Weekend Round-Up

A lot of cooking has happened here lately. When I thought back I realized that in one twenty-four hour period I produced, in addition to regular lunches and dinners, two loaves of sourdough (pictured), a double batch of waffles, several dozen chocolate chip cookies, and a big bowl of potato salad. I don't know what came over me, but it all seemed pretty natural at the time. The bread is mighty good; both loaves used the same starter, but the loaf on the right has about twenty percent kamut flour, while the one on the left has rye and whole wheat. Let's call them identical (conjoined!) twins raised in different environments. The pictured okra family represents our first harvest.

Grilled Steak

with Indian spiced okra and sweet potatoes. My reaction to eating sweet potatoes is almost always "man; I should eat more sweet potatoes."

Okra Flowers

Until I moved to the south I knew nothing of okra (except that I found it slimy), and until this summer (when my husband planted some) I couldn't imagine what kind of plant it grew on (okra trees?), and until yesterday I had no idea it produces flowers of incredible delicacy and beauty. Needless to say, along the way I learned that it can be *delicious*.

Grilled Salmon

with sauteed arugula (peppery enough before cooking to bring tears to my eyes) and black rice.

Scrambled Eggs

with Indian spiced okra and the pictured French Country Boule. I think it's fair to say that this is the best bread I know how to make, and one of the best I've eaten. It's pretty simple (white, rye, and whole wheat flours), and, in my experience, hard to mess up. If I had to quibble with this loaf I'd say I over-salted just a wee bit, and I still haven't mastered oven spring, but on the whole, if this is as good as my bread gets, I can happily live with it. I learned two things this round. The first is that I dislike a starter made with all whole grain; both the spelt starter I made a while ago and the whole wheat starter I baked with last week made a bread that was too tangy for my taste. Even in a whole grain loaf I prefer a starter fed mainly white flour. The second is that preheating the oven and using a baking stone are both unnecessary steps. Following the advice of a number of posters on The Fresh Loaf (link to the right) I baked this in a cold oven, on a baking sheet, and it is both delicious and indistinguishable from loaves I baked on the traditionally recommended searing-hot baking stone. Since I always found pre-heating to be just that one extra step that turned the whole thing into a chore, this is big news for me.

Buffalo Filet

with corn on the cob and okra. I made the okra following a recipe in the recent Food & Wine; I sliced it in half lengthwise, fried it in very hot oil, then seasoned with cumin, fennel seed, turmeric, and coriander. It was delicious; I'm doing it again tonight.

Hat!

Behold, the fruit of my swatching. I'm very pleased with this hat, not least because it used up yarn I've had hanging around for years.

Blueberry Cornbread

with roasted summer vegetables.

Quesadillas

with cheese and tomatoes. With sauteed okra.

Pas de Valse

For some reason I seem to have spent most of this summer knitting in wool; no doubt I'll be glad when November comes around. This is "Pas de Valse," a pattern from Twist Collective, the hottest online knitting magazine in town. A good bit of it was accomplished during jury duty.

Mosaic Knitting

This is a knitting technique invented by Barbara Walker, who invented a lot of what we know as modern knitting. Why have I always resisted trying it? For no good reason, that's for sure, because it is easy and beautiful. Glad I finally got on board.

Roasted Summer Vegetables

I opened the bag from our CSA and simply chopped up and roasted everything in it: eggplant, okra, onions, red peppers, and orange cherry tomatoes. We had it with big hunks of blueberry cornbread.

Grilled Salmon

with quinoa and green beans.

Second Verse

more or less same as the first: the remainder of the field peas from last night, with fresh tomatoes and black rice added. With sauteed okra.

Field peas

with bacon, onions, and cherry tomatoes. Also okra and blueberry cornbread.

Tomato Pie

with okra, and fresh figs for dessert. All from the farmer's market.

Grilled Salmon

with roasted new potatoes and sauteed peppers and broccoli.

Whole Wheat Spaghetti

with fresh tomato sauce (pink, red, and yellow tomatoes, garlic, and basil [if I'd actually remembered to add it, which I didn't]) and sliced up red and yellow peppers.

Omelette

with cheddar cheese and leeks; with roasted new potatoes and shiitakes.

