Monday, October 31, 2011

R Is For Ratios

Every year, in late September or early October, I am surprised by the arrival of a bulky, plain-wrapped package.  Last year I found it, by lucky chance, on the doorstep of the house we had vacated a few weeks before.  This year it showed up in my mailbox at work.  It always arrives in the vicinity of my birthday, yet I never expect it, never assume it is a birthday gift, I don't know why.  Before I look at the return address, though I can feel the heft of the package and I assume it is a book, I am stumped, not knowing, not anticipating.  This year I figured it was marketing material for a support group, or maybe a Thank-You box of chocolates from a patient's family.

In the past the padded envelope has contained A Platter Of Figs by David Tanis, Once Upon a Tart by Frank Mentasana and Jerome Audureau, and Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson.  Wonderful books...books I return to for reminders and reference over and over again.  On my loosely organized bookshelf, I group these with others I consider to be "new classics." 

The source of these gifts?  Well, she always signs the card (with the adorable drawing of the dog inside) Great Aunt Margaret, though she is not my aunt.  But she is Margaret, my former boss, the owner (with Dennis) of Le Buzz.   For a little more than two years, I baked alongside Margaret, sharing laughs, dog stories, frustrations, and the repetitive yet satisfying work of a successful cafe/bakeshop.  She told me on my first day as a professional baker, "Don't worry about making mistakes, I've made every mistake possible."  Calming yet ominous words for this career-changing-new-graduate-from-culinary-school. 

This year's package contained two books.  The unusual and quirky Eat Me (The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin) by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreno...the cookbook with some of the most unappetizing photos of comfort food ever published.  Margaret wrote in her note that I could exchange it if it was just too odd.  Yeah, right...exchange a cookbook?  Not likely!  Besides, it contains a very common sense approach to the kitchen, f'rinstance consider this bon mot from the book, "If you like your eggs more cooked, cook them more."  How can you argue with that?  This book is a keeper.  

The second book was Ratio by Michael Ruhlman.  This little book contains some of the gems that I failed to learn in culinary school (shame on me, shame on Cordon Bleu).   You see, with the possible exception of molecular gastronomy (e.g. liquified olives, parmesan air,  potato foam, and the like), most kitchen work is not rocket science...though it is a practical application of that most basic scientific principal:  find a formula that works, change a variable and observe (or eat) what happens.  Ruhlman's Ratio offers simple, easy-to-remember ratios for doughs, batters, sauces, custards, and more...with the idea that if you know the ratio of ingredients in a successful recipe (and understand a little of the science behind it), you can alter the ratio slightly to create dozens of other tasty goodies.  In other words, the trip from crepe to muffin is not that far.

Take custards, for example.  No, not that super-eggy quivering mass that you once grabbed by mistake when your in-laws splurged and took everyone out to Furr's.  No, not that...but custards, those rich, smooth amalgams of cream and egg and lusciousness.  So easy...it's just a Liquid : Egg ratio.  Works everytime.  But try adding some sugar and vanilla, and heaven awaits your tongue, or how about cook it on the stove to make a sauce rather than baking it in the oven, or...oh oh oh, try this...add some extra cream, some mashed strawberries and churn it in an ice cream maker.  HA!  Ben and Jerry ain't got nothing on you!  By messing around with the basic formula (and trying different cooking techniques) you end up with a completely different dessert.  It might be delicious and make you moan in a really good way, or it might be that eggy-fright they served at Furr's.

Think for a moment, as I have done countless times, about the spectrum of custards that can appear after a (relatively) quick trip to the kitchen (i.e. creme anglaise, pastry cream, pot de creme, creme brulee, and flan, to name a few).  Alter the ratio of ingredients (and a few other things) and the creaminess/richness changes, the savoriness/sweetness can vary, and the egginess can (sadly) vary.  It's that ratio, Liquid : Egg, which will dictate whether the custard is a sauce, or a dish of soft, rich cream, or a fantasticly wicked little puck of delicious richness that can stand by itself on a plate.  It's all about the ratio of one ingredient to the other. 
Which brings me back to Margaret and Le Buzz.  Before immersing myself in the stress and fatigue called culinary school, my good work : bad work ratio was tipping in the wrong direction.  Burnout had definitely set in...big time.  It was the world of healthcare and if your heart isn't in it, you shouldn't do it...period.  I'd always said that but realized that I wasn't living it.  The rest of the ratio of my life was pretty balanced (FUN : CREATIVITY : LOVE : MONEY : REST :  WORK), but the thing with ratios is this...too much of one thing can turn custard into scrambled eggs.  Having some background in the scientific method, I stood back, reassessed the formula to life as I was living it and realized that WORK needed to change.  The out of kilter WORK component threw everything else out of whack.  I came home from work everyday feeling like a big bowl of scrambled egg custard. 

