Dear Mark Bittman…

…I’m sorry I ever doubted.

Lovely bread

I know Mark Bittman has been exceedingly popular in the cooking world since the publication of How to Cook Everything, and while I actually own both that book and the vegetarian version, I’ve never found him or the books to indispensable the way some friends do. Some of the recipes seems too simple to really “count” – I know how to bake potatoes! – and it’s a little overwhelming for browsing, which is my preferred method of choosing dinners for the next week. I prefer Veganomicon for most main dishes and Smitten Kitchen for baked goods. But this weekend it was rainy and gray and I was celebrating a new oven! Fresh bread was on the menu. My best  “baking” cookbook had a recipe that requires 6 cups of flour, multiple batches of dough, and takes 5+ hours just to rise. It was Sunday, and we didn’t even get out of bed until 10:30. There was no way any bread would get going before 2, so I turned to Bittman. The french bread recipe (in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, although I imagine it’s the same recipe in both books, only rises for two hours.

I actually did the “medium” length version, which meant two two hour rises instead of two one hour rises. I think for this loaf it was especially helpful, as I went for a big boule shape rather than baguettes. But it was still amazingly simple, and this was definitely the best loaf of french bread I’ve ever made. It came out of the oven with a nice chewy crust, cooked all the way through, not as quite as light as what you might get at the grocery store but evenly baked and absolutely gorgeous. We slathered it with lots of butter and ate it warm with a very simple leek and potato soup. Heaven.

The easy recipe, KitchenAid mixer style, goes like this:

Combine:

1  3/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. yeast
1 c. water

in the bowl of your stand mixer (Bittman prefers his food processor, but I have a huge crush on my stand mixer and will use it any chance I get). Using the paddle attachment, mix on a low speed until the ingredients come together in a relatively smooth ball. You will probably need to add more flour (I added an additional cup, approximately, which was less than the recipe called for, but even adding only that much I ended up needing a bit more water too). You may want to switch to your dough hook once the dough begins to come together. It’s ready to be kneaded when it’s smooth but tacky and doesn’t stick to your hands or the side of the bowl. Remove dough from the bowl and kneaded on a <em>lightly</em> floured surface for one minute. Return the dough to the bowl (if it’s fairly clean–otherwise you might want to get a new one), cover with plastic wrap or a clean plastic bag, and let rise for at least one hour. If you’re going to let it rise for more than three or so, put it in the fridge, but be sure to let it come back to room temperature before you shape it.

After the first rise, gentle remove your dough from the bowl and shape as desired. To make the boule, I just worked around the edge, tucking the seams under and focusing on creating surface tension on the top of the loaf. Cover with a clean dry dishtowel (the boule rises best seam-side up in a dishtowel-lined bowl. Sift a bit of flour on to the dishtowel before you plop the bread in there, and then sift a bit more on top of the dough before covering it). Let rise for at least an hour.

At least half an hour before you’re ready to bake the bread, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. When you’re read to put the bread in, turn the heat down to 375, turn the bread out on to your baking surface. You can use a cookie sheet, if you want, or a baking stone, which is what I used. Slash the top of the loaf to let the steam out while it bakes, and bake accordingly (I’m not sure of the time for baguettes–the boule took about 40 minutes).

Let it cool!

Be sure to let your bread cool sufficiently before you eat it–it’s hard, but otherwise your first slice will be mushy and the rest of the loaf will dry out more quickly. Of course, if you’re at all like us you’ll finish the little loaf off in two days so it won’t matter how quickly it dries out.

P.S. I’m experimenting with the manual settings on my camera–sorry if the photos are weird.

Vegan banana muffins

Oh, what’s that, I’m not dead after all? I’m just a lazy, lazy blogger? True. I haven’t been doing much new food cooking lately: lots of tabbouleh, pasta with pesto, and other late summer goodies, but now we’re truly headed into fall and joy of joys, I have A BRAND NEW WORKING OVEN, so hopefully I’ll get back to posting recipes at least every once in a while.

