Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts

05 January 2015

Apple Juice… Without a Juicer?


That’s right, if you’re getting a cold weather craving for some delicious apple juice but don’t yet have a dedicated juicer, you’re in luck. Making apple juice in your own kitchen is not nearly as intimidating as it may seem. With a few basic supplies and a bit of patience, it’s relatively easy to churn out fresh, homemade apple juice unrivaled by anything you get at the store.

Choosing Apples
The apples you pick for your juice have a tremendous effect on the finished product. In fact, if you choose your apples carefully, there will be little or no need for added sweeteners due to the high levels of natural sugar in the fruit. When making apple juice, a variety of red apples such as Red Delicious and Fuji should be used to create complex flavors. Bruised or otherwise imperfect fruits can also be used for juice making, as their full flavor is intact.

If possible, fresh apples should be obtained from a local farmers’ market instead of a supermarket or other store for maximum flavor and freshness. Each bushel of apples yields about sixteen quarts of apple juice, so keep this ratio in mind when determining the amount of apples you will need for your juice making project.

Be sure to get an appropriate number of glass mason jars to store your juice in.

Preparation
When you have decided on a suitable blend of apples for your juice, it’s time to start the process. Begin by thoroughly washing out the jars in hot, soapy water, then boil the jars for ten minutes to completely sanitize them. Keep the jars and lids submerged in the hot water until it’s time to use them to prevent them from breaking when you fill them with the heated apple juice.

Next, wash the apples in plain cold water and remove the cores with a corer or paring knife. Transfer the apples to a large, thick-bottomed pot filled with four inches of boiling water and put the lid on the pot to steam them. When the apples have softened, place them into a colander lined with layers of cheesecloth and allow the juice to drip into a large pot for an hour or until the apples are dry.

Juice Making
When the pot is full, add cinnamon to taste and bring the mixture to a low, simmering boil. Transfer the juice to quart-size canning jars, screw on the lid and tighten the ring around the jar. Place the jars in a water bath submerged in two inches of water for five minutes then remove them from the water with a pair of canning tongs, loosen the rings slightly, and leave them to cool slowly in a draft-free area overnight.

After the jars are cool, check them for a tight seal by pressing the center of the lid down. If it stays down, the jar is sealed and ready for storage. If the center makes a popping sound and pops back up, there is no seal and the jar should be placed in the refrigerator right away to prevent spoilage.

Homemade apple juice is both superior to store bought juice and simple to make in your own kitchen. This apple juice will stay fresh in the jar with no special attention for up to two years, so one batch will allow you to enjoy delicious apple juice all winter and beyond.

02 October 2013

Two hour baguettes? Hmmmm.

Here are two of my usual baguettes. I should put baguettes in quotes because technically, they're not baguettes. I say they're better but that's just me.


Anyhow, I've been on a tomato sauce kick of late and it's been brought on by my frantic attempts to keep up with the truckloads of tomatoes that've been ripening over the last few weeks. Who knew that five tomato plants could crank out this much fruit?

So last night at about five I decided I would make spaghetti for supper. I'd made the sauce earlier but pasta's not pasta without fresh bread but it was already late so what to do?

I decided to consult my kitchen oracle, Mark Bittman from The Times to see if he had any down and dirty (and fast) bread recipes. I found one for Fast French Bread.

Admittedly, I was skeptical when I read that someone could make real bread in two hours. I've been baking bread for years and it's always a process that takes me at least two days to complete. Why two days? To let the yeast do its thing and yield a loaf that tastes like bread, that's why. I had a feeling that rushing this would leave me with something that tasted like Wonderbread and I was right, but at least it was bread.

Here's Bittman's recipe:

Fast French Bread or Rolls
Makes: 3 or 4 baguettes, 1 boule, or 12 to 16 rolls

Time: About 2 hours, largely unattended

This bread can be made by hand or with an electric mixer, but the food processor is the tool of choice and will save you tons of time. Recipe from How to Cook Everything.

  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more as needed
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1. Put the flour in a food processor. Add the salt and yeast and turn the machine on; with the machine running, pour about a cup of water through the feed tube. Process until the dough forms a ball, adding a tablespoon more water at a time until it becomes smooth; if the dough begins sticking to the side of the bowl, you’ve added too much water. No harm done: add 1/4 cup or so of flour and keep going. You’re looking for a moist, slightly shaggy but well-defined ball. The whole process should take about 30 seconds, and it will once you get good at it. If the dough is too dry, add water 1 tablespoon at a time and process for 5 or 10 seconds after each addition. If it becomes too wet, add another tablespoon or two of flour and process briefly.

2. Dump the lump of dough into a large bowl or simply remove the blade from the processor bowl and leave the dough in there. Either way, cover with a plastic bag or plastic wrap and let sit for at least an hour at room temperature.

3. Use a small strainer or your fingers to dust a little flour onto a counter or tabletop. Shape the dough as you like, into small loaves, one big one, baguettes, or rolls, sprinkling with flour as necessary but keeping the flour to a minimum. Heat the oven (with a pizza stone and/or a pan filled with rocks if you have them) to 400°F while you let the breads or rolls rise, in a cloth if you like, covered with a towel.

4. When you are ready to bake, slash the top of each loaf once or twice with a razor blade or sharp knife. If the dough has risen on a cloth, slide or turn it onto floured baking sheets or gently move it onto a lightly floured peel, plank of wood, or flexible cutting board, then slide the bread directly onto a pizza stone. Or you can bake on lightly oiled baking sheets. Turn the heat down to 375°F.

5. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature of the bread is at least 210°F (it can be lower if you plan to reheat the bread later) or the loaves sound hollow when tapped. Remove, spray with a bit of water if you would like a shinier crust, and cool on a wire rack.

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So I started with Bittman's recipe and changed around a couple of things as I flew through it. His instructions call for using a food processor and as I thought this through it made some kind of sense. A food processor used the way he did would incorporate all of the ingredients quickly but I was concerned that it wouldn't work the dough enough to get the gluten to form the correct structure.

When I pulled my dough out of the food processor it didn't feel right so I floured up my breadboard and kneaded it until it did. if you're new to bread baking, the whole idea of properly kneading bread until it "feels right" is maddening, or at least it was for me. Save yourself a whole lot of trouble if you're new at this and ask someone who does bake to have you over the next time he bakes bread so you can learn in person how to knead. Of course I never did this and was left to curse the darkness for about six months until I figured it out.