Nine months (and thousands of dollars) later, I was a diploma'd Cordon Bleu baker/patissier and was standing next to Margaret at Le Buzz.  And it was just like you read about...long days, hot kitchen, fast pace (kinda - I was a baker not a cook afterall), sore feet, sore back...but happy happy happy.  Okay sure, I was making less money than when I went home after sitting in an air conditioned office for 8 hours, but the other parts of the ratio were solid.  Get this...Margaret and Dennis were giving me raises that I felt bad about accepting because I was having such a great time!

Yup, see how easy it is to forget the cardinal rule of ratios...all the parts have to work together.  Long Story Short...two comments summarize my brief dash in/dash out of the world of professional baking.  1.) I ran into a former hospital colleague with whom I also had gone to graduate school.  I was wearing my chocolate smeared chef's coat, was exhausted after a day next to the ovens, and was picking up something quick for dinner before collapsing at home.  This friend had heard that I had changed careers and she said something to the effect of "You are our role model," referring to the desire of the burnout crowd to leave it all behind and satisfy the other parts of the ratio.  2.) Later, when the MONEY part of the ratio had been ignored for too long and something had to change to get my life's ratio back in working order, after I had reluctantly left Le Buzz and returned to hospital work, a colleague said something like "we'd all like to get paid to do what we are passionate about (ugh), but that just isn't realistic."  I disagree with that sentiment wholeheartedly, but unfortunately, at the time, it was quite true.

Thankfully, having had a few years away from the sad work, and having changed the context in which I am once again doing the first career, the WORK and the MONEY components are on an even keel once again.  Of course, those of you who know me, or who have been able to read between the lines of this blog over the past year or so, are aware that some of the other parts of the friggin' ratio have been seriously off.  These damned ratios are kinda like a canoe...once it starts to tip there's gotta be some fast fancy footwork to keep it from going under.  (Okay, so I am mixing my scientific and nautical metaphors, but you get the idea).  I am happy to report that most parts of the life ratio are now bobbing along on the surface of the stream, and no great bowls of Furr's Cafeteria Rubber-Egg Custard are awaiting us. 

So I thank Great Aunt Margaret...for the books, the too-little-time next to the oven, and the boost of confidence that I still feel from her when those mystery packages arrive. 









Custard Ratios

Creme Anglaise:  4 parts dairy : 1 part yolk : 1 part sugar + 1/2 vanilla bean
Creme Brulle: same as above, using whatever percentage of milk to cream that you care to indulge in.
Ice Cream: same as above, 1/2 milk and 1/2 cream, use the entire vanilla bean
Pots de Creme: 6 parts dairy : 1 part whole egg : 1/2 part egg yolk : 1/2 part sugar + 1/2 vanilla bean
Flan: 4 parts dairy : 2 parts whole egg : 1 part sugar + 1/2 vanilla bean + pinch salt

Basic Custard Method:
1.  Combine the dairy and 1/2 the sugar in a saucepan and heat to a simmer.
2.  With your fingers, combine the remaining sugar and the vanilla seeds.
3.  Just prior to the dairy coming to a simmer, combine the eggs and the sugar in a mixing bowl. 
4.  Slowly whisk a small amount of the hot dairy into the eggs, gradually adding it all to the eggs.  
For Creme Anglaise: Pour the sweetened dairy back into the saucepan over medium-low heat, and cook to desired consistency, stirring constantly.  Do not let it boil.  Strain through a fine strainer, chill thoroughly and quickly.
For Ice Cream:  Cook as above for Creme Anglaise, chill thoroughly, then churn per your ice cream freezer instructions.
For Creme Brulee & Pots De Creme: Prepare steps 1-4.  Pour into ramkins.  Bake in a water bath at 325 degrees, 30 minutes or until barely set. For Creme Brulee, sift a fine layer of sugar on top of the finished and chilled custards, then caramelize it with a blow torch just prior to serving.
For Flan: Prepare the custard through step 4.  Cook sugar until it turns amber.  Quickly pour the caramel into the ramekins, swirl to coat the bottom of each ramekin.  Then pour the custard mixture in the ramekins and bake at 325 degrees in a water bath, 45 minutes, or until barely set.  Chill, then turn out onto plate upside down.  The caramel will have created a delicious sauce that drizzles down the sides of the custard. 

