Kale, the belle of the ball

My relationship with kale started off rocky. I first encountered this lovely leafy green at the dinner table at my parents' house in Brooklyn, circa 1993, and it wasn't exactly a love at first sight type of situation. My mom, an excellent cook far ahead of her time in her utilization of healthy ingredients, particularly whole grains, was fond of serving plain steamed vegetables with nary a shake of salt. Hint: when feeding two young children, this is not a particularly sound method (sorry, Mom!). My brother and I hated the stinky, sulfuric pile of stringy greens so much that we would actually form them into little pills in our mouths and swallow them whole with a swift chug of orange juice, our beverage of choice at that time. It wasn't pleasant for anyone involved, and if my memory serves me correctly, my parents finally relented and ceased forcing us to eat steamed kale.

It seems, though, that my mother was prescient in her kale-eating ways, too. Kale is having its fifteen minutes of fame in the food world right now: it's all over restaurant menus in New York City (even in cocktails), and recipes for kale dishes are being featured prominently on food sites like Serious Eats: here's one recipe roundup and one drinks post featuring kale juice. (I'll note, however, that I haven't seen any recipes for plain steamed kale.)

Unlike my mom, I usually like to slick my green vegetables in a bit of fat, in the form of either oil or butter. It doesn't have to be much, but a little lipid goes a long way in rounding out the sharp edges in flavor that some greens have. Usually, I go the classic Italian route and sauté some garlic and red pepper flakes together, then add the greens and maybe a bit of chicken broth to help them break down. But when I received a bag of beautiful, tender baby kale leaves from my CSA last week, I knew I couldn't do the gorgeous produce the disservice of cooking it. Luckily, at my internship at Serious Eats, I had recently edited Kenji's post on one month of veganism, and had spotted a recipe for a marinated kale salad, something I had heard of but never tried. This was the perfect opportunity.

I started by tossing my greens in a marinade of salt and oil, and let that sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. The salt and oil start to break down the leaves--the salt, by drawing out their moisture, and the oil by cutting through their natural waxy, water-resistant coating. The kale becomes more tender and easier to eat, but because there's no heat involved, they retain a bit of their texture and crunch.























When I was ready to serve the kale, I shook on some red pepper flakes and squeezed half a lemon over everything. Because I was eating with friends, and there wasn't quite enough kale to go around to call it a side dish, I decided to divide it up over little garlic toasts, adding an extra drizzle of oil at the very end. I've come a long way from steamed kale, and I don't think I'm ever going back:





















Marinated Kale on Garlic Toasts
Serves 4 - 6 as an appetizer

Ingredients:

1/4 - 1/2 lb. kale, rinsed and cut into ribbons (about 1/4 to 1/2 bunch)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. olive oil, plus more for drizzling
Red pepper flakes
1/2 a lemon
Half a loaf of bread, cut into 8 -12 small slices
Garlic clove, peeled

Preparation:

1. At least one but preferably two hours before you want to eat, marinate the kale: toss kale with salt and 2 tbsp. olive and let sit at room temperature.

2. When ready to eat, preheat oven to 350°. Place bread on a baking sheet and drizzle with a small amount of oil. Bake until toasted and crispy, about 8 - 10 minutes. Remove from oven and rub each slice with the garlic clove.

3. Finish the kale salad: squeeze the half lemon over kale and add a shake of red pepper flakes. Stir to combine, then divide kale evenly among toasts. Drizzle with additional olive oil and serve.

A starring role for a supporting cast member

Bread: it's the staff of life. Delicious and nutritious (despite what those Atkins people say), we all love it, we all crave it. But usually, we relegate it to some minor position in our meal; not even as important as a side dish, it's consumed to stave off hunger pangs at the beginning of a meal, or nibbled as a sort of afterthought alongside. It's time to bring bread into the fold, folks, and I aim to do that today by sharing two recent recipes that starred bread as the main character, or at least the equally-billed costar.

First up is a quick lunch I whipped up after returning home from my CSA pickup one week. I had gotten a bunch of beets, and wanted to figure out a way to use the greens, whose flavor I adore. I didn't have much else in the house besides a loaf of whole wheat sourdough and some eggs. So I thought to sauté up the greens and pile them on top of the toasted bread, crowning everything with a runny-yolked poached egg. Here's what it looked like:

















And yesterday evening, as I was biking home from a day of new apartment-related errands, I was struck suddenly with August Tomato Fever. It's something we all get around this time of year, I think: the unstoppable urge to eat fresh, sweet and acidic summer tomatoes, all the time, for the rest of the season and, if possible, early into the next one. I realized I hadn't had any local tomatoes yet this year, and was able to find some beautiful mini heirloom ones when I stopped into the Co-op. I didn't want to do much to them--just cut them up, maybe add some basil--and that's when it occurred to me to make a panzanella salad for dinner. One of those classic Italian dishes that comes from poverty (like the bread soup ribollita or pasta with breadcrumbs), this recipe doesn't call for much besides bread (stale, if you have it!), tomatoes, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar--plus, more luxuriously if you've got it, fresh mozzarella cheese. I added a little bit of red onion and lemon zest to mine, to brighten the flavors, and what I got was a big bowl of summer, bursting with the brightness of tomatoes and the richness of good olive oil--all without lighting a single burner:



