Hash

of black rice, leftover corn, and leftover ribs, diced up. With a tomato, cucumber, red onion salad.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

Round two of the Kamut Levain. I did everything exactly the same, except for one thing: during the bulk fermentation stage (when one lets the dough rise for about four hours) I did two "letter fold turns." This involves dumping the dough out, stretching it into a rectangle, folding it in thirds, and returning it to the rising container. My internet research assured me that this would lead to better oven spring, and the internet was right. The oven spring was nice, and the crust color better, and I swear the bread tastes better too. So: letter fold turns. Not a dispensable step.

Kamut Levain

This is the Kamut Levain from Local Breads. It is extremely delicious; my spouse declared it my best yet and the best bread he's ever had. He's a man who is generous with his praise, but still; I'm pleased. The only thing is that it had pathetic oven spring, and I don't know why. Over-proofing? Flour without pep? I know the levain itself is nice and active, so I guess I'll just keep playing. I've reached the beginner's plateau where I've stopped being delighted when the bread works at all and have started to worry about how to make it work *right.* Good thing wrong bread tastes so good.

Leftover Chicken

(thanks mom!) with corn on the cob and broccoli.

Chicken and Tomato Sauce

Made by my mom; with mushrooms. basil, and cheese. Very good. We had it with black rice and green beans. For dessert a failed blueberry-peach pie: crust too dark (and soggy on the bottom), filling un-gelled. Of course even a failed pie is delicious, and I stuffed myself with this one.

Toasty Feet

Roasty feet right now, but good for the winter. The top photo shows the back of the heel, which I though came out especially pretty.

Whole Wheat Chia Seed Sourdough

This bread shows both how much I don't yet know about making bread, and how totally forgiving and rewarding a learning process bread making is. I followed (I use the word loosely) this recipe. I was interested because I'd had a bag of chia seed in my fridge for about six months; I bought it and then never figured out how to use it. It turns out that chia seed can absorb incredible amounts of water, and turns into a gel; added to bread dough, this results in a lot of moisture and nice flavor. Because I was winging things I ended up with a lot more water in my dough than I meant to have, and I clearly have no idea how to shape or slash a wet dough. Hence the blobular batards I ended up with. But so what? They taste wonderful.

Field Peas

with cherry tomatoes and red onions, over black rice. With sauteed okra.

Pesto Burgers

with quinoa and a giant sliced tomato. I used dark and light quinoa mixed together, but in the end I think I prefer light by itself.

Whole Wheat Mash Bread II

My first sub-par loaf of bread! Two things changed: I used a new brand of flour, and I only used half the starter I was supposed to. The problem is undoubtedly the second of those things, and basically what happens when one bakes on too little sleep. Bakes half-baked, so to speak. Never mind; even sub-par bread is still pretty good. We had it last night with grilled hake and a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and red onions.

Quinoa Pasta

with a sauce of simmered fresh tomatoes, garlic, and basil. We had it with these funny little yellow and green summer squashes. They were so cute that I ate them even though they tasted like (the despised, the dreaded) zucchini. For dessert more brownies.

Potato Frittata

with tarragon and chives, and sauteed cabbage. For dessert, spectacular brownies: we used the "Cakey" recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, cutting the sugar in half, using white whole wheat flour, and adding a chopped-up dark chocolate bar. I ate two and could go right back and finish the pan.

Buffalo Burgers

with pesto; also wilted escarole, corn on the cob, bread, and tomatoes and carrots from the garden.

Whole Wheat Mash Bread

This is my first recipe from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. It is also my first use of a "mash" in bread baking: a mash is a gelatinized mass of flour that has been hydrated and kept warm for a few hours until various enzymatic activities have had time to do their work. The bread also uses a nice big bit of starter. Let me tell you something: this is a crazy good loaf of bread, and you would never guess it's entirely whole wheat (a good thing). The color balance is off in the top photo; it is much more golden than it appears here (as you can see in the bottom photo).

Happy Father's Day!

We celebrated with homemade English muffins. I found the recipe here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/whole-wheat-sourdough-english-muffins. The dough was very wet and (for me) kind of hard to work with, but it didn't matter. As usual, no matter how many things I did wrong, the end result was delicious for this starter-raised bread.

Egg Noodles

with pesto. Salads composed by the spouse, and as delicious as they look.

Field Peas and Corn

in a sort of ragout, with sauteed onions. Also potato salad and crispy kale.

Grilled Steak

with quinoa and crispy kale. The latter was delicious: leaves of kale tossed in olive oil, then crisped in a 500 degree oven for about 8 minutes.

Quinoa Pasta

with leftover roast chicken and diced up summer squash and tarragon. With steamed green beans. For dessert, many, many chocolate chip cookies, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. We were out of chocolate chips so I chopped up a bar of super-dark chocolate.