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Q Is For Quatre Epices Croquets Bordelais/Four-Spice Almond Cookies


is a problem, you have to admit.
Whether you are playing Scrabble, Bananagrams, Boggle, or any of the other generative naming games that we word-nerds enjoy, Q is a problem, eliciting moans and groans when that tile is pulled from the pile. Yes, it is unique, being the only letter in the alphabet that cannot go unescorted, but in spelling (as in many other realms) uniqueness does not always mean desired.  (And what's up with that friggin' upper case Q we all had to learn in grade school...the one that looks like a fancy 2.)  So it is not surprising that choosing the representative Q recipe for this occasional series on alphabetical baking was a bit of a stumper.  Quince, Quenelle, Quiche, Queso - all potentially tasty choices, yes, but...well, I was uninspired. 

So I thought, and read, and pondered, and actually did go ahead and make a darn good quiche but forgot to take pictures of it, so much for that, until one day, during an afternoon cup of coffee, I was craving those little spicy Mexican pig-shaped cookies, but they (Marranitos) don't start with the dreaded letter.  Not one to quit, I did a little more research, combined a few ideas from an entirely different quisine, qulture, and quntry, and here we have it...a delicious crunchy cookie, whose name I cannot pronounce without sounding like Elmer Goes To Paris, perfect for dunking in your coffee or milk in the afternoon. 

But Tom, you may ask...you haven't posted anything on this blog since March.  Did it really take you 5 months to come up with a simple little cookie recipe?  Sure, Q is a bitch, but 5 months?  To which I reply...let's back up a few sentences to a q word I snuck into the previous paragraph, a little literary foreshadowing.  The word...quit.  A simple little word, quit.  Play fast and loose with an e and you have quite and quiet.  Stare at it long enough...q-u-i-t...and it looks misspelled or not even a word.  But it's a word that has dominated life in this household for not just 5 months, but more like 5 years. 

Stare at the word quit for 5 years, go ahead, you try it...it doesn't just look like a typo anymore, it looks impossible.  It becomes huge and impenetrable and sneaky and humilitating.  But for those of us on the outside, those of us who aren't staring at those 4 meaningless letters 24 hours a day, quit looks easy.  But it isn't. 

I have been asked a few times, and I have asked myself at least a thousand times...so when do I quit.  But that isn't easy either.  Because what is the question...quit hoping?, quit helping?, quit loving?, quit trying?, quit caring?  And the only answer I can come up with, after 5 months, after 5 years, is not yet.  Quit is a big word.

I spend hours reading cookbooks, researching recipes, finding out how to make things and make things better.  Recipes are lists of ingredients and techniques, which you hope all come together to make someting good.  But once the cookie has been made, if it isn't good, there aren't instructions for unmaking it, for taking it apart.   Instead, you have to look at what happened, look at what went into it, change something, and start all over again.  Make it again but do it differently.  Don't quit. 

It is so very French to give a name, and a nobel sounding name at that, to a seemingly simple combination of 4 spices.  Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg...and Black Pepper.  But it's a combination of flavors that works on more than one level.  It's a situation where the personalities of each part, each spice, are present, individually, but they also work together to create something altogether unique...the flavor of Quatre Epices.  

It doesn't happen very often...why give it up. 
Quit - Stop - End.... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Start - Begin - Continue
Croquet Bordelais
Ground Almonds                 3 cups
AP Flour                            1 1/2 cups
Baking Powder                   2 tsp
Salt                                   1 tsp
Quatre Epices                     4 tsp (see below)
Butter, room temp              4 1/4 oz
Sugar                                 1 2/3 cups
Orange Zest                        from 1 orange
Eggs                                   2 (+1 for egg wash)

Quatre Epices
Black Pepper                       2 tsp
Ground Cinnamon                 2/3 tsp
Ground Cloves                     2/3 tsp
Ground Nutmeg                   2/3 tsp