The first thing I did with the new oven was pull out a few of the bananas we’d consigned to the freezer as they passed their best eating stages (and I like my bananas on the green side, so this happens relatively often) to make banana muffins.

I’m not vegan, people, and it’s not like I try to cook vegan. I’m actively opposed to the idea of baking vegan, because in my mind, vegan baked goods are all carob chips (disgusting) and peanut butter (which, as we’ve seen before, I just don’t care for in baked goods). But I have this fantastic, fantastic vegan cookbook, and I can’t stop using it, even when it goes against my deepest beliefs about the importance of butter in…pretty much everything. It is so good–I’ve a couple of flops from it, that’s true, but one of the recipes has become a bi-monthly household staple and there are several other really, really good ones. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, whether you’re vegan or not. Even my meat-loving husband cooks from it! Seriously, go buy it. Right now. You can do it here.

Veganomicon

Anyway, while my bananas were thawing (read, turning into a pile of disgusting mush-have to start peeling them BEFORE freezing) on the counter, I flipped through good ol’ Veganomicon and found this recipe, and it is so good.

2-3 very ripe bananas
1/4 c. applesauce
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1/2 sugar
2 tbsp. molasses
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. all purpose white flour *
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In true quick bread style, just combine the wet ingredients first, then add the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Pour into greased or lined muffin tins and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the pan and let cool for a bit before you give your husband the ok. I got 13 muffins out of the recipe–you could do 12 if you have a 3×4 pan (I have 2 2×4’s). The recipe is originally for banana bread, so you can also bake the batter in a 9×5 loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes. They’ll be lightly browned (hard to see if you use the whole wheat flour) and a cake tester will come out clean when they’re done.

*Veganomicon uses 2 c. all purpose, no whole wheat, but I found that subsituting half doesn’t weigh down the muffins too much. And it makes them even healthier!

New food: fresh figs

One of the joys/trials of moving to a new city has been the new food shopping experiences. I’m not kidding when I say we’ve been to four different groceries stores, for a total of more than ten visits, at least, in the two weeks that we’ve been here. In addition to the giant Whole Foods, the local co-op, the fancy-schmancy upmarket grocery store, and the cheap chain place, on Saturday morning we stopped by the downtown farmer’s market where I bought a pint of fresh figs.

And then I brought them home and looked and them for a while and realized that I had NO idea what to do with fresh figs. My mom suggested pizza, but since our oven was out of commission (fixed today!), pizza was a no go, as was a baked fig recipe I turned up. Instead I decided to make use of another farmer’s market find, some fresh chevre, by making this utterly simple recipe from Epicurious.com.

I love cooking with new foods, but lack of experience can make decision making hard! We bought the figs on Saturday; I puzzled over them Sunday morning and made the figs with goat cheese for part of dinner on Sunday night; by then a number of the figs had soft brown spots and a few had early signs of mold growth when I cut into them. Since I don’t know figs, it was hard to decide what to keep and what to throw out (we didn’t eat the mold, obviously). I ended up throwing about half of them away, sadly, and we were left with about ten figs, just a couple less than the recipe called for.

The recipe itself was pretty yummy, although I was left with a quarter of a cup or more peppered honey–the amount could easily be halved. The honey mixed nicely with the chevre and the flavors were delicate enough that we could still taste the figs too. I’d make this again, but next time I’ll be checking the figs for soft spots BEFORE I buy them!

Hot Weather Food

We’re back! Almost a month has passed since our last post, a month in which one of us got married, went on fantastic Belizean honeymoon, and moved all the way from little ol’ Spokane to Austin, TX, and the other one threw an awesome, karaoke-filled bachelorette party, was the greatest maid of honor ever and let a pair of newlyweds crash on her futon. So we’ve been a little busy.