Garlic Toast with Sautéed Beet Greens and a Poached Egg
Serves 1, for lunch or a light meal

Ingredients:

- 1 small bunch of beet greens, rinsed and drained, with any large stems removed, chopped
- 1 thick slice of good bread such as sourdough or whole wheat
- 1 egg
- 1 clove garlic, peeled, plus 1 clove chopped
- Any light vinegar, such as white vinegar, white wine vinegar, or rice wine vinegar, 1/2 tsp.
- Olive oil
- Salt
- Pepper
- Red pepper flakes, optional

Preparation:

1. Prepare the beet greens: heat a small amount of olive oil in pan set over a medium flame. Add chopped garlic plus a sprinkling of red pepper flakes, if desired. After about 20 seconds, add the beet greens and cook, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender, about 6 - 8 minutes. Season greens to taste and set aside.
2. In the meantime, work on the egg and the toast. Set a small pot of water to the boil, then drop to a simmer. While waiting, toast your bread, then rub it on one side with the garlic clove.
3. When water is at a gentle simmer, add the 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar. Crack egg into a small dish and carefully lower the egg into the water. You can use a spoon to gently encourage the white of the egg to encircle the yolk. Cook at a simmer for about 2 to 3 minutes depending on how runny you like your yolk, then remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
4. Assemble the dish: heap the beet greens on top of the garlic-rubbed side of the toast, then add the poached egg. Season egg with salt and pepper, and eat immediately.


Panzanella (Italian Bread Salad with Tomatoes and Mozzarella)
Serves 1 as a main dish, 2 as a side

Ingredients:

- 1/2 loaf of good bread, such as sourdough or Italian-style, stale is fine, cut into large cubes
- 1/2 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved, or any good ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks, about 2 tomatoes
- 1/2 bunch of fresh basil, thinly sliced
- 1/4 red onion, cut into a very small dice
- Zest of half a lemon
- 1 ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into chunks the same size as the tomatoes
- Salt
- Pepper
- Olive oil
- Balsamic vinegar

1. Toast your bread: place bread on a small tray and toast in a toaster oven or the regular oven until just crisp, about 4 minutes. Set aside.
2. Toss tomatoes with a small amount of salt and pepper, and set aside for a few minutes to allow the tomatoes to "marinate" and give off some juice.
3. Combine bread, tomatoes, basil, red onion, and lemon zest in a bowl. Toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to taste: you want the salad to be nice and juicy, and will probably need around 4 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon vinegar.
4. Just before serving, arrange the mozzarella over the top of the salad.

Over the sea and far away

Well, hello there! It's been so long, I hardly recognize you! You look great!

So, it's been a while since I've written on this blog. It's not something I'm happy about, but I'm here today to make amends. And by "here," I mean Toulouse, France. That's right, folks: this Brooklyn girl has up and moved to Europe. I'll be spending 8 months in La France, teaching English to little kiddies in the public school system, hopefully having a few adventures, and surely eating very well. And I pledge to document that. I don't really know what made me lose interest in my blog all those many months ago, but I do know that once I made the decision to come to France, I was sure that my time abroad would provide me with some much-needed inspiration. Having decided that I would once again become a loyal blogger after my big move, it was hard to motivate myself to blog at all before I got here. But I'm here now, and blog I will!

I don't know if my cooking will be much different here in Toulouse, but I'm hoping that what I'll make will indeed reflect my new locale. And even if it doesn't, I intend to talk a little bit about what I notice about the food here, and how it differs from what we cook and eat in the United States.

There's one big thing to mention and although I'm sure it's no little known fact, I'll go on and tell you anyway. The food here is fresher and tastier than a lot of what's available back home. In general, French people (and possibly the greater European population) care a great deal about where their food comes from, and what it tastes like. As a result, the factory farms that produce the great, great majority of the meat and produce for sale in the U.S. haven't really caught on here. There's still a great tradition of market (not supermarket) shopping: fresh food, made here in France, that's sold by vendors in the street once or twice a week in smaller villages, and every day (in different locations) in larger cities like Toulouse. I don't know if it's a law or not, but at these markets, each and every item for sale lists its country (and often its region) of origin, and you'll quickly notice that with few exceptions, that country of origin is France. In the United States, the provenance of our food is hidden from us: when you go into a supermarket and buy, say, some apples, a bit of cheese, some crackers, it's likely that your haul has been flown in from 2 continents, maybe more. If you've eaten local food, you know that it tastes better. And so the food tastes better here.