So after I'd kneaded it, I turned the dough into an oiled bowl and covered it with a wet dishcloth. An hour later I formed my loaves, sprayed them with oil instead of water and salted them because I didn't think the recipe called for enough salt.

They turned out passibly though I don't think they made a convert out of me. It's true the bread was done in less than two hours and unfortunately it tasted like it. There wasn't any real depth or nuance but since I was using it later to sop up tomato sauce it didn't really matter a whole lot.

The texture was OK and again I think I salvaged that with a good knead. I wonder how this would have turned out had I followed the instructions as written. The world may never know.

But at the end of the day I baked bread from scratch on a weeknight and proved that it's possible I suppose. It also gave me another excuse to beat with my shoe the next person I hear rationalize a poor diet of convenience foods with the excuse that he's has no time to cook.

So give this one a try sometime, you have nothing to lose. The best part of being a baker is that even mistakes taste good.

09 March 2013

A brave new recipe

One of my nieces has some health problems and as a result of that lives a gluten-free existence. She's home from college this weekend and since I love to bake and I love her, I decided to make something decadent that she could actually eat.

I'd never attempted a gluten-free baking before so I did some research. I wanted to bake something that had actual flavor and texture and since she loves chocolate, I settled on brownies with a ganache frosting. Again, because I like to bake and I'm pretty good at it, I hybridized a bunch of recipes I found and came up with a gluten-free brownie that had not only my niece, but everybody else clamoring for more.

I can handle myself in a kitchen, but a food stylist I'm not. Here's a photo of my finished recipe never the less:


Here's what I whipped up:

Gluten-free brownies
2/3 cup almond flour

1/3 cup rice flour
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup crushed walnuts
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Ganache
9 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees with a rack in the lower third of the oven. Line an 8x8-inch metal baking pan across the bottom and up two opposite sides with baking parchment.

Take almond flour, mix it with the rice flour and set aside.

Place the chocolate, butter and salt in the top of a large double boiler over barely simmering water. Stir frequently until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove the bowl and let cool for 5 minutes.

Stir in the sugar and vanilla. Stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the almond and rice flour mixture and stir until moistened, and then mix briskly about 40 strokes. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread it evenly. Bake for around 30 minutes or until the brownies are slightly puffed all over and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out moist but clean. Cool the pan on a rack. Run a knife along the unlined sides of the pan to detach the brownies. Lift the edges of the parchment paper to remove the brownies. Cut into squares or leave them intact if you want to frost them.

I'm sure they'd be perfectly fine without any frosting, but I wanted to give them an extra kick. For reasons I'll never understand, a lot of people think ganache is difficult to make but really, it's a snap.

Take a cup of heavy cream and bring it to a gentle boil. Remove from the heat before it has a chance to froth up. Add nine ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips and whisk until the chocolate's completely melted and you've achieved a uniform consistency. That usually takes two to three minutes. You now have a ganache. In its current form, it will be a very thick liquid and when it sets it'll have the consistency of fudge.

To turn the ganache into a frosting, whip it until it gets the consistency of frosting. That will take about ten minutes with a mixer or about a half an hour if you're using a hand whisk.

Frost the brownies then set them in the fridge to let the ganache firm up a bit before you cut them into squares.

These things are by no means low calorie, low fat or low anything else. But they're very good and they're gluten-free.



17 June 2012

Check out this great method to peel garlic

I love garlic and I cook with it all the time. I swear I go through two full bulbs a week and I live alone.

via

I usually peel it by flattening a clove with the flat side of my chef's knife and peel from there. However, if I need a lot of it I have another method to peel it that I got from Saveur.com. People don't believe me when I describe this way to deal with fresh garlic and this morning, my good friend Nancie Mills-Pipgras (editor of Mosaic Art Now) posted the video that got me started on this whole thing on her Facebook page.

It reminded me that this is something that needs to be spread around. Check it out.




How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.


How cool is that? I can tell you from first hand experience that it works every bit as well as it does in the video above.

It's Father's Day today, a day set aside specifically to be grateful for fathers. I'm endlessly grateful for mine and I'll be telling him that in a few hours when I call him. If you're close enough geographically to see a father today, make him something garlicky for supper. If you don't cook don't sweat it, just let him know you're glad he's in your life.

27 March 2012

Cookies: a Blog Off post


Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive when bloggers of all stripes weigh in on the same topic in something called a Blog Off. The topic of the current Blog Off is "cookies."

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I love shortbread with something that borders on an obsession and I played around with if for years until I perfected a recipe that produces a buttery, somewhat salty, somewhat sweet and perfectly sand textured shortbread. The ingredients couldn't be simpler, the art to this one comes from the perfect oven temperature and time spent therein.

I used to try to make these with a spoon, but they have to be of a uniform thickness or they won't have the right texture. On a lark I bought a cookie gun one year and it yielded the perfect shortbread cookie. Who knew? Some people call them cookie presses, but I call it a cookie gun. It makes me feel more macho that way.


Anyhow, I bought a Wilton Cookie Press (gun! it's a gun!) Pro Ultra 2. It's perfect --plenty of shapes and it's easy to load and clean.






My Ultimate Shortbread

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Whip butter with an electric mixer until fluffy. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, cornstarch, and flour. Beat on low for one minute, then on high for 3 to 4 minutes. Drop cookies by spoonfuls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven. Watch  them like a hawk. Pull them out of the oven at precisely 8 minutes or they will scorch. Once they're out of the oven let them cool for a couple of minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack. Sprinkle them with powdered sugar while they are still hot if you'd like.

That recipe will make enough shortbread to feed an army but fear not. Take the extras, throw them in a food processor, grind 'em up and make an amazing crust for a cheesecake.

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As the day wears on, there will appear below a table of all of the participating bloggers in today's Blog Off. Give 'em a read!

22 November 2011

Roasting a turkey; a Blog Off post


Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "It's Thanksgiving, so let's talk about food"
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There are few things in life that give me the kind of joy that feeding the people I love does. One of my great pleasures is to prepare a meal from scratch and to share the fruits of my efforts.


