Toasted oatmeal

"Things that are supposed to be good for you should keep the secret of their good intentions strictly to themselves!" - Bert Greene's grandmother

Oh, oatmeal, you are both nutritious and delicious.

I tucked "Geene on Greens and Grains", by Bert Greene, into my bookshelf when I started collecting cookbooks in earnest several years ago. I'm not sure that it's still in print. The copyright is 1984-1988. The recipe collection is interesting and diverse, from bran muffins to onion marmalade to carrot rice pudding, the man clearly had a love of food. Even if you never try a recipe, the book is worth its salt for the food writing. The reader is treated to a conversational and comprehensive overview of over 30 veggies/roots/fruits and some 20 grains, along with humorous personal stories and recipes of his own or from friends, each featuring the food in question. He writes in a way that makes you think, "yeah, I should try that."

Almost as an aside in the Oats section, he tells us that "some kitchen savants believe that all oats taste best if they are lightly toasted prior to serious cookery, whether that be for a morning meal or for a midnight snack of oatmeal pancakes."

Right you are, Kitchen Savants. Toasting the oatmeal brings out a delicious nutty quality in the grain. It only takes a few extra minutes, but the taste is a world of difference. I go through phases of making this, during one of which my upstairs neighbor stopped me to ask, "what is it that you make every morning?" Then, "It smells so good!"

Aside from toasting, the other secret to comment-worthy oatmeal is ingredient quality. After extensive testing, it's clear that oatmeal tastes best when prepared with organic oats. These are easily found at natural foods markets (Peoples or Whole Foods). The organic rolled oats are a bit thicker than the Quaker variety, and it makes for a better (chewier) bowl of oatmeal. For that very reason, at least pass on the quick oats if you can't find bulk organic oats.


Oatmeal for one:

1/3 heaping cup rolled oats
1 cup water, cool
Pinch salt (1/8 tsp kosher salt was my measured pinch, and I like it salty)
Fruit of your choice. I like raisins, cranberries, apricots (chopped), freeze-dried strawberries when I can find them. Fresh fruit, of course, also delicious- just add it after the oatmeal is done cooking.

1. Toast Oats
Put the oats in a saucepan over high heat. Let them sit there for about 20-30 seconds while the pan gets hot, then shake them. Let it sit again, this time only 10 seconds and shake again. Do this for 2 minutes. They will become fragrant after 30 seconds (strangely reminiscent of popcorn), you need to shake them more frequently once you can smell them toasting to prevent burning. Burned oats are bad oats, but a few browned or blackish flecks are normal. You'll know if you really burn them.

2. Add Water
Have the water on standby. After a few minutes of toasting, pour in the water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add salt and dried fruit, then reduce the heat to low, stirring often. Cook for about 5 minutes.

3. Let Stand
If you have the patience, turn off the heat and let it sit for about 2 minutes for the oatmeal to thicken up a bit. If you are a perfectionist, cover the pot while it stands. If you're lazy, it will be just as good uncovered.

Some people are against salt in their oatmeal. Most like sugar. Some like butter and cream. Some, nuts. As always, do as you please, but I assure you that if you want to swim in the pool of oatmeal, this is a good platform to jump in from.
The recipe can easily be doubled.

Cranberry almond crostata

About a year and a half ago I had the good fortune to take a trip to France and Italy. My last few days were spent in Italy with my friend, Valentina, in the company of her generous and welcoming family and friends. Our last afternoon in town, Valentina's mother had everyone over for an amazing feast. She spent the whole day preparing a multi-course meal like I had never experienced before- I still remember waking up to the smell of braising meat. Amidst the many pleasures of the day was a crostata with raspberry jam. Both Valentina and her mother have mastered this Italian pastry. A crust like a cookie and a jam filling, it dances in the mouth with elegance. As good for breakfast as it is for dessert.

Hidden in the back of the November issue of Gourmet magazine this year was this recipe for a cranberry almond crostata. It would be easy to overlook, socked away in the back as it was. But on seeing it, my mind wandered back to that summer by the Italian beach, when I was listening to stories told my entertaining old men who speak as much English as I speak Italian. The combined forces of their inflections and gesticulations and my wine consumption held us engaged in conversation. I knew I'd bake this dessert.

My go-to excuses for baking were tapped out, what with Thanksgiving over, no parties on the horizon, and the lab recently fed with pumpkin bread (I like to leave the window of opportunity open for them to believe that some of my free time might be spent reading scientific journal articles). But I love everything this recipe has to offer. Cranberries. Almonds. Butter. Jam. What's not to love? Staring into my fridge one night, bathed in cool light as a heap of veggies stared back at me, the "my cranberries are going to go bad soon!" excuse leaped at me. Relieved, I set about toasting almonds.

The result? A pleasant tart-and-sweet filling ensconced in a buttery, slightly nutty crust. I used half apricot jam, half orange marmalade, and would use all apricot next time, and I'd be sure to roll the crust as thin as possible such that it doesn't overwhelm the delicious insides. The crostata shelf life is relatively short, so be ready with a reason if you go to the trouble of making it. But with a brief oven-revival before serving, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream you might stretch its opportunity to please a few extra days. It's too fancy to be every-day comfortable, and not quite as cookie-like as Valentina's family crostata. It has its place and time, and was a good experiment, but apparently my work is not done yet.

Adapted from November 2007 Gourmet

1. The Almond-and Butter Crust

Toast and cool 1/4 lb almonds, then pulse them in a blender with 1/4 c. flour.

Beat together 3/4 c. softened butter and 1/2 c. brown sugar with a mixer for about 3 mins. Beat an egg in a little cup and scoop out 1 T of the egg, the dump the remainder of the egg into the butter-sugar mix. Return that reserved 1T egg to the cup and refrigerate it, covered, for later.