But now Mark and I are basically settled in to our new apartment in Austin, and I’m grappling with what to fix for dinner when it’s 100 degrees outside. I made this beautiful salad from Smitten Kitchen for a potluck (with yellow, red, and orange cherry tomatoes!), and while it was yummy, standing in the kitchen long enough to blanch the green beans made me sweaty enough for my third shower of the day. So cooking, per say, is pretty much out until Austin cools down a bit.

Last night we had a simple green salad with my current favorite and SO easy vinaigrette, grapes from Mark’s sister’s friend’s grandma’s garden, and baguette rounds smeared with brie. And it was delicious! But as much as I love bread and cheese, I know I’ll be longing for variety soon. Can you recommend any no-cook or almost no-cook dishes to get us to October?

Perfect vinaigrette for 2

2 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. red wine vinegar
Dollop of your favorite mustard (something mellow, and preferably not Western Family brand, I’ve learned)
Fresh ground pepper
Dash of salt

Whisk together in the bottom of your salad bowl and toss to coat. I like best with just mixed spring greens and good bread. And cheese, of course….

Bite of Seattle

This past weekend was the Bite of Seattle which is “The Northwest’s Premier Food Festival” according to…its own website. I’ve only lived in Seattle through two Bites but I was out of town last year, so this year I was really excited to check it out. A friend and I headed down early on Sunday and ended up eating plenty! After doing a once around to make sure we knew all our options, I started with a lamb steak sandwich topped with mint chutney. It was a interesting and delicious take on Indian food. My eating companion got four different kinds of ravioli top with drizzles of marinara, pesto, and a creamy white sauce. I can only tell you they looked great. He devoured them before I got to try a bite. Next, we found a barbecue place and got a plate of ribs and coleslaw. Again, wonderful. We moved on to sweet stuff next and both got Thai iced coffees. I stayed the sweet route and finished off with fudge while my friend got gyros to close out the day. All in all, it was a very successful excursion.

I was quite pleased with the Bite, but I’ve also been to a great food festival in Chicago and a similar event in Sister Kitchen’s home town of Spokane. Taste of Chicago had an amazing system where you bought tickets before you entered and you could get different sized “tastes” for varying numbers of tickets. It made it really easy to try lots of different booths. ToC also had an incredible selection of all types of food. Seattle’s version of that was to have small portions of a couple of items at each booth available for two dollars. Not quite as effective because it was just as easy to buy a normal portion for a few dollars more, but it still gives you the option to try lots of different booths. I hate to say it, but Spokane’s food festival is seriously lacking in comparison to the other two. First of all, its called Pig Out in the Park. Pig Out instead of Taste or Bite. Hmm… Also, your only option at Pig Out is to get a huge plate of food. No sample sizes so you can try lots of restaurants. Not even reasonable sized portions. Just pigging out. Ah, Spokane. They could take a few pointers from Seattle or Chicago. Of course, any event that encourages people to get together and try food they’ve never had is okay by me!

Creme Fraiche Sorbet

We’re not big appliance people at our house, partially, I’m sure, because we haven’t gotten married yet and our kitchen is mostly stocked with the odds and ends of our parents’ old kitchens, things they held on to when they upgraded or things happily gave to us as an excuse to upgrade. My Cuisinart food processor is 30+ years old (still works, too!) I did buy myself a hand-mixer to make whipped cream and got a submersible blender for soups at Christmas last year (it also has a mini food processor attachment that makes a mean pesto). One of the things we don’t have, in addition to a waffle maker, a regular blender, and a panini press, is an ice cream maker. Let me tell you, though, if no one gives us one as a wedding gift, I will buy us one, because I’ll never let another summer pass without making creme fraiche sorbet about a zillion times (I’ll likely become quite round in the process, but that’s another story). Seriously, it is that good. Adam over at The Amateur Gourmet recently had a post about food bloggers and hyperbole–you can’t call something “the best” too often, or your superlatives will lose all emphasis! But this sorbet, people, is right up near the list, and it has the add benefit of being super-easy once you get your sweaty little hands on an ice cream maker.