I'll probably devote at least one post to street markets at a later date, but for right now I'll go down another path and talk about two very important food items here in France: bread and cheese. Again, not news: who doesn't think of bread and cheese (and wine) when they think of France? But the quality and accessibility of these two foods is truly remarkable. First of all, there are bakeries, or boulangeries, everywhere. Just all over the darn place. In my small residential neighborhood just outside the city center, there are 4 excellent boulangeries all within walking distance of my house. Each produces seven, eight, possibly more varieties of very good bread (plus five or six kinds of pastries), all baked fresh every single morning. A simple baguette, another cliché French image, is astoundingly good and astoundingly cheap, usually costing around 85 euro cents, or about a buck. (And baguettes really are all over the place. Walking in the street, you can't go long without seeing someone passing by with one or two long loaves tucked under their arm.) Another thing? The boulangeries are open 7 days a week. That's a big deal in a country where almost everything shuts down on Sundays, and people just hang out around the house, or around the café, drinking coffee and chatting. It shows you where French priorities are, though: they simply can't go 24 hours without their daily bread.



















The perfect match for a nice baguette is, of course, some well-made cheese. Again, there's no shortage of that here: France produces over 400 varieties of cheese, and each year the French people lament the loss of various kinds of traditional cheeses as they fall out of production or popularity. That's a subject, too, for another post; but suffice it to say that to my American eyes, there's still a lot of excellent cheese to be had here. Many of the most well-loved French cheeses, such as the iconic Camembert, can't even be tasted in their true form in the U.S., because they're traditionally made with raw milk. Because the U.S.D.A. has ruled raw-milk cheeses as being possibly more dangerous to consume than those made with pasteurized milk, America simply isn't allowed to import them. Raw milk, though, can develop many more nuances of flavor than pasteurized milk; the heat used to kill bacteria also kills taste. So there's a much fuller spectrum of goût, or flavor, to be experienced here than you could ever have access to in the United States. Another thing worth mentioning? High-quality, interesting-tasting cheese isn't expensive. I've been trying all sorts of cheeses nearly every day since I've gotten here, and they've rarely cost me more than 3 or 4 euro for a nice-sized hunk.



















Et voilà! Those are my opening words on the rich subject of French food. Stay tuned, 'cause there's more to come! Next up? A recipe for silky squash soup that was passed on to me personally via a hardworking French farmer named Emilie. A bientôt!

Birthday fun (with pork)

January 9th marked the 24th year in a row of my existence on this earth, and, also, marked the second year in a row that I chose to celebrate the occasion by feeding a huge, slow-roasted hunk of pork to my friends. For my potluck dinner/birthday party this year, I stuck with pork shoulder because it's a) ridiculously cheap, b) ridiculously easy to make, and c) feeds a ridiculously large number of people. Plus, it's a delicious cut of meat that fills your apartment (and stairwell, and foyer) with a heady, tantalizing, rich aroma during the six to seven hours it spends basting in its own porky juices in your oven. I don't keep many traditions, but I like the fact that one of the few that I observe involves consuming a large section of a pig once yearly.

So I had the pork shoulder, and I prepared it much the same way as the pernil that I made last year, marinating it overnight in a potent blend of chopped garlic and onion, chili powder, olive oil and vinegar. The next day, I slow-roasted it at 300° for, well, the entire day. But after that, all bets were off. I was serving pork shoulder again, but I wanted to mix up my preparation. I decided to convert the pernil into southern-style barbecued pulled pork. I mean, how can you go wrong with that? (Answer: you cannot.) So after six or seven hours when the pork shoulder emerged from my oven glistening with crispy fatty crackling and virtually melting off the bone, I pulled off great big hunks of meat, and, with almost no effort needed at all, shredded them up into long, soft strands. I piled these into a big heavy pot, then folded in a sweet, smokey, homemade BBQ sauce as well as (shhh) a healthy ladle of pork fat drippings that I had rescued from the bottom of the roasting tray. I then turned on the heat again, though this time on top of the stove, letting the pork cook into the sauce over a low heat for about an hour. The pork came out just as I had hoped: moist, tender, and full of sweet and slightly spicy flavor:








And let's not forget the cornbread. After all, what's a southern barbecue without cornbread?








If every year finds me surrounded by good friends and copious amounts of pork, the future looks like a bright one to me!

Southern-Style Barbecued Pulled Pork
Serves 12 - 15 (with leftovers)

Ingredients:

1 pork shoulder, 8 to 10 pounds
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 large onion, quartered
2 tbsp. fresh oregano leaves or 1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tbsp. sweet paprika
1 tsp. ancho or other mild chili powder
1 tbsp. salt
2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil as needed
1 tbsp. wine or cider vinegar
1 recipe Sweet and Smokey BBQ Sauce (see below)
Reserved pork drippings, as needed

1. Score meat’s skin with a sharp knife, making a cross-hatch pattern. Pulse garlic, onion, oregano, paprika, chili, salt and pepper together in a food processor, adding oil in a drizzle and scraping down sides as necessary, until mixture is pasty. (Alternatively, mash ingredients in a mortar and pestle.) Blend in the vinegar.
2. Rub mixture into pork, getting it into every nook and cranny. Cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge. Let marinate for 12-24 hours.
3. Heat oven to 300 degrees. Remove plastic wrap from pork and place in a roasting pan, filling the bottom with about a half inch of water. Roast pork for as long as you can, or six to seven hours (you cannot really overcook it), covering the skin with foil if it starts to burn. Remove foil before cooking time is over to allow skin to crisp well.
4. Let meat rest for 10 to 15 minutes, then pull off pork cracklings (serve these with lime, hot sauce or both. You won't be disappointed). Using your hands, tear all pork meat off bone in big chunks. When all meat is removed from the bone, shred it into a large, heavy pot, using either your hands or two forks--either way, this is a messy job.
5. Fold in the majority of the homemade BBQ sauce, as well as a good ladleful of pork juice and drippings reserved from the bottom of the roasting pan. Cook, covered, over low heat, or until pork is completely soft and tender and has absorbed a good deal of the sauce, about 1 hour. Taste and add more BBQ sauce, drippings, or seasoning as needed.