Next, add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/8 tsp almond extract, and mix it well. Finally, add the zest of 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp salt, the almond mixture, and 1 3/4c. flour. Mix it on low speed or by hand with a big spoon until it just forms a dough. Phew... divide the dough evenly in two, shape into disks with a diameter the length of your hand, wrap in plastic and refrigerate until firm (at least 30 min, according the the experts).

2. The Sweet-and-Tart Filling

Start with 10 oz of fresh, washed, and picked-over cranberries and bring them to a boil with 1/4 c. orange juice, 1/2 c. apricot jam (or marmalade), 1/2 c. brown sugar and 1/4 tsp salt in a medium pot, uncovered. Simmer and stir until the cranberries plump up and some of them burst with a complete loss of integrity and the whole mixture starts to thicken up. This should take 5-7 min. Once you're satisfied, cool the filling to lukewarm by putting it in the fridge for a bit.

3. The Assembly

Preheat the oven to 375F with a foil-liked baking sheet on the middle rack.

Butter your springform pan.

Roll out one round of dough and try to cut it into even strips, 1/3 - 1/2 inch wide. Freeze the strips to firm them up for easier handling while you work on the bottom crust.

Roll out the other half between 2 sheets of parchment or between sheets of saran wrap. Transfer it to the pan and arrange it such that it covers the bottom evenly and comes up about 1/2" in the pan.

Pour your filling into the dough shell and arrange about 5 strips, spaced 1" apart, across the top, then arrange more strips diagonally across the first set. Brush the lattice top with the egg you saved from the crust preparation and sprinkle with 1T granulated sugar.

Bake on the hot baking sheet "until pastry is golden and filling is bubbling, 50-60 min." Keep an eye on it and cover loosely with foil if the crostata is browning too quickly.

Cool completely in pan on a rack, 1.5-2 hr, to let the juices thicken, then serve.
I mentioned the ice cream, right?

A happy burden

Having a loaf of my mom's pumpkin bread in the house reminds me of being a kid. Then, I would carefully cut a few slices and pack them in my lunch bag to get me through the day. Now I fortify myself in the morning with a slice of pumpkin bread and a cup of strong coffee. In short, pumpkin bread can go a long way towards making a better day.

I want the pumpkin bread I buy out in the world to be like this, gently spiced and very moist. When it's not, I pick at it, disappointed, wishing I'd opted for something with crumbly stuff on top. Maybe you have a similar recipe? It's my end-all-be-all, it's homemade, and it hits that magic spot hovering between stomach and brain.

I’ve been making this since high school. High school… a time when I never checked to see if I had all the ingredients called for in the recipe until I actually needed to add them to the mixing bowl. Which means that once I had all my dry ingredients in the well, 6 eggs cracked in there, and then found I had no oil. I left it on the counter and went on an hour-long field trip to the store. And it still worked.

I got the recipe from my mom, who, if I recall correctly, got it from one of the cookbooks in the kitchen that has all the good desserts in it- maybe an old Betty Crocker book, with its retro-orange cover, that she got back in the ‘70s. There were pencil markings in the margin that were her notes to modify the bread for the 28-oz cans of pumpkin we buy.

Here it is, in all its classic glory, along with my peanut-gallery comments:

Preheat oven to 350F and grease 3 medium loaf tins (I use 1-lb loaf tins)

Sprinkle brown sugar in the bottom of each tin (I use about 1 tsp per tin, like my mom, I bang the tin against the heel of one hand to coat the sugar in the grease so that it balls up a bit. It doesn’t have to be perfectly dispersed on the bottom)

Mix together dry ingredients and fashion a well in the center:
(NOTE: USE A REALLY BIG MIXING BOWL)

5 1/4 c. sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/4 c. light brown sugar
2 1/4 c. white sugar
3 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground (or freshly grated, if you’ve got it) nutmeg

Add wet ingredients to the center of the well:
6 eggs
1 1/2 c. salad oil (canola/vegetable oil)
1 c. water
3 c. mashed pumpkin

Use your mixer to mix everything together, scraping down the sides with a spatula to ensure that all the dry ingredients get mixed in. Beat for approximately 3 min, then pour into prepared loaf tins (the batter should fill the pan about 3/4 of the way) and bake about 1 hr, 15 min.

Cool 5 min in tins (if you release them too soon, they won’t set well and you risk breaking the top from the bottom when you take them out.) I like it sliced thick and served refrigerator-cold. It’s great with peanut butter spread on top, or between two slices.

Roasted Roots, Meet Pumpkin

I don’t remember how I wound up subscribing to Gourmet magazine. I think it was a combination of factors: one, my friend Christine, who is a great cook, said that it is her favorite. Two, they tempted me with a $1 per issue subscription, or something ridiculously cheap.

It’s one thing to subscribe to Gourmet, browse it, find some inspiration, and eventually discard it. It's another to make the food in it. Who am I to be put off by “start to finish time: 7 hr”? With tantalizing phrases such as, “A stew-stuffed pumpkin is sheer drama”, and “Why stop at cookies when you can transform your kitchen into a full-scale holiday sweetshop?”, my voice of reason flies out the window and I find myself with enough dirty dishes to warrant hiring a day laborer, baking crostata at 10 pm on a Monday night. This is not normal.

For Thanksgiving this year, we tackled their “Pumpkin Stuffed with Vegetable Stew” and “Roasted-Vegetable and Wine Sauce”. I won’t lie. It took a while to make. But, in an unusual turn of events, the recipe looks more complicated than it actually is. The hardest part was rounding up the ingredients.

Armed with a long shopping list, I went to my trusty organic market to stand in front of the carrots-and-celery section for a good 5 minutes, looking for parsnip. This is one of those stores that doesn’t bother to place its food labels in any relation to the actual food it refers to, which is fine, unless you’ve never bought a parsnip before. Realizing divine intervention was not forthcoming, I finally asked someone where the parsnips are. They pointed me to the case I’d just stared at in vain. I decided it best to re-phrase my question. “Which ones are parsnips, and while you’re at it, can you point out the leeks, too?”