The recipe came from the April Bon Appetit, which I borrowed from my mom for the Double-Giner Sour Cream Bundt Cake recipe (which was also pretty yummy). I was flipping through it last week when I happened on this recipe, and remembering the leftover creme fraiche in the fridge (from tarte flambee), decided it was perfect. And perfect it is: just a few ingredients, whisked together and poured into the ice cream maker, yields, in about 30 minutes (depending on your ice cream maker) a complex and grown-up tasting dessert. The corn syrup and sugar set off the sourness of the creme fraiche and the lemon juice brightens the whole thing up. Bon Appetit serves it with a strawberry rhubarb tart, I served it with huckleberry buckle, but I think it would be even better with the freshest, loveliest peaches you can find, or any kind of summer fruit for that matter. No need for any crust or crumble to get in the way.

So without further ado, here’s the recipe:

2 c. chilled creme fraiche*
3/4 c. light corn syrup
1/4 c. fresh lemon juice
1/4 c. sugar
pinch of salt

Whisk together and prepare according to your ice cream maker’s instructions! That’s it. Then serve it and watch your guests ooh and ahh over the BEST SORBET EVER.

*if you can’t find it, the internet has lots of “make your own” recipes, but I haven’t tried any so I can’t vouch for one.

Reason #563 that I don’t want to have kids anytime soon:

Sometimes it’s Saturday night and you’re not hungry until 9:30 and when you do cook, you want to have Morningstar Farms breakfast sausage and toast for “dinner.” I’m pretty sure people frown on feeding kids a meal like that….past their bedtime…after you haven’t fed them all day.

Yum, love my Morningstar Farms!

Adventures in Eating: Marrow Bones

Bone marrow is something I come across every once and a while and every time I do, I think I should give it a shot. The most recent time I encountered it was in a fantastic food novel that both Emily and I have recently read called Julie and Julia: My year of Cooking Dangerously. It’s a hilarious recollection of Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Her description of eating bone marrow, “It’s like eating life”, was enough to make me hunt down a resturant in Seattle that had it on the menu. Fortunately, my roomate and cousin had been to a place not too far away from our apartment that serves it, Quinn’s. Sister Kitchens Momma is visiting Seattle this weekend and she is game for anything which makes her the perfect dining companion. I figure you should try everything once, right?

Quinn’s is a very cool resturant on Capitol Hill with a fun upscale pub atmosphere and an exciting menu without being snobby, not always an easy thing to do. There aren’t many places you can get Beef Tartare topped with a duck egg and still feel appropriately dressed in jeans. We started with escargot wrapped with proscuitto on a rosemary skewer. Incredible. Rosemary skewers were one of the best ideas anyone has ever had. Next we had the frites with fontina and a demi glaze. Again, amazing.

 

Escargot and Frites

 

Next came an amazing pot of mussels prepared with chorizo and finally, the reason for our evening out. The marrow was served in the bones with a marmalade on top and a thinly sliced bagette on the side. Honestly, it was a little intimidating to have the bone sitting on the plate like that. When our waitress (who was amazing by the way) brought it to us, we got looks from the table next to us. They may have been looks of disbelief and disgust, but I like to think they were eyeing us with respect for our adventurous choices. The texture was much more gelatinous than I expected. It was good though. Buttery, rich, but that’s about all there was to it. Then our waitress came back to check on us and see how we were liking everything. She realized we hadn’t tried the marmalade yet and insisted we spread that over all the marrow so we got some in each bite. It made all the difference in the world. It was good before we tried the marmalade. It was heavenly after. The light tartness of the marmalade sat so well against how heavy the marrow was. Somehow it tasted even richer. I understand what Julie meant when she said it was like eating life. I soon forgot that I was eating something that, as she said, “I had no right to see.”  

