs a bit more rise before baking. Still, it made a great Reuben, wonderful toast with butter and jam. Sliced very thin and toasted worked for lox, cream cheese and capers. (The beginning: Dark Rye)

After a trip to town, I spent the rest of the day snuggled up in bed with Bear and Auggie watching PBS Mystery … allergy stuff from the very dry woods got to me again and I gave up on the outside chores.

But, Sunday dawned cloudy, cool and with a wee bit of rain, so feeling much better I started on an Apple Crumb Pie.

A new pie crust recipe as well as a new filling recipe: Mel’s Apple Crumb Pie There is a link to the crust in the post and on the crust post a video tutorial. The video is so much fun as Mel’s 3 year old daughter assists – AND I learned a couple of pie crust tricks as well.

After getting the pie in the oven for a 60-90 minute bake, I decided to tackle the kitchen cupboard hardware. Both the knobs and pulls (see Hardware: Part 1 and Hardware: Part 1.5 ) arrived last Monday. I tried not to think about them and gradually decided on…

Knobs. And I was happy.

No second guessing, no more dithering – I liked the way they looked.

Done.

Knobs on doors, pulls on drawers.

And Pie!

It is a great pie: deep dish apple with a streusel topping.

The weekend projects went well.

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some more s’mores

Just in case… s’mores are an “around the campfire” kind of treat here in the U.S. … I’m not sure if they are an international thing or not. I think I had my first experience with s’mores in either Brownies or Girl Scouts.

You roast a marshmallow, preferable on a stick found in the woods, over a campfire. Meanwhile, you take a Hershey’s chocolate bar snapped in half and put that on half of a graham cracker. When your marshmallow is done to your own personal satisfaction (some like them “raw”, some just tan and some of us like a bit of burned), you plop the hot, gooey mess on top of the chocolate and smush the other half of the graham cracker over the top.

I’ve never seen one look that pristine, but the image shows the construction.

At any rate, the flavor combo of graham cracker, milk chocolate and marshmallow is pretty good to most folks.

Last week, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for s’mores cupcakes. They were for her son’s school to celebrate his and other September birthday kids, birthdays. They looked like so much fun and I’d been wanting to take a special treat to my neighbor’s children: Carter (5) and Hudson (7). So, I made the recipe.

Deb’s “secret” is crushed graham crackers in the cupcake batter. It works!

Some of the insides are scooped out and filled with a milk chocolate ganache…

Now, Deb left the tops off …wonder what she did with them ? I put the tops back on save for a bit of inside stuff that I lopped off … and ate. Well, wouldn’t you ?

If you clicked over and looked at Deb’s cupcakes and recipe, you would see that she topped the cupcakes with meringue which she then browned with a kitchen torch. I don’t have a kitchen torch, but I figured I could brown the meringue under the broiler. I’m sure that would work, but I had a failure with the meringue. I have some ideas why, but suffice to say that the egg – sugar – cream of tartar mix did not peak…

Fortunately, another commenter before me noted that instead of meringue, she topped the cupcakes with marshmallows and ran those under the broiler. So that’s what I did and it was fine. The kids were thrilled with cupcakes that had marshmallows on them. Win!

Onward.

In response to Deb’s s’mores cupcake post, David Lebovitz posted a recipe for s’mores ice cream. Huh.

Well, I had to try.

The ice cream was as much fun to make as the cupcakes. This was my first summer with an ice cream machine and it was such a hot summer (hot for Montana…) and I made mostly fruit ice creams. The idea of chocolate and marshmallows or other gooey stuff just did not appeal. But now, I was ready to try something different. This recipe is a vanilla custard base with a ripple of chocolate sauce, roasted marshmallows and crushed graham crackers.

It is good. It is very rich and a little goes a long way.

Now… the ice cream took 5 egg yolks, which means I have 5 egg whites left. I’ve been wanting to make marcaron and I’ve read that older egg whites work best.

Here is the recipe that is on tap for macaron: s’mores macaron. Some more s’mores.

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Got Green Tomatoes?

Tuesday, late morning, I received a text from neighbor Mel that she was going to pick all of the tomatoes and did I want any? YES! And I thought I should volunteer to help, which I did and she accepted. It was nearly lunchtime and a beautiful day and despite the work deadline, I really needed a break outside in the fresh air and a relaxed yack with my good neighbor. So that’s what happened.

It has been close to freezing several nights and was nearly October 1 so it was time to get those ‘maters in. We picked, cut and pulled up the plants. And had a good visit while we worked.

My haul, although some will go back for the chickens. The chickens will apparently eat anything and they especially like stuff that they have to chase. The tomatoes roll around and they scrabble after them. It is great fun. Yep, I am easy – watching chickens chase tomatoes is entertainment!!

So, all of those green tomatoes…

I found a recipe for a green tomato casserole and tried that last night. I made a single serving for testing: layer sliced green tomatoes, onion, bread crumbs, a bit of lemon juice and repeat dotting the top with butter. Then bake at 400 for 1 hour. It was wonderful! I made a small serving of mac ‘n cheese to go along with.

This morning I got to thinking that maybe some bacon and a bit of parmesan cheese would not go amiss … and I had about 1/4 of a potato in the refrigerator.

First, though – Coffee! Today is International Coffee Day. I never knew things like that before the internet. I didn’t do anything to celebrate – coffee as usual!

On to my concoction…

…ready for the oven…

…put an egg on it, add a slice of toast and we have breakfast…with green tomatoes!

My mother tells me that the green tomatoes will ripen fastest in a paper bag. I have some in a bag, some on the window and meanwhile, I have something good to do with the green tomatoes. I might also try green tomato pickles and green tomato chutney. I don’t intend to do fried green tomatoes. I’ve never had much luck with breading and pan frying anything and end up making a huge mess. The casserole is kind of a deconstructed and then baked version of fried green tomatoes and so easy and good that I’ll stick with that!

Happy International Coffee Day!

***Yep, made the project deadline. I have a work meeting in the morning so decided to work half day tomorrow and start late on Monday. It might almost feel like a 4 day weekend!