Whenever I am confronted with a new-to-me vegetable in its raw form, I’m amazed that someone, a long time ago, thought to try eating said food item. A basket of parsnips, celery root, leeks, and chanterelle mushrooms later, I wonder if this isn’t some sort of test.

I roasted the vegetables for the sauce the night before and then started the 2.5-hour long reduction while I went out for a run. Nothing like leaving a full stockpot boiling unattended on the stove to make me run faster. Everything came together well in the end, and was delicious. I’d make it again. Roasting the vegetables and using fresh thyme give the stew good depth of flavor and a very seasonal quality. It’s a great vegetarian main course for Thanksgiving, being festive and savory, clearly not just another side dish. The time and energy put into it ensure that it will likely remain a special occasion meal, though this meal could easily inspire a simpler version one cold and lazy weekend this winter.

Speaking of simpler versions, I’ve got a lot of leftover sauce I should freeze. The sauce is the slowest part, and it would be easy to roast up a random assortment of veggies to stuff into a squash or something in a few weeks, once we’ve recovered from this meal. One problem with making meals from magazines: my food never looks quite like theirs. I think I need to check their picture halfway through to get it right.

The recipes (and their photos) are at the links above. I think, by the way, that for the "sheer drama" the Gourmet food writers so eloquently describe their pumpkin having, you might need to find an 8-9 lb pumpkin, rather than 2 4-lb pumpkins.

Smaller is always less dramatic.

Comfort me with meat and tomatoes

I went to Siesel’s today. I love going to good butcher shops. So many great cuts of meat, plus my curiosity is always piqued by relatively exotic (to me) offerings like pigs’ feet, duck (love it, never made it), and rabbit. I lingered in front of the “exotics” for a while, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to make such a purchase without a plan, so I deferred to the more familiar (and relatively very boring) ground sirlon.

Ground beef in hand, I went home, poked around the pantry, and settled on spaghetti with meat sauce. Wow… take a boring meat, make a boring meal? Au contraire! Like a baby you won’t give a name to before you see, so with this pasta. It’s different every time. This one, I’m calling “Capsaicino”.

Pasta sauce…it’s not hard to make a decent sauce at home in a relatively short period of time. I’ve picked up two tricks, I’m sure there are more. One, use olive oil in your sauce. Two, save some of the cooking liquid from the pasta. When everything is ready, don’t just pile pasta on plates and ladle sauce on top. It needs to be brought together. Instead, mix your cooked pasta, the sauce, plus about 1/4-1/2 c. pasta water (start with a little, add more as needed), and about 3T olive oil together in a suitably-sized pot, cook together for about 5 min over medium heat. You can add cheese at this point, too. That pasta water helps the sauce stick to the pasta, and the oil makes it taste good.

There are infinite variations on this recipe, play with it to make it your own. Here’s the basics to get your creative juices flowing. A note about portion size: this feeds me, with enough leftover for about 2 more meals. I like my pasta saucy- it’s more about the meat and tomatoes than the pasta the way I make it. Depending on your own preferences, modify accordingly. It can easily be doubled, but you’ll need a stockpot for the sauce rather than a 12” frying pan. The other benefit about this one is that you don’t have to do a lot of mise en place- it’s very forgiving, you can prep ingredients as you go.

First, set a pot of water to boil. While it heats, prepare the sauce.

Throw the ground beef (1/2 lb) into a large frying pan over medium high heat to brown. While it cooks, chop an onion. Stir the beef occasionally, adding salt and pepper to taste, plus a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes.

When the beef is browned and no longer pink, transfer it to a plate lined with paper towels. Wipe the grease out of the frying pan with a paper towel. If there’s lots of stuck-on bits, you can deglaze the pan with 1T stock or water, boiling it for a minute or so. Add 1 T olive oil and the onion (I had about 1c onion, you don’t have to measure). Cook the onions until they are soft and lightly browned. While the onion cooks, slice cremini mushrooms- I had about 1.5 c, sliced. Add those to the pan once the onions are browned. Cook until they become very soft and release their juices. You know you’re ready to proceed when it looks like you’ve got a lot less mushroom than you added.

Add the contents of one 28-oz can of chopped tomatoes with their juice to the pan, 1 T tomato paste, a drizzle of olive oil, 1 tsp kosher salt, lots of ground black pepper, and more red pepper flakes- about 1/4-1/2 tsp or more if you love your spice. I had fresh rosemary, so I tore up about 2 tsp of that, added that to the sauce along with about 1/2 tsp dried oregano. Feel free to experiment with herbs in the rosemary, oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram group. You can use them combination, just try to keep it about 1/2 tsp dry or 1 T. fresh for this amount of sauce. If you’ve got dry (not oil-packed) sundried tomatoes, you can use them in this dish, too. Slice them thin and add them with the tomatoes.

Let that simmer over low heat to meld the flavors. In the meantime, salt your boiling water and add dried pasta (I used about 1/2 lb).

When the pasta is cooked, drain it, reserving about 1 c. of the pasta water, and add the pasta to the sauce. Finish as described above. This makes a good, spicy meat sauce. It also works well using half ground beef, half sausage- remove it from its casing and cook with the beef. If you don’t like spice, skip the red pepper, or use a light hand there.

The real secret about this dish? I like it with a glass of milk. I once told this to Valentina. She indicated this would not win over any Italian, and advised me to keep such information to myself.

Pumpkin Risotto

I love all things pumpkin.

I don't, however, buy pumpkins in the raw much. But there was a nice heavy sugar pumpkin at People's, looking bright orange and delicious. So I bought it. While I had planned on soup for this pumpkin, I have to admit I was a bit souped-out from the squash a few days ago. Inspired by a recent episode of KCRW's Good Food that loosely discussed the idea of pumpkin risotto, I decided to forge a path in that direction. As it was starting to rain and I had a good parking spot, I based it on my kitchen's current ingredients.