Sweet and Smokey BBQ Sauce
Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

2 cups ketchup
7 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp. water
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
12 dashes Tabasco sauce
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. sweet or smoked paprika
3/4 c. dark brown sugar or more, to taste
3 cloves garlic
2 chipotles en adobo plus 2 tbsp. adobo sauce
1 tsp. salt
Ground pepper to taste

1. Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan and bring to a simmer. Cook for 45 minutes or until sauce has thickened, stirring often to prevent burning and adding more water as necessary.
2. Puree until smooth with a stick blender. Taste for seasoning, adding more brown sugar or salt as necessary.


Skillet Cornbread
Adapted from epicurious.com
Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

1 c. all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. yellow cornmeal
1/4 c. sugar
1 c. milk
1 large egg
1 sticks (1/2 c.) unsalted butter

1. Preheat oven to 375°. Place several small pats of butter into a large cast iron skillet and place skillet in the oven. (If you do not have a cast iron skillet, butter a large, shallow glass baking dish and set it aside.)
2. Melt remaining butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.
3. In a large bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cornmeal and sugar.
4. In another bowl, whisk together melted butter, egg, and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. Batter will be thin.
5. Remove skillet from oven and pour in the batter. Place in middle of oven and bake until golden brown and cooked through, about 35 minutes. Remove skillet from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Food & Wine, Patrick & Willy

About a month ago (this post, like most of my posts recently, is long overdue--hey, it's summer!), Patrick and Willy came over for yet another one of our dinners. It so happened that at work at Food & Wine that day I picked up the July issue of the magazine, thumbed through it, and found about a million recipes I wanted to try. I settled, though, on one that sounded perfect for a hot, humid day: Za'atar Flatbreads with Cucumber-Yogurt Salad. Za'atar (or zatar), a Middle Eastern spice blend that usually contains crushed sumac, dried thyme, and sesame seeds, is one of my very favorite ingredients, but I had only ever eaten it in restaurants and had never before cooked with it. But, like they say, there's no time like the present--or, at this point, the recent past. I promptly dog-eared the recipe, and, on my lunch break, strode the few blocks over to the market in Grand Central and, more specifically, to the Penzey's Spices stall therein. I grabbed a bottle of zatar and was halfway to having dinner on the table.

Well, maybe not quite halfway. But the rest of the recipe was remarkably simple. When I got home from work, I stopped into Peppe's, one of the many respectable pizzerias in my neighborhood, and picked up a round of pizza dough for $3. At home, I pounded it out, oiled it, and slapped it on a very hot charcoal grill, spooning a mixture of zatar and olive oil on the side facing up. About 6 minutes later, we had hot, yeasty bread that was perfect for scooping up the verdant, cooling accompanying salad of cucumber, spinach and peas bound together with Greek-style yogurt:

































To round out the vegetarian menu, I prepared another dish courtesy of Food & Wine: a green bean, roasted red pepper and cherry tomato salad that I had sampled in the test kitchen earlier that week. Brightened up with fresh thyme and basil from my garden and topped with crunchy, nutty toasted almonds, the salad perfectly rounded out the evening's menu:

















I'd say everyone was pleased, particularly Willy:



















Za'atar Flatbreads with Cucumber-Yogurt Salad
Adapted from foodandwine.com
Serves 6

Ingredients:

All-purpose flour, for dusting
12 oz. prepared pizza dough, divided into 2 pieces
5 oz. baby spinach
1/2 cup frozen baby peas, thawed
1 cup peeled and finely diced cucumber
2 tbsp. chopped parsley
2 tbsp. chopped mint
2 tbsp. chopped dill
2 tsp. minced garlic
One 17-oz. container Greek-style plain whole-milk yogurt
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups shredded romaine lettuce
Kosher salt
1/2 cup za’atar spice mix

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 450° and place a pizza stone on the bottom rack to heat for 30 minutes. Alternatively, light a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill on high.
2. On a lightly floured work surface, flatten the pizza dough into two 9-inch rounds, about 1/4 inch thick; transfer to 2 well-floured pizza peels or inverted baking sheets. Let stand until slightly risen, 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, wilt the spinach with 1 tablespoon of water over high heat. Transfer to a colander and rinse with cold water. Squeeze out the liquid and chop the spinach; transfer to a bowl. Add the peas and mash lightly with a fork. Stir in the cucumber, parsley, mint, dill and garlic. Add the yogurt, lemon juice and 2 tbsp. olive oil and stir to combine. Fold in the romaine and season with salt.
4. In a bowl, combine the za’atar with the remaining oil and a generous pinch of salt.
5. Shake the pizza peel a few times to loosen the dough. Dust flour under any areas that stick. Spread the za’atar oil over the dough. Slide the rounds onto the hot stone and bake for 10 minutes, until golden and crisp. To grill the flatbreads, oil one side lightly and flip that side onto the hot grill. Spread the za'atar oil over the side facing up. Grill for about 6 to 8 minutes.
6. Transfer the breads to a work surface and cut into wedges. Serve with the cucumber yogurt.