1.  Mix together the ground almonds, flour, baking powder, salt, and spices.
2.  With mixer, cream the butter and sugar until smooth.  Add the orange zest and mix   briefly.  Add the eggs, one at a time - mixing thoroughly after each addition. 
3.  With mixer on low speed, add the almond mixture from Step 1, scraping the bowl as necessary.  
4.  Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto a pice of plastic wrap.  Pat the dough into a rectangle, 9 x 6 inches.  Wrap in the plastic, smoothing the edges of the dough after it si wrapped in the plastic.  Freeze overnight.
5.  Preheat the oven to 375.  
6.  Cut the dough into thirds (along the 9-inch side).  Return two of the pieces two the freezer. 
7.  Cut each piece into 13 pieces (they will be 3 x .5 inch cookies).  Place them on parchment (or Silpat) lined sheet pans.  Repeat with the 2 remaining pieces of dough.
8.  Brush with egg wash and bake for 18-20 minutes, until golden brown. 
9.  They will firm up into a delicious crunchy cookie - perfect for dunking - as they cool.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

P Is For Pastry Cream and Pate Choux


For about 18 hours in 1980 I considered going to medical school.  I decided against it based on two facts:  I had already recieved a B in a class and figured that would prevent me from becoming a doctor, and (more importantly) I read in the curriculum that I would have to take Chemistry.  Deal breaker.  Here's the thing with Chemistry...ask anyone who has taken a chemistry class about it and all they say is "math, lots of math"  To this day (because I still have not ever taken a chemistry class) when I ask people about chemistry, that is their response..."math, lots of math."  (Sometimes I will ask students what they think about their chemistry class just to see if they give me the same answer...and they almost always do.)

Math?  Really?  That answer has always frustrated me.  Firstly, because math has been a lifelong nemesis.  Numbers, no matter if they are in dollar form, ratios, percentages, sale prices, or weights and measures, apparently are processed in a part of my brain that is lacking in dendritic density.  No matter how simple the calculation, I have to write it down, study it, do it wrong a few times, get frustrated, do it again, and then it all makes sense...maybe.  (F'rinstance, yesterday Nik was explaining the cell phone plan options that he was considering...a $129 cancellation fee with a 10% monthly discount versus the new plan which was cheaper monthly but required an activiation fee of blah blah blah.  It was like he was speaking some illogical foreign tongue.  I felt like my brain actually turned off after about 30 seconds of listening to him.)

But the math conundrum is not the most irritating part of the chemistry=math answer.  Maybe I am naive, but I thought that chemistry was learning about the elemental components of everything.  For a fact freak like me, what could be more interesting than that?  To learn how a relative handful of stuff can be combined to create everything in the world...well that pretty much sounds like the key to all knowledge, doesn't it?  I admit that the numbers and letters on the Periodic Table of Elements are quite meaningless to me...but I do understand the basic concept behind it and that excites me.  It's a Table of What Could Be.  (So you can see my disappointment when someone throws cold H2O on this excitement by reducing it all to dreaded Math.)  I keep threatening to take a Chemistry 101 class at the local community college...just to prove to these Math Terrorists, and myself, that there is more to Creation than math, hopefully.

But hold on just a moment...a recipe is essentially a Table of Elements, a Culinary Table of Elements.  Replace articulatory mouthfuls such as Darmstadtium, Ununpentium, Seaborgium, and Xenon for bowls of more flavorful items such as Flour, Butter, Eggs, Chocolate, Yeast, and Salt and what do you have?  You have a very approachable and delicious Table of Potential.  Wandering the stalls at a farmer's market, or flipping through the pages of a cookbook or food magazine, I don't find myself drooling and thinking "I want to eat that."  I am saying to myself..."I want to make that."  And with  a pantry full of basic elemental ingredients - I can do that.

But the potential goes beyond even that, beyond individual ingredients...because if you make a batch of this and you make pan of that, you can put them together to make an entirely different and tasty this-and-that.  (Nik's pet peeve with the old Joy Of Cooking was it's tendency to list page numbers for other recipes in it's list of ingredients for a dish.  Different strokes.  I see a complex list of ingredients and preparations and I put a star next to that recipe as a Must Do.)  So while flour and eggs and butter are essential ingredients for thousands of baked goods, every baker also knows that equally important are fundamental preparations such as custards, and laminated doughs, and meringues, and shortdoughs.  And here's the irony to this tale...every baker needs to know a little bit of practical chemistry as well to make it all work. 