1 pumpkin
1/2 onion, chopped
4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled, 1 whole, 1 chopped
vegetable stock (about 5 c)
2 c. arborio rice
spinach
chipotle chile flakes (not necessary)
a few gratings of fresh nutmeg
olive oil, butter
cheese, if you like it: Parmesan or goat cheese would both be good.

I halved the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds and the strings (save seeds), and put the pumpkin, with the exposed insides down, into a casserole dish with about 1" water in the bottom. Put that in the oven at about 425F to roast.

Meanwhile, I tossed the seeds with a bit of melted butter and some salt, spread them on a baking sheet and added them to the oven to toast, about 30 min. Stir them occasionally and try not to make the same mistake I did, keep an eye or a keen nose on them so that they don't over-roast.

Let the pumpkin go for a while... about 35-45 min, until the pumpkin is cooked (this is a good recipe for a rainy day). Peel the skin off with your fingers or cut it off with a knife, then cut the pumpkin into roughly 1" cubes. Put half of it on a baking sheet (I used the one that had the seeds on it) and toss with salt and olive oil, return to oven to caramelize the pumpkin a bit, get it nice and roasty. Take it out when it starts to brown slightly.

Mash the other half up for use in the risotto.

Risotto: Put about 2 T olive oil in the bottom of a large pot. Heat the oil, add the onions and shallots. When onions start to soften, add the garlic. You'll later remove the whole garlic clove, it gives good flavor without overpowering.

After about another 3 min- before the garlic browns- add the rice and stir to coat with oil. Add the mashed pumpkin and coat the rice with the pumpkin. Let that cook for a few minutes, it might start to brown a bit on the bottom.

Add the stock, 1 c. at a time, stirring frequently. Don't add the next cup until the previous one is well-absorbed. The stirring is important b/c it releases starches from the rice, making your risotto feel creamy in your mouth.

Repeat until your rice is al dente- like cooked pasta, it shouldn't be mushy or soggy. The very inside will offer the slightest resistance to your biting into it. When it's about done, finish it with about 1T butter (just stir it in) and the cheese if you like it, salt and pepper to taste, and grate in the faintest hint of nutmeg. Finally, add several handfuls of spinach to the pot and cover it. The spinach will steam this way, then you can fold it into the risotto.

Dish it up, adding a few cubes of roasted pumpkin and top with the toasted pumpkin seeds.

No bread flour in Beijing?

Since I won't mail bread to China, SYZ wants to know...
"...Maybe you can make up for it by posting advice for a breadmaker stymied by the lack of bread flour in Beijing. I've tried substitutes, but bread is not the same. Is there some unpronouncable chemical compound I can add to compensate for whatever makes bread flour bread flour?"


Would it make you feel better to see a picture of my very first loaf of bread ever baked (right) next to my second loaf of bread (left)? Each weighed about a pound. I hope your problem doesn't look like mine did...




If you already know bread chemistry, excuse the background and skip down. One important difference between types of flour is the amount of protein they contain. Your bread flour may have, for example 12% protein, while your all-purpose only 10% protein. The proteins (glutenin and gliadin) are what form strands of gluten when combined with water and kneaded, giving the dough elasticity and extensibility, which both help it hold its shape and allow you to manipulate it. Maybe this is the root of your problem?

Short of going to a local bakery and convincing them to sell you 5 kg flour, try this...

1. Add protein to the flour you have. In the States they sell vital wheat gluten in the stores. I don't know what that is in Chinese. Try adding 1 or 2 tsp to your recipe, if you can find it.

2. Add extra folds into the dough as it rises. This will strengthen the gluten that's there. You can rise your dough for longer, folding about every hr- so if your normal rise time is 1 hr, rise for a total of 2 or 3 hr, folding every hour. To fold dough: spread into a rectangleish shape on a floured surface. Fold it like a business letter- in thirds on itself. Then fold it in thirds the other way so that you have a nice little cube of dough. Put that back into the bowl, seam-side down. Folding also de-gasses the dough (so you don't have to punch it down, if you normally do that). After that first fold, always turn it out from the bowl upside-down on your work surface. This keeps the top and bottom in their established orientations. You might add a bit less yeast since if you'll be lengthening the rise time. Extra folds can make a big difference.

3. Add less water. Higher protein content doughs absorb more water. The more protein you have, the more water will be absorbed. You shouldn't have to change it by much, maybe only 1 or 2 Tbs, depending on how much bread you make at once.

The Cookie Fairy

Sylvia Leighton is the cookie fairy.

I'd met her once before, and yesterday I had the pleasure of her company over brunch with extended family. She bakes cookies every day (!) to give to people as part of her own personal ministry to to "encourage smiles on faces and joy in hearts."

From talking with her, I understand that she has quite an arsenal of cookie recipes. They're delicious, she is both a skilled baker, and a skilled smile-maker. Sylvia really put her finger on the force driving a lot of home bakers: the ability to give a gift of unadulterated pleasure.

Chocolate Bobka.

Chocolate Bobka... so good, it's no wonder it was the topic of discussion in one Seinfeld episode:

JERRY: That was our Bobka.

ELAINE: You can't beat a Bobka.

JERRY: We should have had that Bobka.

ELAINE: They're going to be heroes.

JERRY: What are we going to do now. If we can't get the Bobka the whole thing's useless.

This recipe for bobka is so good, you will never suffer the fate of Jerry and Elaine, who had their chocolate bobka scooped up by the woman in line in front of them.

It's not that hard to make, especially once you become adept at working with yeast. My initial inspiration was from the December 2006 gourmet magazine, I've futzed with the recipe. This works great every time, and it's definitely worth the effort. It's also pretty easy to fit bread making into a busy schedule. I tinker with the recipe and timing a lot, but here's one way to get started:

The night before, make a sponge by mixing together 200 g flour, 1/4 tsp yeast, 3/4 tsp salt, 250g cold milk. Let that sit on your counter overnight, covered.