Green Bean, Roasted Red Pepper and Cherry Tomato Salad with Toasted Almonds
Serves 4
My improvised version of a Food & Wine test kitchen recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 425°. Lightly coat 2 red bell peppers in oil and place in the oven on a baking pan to roast until they are soft and their skins are blackened, turning occasionally, about 14 - 16 minutes. During the last few minutes of cooking, place a large handful of whole, preferably blanched almonds on a small baking pan and toast in the oven. Remove peppers from oven and place in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a tight layer of plastic wrap and set aside to cool. Remove almonds from oven and set aside to cool.
2. Blanch one pound of trimmed green beans in a shallow pan of salted water until bright green and still crisp, about 4 - 6 minutes. Drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking. Place green beans in a large bowl.
3. When peppers are cool enough to handle, peel skin from them, open them up and remove their seeds. Slice peppers into strips and add them to the bowl with the green beans.
4. Cut one pint of cherry tomatoes into quarters or halve one pint of grape tomatoes. Add tomatoes to bowl.
5. Dress salad with a mixture of lemon juice, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, to taste. Add generous handfuls of chopped fresh herbs, such as thyme and basil, and mix well.
6. Coarsely chop the almonds and sprinkle them over the salad. Divide between four plates and serve.

A brief sojourn to the country

Last weekend I finally escaped New York City and headed upstate to my friend Gideon's country house. As I detailed in this post, Gideon and I like to cook together and we tend to create some really delicious things. The past weekend was no exception. We arrived late at night and got right to work the next morning, making oatmeal griddle cakes for breakfast. The recipe, which we found in the classic Joy of Cooking, is dead simple; you basically just add the usual pancake ingredients (flour, leavening, eggs) to cooked oatmeal, mix, and fry. A great use for leftover oatmeal, they made a filling, hearty breakfast that fortified us for our hike in the frigid woods:

















For dinner that night we roasted a chicken and some potatoes in exactly the same manner as I demonstrated in my recent post on roasted chicken. This one came out just as nicely:

































On the side we enjoyed a refreshing salad of green leaf lettuce, sectioned grapefruits, sliced red onions and avocados dressed with olive oil and rice wine vinegar. The lightness of the salad was a perfect counterpoint the warm, rich and salty chicken and potatoes:

















As good as that whole plate of food was, I think my favorite part of our meal was the little cooks' treat that we made at the beginning as we cleaned the chicken: chopped liver. Gideon happened to have some homemade chicken and matzoh ball soup that he had made with his grandmother, so as any good Jews would do we skimmed the top of its schmaltz (that's chicken fat, used for cooking, for you Goyim out there) and slow-cooked the one liver that came with the chicken, along with some chopped onions, in a small pan. We then seasoned it well with salt and pepper and whirred it up with some fresh parsley in a little electric chopper. Here it is spread on some olive bread and garnished with raw red onion:

















The chicken was a large one and took a while to roast in the oven. As it did, Gideon and I decided that we wanted to bake something, so we made challah bread. For a yeast bread, it's very simple to make and doesn't take too much time. Here's what it looked like after we braided it and let it rise for a second time:

















And here it is after being coated with an egg wash and baked:

















And here it is after being converted to French toast the next morning:

















Think we were done eating by that point? Well, not quite. Late on Sunday afternoon we threw together this chicken salad with parsley, tomatoes, red onion, olives, olive oil and vinegar and made to-go sandwiches to bring in the car:

















Needless to say, after polishing those off I was quite full.

Oatmeal Griddle Cakes
Serves 2-3
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

1. Sift 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Re-sift with 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt.
2. Stir together 1 1/2 c. cooked oatmeal, 1/2 c. milk, and 2 tbsp. melted butter. Add one egg, beaten, and stir to combine.
3. Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined. Fry the cakes on a heated buttered griddle or cast-iron pan, about 3-4 minutes per side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

Challah Bread
Makes 1 loaf
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

1. In a small bowl, mix 1 packet of active dry yeast with 1/4 c. warm water and 1 1/2 tbsp. sugar. It should froth up; if it does not, discard and try again with different yeast.
2. Measure out 3/4 c. warm water and add a pinch of saffron to it.
3. Sift 3 c. flour with 1 1/2 tsp. salt into a large bowl. Create a well in the center and add 2 eggs, lightly beaten, 2 tbsp. vegetable oil, the saffron water, and the yeast mixture. Using a wooden spoon, stir until combined. The dough will be very sticky.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead, with floured hands, until it becomes smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place the dough in a large bowl that has been oiled and turn it over so that both sides are coated. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
5. Punch the dough down and knead it again, briefly, on the floured surface. Create three long, ropey strands of dough and place them on a greased and floured baking sheet. Braid the strands together and tuck the ends underneath. Allow the loaf to rise again, about 1/2 to 1 hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 400°. Make an egg wash of one egg yolk beaten with a little water. Brush it all over the loaf and bake it in the 400° oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350° and bake for another 15 minutes. The loaf is done when it is well browned and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Allow it to cool before you slice it.