It kills me that my sentiments about food aren't shared by everybody and seeing the endless displays of convenience foods arrayed in grocery stores at this time of year sends me over the edge. Instant stuffing, instant mashed potatoes and the nightmare that is green bean casserole aren't fit for human consumption and I can't believe that those sorts of things end up on Thanksgiving tables all across this country. Scratch cooking isn't difficult, all it takes is time and attention to detail. The result is a meal that requires effort but the reward comes in knowing exactly what you're feeding your loved ones. Read the ingredients on a box of Stovetop Stuffing some time. Is that really the sort of thing you want to feed to people you care about?

The centerpiece of any Thanksgiving dinner is a stuffed turkey. If turkey's not your thing, a capon makes a perfect stand in. In either case, stuffing and roasting a large bird is a simple operation.

All photos from Martha Stewart

When you're buying a turkey, allow a pound for every person you're feeding. Most frozen turkeys, and even some fresh ones, are shot full of heaven knows what so that they remain moist during roasting. This sort of idiot-proofing is completely unnecessary and introduces a bunch of things nobody needs in his or her diet. Find a fresh or frozen turkey that has one ingredient, a turkey. You get bonus points if it came from a local farm.

Defrosting a turkey in the refrigerator takes a couple of days. And if you're late to the game and don't have a few days, there's hope. You can defrost a large, frozen bird in a couple of hours using cold tap water. The USDA's website has some terrific guidelines on safe thawing.

Once thawed, it's time to prepare your bird for roasting and a large part of that preparation involves making stuffing. Two days before you need to use it, cube the slices of a whole loaf of bread and set them on a baking sheet. Let the bread dry out and get stale. Again, in the interest of knowing what I'm feeding my loved ones, I use bread I baked myself. But then again, I'm a purist.

Making stuffing is easy and Thanksgiving is no time to get cute. Holding onto traditions is what Thanksgiving is for. I make the same bread and sage stuffing my mother and my grandmother always made. I have no doubt my grandmother learned it from her grandmother and when I make it now, I feel like I'm honoring the people who came before me and upon whose shoulders I stand every day. I don't follow recipes or measure things, I tend to cook by instinct and sight. The following instructions are meant to be adapted, but if you follow them as written you'll get a good result.

Here goes. Remove the giblets and the neck from the carcass of the bird. Put them in a sauce pan with four to six cups of water and boil them for 45 minutes. Add more water as it evaporates. After 45 minutes, remove from heat and add a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of thyme and a couple good grinds of black pepper. You just made turkey stock, congratulations. Fish out the organs and neck and feed them to the closest dog. Let your stock cool.

Melt a stick of butter in a sauce pan. Once the butter's melted, add about a cup of chopped celery (with leaves), a chopped half an onion (not a sweet onion) and about an eighth of a cup of chopped parsely (stems and all). Saute for ten to 15 minutes until the celery's soft but still firm. Remove from heat.

See how loosely packed that stuffing is? That's how it should look.

Take your stale bread cubes and put them in a large bowl. Pour the butter and sauteed vegetables over the bread cubes. Take about half the stock and pour it over the bread cubes, but add a bit at a time. Stir the mixture as you add the liquid. You want the bread cubes to be moist and sticky, but not sopping wet. Save the rest of your stock, you'll need it later. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Make a chiffonade from 12 fresh sage leaves and add it to the bowl. Then add around a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves and salt to taste. Stir and mix everything thoroughly. Set aside for the time being.

Take your now thawed turkey and rinse it thoroughly. Salt and pepper the inside of the bird. Then stuff it with the stuffing you've already prepared. Don't pack it too tightly. The goal is to fill the cavity, not to pretend you're stuffing a sofa.

A trussed bird ready for the oven.

Once stuffed, prepare the roasting pan. Line the bottom of the pan with whole celery stalks to form a rack of sorts. Roughly chop the remaining half onion and spread over the celery stalks. Set the bird on top of the celery and onion rack. Truss the bird's legs with cotton string. If there's a pop up timer in your turkey, remove it. They don't work very accurately and food safety is very important if you're roasting a stuffed turkey.

Tuck the wings under the bird before placing it in a roasting pan.

Pour around two tablespoons of olive oil over the bird. I eyeball everything so that measurement is approximate. You want to coat the entire bird, so use your hands to rub the oil over all of its exposed parts. Tuck the wing tips under the body of the bird. Sprinkle a teaspoon or two of salt over everything and set the roasting pan onto the lowest rack of your preheated oven. Every half hour that the bird's in the oven, brush it down with your remaining turkey stock. Don't skimp on the basting, the liquid that rolls off the turkey is what you'll be making gravy from later.

Toothpicks are the perfect way to pin down the skin around the neck cavity.

Use the USDA's guidelines for cooking times. Regardless of the amount of time it takes, a turkey has to be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. You have to have a meat thermometer to be able to read this temperature. No method other than a meat thermometer can tell you with any degree of accuracy when your turkey's cooked.

Take the temperature of the inner thigh and the thickest part of the breast, don't rely on a single probe and take care not to touch any bones when you're plunging in your thermometer.


About 3/4ths of the way through the roasting process, the bird will achieve the perfect color even though it's not fully cooked yet. Make a tent from aluminum foil and cover the bird, being careful not to let the foil touch anything but the roasting pan. The foil will keep the bird from browning any further and it helps to preserve some of the moisture being lost due to the hot oven.

When the bird gets to 165 degrees, remove it from the oven and set it aside. After five minutes, remove it from the roasting pan and set it on a warm serving platter. Let it sit for another 15 minutes before you carve it.

While the turkey's resting, take a fork and remove all of the celery and onion from the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour the remaining liquid into a sauce pan. Add a tablespoon of corn starch to the remaining stock that you made earlier. Mix in the starch and stock thoroughly. Keep stirring until the starch is dissolved completely. Add the stock and starch mixture to the sauce pan holding the drippings from the roasting pan. Bring to a boil while stirring constantly. As the liquid boils, the starch will make it thicken. Once at a roiling boil it ought to be done. Add salt to taste. Congratulations. You just made gravy. Turn down the heat to a slow simmer and cover.

Remove the stuffing from the now rested bird and put it in a serving dish. If you're planning to eat right away, set it out on the table. If not, cover it and put in the oven to keep it warm.

Carve the bird and you're done.

See? Easy. All you need is a willingness to put in the time and an awareness of what cooked food looks and tastes like.