The next morning, whisk 1/2 c. sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla into the sponge. In a separate bowl, mix together 300 g flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp yeast. Knead that into the wet sponge mixture. Let the dough rest for about 5 min, then knead in about 1 stick butter. Half should be kneaded in so that the dough is smooth. The other half, break up with your fingers and knead it in such that it is well-distributed as small pieces, but there should still be small pockets of butter.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover, let rise 1 hr. After 1 hr, fold dough, return to bowl. Let rise about 1-1.5 hr more, until it's about doubled in size.

Divide the dough in half and roll it out into a rectangle, about 10x18". Spread 1.5T softened butter over the dough, leaving a 1.5" border on all sides. Distribute 4 oz good-quality chopped bittersweet chocolate over the butter. Sprinkle 2T sugar over this. Make an egg wash by mixing an egg white with about 1T water, use a pastry brush to brush some of the egg wash on the 1.5" border.

Roll the dough up like an 18" cigar. Bring the ends together so that you have a circle with an 18" circumference. Seal the ends by overlapping them and banging them with your fist. Twist the circle into a figure 8, then give it one more twist and put it into a greased 1-lb loaf tin.

At this point, you have a few options: You can let it rise until the dough comes up to the top of the bread pan, then bake it. You can put it in the fridge, covered w/ plastic wrap, overnight... then bring to RT for 2-3 hr and bake it. OR, my favorite, put it into the fridge, covered with plastic wrap until you go to bed. Then take it out and put it in a box outside, or in a shed if you've got one (the nights here are about 45-50F). Let it rise slowly at this cooler temp. In the morning, pop it straight into the preheated oven.

Before you bake it: for a glossy finish to the bread, save the yolk from that egg wash and mix it with 1T milk. Brush that gently over the surface right before you put it into the oven.

Bake it at 350F for 35-40 min, or until it's 190F inside the bread. If it browns too early, put foil over the top and finish baking. Let the loaves rest in their tins for at least 30 min before removing them to fully cool.

You can always make extra and share...



My friend, Valentina, and I had fun time photographing the bread. The top 2 pics are her works of art- thanks Vale! You captured the bread's jauntiness.

Blisters on my...eyeball?

It's November in coastal San Diego, which means that yesterday I had to close several of the windows in my apartment to stay warm at night. This new chill in the air puts me in the mood for soups... with a butternut squash languishing in the metal hanging fruit basket of the kitchen and a fancy organic pumpkin in the wings, I decided to experiment with the less expensive gourd. It's been a while since I cooked up a butternut squash soup, but as my grandmother used to say, "you can turn anything into soup!" This is also what I told the curious man in line ahead of me at the market when I was purchasing bananas, an onion, and carrots.

So I got home and, in a burst of productivity, first turned half the chickpeas in my fridge into hummus (which, in my opinion, called for far too much tahini, so I've barely touched it, but I'm hoping to pawn it off on someone.)

Hummus made, but no satisfying appetizer at hand, I set out in earnest to create dinner with renewed interest. I halved the squash lengthwise and put it face-down in the oven to bake at 400F, in a pyrex dish with some water in the bottom. With that going, I chopped half an onion, sauteed that in olive oil in a stockpot until it became translucent. Meanwhile, I peeled and chopped 2 large carrots, about 1 tsp fresh ginger, and 3 large cloves of garlic. Threw all that into the stockpot and waited for everything to soften.

The hummus called for toasting 1 tsp cumin and grinding it. Well, that cumin smelled so good, I couldn't resist toasting 2 tsp and adding 1 to the soup. This got thrown in there with the carrot mixture. My advice: go easy on the cumin. When things were looking good and mushy, and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan a bit, I peeled a banana and broke it up into chunks, adding it to the mix.

Banana? Subtle sweetness, almost creamy, a "secret ingredient," if you will. Not as obvious as an apple, which is often added to pumpkin soup to sweeten it. Apples require peelers and knives.

Things were smelling good and the squash was mostly cooked. I added several cups of water- about 4- to the soup and scraped the bottom of the pot to loosen all the tasty bits. Brought that to a boil while I cubed the flesh of the squash, cutting it from its peel. The squash went into the pot, along with about 1/2 c. of the chickpea cooking liquid (why not?)- this is certainly not necessary, but I didn't have any stock in the freezer, so I improvised for flavor.

Salt (2 tsp), pepper (lots), 1 tsp curry powder, and 1/2 tsp crushed chipotle chile pepper (1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes would work well, too- adding more heat rather than smokiness). Boiled everything until I was sure that the squash was fully cooked.

Took the pot off the stove and used my immersion blender to mix everything up pretty well- all the squash got nicely blended, I left some of the carrots as chunks in there.

Returned the pot to the stove, adjusted the liquid, and added 1 c cooked chickpeas. Let that get well heated through. At which point, the soup turned on me. Once the boiling point is reached with a thick gruel-like substance, don't forget that it doesn't come to a gentle, rolling boil. Rather, it comes to an explosive boil. So as I was lovingly leaning over my soup, smelling it, a huge bubble erupted from the bottom and splattered very hot soup directly into my left eyeball.

I flew, cursing, from the room, abandoning the soup to visually examine this searing pain. Someday, my kitchen will have tall countertops, an eyewash station, and a safety shower. I contemplated flushing my eye with water or rubbing an ice cube on it, but the soup splatters all over the wall distracted me.

Safety first.

I cautiously added more salt, toasted up some pepitas, poured the soup in a bowl and sprinkled the seeds on top. By the time all that was done, the injury seemed to be mostly resolved.

Pepitas, incidentally, make the soup.

The Joy of Cooking (for one)

The risk-reward profile is not optimal for the solo home cook. No wonder fast food has become so popular. Sometimes even cooking for two can be tricky, but I dare say not as potentially unsatisfying as cooking for yourself.

Let's review the plight of the single home cook.