And lo, there was bread, and it was good

Back in May I reported that one of my culinary goals for the summer was to learn how to bake good bread. I nourished a sourdough starter weekly, but for the most part it just sat in my fridge unused (with the notable exception of its inclusion in these sourdough pancakes). But the good thing about goals is that we usually get around to them, even if it takes a while. And so over the weekend I finally made a loaf of sourdough, and I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out.

The reason I finally got around to baking bread was that I bought a bread stone, which I had been meaning to do for a long time. I had originally intended to just buy one or two saltillo tiles, commonly used for flooring, because Alton Brown of the Food Network show Good Eats said that that was the thing to do. But I don't live near any big home goods stores, and when I checked with my local hardware stores they didn't carry the tiles. So I just bit the bullet and purchased a bread stone at Williams Sonoma--for $35. I think that price is a little exorbitant, but luckily I had a long-unused gift card from my brother lying around (thanks, Eric!) I can't stress how much of a difference baking with the stone makes. I am not a skilled baker, and this bread turned out phenomenally well. That's because the stone preheats in the oven and gets scorching hot, drawing out all the moisture in the bread and producing a crackly crust that comes close to approximating the texture of bakery loaves.

So I'll walk you through the process. It's a long one--you have to have a deep reserve of patience to be a baker because you can't speed things along. What you do first is mix your starter with water, a little sweetener, and the flour to form a dough. You knead it--an infinitely satisfying process--then let it rest a while. Then, you knead it again, adding the salt. That's it; you have your dough. All it has to do now is rise. This step actually proved to be a minor problem for me. You see, although my starter is by all accounts active and alive, it wasn't sufficiently raising the dough. When I noticed this, I quickly took action, mixing up 1/2 tsp. of instant yeast with some water and flour to form a paste, and then kneading it into the dough. Problem solved--the dough quickly started to behave as it should. Purists might frown upon this step, but I think it was necessary. The dough rises at room temperature for 4-6 hours, and is then punched down and allowed to rise in the fridge for a second period of 8-12 hours (as I said, patience is key!) Here's what my dough looked like when it came out of the fridge the morning after its second rise:

After the cold dough comes to room temperature, about 2-3 hours, you shape the loaves. I only made half a recipe, which yielded one large loaf. What you do is flatten the dough into a large rectangle, fold each long side into the middle, then fold that completely in half to create tension in the dough, which will cause a nice springiness as the bread bakes in the oven. Then you let the loaf rest, yet again, for 1 hour. At this point you should place your bread stone on your oven's middle rack and start preheating the oven to 500°. You should also place a heavy pan full of water in the bottom of the oven to generate steam. Here's my loaf after 1 hour of proofing, almost ready for the oven:

Next I slashed the bread lengthwise, and then it was time to bake. I quickly slid the loaf from a cornmeal-dusted baking sheet directly onto the stone, splashed the floor and walls of the oven with water for more steam, and closed the door. Within the first five minutes of baking, I splashed water twice more (you can use a spray bottle, too). After that, I lowered the oven temperature to 450° and left the oven door closed for 20 minutes. Then I opened it up and rotated the bread, closed it, and baked the bread for 15 more minutes. The bread is done when the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. I removed the bread to a cooling rack and waited (more!) until the bread was completely cool before cutting into it--you must do this, or else you'll mess up the bread's texture by releasing all the steam still in the bread. And here's my gloriously crusty brown loaf (can you tell I'm a little bit proud?):

And here's a peek inside at the bread's crumb. As a novice baker, I was very pleased with the bread's texture: it was chewy but not too heavy, with a wonderfully crisp crust. But I think that ideally the crumb should have larger air bubbles; maybe my technique will improve with time:

I loved the taste of the bread, too. What the sourdough starter adds is an intense, highly developed sour tang; I've made regular yeast breads a few times before and they just don't have the depth of flavor. Even though I had to boost my starter with a little yeast to get it to rise, it was really instrumental in creating a finished product that tasted (dare I say it?) almost as good as something you buy at a bakery. The best way to enjoy this bread? Spread thickly with good butter, and even sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt, if you dare. The creamy richness of the butter offsets the sourness of the bread in a most satisfying way:

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French Country Sourdough White Bread
Adapted from The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen by Peter Berley
Yields 1 two-pound loaf

* Note: This recipe will take 2 days from start to finish. It's most convenient to do steps 1-6 on the first day, and steps 6-16 on the second.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup white sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups lukewarm (70-80°) non-chlorinated water
1 1/2 tsp. sweetener (honey, sugar or molasses)
1/2 tsp. instant yeast
3 cups unbleached white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp. salt
Cornmeal