Zucchini Gratin

from Richard Olney. Delicious; we had it with corn, tomatoes, and salad. One of the nicest unintended consequences of my breadmaking is that I now leave my baking stone in the oven full time, which results in beautifully even heat distribution in everything I cook. Makes a huge difference.

Clapotis Four

I may never stop making this scarf pattern. I've made three winter versions in wool; here is my first summer version, in silk.

Linen T-Shirt

All ready for summer.

Roast Chicken

with tarragon. We had it with a salad and the pictured pain au levain, even better than the first batch.

Eggs

Fried eggs (Miss Sue's, so very flavorful) with brown rice and roasted vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots).

Pain Au Levain

In my opinion, the best bread yet. Stiff dough starter, nice beefy percentage of whole wheat and rye flours, and oven spring that resulted in beautifully cylindrical batards. I think I am persistently slashing too shallowly, but other than that I have no fault to find with this mouthwatering bread. We had it with friends; I made a Swiss chard quiche (pre-baked the crust this time, which made all the difference in the world), salad, and banana bread for dessert (all-purpose, whole wheat, and amaranth flours).

Cheese Omelette

with sauteed okra, corn on the cob, and bread and butter.

Long-Cooked Broccoli

over whole wheat spinach pasta, with salad. The broccoli recipe is from Alice Waters The Art of Simple Food, a book about which I have mixed feelings.

Grilled Hake

with green beans, salad, and sourdough bread.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Miche

A very, very good loaf of bread. This is the first one I've made that I would say is genuinely sour. It is tender and flavorful, but its real glory is its crust: deeply caramelized and delicious. It was also the occasion for a discovery. I had to use all of the starter I'd made for it, saving none to ferment the next batch. For fun I decided to mix a new starter in the old container, which had a few clinging shreds of starter in it, and lo: a whole new batch of starter, no problemo (and for that matter, problem solved). I'm learning that wild yeast is strong.

Quiche

with spinach, onions, and gruyere. I made the crust with the aptly named "Foolproof Pie Crust" recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Though I did in fact out-fool it: "I won't bother to pre-bake it" I thought. "It won't matter" I thought. Next time I'll pre-bake. We had it with salad and the pictured carrots, harvested by my spouse.

"Whole" Spelt Loaf

"Whole" is in quotation marks because in fact I ran out of spelt flour and had to top it up with whole wheat (maybe 20%). This is what my spelt starter did; as you can see, it had oven spring that, once again, made a mockery of my slashes. I think it's a beautiful loaf, and has a deep, complex, tangy flavor I like. Unfortunately, only I and one of the household toddlers like it, so it may not get made again for a while. Will have to find another use for spelt starter (fragrant library paste?)

Chicken Sausage

with turnips and brown rice. I had to douse the sausage in olive oil to make it worth eating; not enough fat.

Spelt Starter

I am nurturing a new starter, still in its infancy. It took me a minute to place its current aroma, but once I did it was unmistakable: it smells *exactly* like gazpacho.

Potato Salad

with little herbed hamburger patties, and arugula salad. Potato salad is shaping up to be my dish of the summer. Last night's had some tarragon in it, which really came into its own this morning, after sitting in the fridge over night. I'm having it for lunch today and can hardly wait.

J.M. Coetzee

I'm not sure if books are the kind of thing we talk about here anymore, but in case anyone's wondering I am in a deep Coetzee phase. In the last two months I've read Summertime, Disgrace, Foe, and The Master of Petersburg; I'm reading Elizabeth Costello now. I am wholly absorbed, can't, it seems, get enough. He can do anything he wants with me once he starts.

Kale Soup

Made of one onion, one red pepper, a can of Great Northern beans, two cobs' worth of corn, half a box of chicken stock, and a big bunch of kale.

French Country Boule

These are from Local Breads. If I have to quibble with bread this delicious, it would be to say that I prefer a higher percentage of rye and whole wheat flours than these called for. But seriously, why am I quibbling? There's nothing not to like here. For one thing, these babies had oven spring to spare. They laughed in the face of my wee slashes and almost burst themselves in half as they rose in the oven. I attribute this muscle to my use of bread flour; up until now I've been using all-purpose. I'm a convert.

Bacon and Mei Qing Fritatta

with salad, and the remainder of the baguettes.