Scenario 1: Work all day. Come home. Assess mess of yesterday's dishes (who's going to complain?) Look in cabinet. Snack on Doritos while pondering the options. Forgo thinking (you already did that today) and meal preparation in favor of box of macaroni and cheese. Add reheated string beans or peas to make it look healthier.

Scenario 2: Find delicious looking recipe. Studiously copy down all ingredients. Go to the store and buy everything. You are now $27 poorer, and think you should have gone out to eat. Spend 1 hr cooking everything by yourself. Congratulate yourself on a job well done during your 10 min of eating. Call your mom to tell her how amazing you are, reassure her you are not starving. Spend 20 min doing dishes. Eat the same thing over and over again for the rest of the week, figuring the meal gets cheaper every time you do so. Next week: throw out all those leftover perishables from last week's recipe. Repeat.

There are other problems. Food is very social. Eating alone is not. The word "leftover" is often used to describe dinner. Not a word that sends most people running to the table. You always have to be the one that chops the onions. Entire meals can be eaten standing up and no one is around to think it uncouth. Tip of the iceburg.

The goal: One shopping list. Several meals. No repeats. Enough crossover in ingredients that you don't drop $80-100 on groceries for yourself for one week. A few nights of quick and delicious meals.

The execution: I prudently saved half of that nice pork chop from Sunday's dinner, plus some of the cooked apple slices. Reheated all that in the microwave for 2 min (put some water on the plate and cover with saran wrap). While they were reheating, I assembled my salad:

Fresh washed organic baby spinach
Sliced avocado (salted)
Crumbled blue cheese
Chickpeas that I cooked over the weekend and have hanging out in my fridge
Olive oil and vinegar

Sprinkle kosher salt (about 1/4-1/2 tsp) and copious amounts of freshly ground pepper over this mix in a large bowl and toss everything together with hands or forks once you've drizzled your oil and vinegar on top. There's nothing magical about kosher salt- it isn't more pure than regular table salt, it doesn't taste better. But the crystals are bigger, so it has a different texture in your mouth. And it won't completely dissolve in the oil-vinegar that you put on top. Salads need salt!

When the microwave stops, add the warm apples to your salad and dump it all out onto a plate. Slice the pork and arrange on top of the salad, along with a sprinkling of dried cranberries and a few roasted, salted cashews.

You'll feel special as you surf the web, watch TV, and skim a magazine while you eat your dinner, all the while talking to yourself about what a good meal you're having...

Brioche Bonanza

Yes, yes... I know. Brioche is meant to be shaped into little knots and put into cute high-walled fluted tins. Well, I don't have special little tins that exist for that sole purpose. It's not in the cards for me right now. AND, living on my own as I do, I can't possibly eat 12 or 24 little brioche rolls before they go bad. My elegant solution to this problem is the 1-lb loaf tins, in which my bread rises nicely, develops a buttery thin crust, and toasts from the freezer beautifully, if I do say so myself.

Being my breakfast toast, I like to change it up with mix-ins (I am a product of the frozen-yogurt for 4 years through college generation, after all.) My favorite combos so far: apricot-almond and golden raisin-walnut. Today I tried maple-cherry-pecan and I also did one in which I spread cooked apples over dough that had been rolled out, sprinkled them with cinnamon-sugar, and rolled it all up into the center.

My basic brioche dough starts with...
400 g flour
1/2 tsp yeast
1.5 tsp salt
500 g milk (cold)

Mix that all together before you go to bed, leave that on the counter overnight. Also, leave out a stick of butter and 5 eggs. Eggs are fine on the countertop overnight, and you want them about RT when you mix them in.

The next morning your starter should look bubbly and airy. If it doesn't, set it somewhere warm, like on your stovetop if you've got a pilot light to warm it up a bit more. Or bring it into the bathroom with you while you shower. Friends and colleagues need not know you shower with dough in the room...

When you and the dough are both ready, wisk in eggs and 3.5T sugar. Knead in 475g flour, 2 tsp yeast, and 1/2 tsp salt. Wait a few min for the flour to absorb the liquid and the gluten to start to form. Then knead in 6-8T butter, depending on how rich you want your dough and how the dough is feeling.

Finally, when you've got all that worked in, add your mix-ins: 150g nuts and 200 g dried fruit is where I typically start. It may or may not all make it in there.

Return dough to bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise. After about an hour, fold your dough to increase its strength.

Let it rise for another hour or so, depending on the temperature, then shape it into 2 loaves and put them into buttered 1-lb loaf tins. Cover those with plastic wrap and let rise until the dough comes up to the top of the loaf tin.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350. If you've got a baking stone, throw that into the bottom of the oven to help it maintain a constant temperature.

Bake bread for 35-40 min, until a thermometer inserted reads 190F or until it's golden brown on the top and "hollow-sounding when thumped on bottom," a description I've read various places and never quite grasped myself. If your bread isn't done yet but it's brown on top, you can turn the oven off and put it in the warm oven, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Resist the temptation to bust into those loaves too soon! Let the bread cool, it is still cooking. If you cut it while it's still warm, you won't be able to fully appreciate it's flavor, and the remaining bread will have a hardened, slightly fallen end where you cut.

Sear my chop

I came upon pork later in my post-college dinner preparation years. I shied away from it because every pork chop I ever ate as a child was cooked for a long time at very high heat, ensuring that neither I nor the lurking trichinellosis could or would survive on it. Mom was deathly afraid of poisoning her family... I think her foe, the pork chop, made its appearances to give us a change of pace from chicken. To her credit, I didn't know what food poisoning was until my first year after college. Though let the record show pork was not involved, rather my lack of concern for prompt refrigeration.

But to my dinner. I was having an "oh, crap, the nice pork chop I ambitiously bought from Sisel's last week needs to be cooked" moment. So I took a gander at the contents of my pantry and fridge and assembled apples, ginger, rice, and chard...