It's these sorts of handmade meals that memories are made from and where traditions are born. As a personal favor to me this year; skip the prepackaged, cheater foods for Thanksgiving and make something from scratch. Thanksgiving's not a time for haute cuisine or edgy ingredients and techniques. Rather it's a time to eat the way your grandparents did. Simple foods prepared simply make for the perfect Thanksgiving dinner.
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Late breaking addition: I've been told that how to carve a turkey properly is a sticking point for a lot of people. Here's a video that explains and shows everything.








As the day progresses, a list will appear below with all of today's participating bloggers as they weigh in on today's topic. It's going to be an interesting day and passions are running high. And not just mine. Check out what bloggers from all over think about food.





03 January 2011

A Cracker Jack Hack


I took that photo on my patio yesterday morning before tucking into what looks suspiciously like a bowl of Cracker Jack. It's not quite the Cracker Jack I remember but it's something far, far better.

I had two wildly inconvenient dental procedures last month and after my last one, my dentist warned me not to eat popcorn until my gums healed. Not a problem because I never eat popcorn. I never eat it that is until a dentist tells me not to.

The surest way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do something. My dentist's warning about popcorn gave rise to something deep inside of me and I was seized with a craving for not just popcorn but a very special kind of popcorn and something I hadn't eaten since I was around 12.


I became consumed with a craving for Cracker Jack so profound I lack words to describe it accurately. It kept me awake at night and when I couldn't stand it any longer I gave in and sped off to the grocery store. To my profound horror, Publix doesn't sell the stuff and if Publix doesn't sell it it may as well not exist.

Undaunted, I came home and turned to the internet for caramel corn recipes. As a point of order; that word, caramel, is pronounced kar-mel. Pronouncing it with the second A marks you as someone from the west coast. The horror!

Anyhow, I adapted a recipe I found on Recipes.com and I cranked out a king's ransom in Cracker Jack Hack. Let's look at my glorious effort again:


Here's what to do.
  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup corn syrup
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 5 quarts popped popcorn
  • A mess of peanuts

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Place popcorn in a very large bowl.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla. Pour in a thin stream over popcorn, stirring to coat.

Place in two large shallow baking dishes and bake in preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and let cool completely before breaking into pieces.
That seems really cut and dry but believe me, this is one of the messiest things I've ever made in my life. I took some liberties with the original recipe by adding more salt and a lot of peanuts. I think the added salt makes the sweetness less cloying and the peanuts are what make Cracker Jack Cracker Jack.

Craving sated, I can now concentrate on concealing the evidence from my dentist at my follow up appointment this week.

As fantastic as this stuff is, I made enough that I ate my fill on the first day and now I have great bags of the stuff sitting around. The next time I make this I'll split the recipe in half. As a side note, the caramel it makes is fantastic in its own right. It cools to the consistency and taste of a Sugar Daddy, another old friend from childhood. As wonderful as this fix was, it was still missing one key element.


Alas, I had no cheap ring or booklet of cheesey tattoos with which to while away my sugar-fueled afternoon.

20 December 2010

Further adventures in bread baking

Two of my glorious loaves

For the last couple of years, I've been on a real bread kick. I've written about it here a couple of times and I've taken this bread-baking thing to the point where I don't buy bread anymore. I doubt I save any money this way and it certainly doesn't make very efficient use of my time. However, there is nothing more satisfying to me than knowing I have a loaf of fresh bread sitting on my kitchen table. A loaf of bread I made from scratch.

Bread baking isn't just an activity I'm finding. It's a way of looking at the world. I actually like it that it takes time and effort for me to make the thing that holds together a sandwich or gets slid into the toaster. My bread baking teaches me to be patient and as proud as I am of the finished results, I am at the mercy of a fungus when it comes to the finished result.

The fungus in question is a yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae is the yest sold as baker's yeast and it's the same organism that ferments beer. S. cerevisiae is just one of a host of related species that will make bread dough rise. For example, Saccharomyces exiguus is the yeast that makes sourdough bread taste like sourdough bread.

I've been reading a lot lately about the role different yeasts play in how finished bread tastes. It makes sense and I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to life than Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Susan Tenny's amazing blog Wild Yeast has been a real inspiration. My starter, to make a bad bread joke.

So yesterday afternoon I embarked on an experiment to culture my own Saccharomyces exiguus. There's a lot of folklore surrounding the whole process of harvesting wild yeast. While it's true that there's wild yeast everywhere, the yeast that will grow in my starter arrived with the flour my starter's built around. Over the course of my starter's life it will attract other local bacteria and fungi and it will lend a special St. Pete flavor to my breads. But my goal here is to culture the yeast that's already in my flour naturally.

I'm partial to King Arthur flour and no that's not a paid plug. I think their bread flour is a perfect consistency and I get good results with it. King Arther also has a great website and it's their website that got me started on this grow your own yeast kick.

From what I understand, this will take a few tries until I get it right but I'm dying to see how this affects my breads.

Photo via K. Fields

OK, from King Arthur's website:
  • 2 cups warm water that's been allowed to sit for a day to let the chlorine dissipate
  • 1 tablespoon sugar or honey (optional)
  • 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Mix the water, flour and optional sweetener together thoroughly in a clean, scalded glass or ceramic bowl. The scalding will ensure that you’re starting “pure.” Cover the bowl with a clean dishcloth. Put it in an area where there’s apt to be the highest concentration of airborne yeast as well as the warmth that is needed to begin fermentation.

If the surface begins to look dry after a while, give the mixture a stir. It should begin to “work” in the first day or two if it’s going to at all. If it does, your trap has been successful. As you would with a dried starter or active dry yeast, let this mixture continue working for 3 or 4 days giving it a stir every day or so. When it’s developed a yeasty, sour aroma, put it in a clean jar with a lid and refrigerate it until you’re ready to use it.

If the mixture begins to mold or develop a peculiar color or odor instead of a “clean, sour aroma,” give a sigh, throw it out and, if you’re patient, start again. Along with the vital yeasts, you may have inadvertently nurtured a strain of bacteria that will not be wonderful in food. This doesn’t happen very often though, so don’t let the possibility dissuade you from this adventure.
Have any of your guys ever tried this? Any words of advice? I know there are some bakers out there.

I'll keep you posted on my further adventures in bread baking.