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the starter, water, sweetener, and yeast. Stir until starter is dissolved.
2. Add the flours and mix to form a ragged mass of dough. Cover the bowl and allow dough to rest for 5 minutes.
3. Scoop the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured surface. Wash out the bowl and thoroughly wash and dry your hands. Knead dough for 10 minutes. Invert the bowl over the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes.
4. Uncover the dough, add the salt, and knead for 5-10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Avoid adding extra flour as you knead.
5. Lightly grease the inside of the bowl. Add the dough and turn it over several times until it is well-coated. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set aside at room temperature until dough has nearly tripled in volume, 4-6 hours.
6. Gently press on the dough to deflate it. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8-12 hours.
7. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Remove the plastic wrap and sprinkle with a little flour. The dough will be very cold and stiff. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set aside for 2-3 hours, until the internal temperature of the dough is about 68°.
8. Turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured surface. Press the dough into a 1-inch-thick rectangle. Fold one long end in to the middle of the rectangle; repeat with the other long end. Then completely fold in half to create surface tension over the dough. Pinch the seam to seal underneath.
9. Place the dough seam side down on a floured cloth. Sift a light veil of flour over the loaf. Cover with a clean cloth and let sit for 1 hour.
10. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 500° F (at least 45 minutes before the dough is ready to bake). Set a heavy pan filled with water on the floor of the oven. Set a baking stone or inverted baking sheet on the middle rack. Dust a peel or baking sheet with cornmeal.
11. Press the dough with a fingertip. If the dough springs back quickly, it requires more time. If it springs back slowly or holds the indentation, it is ready to bake.
12. Gently transfer the loaf onto the peel, seam side down. Slash the dough length-wise, making an incision 1/2-inch deep and stopping 1 inch from the ends.
13. Open the oven and slide the dough onto the baking stone or baking sheet. Heavily mist the floor, sides, and ceiling of the oven with water, or splash some with your hands. Shut the oven door. Mist 2 more times during the first 5 minutes, taking care not to mist the loaf itself.
14. Turn the oven temperature down to 450° F. Do not open the oven door for 20 minutes.
15. Open the oven and rotate loaf for even browning. Continue to bake for 15-20 more minutes. The bread is done when the internal temperature reaches 210°, or when a loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
16. Cool the loaf on a wire rack for no less than 1 hour before slicing.

Back in action

Greetings from Brooklyn, New York. I'm home for the summer after graduating from college yesterday. Allow me to brag for a second as I share that Barack Obama was my class's commencement speaker. Score!

Anyways, with higher education over and done with, I turn my attention to food (as if that's not what I was thinking about all along). I don't know how much time I'll have to cook on a daily basis this summer, so I'm going to take on a few more long-term culinary endeavors that I can focus on when I have the time. One of them is learning how to bake bread. As I noted in this post, that's not something I have much experience with, but I want to get better. At the inspiring bread-baking workshop I talk about in that same post, we were each given ball jars of sourdough starter to take home with us, and I've been diligently "feeding" mine (read: adding more flour and water) twice a week since then. Unfortunately, I left that jar of goodness in my fridge when I moved out of my apartment in Connecticut yesterday. WHOOPS. Way to go.

But that brings us to this post. I'm making another batch of starter, hopefully. And what exactly is that, you ask? Well, it's basically just a mix of flour and water that you leave out for a few days so it can become a natural bread leavener. What happens is the mixture absorbs the natural yeast in the air and gets bubbly and fermented. The starter I had at school seemed promising. It was full of air and smelled like wine, which is what you want to happen, as the starter adds that distinctive sour tang to bread you bake with it. Unfortunately, I never got to use that starter, and now it's gone (you can make lots of things with sourdough starter besides bread, like sourdough pancakes, which I plan to try).

So I mixed myself up a batch of starter just now: one cup of all-purpose flour mixed with one cup of warm water, in a wide-mouth glass jar. I used organic flour because I figured it might have more flavor, and bottled water because it's more pure:

















And that's it. You leave the mixture, uncovered, at room temperature for a few days (usually 4-6), feeding it 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour every day, until it gets the way it should be, described above. Then you refrigerate it and can use it anytime. You keep it alive by feeding it once or twice a week. Dead simple, right? I hope so. My recent yogurt failures have shaken my do-it-yourself confidence to the core (as an aside, I finally purchased a candy thermometer, and I hope to try making yogurt again very soon). Anyway, here's what I have now:

















So yeah, it looks pretty much like exactly what it is: goopy flour. But it's latent with promise! If all goes according to plan (cross your fingers for me), I'll be showing you pictures of bubbly, yeasty, full-on starter in a few days, and then, hopefully, the beautiful bread it will help produce.

I made bread!

I've established at this point that I'm more of a cook than I am a baker. So it was really exciting for me last Saturday when I learned how to bake really good, French-style sourdough bread. There are two girls at Wesleyan, Tressa and Ellie, who are into organic and local food, and they a ran an instructional workshop on Saturday on homemade bread, butter and yogurt. It was so fun!