I started the Trader Joe's "Brown Rice Medley" with 2 c. water, 1 c. rice plus 1/2 tsp "better than bullion" chx flavored paste. Peeled and sliced the apples thick, threw the raw pork chop and my apple slices into the skillet with a bit of melted butter. Everything seemed off to a good start. But it's been a while since I tackled the pork chop. At least a year.


When the pork chop was browned on the bottom, I stirred the apples around a bit and flipped the pork, let that brown on the bottom, then popped the whole thing (with lid) into a 350F oven for about 10-15 min while the rice cooked.

While that cooked, I chopped the chard and thinly sliced about 1 tsp fresh, peeled ginger.
I took the skillet out of the oven and removed the pork chop, turned on a burner and cooked the chard with the ginger while the apples were still in there over medium heat in the liquid that had been released from the apples. The chard cooks fast, stir it a few times and sprinkle in about 1/4-1/2 tsp salt as it cooks.

Easy, moist, good flavor combo. That ginger brings the chard, apples, and pork together well.

Egg on egg goodness

One of (my particular) life's simple pleasures is a fried egg sandwich. It's ready in a flash, it's warm, it's a great vehicle for fried cheese, it's egg-on-egg goodness.

I discovered fried cheese in the form of raclette as a young girl. My family was living in Switzerland at the time, and we would take ski trips in France every winter. After a full day of skiing, we often went and ate cheese and ice cream for dinner (those were the days). Fondue or Raclette. While most of us are familiar with fondue, raclette hasn't gained the same sort of name recognition here in the Staes, and I'm not sure why. It's delicious. Raclette cheese, cooked on a hot griddle until it forms a crust. Served with boiled potatoes, pickles, and onions.

I came upon frying the cheese in this sandwich last year when some of the cheese I melted on top of the egg sneaked off the side and fried on the hot pan. It brought the sandwich to a whole new level.

My preference is 2 egg whites, no yolk. The yolk is delicious, but it's just too rich for me with the cheese. My preference is also for mayo on both slices of toast. Egg-on-egg fantastico. One day, I will make the mayo from scratch. And then I will have reached a state of lunch nirvana not yet seen at my kitchen table.

Get everything ready, because it goes fast:

2 egg whites, with a pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper
Sliced avocado
Thin slices of cheese, I usually use cheddar.

Get a non-stick pan or cast-iron pan nice and hot. Spray some cooking oil in there, pour your eggs in. Pop the bread in the toaster. When egg has browned on the bottom (about 1 min or less), flip it and top the cooked side with cheese. When the bottom side has browned, flip it back over so that the melty cheese fries in its own fat- this will take less than a minute.

Somewhere in there, slather mayo on your toast.
Transfer the egg to the bread, top with avocado, sprinkle avocado very lightly with salt (I'm a salt fiend). Top with other slice of bread.

I'd recommend potato chips, sliced apple, and a root beer as accompaniment.

Flipping Naked!

First of all, the picture above doesn't do this dessert (or breakfast) justice. At least I remembered to photodocument it. Flash bulb and plastic wrap- oh, so elegant. This food wasn't ready for its photographic debut, but time was short and daylight was obscured by heavy cloud cover.

The French have probably already discovered my "Carmel Apple Brioche Tatin". I am sure that I bring no news to them. That, or they'd think it a ridiculous bastardization of their traditional tarte tatin. Or a waste of enriched yeasted dough. I, however, was feeling quite clever today when I replaced the usual puff pastry or pie crust dough with a version of brioche dough I like. I was inspired by a variety of cooking-related programs recently that went on about apple pies in great length... even the NPR segment on apple pies had my mouth watering, among their lip-smacking, pregnant pauses, and graceful "mmmm" noises. I could practically smell the apples cooking.

So I took a field trip over to People's Co-Op and bought a 5-lb organic apple assortment: the pinova sonata, honeycrisp (a favorite), granny smith (classic baking apple), and an arkansas black apple, which I haven't tried yet, and couldn't bear to include in the pie because its main appeal to me is that alluring deep red skin. It looks like a plum.

The brioche dough... see my next post for the brioche in full-detail. I was a mad experimentalist today, I made enough dough for 3 loaves of bread plus this crust.

With the dough made, I set to making the apple brioche tatin. I basically followed the recipe from the Moosewood Recipe Book of Desserts for Carmel Apple Tarte Tatin.

Start with the caramel: 1 c. sugar + 1/3 c. water. Dissolve the sugar in the water on medium heat in a saucepan on the stovetop. Stir constantly until the mixture is clear, this takes about 5ish minutes, you'll start to see lots of bubbles. Stop stirring and turn the heat up to brown the sugars. You want it to turn honey-brown in color. I swirled it occasionally to check for color under the bubbles. When it's browned (don't let it get too dark- your caramel will taste burned), take it off the heat and work on your apples.

Pick 5 favorite apples. I peeled 3 grannies, one honeycrisp, and one pinova. I wanted a combo of tart and sweet. Core and quarter them. Melt 2 T. butter in a cast-iron skillet, I added the seeds and inner flesh of about 2" of a vanilla bean pod that I split open lengthwise, put it in with the butter. Once the butter is melted, arrange the apples in the pan in a circle starting at the outside of the pan, then fill in the middle. Cover and cook about 8-10 min until apples begin to soften.

While the apples cook, stir 1/2 c. sour cream into the caramel.
Note: I have made this twice now- last time was about 2 yr ago. Both times I managed to screw up the caramel bit. First time: burned the caramel. This time, let caramel get too hard. I couldn't stir in the sour cream. I've learned to have 2x as much sour cream as is necessary. It's also important to let the caramel cool a bit- if you don't, the caramel doesn't thicken properly and you don't get a nice, gooey caramel. It's still tasty, but more like a nice sweet sauce.

Back to the apples: when you deem them ready, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt and juice of 1/2 lemon (1.5T). Pour the caramel on top of the apples. Spread the dough out gently with your fingers to be about 2" larger in diameter than your pan. Lay it over the apples and tuck the overhang into the pan, down the sides.