13 November 2010

Autumn re-runs: Making your own pie crusts is as easy as, well, pie.

This post appeared originally on 25 November 2009. I baked an apple pie on Monday and it reminded me of this scolding post from a year ago. Cooking from scratch is a passion of mine and it seems like a better idea with each passing year.


It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and in keeping with my one man crusade against convenience foods, I am dipping into my time-tested recipe box. Actually, I don't have a recipe box. I have a file in my computer that's called "recipe box" though.

I am a pie man, through and through. Few things give me the pleasure of cranking out pies in anticipation of major holidays. Thanksgiving is my day to shine thank you very much and nothing says Thanksgiving to me like a real pie or pies as the case may be. And by real I mean made from scratch.

I am a self-taught baker. My mother was a skilled cook and my grandmother too. But kitchens were woman turf and though I watched them bake on holidays I wasn't allowed anywhere near the action. It wasn't until I got out on my own that I realized that I not only like to bake, I'm actually pretty good at it.

I know, I know, I hear it all the time; "We're too busy nowadays to bake from scratch." Well, I'll be the first one to tell you that that's a damn lie. I have a schedule that would kill a lesser man and somehow I manage to cook dinner for myself every night and turn out a hell of a spread of baked goods on holidays. Nobody's too busy, but people have different priorities. Having different priorities is fine, just own that. Telling yourself that you're too busy is what makes you neurotic.

I have a real problem with convenience foods. I don't care that they're not organic or that they're mass produced. What bothers me about them is that they're tasteless. It bothers me too that I can't tell what's in something that's prepackaged. Scratch baking keeps me in control of what I put in my mouth and it also makes me expend some effort before I get a reward. Self-discipline never sleeps kids.

So here's my recipe for pie crust, the first step toward a blue-ribbon apple pie like mine. This recipe's also perfect for the bottom crust of a tartine, but that's a topic for another day. Making pie crusts is not hard, despite what everybody says. All it requires is that you pay attention. Try this, just once, and you will never buy another convenience food for the rest of your life.


2-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 cup of cold Crisco
1/2 cup of ice water

Put everything, including the bowl,  in the refrigerator for an hour before you start. Then mix the flour, salt and sugar together in the now-chilled bowl. Cut the chilled Crisco into small pieces and work it into the dry mix with a fork. When the Crisco and the dry mixture are blended, it will have the consistency of coarse meal.

Add the cold water in small drips and drabs and work the dough after every addition of water. After you have a quarter cup of the water worked in, slow down and start to test the dough after each time you add more water. Test the dough by squeezing a pinch between your fingers. If it's crumbly, then add more water. When it holds its shape and approaches the consistency of Play-Doh, stop adding water. Work the dough into a ball with your hands and wrap it in plastic wrap. Then put it back in the refrigerator. After an hour or so, cut the ball into two halves. The amount above will yield more than enough dough for a two crust pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

08 October 2010

Let's have a pizza party


I've been on a pizza kick lately. Make that, I've been on a real pizza kick lately. Pizza in Rome has nothing in common with that garbage available for delivery except perhaps the similar-sounding names. Roman pizza hunts me, it does. So I've spent the better part of the last year mastering the manly art of pizza making and I can honestly say that I make a mean pizza. While hardly as good as the stuff in Rome, it's a thousand times better than anything that comes out of a box and best of all, I know what's in it.

The key to successful pizza making is practice of course, but you need cold ingredients when you make the dough and the a really hot oven when you bake your pizzas. It's all but impossible to bake pizzas at home without a pizza stone, so go get one before you try this. No two ovens are the same and so you're going to have to play with the baking time and temperature until you find the right settings. I have a crappy oven so I bake mine in two stages.

Baking bread and bread doughs is fun and there's something about it that appeals to me on a very primal level. I like to make things with my hands and the idea of making food with my hands has an appeal to me I just can't describe. I bake the old-fashioned way, no power tools. If you use a mixer or heaven forbid, a bread maker, I don't want to know about it. Baking bread is actually very easy. There are usually four or five ingredients and the yeast does most of the work. It is not a fast process, but easy access to fast foods is why westerners are so fat.

I got started with my pizza dough recipe on a website called 101 Cookbooks. The ingredients are about the only thing my method has with theirs at this point though. This is a great way to start though. Recipes are just a starting point, true mastery comes when you fly under your own steam.

  • 4 1/2 cups bread flour, chilled 
  • 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon instant yeast 
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 3/4 cups water, ice cold
  • Additional flour for dusting and additional olive oil for finished dough
  1. Stir together the flour, salt, and instant yeast in a 4-quart bowl. With a large metal spoon, stir in the oil and the cold water until the flour is all absorbed. Repeatedly dip one of your hands into cold water and use it, much like a dough hook, to work the dough vigorously into a smooth mass while rotating the bowl in a circular motion with the other hand. Reverse the circular motion a few times to develop the gluten further. Do this for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom of the bowl. If the dough is too wet and doesn't come off the sides of the bowl, sprinkle in some more flour just until it clears the sides. If it clears the bottom of the bowl, dribble in a tea- spoon or two of cold water. The finished dough will be springy, elastic, and sticky, not just tacky, and still be cooler than room temperature.
  2. Turn the dough onto a floured table top and form into an even ball. Add around a tablespoon of olive oil to the now-empty bowl. Put dough ball back into the bowl and roll it in the oil until it's evenly coated in oil. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rest in the fridge overnight.
  3. The next morning, set the covered bowl on the counter and let the dough warm up and rise. When it nearly doubles in size, it's done rising.
  4. Punch the dough down to remove the air and turn it out onto a floured table top. Roll it back into an even ball and then form the ball into a log about a foot long.
  5. Take a dough scraper and cut the log into six, even slices. Oil your hands and roll each slice into a ball.
  6. Place each ball into a small, zip lock bag and toss in the freezer.

It's pizza time!