Old World Baguette Redux

Definitely a life lesson here. This bread looks nothing like the bread described in my book, and no stage of its preparation went as predicted, and I suffered great frustration along the way, and when I went ahead and baked it I came up with one of the best pieces of bread I've ever tasted. I'm beginning to understand that there are not many ways to mess up bread made from a levain. The picture does not do justice to the opalescence of the bread's chewy interior.

Quinoa Pasta

with pesto, and sauteed garden turnips.

Grilled Red Snapper

with roasted sprouts, shiitakes, and new potatoes.

Potato Salad

from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. It is extremely delicious, mainly, I think, because I used rice vinegar which doesn't really taste like vinegar to me (not that I dislike vinegar). We had it with sauteed cauliflower and steamed broccoli from our local farmer's market. Super yum.

Crab Cake

We only had one, so I split it. Also a salad and massive helpings of buckwheat batard with Danish butter.

Buckwheat Batards

Or as I affectionately think of them, "li'l buckwheat bastards." My second recipe from Local Bread. These are just as good as they look, and particularly gratifying because the omens during their making were so uniformly unpropitious (insufficient water, texture not at all as described in the book, dubious rising of the levain). I was cheered a little bit when I realized that the recipe itself had some significant errata, so the difference between my dough and the one it described was inevitable. Two things on which I did make progress this time were proofing (I didn't overproof) and slashing (I used a razor blade and boy, does a truly sharp blade ever make a difference.)

Grilled Salmon

with raw sugar snap peas, sauteed Swiss chard and spring onions, salad, strawberries, and les flutes. All around great meal.

La Flute Gana

Voila, my first recipe from Local Bread. It involves commercial yeast and a little bit of corn flour, plus a long refrigeration of the proofed dough, called "retarding." If only someone had asked me what I was doing yesterday I could have answered, "retarding the flutes!" In any case, they are terrific. Very delicious, with a crust so deep and strong and crisp-yet-chewy that my jaw ached as I finished my first bites. True, they are oddly shaped; I blame over-proofing, a too-cool oven, and a not-perfectly-sharp dough scorer. I can fix these things, and in the mean time, will enjoy this bread.

French Country Boule

Well, this is a revelation. This is a delicious little loaf of bread; chewy, moist, wheaty with just a touch of sourness. And nothing in it but flour, water, salt (not quite enough, I think), and time! I followed the recipe and instructions in the Bread Bible, and used my stiff starter. I feel I have crossed a threshold.

Fridge-Clearing Frittata

of brown rice, farro, broccoli, and corn. With roasted cauliflower and shiitakes.

Raised Waffles

The first fruit of my starter! I made Marion Cunningham's Raised Waffles, from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible, using some of my starter instead of yeast. (I also replaced about half of the all-purpose flour with rye flour). These waffles are extraordinary; their surface is as delicate and crisp as the best tempura you've ever had, the interiors moist and light as a feather. They have a mild sour flavor, though might not have if I'd used any sugar. I thought they were just about perfect with a little maple syrup. Tomorrow I'll make my first starter-leavened bread; I am encouraged.

Cherry Fizz

This scarf has been done for some time, but I'm behind on my knitting documentation. I love this pattern; easy and just right for one skein of yarn.

Double My Fun!

What we are looking at here is a starter that has doubled in bulk a few hours after feeding and that, my friends, spells success. I'm baking with it tomorrow and we'll see what's next. The container comes from the paint section of Home Depot, which is appropriate because the starter smells exactly like fresh paint.

Whole Wheat Fettuccine

with sauteed mei qing cabbage, tuna, and capers. With salad. I could have eaten bowls of it.

Starter Update

The whole-wheat based starter is more active than the rye so far (though both are bubbling away) and smells like an overripe peach.

Grouper

pan-fried in butter, with brown rice and farro, and first CSA salad of the spring!

Meatloaf

Ground beef, an egg, tarragon, chives (with flowers), preserved lemon, and quinoa. With broccoli rappini and corn on the cob.

Progress?

It's a shame I can't post this picture in Smell-O-Vision, because if I could you'd know this incredible fact: both batches of starter smell exactly like sourdough bread! Unfortunately, they aren't growing in volume at all. So what the heck is up? My awful-smelling starter rose like it was supposed to; my wonderful-smelling starter seems to have no rising mojo at all. I'm just going to keep feeding it and hope for the best.

Turnip Time!

I do love spring turnips. Tonight we had sauteed tiny turnips with sauteed turnip greens and a potato-and-tarragon frittata. Wonderful all around.