Bake in oven 20 min, 400F

Let sit 5-10 min, then invert onto a plate.

Careful with that inversion... it's not that hard, but I wound up with some hot and sticky caramel running down my leg. Could my shamelessness be a blessing in disguise? Rushed, I was flipping still dripping from my shower. At which point I thought, "baking in the buff IS a good idea!"

Safety first.

Serving note: Next time, depending on how the caramel turns out, I would like to try browning the top of the apples with the kitchen torch. It would look lovely with a few raspberries on top there. And it needs fresh whipped cream. Though ice cream certainly wouldn't suck. But a nice creamy sauce would be the perfect complement.

The outcome: A good twist on the tarte tatin- nice because it's not as buttery and heavy as puff pastry of pie crust. The brioche dough is slightly eggy, not too sweet or too rich. It also gives the tart good structure. The leftovers make a good breakfast- I stored it in the fridge overnight and toasted a slice of it briefly under the broiler.

Some heros get statues

According to Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, folklore has it that bagels were invented in Austria in the 1800s "as a tribute to the wartime victories of King Jan of Poland, and were modeled after the stirrup of his saddle." They were brought to the States by German and Polish Jewish immigrants, which is why we think of them as a Jewish bread. Something happened between their inception in the US and now... bagel greatness has been diluted out by mainstream mass production.

Living in San Diego, it can be tough to find a good bagel. Einstein's and Brueggers have a monopoly on the bagel scene here, and they are packed on weekend mornings despite their sorry excuses for bagels. Einstein's have decent texture, an okay crumb- a bit airy for a true New York-style bagel, but the real problem is that they are sweetened. Bruegger's have a horrible crumb, no flavor, no nice pockets of air, and no complexity to the bread's flavor. Really, both are just vehicles for the topping of your choice.

Why is it so hard to find a good bagel? Referring back to Peter Reinhart, I am able to glean that industrialization is at the root of this problem. Someone figured out how to mass-produce bagels. The dough shot through bagel-processing machines is a softer dough that won't stand up to boiling, so most mass-produced bagels are steamed, then baked, all in one big oven. This takes away that great, chewy crust we love in a good bagel. According to Bruegger's website, they boil their bagels, so I don't know why theirs suck.

I remember making bagels once or twice when I first started baking bread several years ago. However, that was in my early bread days, which were pocked with breads gone horribly wrong, due either to my stabs at creativity or bread-ignorance.

A few hundred loaves wiser now, I return to the bagel...

I scoured my favorite bread books, and came to the following conclusions:

1. I need a higher gluten percentage than normal bread flour to give the dough elasticity and stiffness, both important if the bagel's going to handle being boiled and not and the bagel a good chewy texture

2. I need a source of diastase enzymes. Malt syrup or active diastic malt powder (I found malt syrup at Whole Foods, you can get powder at beer-making supply stores). Malt contains an enzyme that digests starches, hastening their breakdown into their component sugars. Honey or brown sugar can be used as a substitute, but won't taste the same. Non-diastic malt won't work- it's been boiled, so the enzymes are inactive.

3. A long rise is important. I'm always a fan of the long rise. Longer shelf life, better flavor. And bread-baking is not for the impatient.


Here's the recipe I adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread:

1 lb + 13.5 oz bread flour
2.5 oz vital wheat gluten
1 T salt
1.75 tsp yeast (instant, also known as "bread machine")
1 lb 3.5 oz water
1 T malt syrup

Desired dough temp: 78 F (for kneading by hand, if it's about 68-70 degrees inside, use water that's about 90 F).
Weigh out the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Whisk together.




















Add wet ingredients.



This dough was freaking STIFF. That's a quote right out of my bread diary.


Mix and knead. Work all that flour in there. Most first-time bread makers add too much flour to their dough. That shouldn't be your problem here. I had to add in more water when I did this a few days ago, today it came together well after about 10 min of kneading and whacking the dough around.

(I made two because I figure I might as well if I'm at it... plus I've already promised away at least a batch... and my two most honest critics need samples. Plus I've got a few favorite whores-for-baked-goods who never dissuade me from pursuits in the kitchen.)



Round the dough up into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm, still spot to rise for 1.5 hr.

After the dough has risen, about doubled in size, cut the dough into 4 oz. rounds. The recipe will make a baker's dozen. Flatten each round slightly with the tips of your fingers to degas it, tuck and roll the dough into a short log, then using the palms of your hands roll it out to be about 12 inches long. Loop the dough around your knuckles so that the ends overlap by a few inches and roll the ends together with the palm or heel of your hand to seal.

Place uncooked bagels on a baking sheet sprinkled lightly with semolina flour or cornmeal, cover with plastic wrap. Let them rest for about 10 min, then put them into the fridge to proof overnight. (These can live in your fridge up to 2 days).

Next morning: Preheat oven with baking stone on middle rack to 500 F. Boil a large pot of water, have a bowl of ice-water and desired toppings ready.
Put a few bagels into the pot of boiling water, 45 seconds/side. Transfer to ice bath to cool briefly. Sprinkle with toppings. Put onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet or bakers peel. Boil longer for a chewier bagel.

Do this for each bagel, making sure the water returns to a boil before the next batch goes in. Depending on the size of your pot, you will probably fit 2-4 bagels at a time.

When you've got a tray full of boiled bagels, slide them onto your baking stone, bake 13-15 min, until golden and crispy. Transfer to a cooling rack.


Topping note: I made an "everything" mix: salt, dried onion flakes, poppy seed, sesame seed. It's good. The first batch also included fennel. I can't recommend that, at least not with a heavy hand. It sort of grew on me by the end, but it's not standard... "everything", clearly a misnomer. I'm going to add flax seeds to the mix... they can get stuck in between my teeth right next to the poppy.

These freeze beautifully- once they're cool, slice them, then freeze them. Toast anytime for a slice of bagel heaven.