 

Marrow Bones with Citrus Jelly

Really, the whole experience was amazing and I may have a new favorite resturant. Quinn’s has an amazing wine and beer list. My mom had an appropriately named cocktail called Tia Borracha, or drunken auntie. I had a spectacular medium bodied ale that I can’t remember the name of. They also have 57 whiskeys available, which I know will make a certain friend of mine very happy to find out. I think I’ll be going back soon to try the Crispy Fried Marrow. I included a link to Quinn’s below for those of you who are interested.

quinnspubseattle.com

Tarte Flambe

When my hubby-to-be Mark was 16, he spent 6 months in France. Part of the time he was there he lived in a restaurant (lucky duck!) outside of Strasbourg, near the German-French border, so when our friend decided to host a French-themed potluck dinner, I knew Mark would have some great suggestions.  He picked tarte flambe (he even found the recipes online!) and I cobbled together something that I hoped was close to the original. Traditionally, it’s a thin, crispy crust topped with creme fraiche, onions, and bacon, sort of a creamy crunchy pizza. Yum!

I skipped the bacon (I’m not THAT bad of a vegetarian, although I did eat all but the actual chucks of beef in my friend’s boeuf bourguignon), which made the topping significantly less salty than it ought to have been.  Unfortunately I didn’t think to correct this until I ate it, oops, so the flavor wasn’t as rich as it could have been, but it was decently tasty. I sauteed the onion in a combo of butter and bacon grease (told you I was a bad vegetarian) but next time I’ll use all bacon grease to up the saltiness.

I used this recipe for the crust, and its definitely a keeper! It was a little fluffy for a traditional tarte flambe, but for a regular pizza it would work just fine, and since it doesn’t have to rise, it’s very quick. I’m already planning to use it later this week in a variation on Deb’s zucchini pizza.

Tarte Flambe (adapted from Robbie’s Recipe Collection and Simmer till Done)

For topping:

1 medium sweet or red onion, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. butter or bacon grease
1 c. creme fraiche
1/2 tsp. salt
a couple grinds of fresh pepper
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Chopped chives for color

For crust:

2 1/2 tsp. dry active yeast
1/4 tsp. sugar
3/4 hot water
1 3/4 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Begin by preparing the crust. Combine yeast, sugar, and hot water. Let rest for 8 minutes. In a separate bowl, combine flour and salt. Add yeast mixture and mix well, then turn out on to a well-floured surface and knead for 2 minutes. Stretch the crust as thin as possible in to a jelly roll pan. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Prepare the topping: mix the creme fraiche, salt, pepper, nutmeg in a medium bowl. Set aside. Melt the bacon grease (or butter, if you don’t have bacon grease on hand) in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about 5-6 minutes, being carefully not to burn.  Add 3/4 of the onion to the creme fraiche and mix well. Turn up the heat under the remaining onion (about 1/3 of a cup) until it begins to carmelize around the edges. Taste, and add salt if necessary. Spread this mixture over the pizza crust, then sprinkle the remaining onions on top.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until it begins to brown. Once you’ve pulled it out, top with the chives and let cool for a few minutes before slicing into squares. Serve warm (can be re-heated under the broiler)

Note: if you want to do it traditional-style, add all the onion to the creme fraiche before spreading it on to the crust. Omit the chives, and instead chop some bacon and saute until crispy, then top the tarte with that.

Want

One of the perks of my library job (in fact, pretty much THE perk) is that I get to see every single book that comes into the library system. That means the novels, everything from James Patterson to Harry Potter, and the non-fiction. I’ve always been a big reader, but it’s usually the non-fiction that catches my eye, because, let’s be honest, it has the best pictures (I’m looking at you, every book published by Potter Craft). And, of course, the cookbooks are the best of the best.

Today I had this little gem:

I’m in love. I didn’t get to flip through it much (I do get paid to actually WORK at the library, sadly, not just read the cookbooks), but I did see a beautiful sweet cherry upside-down cake and a glossary of all the different kinds of fruit desserts, in case you’re like me and can never keep a buckle, a crumble, and a brown-betty straight. So check it out from YOUR public library, or better yet, buy one for the baker in your life–you might get a pandowdie out of the deal!