Take pastry cream, for example...it's all about chemistry.  Pastry cream is 1) a stirred custard and 2) one of a baker's multi-use items.  Peek down to the recipe below, step #5, and you will see that it instructs you to let this mixture of eggs and milk bubble and cook for a minute.  WHAT?  Anyone who has ever made breakfast knows that cooking eggs till they bubble will create scrambled eggs and not a luscious creamy custard.  Enter Chemistry. 

Pastry cream contains eggs, sugar, milk, and cornstarch.  While the temperature in the saucepan is rising, the egg proteins are unravelling from compact little pearls of albumin into long graceful strands that sweep and swirl around in the liquid surrounding them.  In a concentrated mixture, just a bowl of eggs say, these unravelled proteins would bond (a chemistry term) with each other quickly, firmy, and efficiently (think scrambled eggs).  But the milk in the pastry cream formula dilutes the mixture, putting more space and stuff between the egg-protein molecules (Molecules? Chemistry again).  Think of it like this...10 kids playing Marco Polo in a kiddie pool are bound to find each other quickly...Game Over.  Put those same 10 kids in an Olympic sized swmming pool and that game could go on all day (ugh).  But there's more chemistry here...the sugar in the mixture coats the proteins (there are several thousand sugar molecules for each lonely protein molecule) making bonding less likely when the proteins do get close to each other. 

Of course, ultimately the proteins will bond (because that's the whole point in cooking them) BUT, just like those kids in the pool, there is alot of liquid slopping around in the spaces between the proteins.  And that's why we add cornstarch to pastry cream.  As the mixture is heating and the proteins are unravelling and shouting out "Marco" and "Polo" to each other, the cornstarch is likewise getting hot and it starts to sweat its guts out.  Cornstarch sweats a thickening agent that floats through the pastry cream mixture and via "hydrogen bonding" (Chemisty!) it captures water molecules.  And the hotter it gets (until around 200 degrees) the more it sweats and the more water it traps.  The mixture thickens as the water is trapped and the proteins bond, and that's when you turn the heat off and chill those hard working, exhausted molecules.  Ahh yes, just as I thought...Chemistry is possible without Math, but Cooking is all about Chemistry.

So we start with eggs and butter and dairy and a starch, and we make a basic custard and a simple pastry dough, and to them we can add whipped cream or more butter or  chocolate or praline paste or cheese or any number of other ingredients or preparations and instead of a plate of eclairs, you can have cream puffs, or beignets, or gougere, buttercream, or crab puffs, or Paris Brest.  The possibilities are truly endless.

Pastry Cream
Whole Milk                  2 cups
Granulated Sugar          4 oz (or about 1/2 cup), divided
Cornstarch                  50 grams (or about 3 1/2 Tbsp)
Salt                            1/4 tsp
Eggs                           2
Vanilla                        1 1/2 tsp
Butter                        2 oz

1.  Combine the milk and approx 1/2 the sugar in a saucepan, and bring to a simmer.
2.  While the milk is warming, combine the remaining sugar, the cornstarch and the salt in a mixing bowl.  Set it on a damp towel or rubberized something - so it won't scoot across the counter when both your hands are busy and you can't steady the bowl.
3.  When the milk is almost hot enough, whisk the eggs into the sugar-cornstarch mixture until smooth.
4.  Immediately add a little of the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.  Keep adding and whisking until more than half the milk has been added, then return the saucepan to the heat, and whisk the warmed egg-milk mixture back into the saucepan.  Turn burner to medium-low. 
5.  Whisk or stir slowly until the mixture thickens (about 4-5 minutes).  Turn the heat down a bit if it is cooking too quickly on the bottom. (Nobody likes scorched pastry cream.)  Let it bubble for about a minute, stirring or whisking steadily. 
6.  Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla and the butter.
7.  Put the pastry cream into a bowl, and put that bowl in a larger bowl of ice water.  Lay a piece of plastic wrap directly on the top of the pastry cream, to prevent a skin from forming.  Keep chilled in the refrigerator until ready to use. 


Pastry Cream - Chocolate Variation
Melt 7 ounces of buttersweet chocolate.
At Step 7 of the recipe above, reduce the amount of butter to 1 ounce and stir in the melted chocolate with the vanilla and butter.