  1. When you're ready to make a pizza, take a frozen dough ball and put it into a glass bowl then cover it with a damp kitchen towel. Let the dough defrost in the refrigerator. It will take two hours or so to defrost. Once it's defrosted, set the bowl on the counter and bring it to room temperature.
  2. While that dough's assuming room temperature, set a pizza stone on the lower rack and pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and assemble your toppings.
  3. When the oven's to temperature, lightly flour the counter and your hands and make a pizza from the dough. Start with a ball and flatten it. Pizza dough is very elastic but you can poke a hole in it if you're not careful. My pizzas are rarely perfect circles but you'll get better at this the more often you do it. By the time you're done forming your pizza, it should be between nine and 12 inches in diameter.
  4. Take the hot pizza stone out of the oven and set on a rack. Be really careful with that stone. Place your pizza on the stone directly. Brush with oil or pesto and bake for five minutes.
  5. After five minutes, remove the pizza stone and set it back on the rack. Add the rest of your toppings now. Go easy on them. A good pizza has no more than three toppings and they should be added sparingly.
  6. Return the pizza and the pizza stone to the oven for an additonal four minutes.
  7. Remove from the oven, set the stone on a rack and let sit for two to three minutes.
  8. Slice it up and pretend you're in old Napoli.

19 September 2010

Late-summer rerun: From the land of the shoo-fly

This post ran originally on October 3rd, 2008. In an effort to reclaim some part of my life, I'm dipping into my archives on weekends for the time being.



I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; and no, I'm not Amish. I've been away from those gently rolling hills for a long time but Thanksgiving makes me nostalgic. I may not be Amish, but it doesn't take an Amishman to appreciate pretty countryside and an urge to make things by hand.

Arguably, Lancaster County's signature dish is a little something called shoo-fly pie. Shoo-fly pie is one of those things that everybody's heard of but never encountered first hand. Shoo-fly pie is one of my favorite things to bake and it can't be the holidays in my house without it.

The first time I ever made one for a party, everyone thought it was so exotic and cosmopolitan. That is funny on so many levels at one time I can't stand it. Anyhow, here's my recipe for cosmopolitan and exotic shoo-fly pie.


Pie dough for a nine-inch pie
1 cup of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup of firmly packed, dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter (softened)
1 cup light molasses
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup boiling water

Roll out pie dough and turn into a nine-inch pie plate. Trim and flute the edges. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar and softened butter. Mash with a fork until it reaches a consistent, crumbly consistency. In a separate bowl, beat together the molasses, egg and baking soda with a large spoon until blended. Stir in the boiling water and mix thoroughly (this will begin to foam). Stir half the crumb mixture into the molasses mixture and pour into the crust. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the top. Bake a 400 degrees, on the center rack, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake until the pie filling has puffed around the sides and is firm in the center, about 20 to 30 minutes more. Cool on a rack.

11 August 2010

All in Good Food, a new chef's blog from GE Monogram





GE Monogram has two full-time chefs and the rule over the kitchen at GE Monogram's Experience Center in Louisville, KY. Chefs Joe Castro and Brian Logsdon have been working together for more than ten years, first at a Lousiville fine dining restaurant and now at the Monogram Experience center. They're as entertaining as they are accomplished chefs and I'm thrilled to see that GE Monogram's given them their own spot on the internet.

The blog launched a few weeks ago and they've been adding content steadily. The site looks fantastic, it's easy to navigate and it's brimming with great ideas and recipes. There's even a story by me.

So pop on over and give Joe and Brain a warm welcome to the blogosphere. They have a pizza dough recipe that rivals mine in its simplicity and if it's anything like the na'an recipe I got from them last summer, it will put mine to shame. All in Good Food can be found here.

23 July 2010

Summer rerun: From the land of the shoo-fly

This post ran originally on 29 November 2008.



I was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; and no, I'm not Amish. I've been away from those gently rolling hills for a long time but Thanksgiving makes me nostalgic. I may not be Amish, but it doesn't take an Amishman to appreciate pretty countryside and an urge to make things by hand.

Arguably, Lancaster County's signature dish is a little something called shoo-fly pie. Shoo-fly pie is one of those things that everybody's heard of but never encountered first hand. Shoo-fly pie is one of my favorite things to bake and it can't be the holidays in my house without it.

The first time I ever made one for a party, everyone thought it was so exotic and cosmopolitan. That is funny on so many levels at one time I can't stand it. Anyhow, here's my recipe for cosmopolitan and exotic shoo-fly pie.


Pie dough for a nine-inch pie
1 cup of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup of firmly packed, dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter (softened)
1 cup light molasses
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup boiling water

Roll out pie dough and turn into a nine-inch pie plate. Trim and flute the edges. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar and softened butter. Mash with a fork until it reaches a consistent, crumbly consistency. In a separate bowl, beat together the molasses, egg and baking soda with a large spoon until blended. Stir in the boiling water and mix thoroughly (this will begin to foam). Stir half the crumb mixture into the molasses mixture and pour into the crust. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the top. Bake a 400 degrees, on the center rack, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake until the pie filling has puffed around the sides and is firm in the center, about 20 to 30 minutes more. Cool on a rack.

05 June 2010

A recipe hack that doesn't work and a smart one that does


Our pals at Apartment Therapy figured out that you can't make whipped cream in a French press this week. Duh.

In yet another sterling example of why a working knowledge of chemistry will set you free, had the brave experimenter paid attention he or she would have known that whipped cream is milk fat mixed with air. Whipped cream needs to have at least 80% of its volume made up of air and there's no way something that works as a plunger can get that much air into a liquid. The need for air thing is the reason you can't make whipped cream in a blender either.

Short cuts abound but I find the best way to make whipped cream is to make it the way my grandmother did, with a bowl and a wire whisk. Making whipped cream by hand can be quite a work out but I find that when I have to work at something like this, I am more in touch with what I'm eating and I also eat less of something when I know how much labor went into it.

Take a glass or stainless steel mixing bowl and a wire whisk and put them in the freezer for about an hour. Once they're chilled, take a cup of cold, heavy cream and a tablespoon or two of powdered sugar and add them to the bowl.

Put the bowl in the crook of your arm and commence to whisking. You can also set the bowl down on a table or counter but I find I have more control if I hold the bowl against myself with my left arm.

Whisk for about ten minutes. Nothing will happen for about the first half of that time but the mixture will slowly thicken. About 9/10ths of the way through the cream and air reach critical mass and the mixture stiffens significantly. You're at the soft peak phase. Soft peak is what you want if you're going to add your whipped cream to another recipe.



This is what "soft peak" whipped cream looks like. Once you're at this stage
 you have about another minute to go. Photos from Pastry Pal.