The girls ran us through the basics of making and maintaining sourdough starter and kneading, proofing, and baking bread. We also tasted two yogurts they had made the night before: raw milk (runny, rich and grassy-tasting) and pasteurized milk (firmer and somewhat bland in flavor). We also made butter, which (with the aid of modern technology) is crazy easy: all you do is whip cream with a Cuisinart or electric mixer until the butter separates from the buttermilk. Then you knead the butter in your hands to squeeze out the last of the buttermilk and wash it off in cool water. Add salt to taste and wrap in wax paper and you're done!

After gorging ourselves on warm, fresh bread with butter and yogurt with maple syrup and honey, we got sent home with parting gifts: sourdough starter, butter and buttermilk, raw milk in glass ball jars for making yogurt, and bread dough to bake.

But here comes the depressing part: I hate to admit it, but since Saturday I've tried on two--two--occasions to make yogurt, and failed. And it seemed so easy. All you have to do is heat the milk to 180°, let it cool to 110°, then add it to a few tablespoons of plain commercial yogurt that you've placed in a warmed ball jar, mix and let stand undisturbed in a warm place for 8-12 hours. After that, you should magically have yogurt. But all I've had both times was stringy, gooey warm milk that smelled like yogurt. Yuck! I suspect that my milk temperatures have been off, since I've been eyeballing it (I don't have a candy thermometer, but I think I need to get one). Either that, or the warm place I've been keeping the yogurt-to-be (a preheated oven that I then turned off) hasn't maintained temperature overnight. Who knows? I'm almost afraid to share this in case it goes awry again, but I have another batch in the oven right now. I still didn't use a thermometer, and if it doesn't work I'll buy one this weekend and try yet again. Oh well. Making yogurt (or failing to make yogurt, as the case may be) is really fun--it feels less like cooking and more like a second grade science experiment (baking soda/vinegar volcanoes, anyone?).

So as not to end this post on a down note, I'll display my workshop success below. Behold, the most basic and most satisfying of foods: freshly-baked bread. Mine is the long baguette in the front to the right.

The time was ripe

On Sunday afternoons, my tendencies toward procrastination really reach their peak: Monday (and its associated deadlines) looms near, and yet all I seem to want to do is laze around and watch cooking shows, or, now that it's spring, sit in the sun with a book, intending to read but really just people-watching. Another thing that I like to do on Sunday afternoons is bake. Baking can take a fair amount of time, since you need to be quite precise in what you're doing, and so rather adequately satisfies the requirement of keeping me from doing my work. It's also a fairly low-energy activity, which is important after a long week of intellectually and physically taxing commitments (or after a too-late Saturday night).

My baking repetoire is somewhat limited. As I've mentioned on the blog before, I don't really follow recipes, preferring to wing it when I'm cooking (for better or for worse). But with baking, you really do have to adhere somewhat strictly to a recipe, since your delicious, fragrant cookies/pies/muffins/etc. are the result of a series of complex chemical reactions. Tip the balance of the recipe even slightly out of proportion and you're liable to end up with something that's leaden where it's supposed to be fluffy, or raw where it's supposed to be cooked. In cooking, on the other hand, you can usually take creative license with your ingredients and methods to little detrimental effect. It's kind of liberating.

That being said, there's definitely a place, in my kitchen, for the comforting confines of baking. I find the process to be relaxing: the steps of reading, measuring, and mixing are soothingly methodical, and then, of course, there's the wonderful aroma you get emanating from the oven and filling your house, making you feel right at home. Although I will occasionally branch out and make an elaborate cake or tart for a dinner party, when I'm baking for myself I find that I most often make muffins and quick breads. They're simple and don't take too much time to prepare, and, unlike yeasted breads, their results are reliably predictable. They're also the perfect breakfast food, so when I bake such things I always freeze a few individual portions that I can just grab on my way out the door in the morning.

Yesterday afternoon I made banana bread. It's something I make frequently, because there are often spoiled bananas lying around my house, and I can't stand to see them go to waste. So whenever I see a rotten banana in the kitchen, I throw it into the freezer to save it for banana bread. That way, when I'm ready to bake, I just thaw the bananas I need and I'm good to go. I've made this recipe so many times now that I feel I've perfected it. Although some people are purists, adding only walnuts if that, I go the opposite route, including not just nuts but golden raisins, dark chocolate, and spices, as well. Who says less is more?

Banana Bread
Makes 1 loaf

1. Preheat the oven to 350° .
2. In a mixing bowl, combine 1/2 cup vegetable oil with 3/4 cup sugar.
3. Add 3 mashed bananas and 2 large eggs; mix well.
4. Into the bowl, sift 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp. ground cloves. Stir until batter is just combined. Optional: add 1 cup chopped toasted walnuts, 1/2 cup golden raisins, and 2 oz. chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips.
5. Pour batter into a greased and floured loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, using a toothpick to check for doneness. Take the bread out as soon as you think it's ready--you want it to stay very moist.