Pate Choux
Cake Flour             4 oz
Bread Flour            5 1/2 oz
Water                   2 cups
Unsalted Butter      6 oz
Salt                       1/2 tsp
Eggs                      8

1.  In a saucepan, bring the water, salt and butter to a full boil.
2.  While the water is heating, combine the flours and set aside.
3.  When the water is at a boil, remove from the heat and add the flour, stirring thoroughly until all the flour is moistened.
4.  Return the pan to the medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture forms a mass, and the flour forms a light skin on the bottom of the pan.  Remove from the heat. 
5.  Let the dough cool briefly until it is very-warm to the touch.  (You can add the eggs by hand or put the dough in the stand mixer and let it do the work.)  Either way, add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition, until the dough is soft but still holds its shape.  (Egg Test:  Take a blob of dough on your spatula and turn it upside down -- if it elongates and forms a "V" shape, you have added enough eggs.  It if is too stiff to elongate, you need to add another egg.)
6.  For mini-eclairs, use a 3/4-inch piping tip and pipe the dough into approx. 4 inch lengths on a Silpat.  If they have a little flip at the end (like the ones in the picture), wet your fingertip slightly and flatten the flip before baking.
7.  Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 degree and bake until they are lightly browned and have a slightly crisp exterior (about 20 minutes). 



 

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

O is for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies


Let me just say that I do not belive that there is such a thing as too many cookbooks. What a ridiculous concept.  Oh, sure, I have watched hours of television programming about hoarders; I have seen those people pushed out of their bedrooms and homes by their own collections of stuff, whose lives have become dominated by mountains of clothes, styrofoam containers, and plastic figurines...insignificant things.  But cookbooks?  No way.  
Not only are cookbooks the ultimate how-to manuals, but if you will allow me to be grand and only slightly overstated for a moment...cookbooks give us a way to recreate history.  Wow - really, Tom?  Yes!  Okay, not all cookbooks do that.  (I have one slim volume entitled The Classic Carrot Cookbook which may provide a counterargument to the whole history theory, but, if push came to shove, I'm sure that somebody could find some recipe on those orange-hued pages that elicits memories of picnics by the lake.)

Look through most any cookbook and you will see numerous references such as "a dessert I had on my first trip to Paris" or "my mother's never fail pie crust" or "the pot roast from countless Sunday dinners."  Food is a multisensory reminder of times past.  And not only when you eat it, but also when making it.  Hold a heavy wooden rolling pin in your hand and generations of bakers are lined up behind you.  The next time you make whipped cream, imagine how many times your mother or father, or grandmother, or greatgrandmother lifted the whisk to check the consistency of the cream before serving it on the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. 

The French have a reputation for being all this-and-that about their cuisine, in part because they were the first culture to document their culinary techniques and traditions.  Sure, the Bedouins may have been stewing goat heads for thousands of years before the first puff pasty was made, but they never wrote it down...they are a nomadic culture, so no doubt toting boxes of goat recipes was not a first priority on their limited camel space.  With only recall to go on, little Mohammed can't be sure that the goat head he is eating in his tent is exactly like the goat head that his greatgrandfather stewed up.  But when little Pierre climbs up on the kitchen stepstool to make his first Tarte Tatin, he can follow the directions exactly and be confindent that it will taste just like Grandmama's. 

But I don't mean to minimize the oral tradition of the kitchen (or the tent).  We can probably all remember some tidbit of food knowledge that we heard from our mothers (don't cut lettuce with a knife; chill the bowl and beaters before you whip the cream; an open can of kidney beans is the most dangerous food there is), but these are generally technique remarks rather than specific recipes.  For recipes I turn to my trusty stack of index cards with Grandma's recipes on them (Sour Cream Coffee Cake, Baking Powder Biscuits, Rolled Molasses Cookies) or to one of my many treasured cookbooks. 

These Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are from "The Church Book."  There are probably thousands of similar books on bookshelves across the nation...you know, collections of recipes published by the women's fellowships from every church in every town in every state, providing generations of the devout with cholesterol and pot luck dishes for all eternity. (Despite their reputation for covered dishes containing condensed soups, these books are not restricted to midwest Christians.  I am the proud owner of the 1972 Edition of the Hadasah Cookbook from Rochester, New York.) 
 "The Church" from which my well-used "Church Book" hails, is the First United Methodist Church of Longmont, Colorado.  And amidst the questionable recipes on those pages are to be found some real keepers, often marked by my mother with a simple "good" in the margin. 
My sister tells me that in her copy my mother also identified some of the clunkers...apparently I was left to find those myself, not difficult in some cases.