If you're making a dessert topping keep going for about another minute and your whipped cream will reach the consistency of the whipped cream that comes out of a can of Redi-Whip. Stop immediately.

If you keep whisking, the fat globules in the whipped cream will begin to stick together instead of the air bubbles you just worked into the mix. When that happens, the mixture separates into butter and butter milk. That in itself is pretty cool but probably not what you're after.

Congratulations, you just made whipped cream.

You want a low-fat version of this? Eat a teaspoon of it instead of a quart.

10 May 2010

Get a grouper reuben while you can

I live along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

via Flickr

That body of water is why I live here. Usually, it's a calm, warm stretch of emerald sea that forms a backdrop to much of life in this part of the world. No other body of water I know exerts the pull on me that the Gulf, my Gulf, does. I've dallied in The Atlantic. I've dabbled in the Pacific. The Mediterranean's good for an occasional affair and the Caribbean's a nice fling too. But none of them can compare with my Gulf of Mexico.

I'm sick over what's going on 5,000 feet below a spot 250 miles from where I'm sitting. Our beaches aren't likely to be fouled the way the beaches of Prince William Sound were 21 years ago. But the waters here will be fouled by something far more insidious. In the coming months and years, the contamination spreading outward from that spot on the floor of the Gulf is going to spread into every life form, including the ones I like to eat, along this coast.

The Gulf of Mexico is a treasure trove of resources, and all of those resources are linked together. You can't isolate the fisheries from the oil deposits, or the people from from either. Allowing an essentially self-regulated industry to Drill Baby Drill is an insanity on par with enabling unsustainable fish catches or encouraging endless, pointless suburban sprawl. The spill wreaking havoc to my northwest is a symptom of a deeper problem and it has a lot more to do with a human inability to think and act for the long term than it does with which party's in the White House. So instead of Drill Baby Drill, how about a chorus of Manage Baby Manage?

To the outside world Florida has no culture of its own but those of us who live here know it does just as surely as any other place on earth. For better or for worse, Florida does have a culture and it has foods unique to the region. Many of those foods are linked to the Gulf of Mexico. Chief among them is the grouper sandwich. Every restaurant and every aficionado in the region has a pet variation on the theme.

I walked along the beach at Pass-a-Grille yesterday and I stopped at The Wharf for what well may be my last Gulf grouper sandwich for a long time. It was at The Wharf that I first experienced a grouper reuben. While The Wharf's reuben isn't exactly sublime, whatever it's lacking is more than made up for by the jukebox full of Elvis songs.

via Flickr

My grouper reuben is sublime and here it is. It starts with some Thousand Dressing.
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons bottled sweet pickle relish
  • 2 tablespoons bottled chili sauce
  • 2 tablespoons ketchup
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Mix together all of the ingredients and sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to let the flavors blend.

Onto the sandwich.
  • 4 grouper filets
  • 1/8 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
  • pepper and salt
  • olive oil to saute
  • 2 cups of sauerkraut.
  • 12 slices of a good aged swiss cheese
  • 8 slices of good pumpernickel or marble rye
  • butter to brush on the bread to grill
To prepare the grouper, I just put the milk in a zip lock bag and then add each piece of grouper, one at a time. It just gives a light base so the flour sticks well.

Mix the flour, cayenne and salt and pepper again in a dish or a separate bag and then drag each fillet in until it's lightly coated. Heat up the oil in a pan over medium high and saute the grouper until lightly golden on each side. 4-5 minutes per side is about right but it varies with the thickness of the fish.

Drain the sauerkraut and set aside, butter your bread and have the cheese slices ready to go.

Now heat up the pan to medium heat and build your sandwiches. Now lets build the sandwich. Take a slice of bread and smear it with Thousand Island dressing. Add a slice of cheese. Add your grouper filet and cover it with sauerkraut and another slice of cheese. Add the top slice of bread and grill until lightly golden on each side. The cheese should be melted and the sauerkraut nicely warmed.
So whatever happens out there in the coming weeks and months, I'm swearing off the grouper, the oysters, the stone crabs, the shrimp and the rest of the fruits of the Gulf fisheries 'til further notice. Thanks BP.

28 February 2010

Sunday brownie Sunday


I found the basis of this recipe on the fantastic website Smitten Kitchen and have been tweaking and perfecting it for the last few weeks. Deb Perelman (who is the voice of Smitten Kitchen) pronounced these the Best Cocoa Brownies. I'll take it a step further and pronounce them the best damn brownies I've ever made or tasted anywhere. They have the perfect texture, Deb Perelman describes it as "chewy and candy-like." She's right. One of these babies with a cup of coffee in the morning and that's what I call the breakfast of kings.

Brownies made with cocoa have a richer flavor, and by the time you add in the semi sweet chips what you're in for is a bittersweet chocolate fantasy. Really. These things are a snap to make, all it takes it a little patience and about 45 minutes. Life's too short to eat crap out of a box. Remember that.


10 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, cold
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Line the bottom and sides of an 8×8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides.

Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir from time to time until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test. Remove the bowl from the skillet and set aside briefly until the mixture is only warm, not hot. It looks fairly gritty at this point, but don’t fret — it smooths out once the eggs and flour are added.

Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one. When the batter looks thick, shiny, and well blended, add the flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with the wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips. Spread evenly in the lined pan.

Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool completely on a rack.

Lift up the ends of the parchment or foil liner, and transfer the brownies to a cutting board. Cut into 16 or 25 squares.

30 January 2010

Winter turns to summer with the Smitten Kitchen


Ahhhh, January. In my part of the world, January means warm, sunny afternoons and cool nights. Winter for us is what spring is for people in cooler climates and it's also when citrus fruits come into season. By now, Florida grapefruit and oranges ought to be trickling into grocery stores all over the place and we're up to our elbows in them. I'm not complaining. We get the pick of the litter and most of the specialty citurs fruits that grow here never make it out of Florida. Minneolas, honeybelle tangerines, kumquats, key limes, meyer lemons, bitter oranges, blood oranges, clementines, mandarins, and the list goes on. I could live on local citrus fruit and die a happy man.