Though these are called "Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies," they aren't from my Grandmother.  But that doesn't matter because I've tweaked the recipe a little bit anyway, and that's not a sacrilege, that's how cuisine evolves.  But with the cookbook in hand, we can always return to the orginal, to Grandma's way, when the newer version turn out like hockey pucks...or fossils (which these didn't - they are delicious).


Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies
Yield:  30 cookies

Eggs, well beaten                3
Vanilla                                1 tsp
Raisins                                1 cup
Butter, room temp               8 oz
White Sugar                        1 cup
Brown Sugar                        1 cup
AP Flour                              2 1/2 cups
Salt                                    3/4 tsp
Baking Soda                        2 tsp
Cinnamon                           1 tsp
Nutmeg                              1/2 tsp
Oats                                   2 cups

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2.  Combine the eggs, vanilla, raisins in a small bowl.  Let sit for 1 hour.
3.  Thoroughly cream the butter and sugars.
4.  Stir together the flour, salt, soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and add to the creamed mixture.
5.  Add the egg-raisin mixture and the oats and mix until completely combined - the dough will be stiff.
6.  Place heaping rounded Tablespoons of dough onto baking sheet.  Bake for 15-17 minutes (until lightly browned on top).

Saturday, February 5, 2011

N is for Naan







On more than a few occasions have I referred to my obsession/love/passion/craving for yeast...odd though that may seem to those who don't worship at the Church Of The Preheated Oven.  I recently read this about yeast..."Yeast fungus (Saccharomyces) exists everywhere in nature, and natural yeast consists of microorganisms reproducing and eliminating waste."  Ok, sure, not exactly a scenario that makes a guy run to the kitchen.  But wait, it gets better...these tiny little buggers (there are about 10 billion of 'em per gram) are hungry and horny (interested yet?).  Give them a few shots of glucose and they get wacky!  And these creative, single-cell dudes are a clever, partying bunch - if you don't feed them straight shots of glucose but instead water down their drinks with other sugars, or starches or alcohol - they whip out an enzyme to match whatever you are serving and convert it to a deelish aphrodisiac buffet.  So...give them a little food (flour, f'rinstance), and a little warm water (100 degrees ideally, mmm) to swim around in - and the party is on!  Before you know it, that intimate party with your closest 10 billion friends has turned into a veritable dough-orgy of eating, hydrating, passing gas, and making babies.  Give them enough time, food and drink and they can make even the stiffest dough rise. 





Seriously, what other food depends on the digestive and reproductive cycles of a critter to make it work.  Without yeast bread is...a cracker.  Of course, this Dionysian free-for-all in your bread dough does not have a happy ending..well, not for the yeast anyway.  The Circle of Life applies even to single-celled horndogs.  These guys are going at it nonstop, the party is really heating up - and I mean, really heating up because you popped that blob of party-bread in the oven.  These doublebacked yeast-beasts are WILD - all that yeast gas is expanding, the dough is rising in the oven, the party is HOTHOTHOTTER...and then it hits 140 degrees.  Ouch.  The party...is over.  140 degrees is taps for yeast.  But we don't despair. We love what yeast has done for us...the miracle of bread lives on - because 140 degrees is the same temperature when the starches and proteins in the bread start to set, so that Highrise Den of Sin the yeast built for themselves stays up even after they are gone, and finishes baking as a risen loaf of bread. 

I'm not going to push, but given this intimate knowledge about yeast...I just have to ask, how can you not be a yeast-head?  Bread doughs are living things.  They are sensitive, and vulnerable to their environments.  They depend on us to provide them with what they need.  Even though I have spent the last many months trying to eliminate co-dependent tendencies in some aspects of my life, I admit that I am a card-carrying enabler for my single-celled little buddies. 

But now, on to this Indian flatbread, naan.  Take a peek at the recipe, you'll see that the dough contains both whole-milk and whole-milk yogurt.  Holy cow.  I won't go into the graphic details right now, but think about it...we are adding fat to this yeast-based orgy.   When you add fat to a dough, the fat coats the gluten strands that provide much of the structure of the bread.  Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi - now the yeasties have a slippery surface on which to do what they do - BUT, miracle of miracles, the balance of fat to structure in this recipe allows for a soft but cohesive and wonderfully workable dough to form.  In this case, not only are the yeasty-beasties happy, but so is the baker, and so are the lucky Joe's who get to eat the soft, salty, seedy rich breads.  Enjoy. 


Onion Naan
Yield:  4 flatbreads
Active Dry Yeast              1 tsp
Sugar                              1/2 tsp
Warm Water                    1 Tbl
AP Flour                           3-4 cups, divided
Baking Soda                     1/4 tsp
Salt                                 1 tsp
Sesame Seeds                  1/2 tsp
Whole Milk, warm            1/2 cup
Whole-Milk Yogurt            1 cup (room temp)
Onion, minced                 1/3 cup
Unsalted Butter, melted    4 Tbl, divided
Egg, lightly beaten            1
Mixed Seeds                     1 1/2 Tbl
Kosher Salt

1.  Combine the water, sugar and yeast.  Let proof.
2.  Combine 2 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, salt, and sesame seeds in a large bowl.
3.  Stir together the mik, yogurt, egg, onion, and 2 Tablespoons butter.
4.  Pour yeast and milk mixtures into well in center of flour.  Stir until a soft, shaggy dough forms.
5.  Put approx. 1 cup of flour in a pile on the counter.  Pull a little of that flour to the center of the counter, turn the dough out onto it, and knead for approx. 10 minutes.  Gradually add small amounts of the extra flour when the dough gets sticky.  (A plastic dough scraper works well for assisting with the kneading at the beginning of this process.)
6.  When a soft, nonsticky dough is formed, shape it into a ball, and place it in the lightly oiled bowl.  Let rise until doubled, approx 2 hours.
7.  Place baking stone on the bottom rack of the oven.  Preheat as high as your oven will let you (500-550 degrees).  Let the baking stone preheat for a full hour.  Dust two baking sheets with flour, set aside.
8.  Turn dough onto lightly floured surface, divide into fourths.  Roll each piece to approx 1/8 inch thick oval.  Transfer to floured bakng sheets.  Let rest approx 10 minutes.
9.  Transfer a piece of the dough to a well-floured peel or flat baking sheet.  Brush top of each piece with remaining melted butter.  Sprinkle with mixed seeds and salt.  Slide the bread directly onto the preheated baking stone. 
10.  Bake 5-6 minutes, until it is bubly and the top is a blotchy golden brown. 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

M is for Macaroons (and so much more)


So...I have to be honest.  I made these cookies and took these pictures back in October.    Because, you see, M is not just for Macaroons; M is also for Missing Muse, and Maybe Later, and I Might/I Might Not, and How Can I Care About Cookies Right Now - Don't You See That My Life Is Falling Apart.  (Hmm, apparently, M can also stand for Melodrammatic.)  Back in October, I baked these cookies, I ate some of them because I love them so, and took the rest to work.  They were crispy, chewey, gooey, sweet and creamy.  But beyond that, beyond that handful of predictable adjectives, I had little else to say.  So I stopped blogging.  And for the most part, I stopped baking too.  Thanksgiving passed without a pumpkin pie.  Not a single sugar cookie, or gingerbread boy, or pannetone or figgy pudding was pulled from the oven to fill the house with the traditional scents of the Christmas.  I actually lost 12 pounds during the holidays...unheard of. 

Those of you who know me well may be surprised at this next statement, but food was not important to me during much of last year.  Or more accurately, food gradually lost some of its importance.  Birthdays came and went without cakes.  Anniversary celebrations weren't.  Pizza Night became an obligation, and cooking became a chore.  Puff pastry, creme brulee, and meringue don't stand a chance against heavy-weights like Foreclosure, Bankrupcy, and Booze.  Or, to get even more graphic and metaphorical, how can you eat brioche when Reality is being crammed down your throat? 

But here's the good news...2010 is gone.  2010 taught me not to ask "what can happen next?" because something always will, just wait.  But it also taught me, ultimately, that Reality is served in small doses.  2011 is happening moment by moment, and a moment is not very much time at all. Traditions become traditions when they stand the test of time, and life on Chuckwalla Place certainly tested them all.  I'm confident that life on Hawthorne Street, or wherever else we end up, will include cookies, and birthdays, and pizza, and moments. 
So I begin this new chapter with Messy Mexican Chocolate Macaroons:  Chocolate and Cinnamon Macaroons Shells filled with Vanilla Buttercream, and Goat Milk Dulce de Leche.  Crispy, chewy and gooey, sweet, delicious. 
(I can't share the recipe because, like so much of last year, I just winged it.)