A cooking blog I like to read is Smitten Kitchen, written by Deb and Alex Perelman. Deb's a chef's chef and she prepares her delicacies in a 46 square foot kitchen on New York's Upper West Side. I love her take on food. She doesn't believe in fuss or unnecessary complication, she's about flavor and hospitality instead. Her recipes prove beyond a doubt that great food isn't dependent on fancy equipment or posh ingredients. Great food is an attitude as much as anything.

Anyhow, Deb and Alex featured a recipe that I'll be having for lunch today. I'll let you know how it goes. Here's the recipe.



Mixed Citrus Salad with Feta, Onion and Mint

3 to 4 tablespoons red onion, cut into tiny bits
4 pieces of citrus, preferably a mix of grapefruits and oranges but use what you can get, and what you like to eat (spoiled by the spread at the store, I used 1 pink grapefruit, 1 cara cara and 1 blood orange, and 1 mineola)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar or lemon juice
1 teaspoon smooth Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
3 to 4 tablespoons (1.5 ounces) feta cheese, chopped or crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped or cut into tiny slivers

Place your red onion in the bottom of a medium bowl. Nest a strainer over the bowl.

Prepare your citrus fruits by beveling the stem end of one, cutting enough off that you reveal the pith-free flesh of the fruit. Repeat on the other end. Rest your fruit on one of its now-flat surface and begin cutting the peel and pith off in large, vertical pieces. You want the fruit’s exterior to be “white”-free.


Turn the fruit back on its side and cut it into 1/4-inch thick wheels, removing any seeds and thick white stem as you do. Place the wheels and any collected juices from the cutting board in the strainer over the bowl with onion. Repeat with remaining citrus fruits. (As the extra juices drip over the bowl, it will soften the raw onion bite.)

Spread the fruit slices out on a platter. Scoop out the onion bits (a slotted spoon or fork does the trick) and sprinkle them over, leaving the juice in the bowl. Whisk one tablespoon of juice (this is all I had accumulated) with red wine vinegar or lemon juice, Dijon and olive oil. Season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Drizzle the dressing over the citrus, sprinkle with feta and mint, adjust salt and pepper to taste, serve immediately and daydream of warmer places.

Recipe and photos from Smitten Kitchen

20 December 2009

Mammy's little baby loves shortbread



Amid the murmurings that followed Kevin's brilliant post on what used to be a private and quiet Christmas tradition in St. Pete (well, maybe not quiet), a heard a voice calling out for a good Christmas cookie recipe. Well, here's the best one I have.

I love shortbread with something that borders on an obsession and I played around with if for years until I perfected a recipe that produces a buttery, somewhat salty, somewhat sweet and perfectly sand textured shortbread. The ingredients couldn't be simpler, the art to this one comes from the perfect oven temperature and time spent therein.

I used to try to make these with a spoon, but they have to be of a uniform thickness or they won't have the right texture. On a lark I bought a cookie gun one year and it yielded the perfect shortbread cookie. Who knew? Some people call them cookie presses, but I call it a cookie gun. It makes me feel more macho that way.



Anyhow, I bought a Wilton Cookie Press (gun! it's a gun!) Pro Ultra 2. It's perfect --plenty of shapes and it's easy to load and clean.

My Ultimate Shortbread


Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, softened 
  • 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar 
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch 
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
  2. Whip butter with an electric mixer until fluffy. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, cornstarch, and flour. Beat on low for one minute, then on high for 3 to 4 minutes. Drop cookies by spoonfuls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
  3. Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven. Watch  them like a hawk. Pull them out of the oven at precisely 8 minutes or they will scorch. Once they're out of the oven let them cool for a couple of minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack. Sprinkle them with powdered sugar while they are still hot if you'd like.

That recipe will make enough shortbread to feed an army but fear not. Take the extras, throw them in a food processor, grind 'em up and make an amazing crust for a cheesecake.

25 November 2009

Making your own pie crusts is as easy as, well, pie


It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and in keeping with my one man crusade against convenience foods, I am dipping into my time-tested recipe box. Actually, I don't have a recipe box. I have a file in my computer that's called "recipe box" though.

I am a pie man, through and through. Few things give me the pleasure of cranking out pies in anticipation of major holidays. Thanksgiving is my day to shine thank you very much and nothing says Thanksgiving to me like a real pie or pies as the case may be. And by real I mean made from scratch.

I am a self-taught baker. My mother was a skilled cook and my grandmother too. But kitchens were woman turf and though I watched them bake on holidays I wasn't allowed anywhere near the action. It wasn't until I got out on my own that I realized that I not only like to bake, I'm actually pretty good at it.

I know, I know, I hear it all the time; "We're too busy nowadays to bake from scratch." Well, I'll be the first one to tell you that that's a damn lie. I have a schedule that would kill a lesser man and somehow I manage to cook dinner for myself every night and turn out a hell of a spread of baked goods on holidays. Nobody's too busy, but people have different priorities. Having different priorities is fine, just own that. Telling yourself that you're too busy is what makes you neurotic.

I have a real problem with convenience foods. I don't care that they're not organic or that they're mass produced. What bothers me about them is that they're tasteless. It bothers me too that I can't tell what's in something that's prepackaged. Scratch baking keeps me in control of what I put in my mouth and it also makes me expend some effort before I get a reward. Self-discipline never sleeps kids.

So here's my recipe for pie crust, the first step toward a blue-ribbon apple pie like mine. This recipe's also perfect for the bottom crust of a tartine, but that's a topic for another day. Making pie crusts is not hard, despite what everybody says. All it requires is that you pay attention. Try this, just once, and you will never buy another convenience food for the rest of your life.


2-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 cup of cold Crisco
1/2 cup of ice water

Put everything, including the bowl,  in the refrigerator for an hour before you start. Then mix the flour, salt and sugar together in the now-chilled bowl. Cut the chilled Crisco into small pieces and work it into the dry mix with a fork. When the Crisco and the dry mixture are blended, it will have the consistency of coarse meal.

Add the cold water in small drips and drabs and work the dough after every addition of water. After you have a quarter cup of the water worked in, slow down and start to test the dough after each time you add more water. Test the dough by squeezing a pinch between your fingers. If it's crumbly, then add more water. When it holds its shape and approaches the consistency of Play-Doh, stop adding water. Work the dough into a ball with your hands and wrap it in plastic wrap. Then put it back in the refrigerator. After an hour or so, cut the ball into two halves. The amount above will yield more than enough dough for a two crust pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!