Nibby-licious

I promised nibs, so here they are:


Making their rounds through the culinary blogosphere, cacao nibs seem to be everywhere these days. They are folded into buttery and chocolatey cookie doughs, sprinkled atop chic pasta dishes, and here at Red Ramekin, tucked into my favorite treat: biscotti.

I was so excited about using cacao nibs that I made two batches of biscotti with them. One was adapted from David Lebovitz's very dark and chocolatey biscotti, (featured in the pictures below) and the other was an adaptation of my regular almond biscotti recipe, enhanced with a touch of cocoa, spices, and of course, the nibs themselves. I'll admit it, though, we gobbled up the second batch so quickly that we kind of, um, forgot about the whole taking pictures thing....so use your imagination. They looked like a cross between the almond and the chocolate varieties, with visible chunks of nib speckling the dough.


Before getting to the biscotti, though, let's talk nibs. The cacao nib is a wholly worthwhile culinary experience, even at $9 for a smallish-sized box from Scharffen Berger. The nibs are simply roasted and crushed cacao beans, which are usually used to make the smooth and sweet chocolate that we are used to eating. The nibs, though, are unadorned, and on their own taste intensely chocolatey and bitter, like unsweetened baking chocolate. You might say that they are an "acquired taste," or if you aren't a total and unabashed food snob, you might just toss them into some cookie dough and enjoy the chocolate crunchiness that they impart when paired with something sweet.


In cookies the nibs seem to lose their harsh bitterness, and taste almost like very dark chocolate bits. The texture is quite different though, and the visual effect is much more interesting. In our first batch of biscotti, I timidly chopped the nibs to soften their harshness, but this proved unnecessary; in the second batch, I tossed the pieces in as they were, and they struck just the right balance of subtlety and bite.

Until it is definitively shown through dubious medical evidence and sensationalized New York Times articles that cacao is the most anti-oxidant rich substance in the world, though, I'm not sure I'll go out of my way to acquire more nibs. A little bit goes a long way, so we still have a few handfuls of these little treasures left. I'm trying to dream up a new use, but then again, I never tire of cookies. Once we've worked our way through this box, though, I doubt we'll be seeing another one until our next lazy afternoon spent meandering through the Ferry Building.

Our first batch of biscotti (pictured in this post) were quite yummy, but a bit too chocolatey for me. If you are looking for a relatively healthy chocolate cookie, though, these would work just fine. I prefer my biscotti to be a bit lighter, thus facilitating my habit of eating 10-20 of them per sitting. Keeping this in mind, I made the second batch with just a couple tablespoons of cocoa to complement the nibs, and some spices to heighten the flavor without going overboard. I enjoyed these cookies much more, and found that the nibs were really the star ingredient. In batch #1, the nibs were all but lost in the hefty dose of cocoa powder and smattering of dark chocolate chunks that I added to the dough.


If you are looking for a biscotti-making tutorial, check out my earlier post on almond biscotti. And if you get your hands on some nibs and are looking for a recipe, try this one. (To put things in perspective, we devoured the entire batch in two days.) I happen to love the combination of cocoa and warm spices, but you can tweak the recipe according to your tastes. I also added some liqueur to this recipe, which makes the dough supple and easy to form into logs. I think the nutty-fruity scent of frangelico works really well here, but amaretto, brandy, or perhaps even Grand Marnier would work. These biscotti have just a small amount of sugar, perfect for a snacking/dunking cookie. If you like sweeter cookies, increase the sugar to 2/3 c. For recipe directions, see the post mentioned above.

Nibby Spiced Biscotti

2 1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tbs. unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
pinch of cloves
1/4 tsp. salt
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1/4 c. frangelico
2/3 c. whole toasted almonds
1/4 c. (or more, if desired) unsweetened cacao nibs

Back in Action

Wow - it has been so long since the last Red Ramekin post! I didn't realize just how long it had been until I signed into Blogger to check up on my little baby blog...it has been neglected for the past three weeks, and I am very sorry about it. I won't let it happen again, I promise.

These past few weeks were pretty busy for me, but now I'm one huge step closer to graduation and I should have plenty of time to give Red Ramekin the love it deserves. On a related note, Jonathan and I are currently spring breaking, northern California style. Today it was 70 degrees outside, and in general the food here is so good it makes me wonder why I ever decided to commit to two more years of living in Boston. As soon as I stepped off the plane today, I was craving fruit and veggies and everything else that this Massachusetts weather has been keeping from me. Granny smith apples and root vegetables are great and all....but sometimes you just want some berries. And not those crunchy, vaguely berry-flavored specimens that cost $8 per pint.

Our first stop after the San Francisco airport was the Ferry Building, which on Tuesdays and Saturdays is bustling with a huge farmers' market. Today it was a bit quieter, but still lively; there was no farmers' market, but we had lunch at a little seafood place that really hit the spot. Super-fresh shrimp, crab, chowder, and salad was perfect post-flight nourishment.

We'll be heading back on Tuesday, though, because the farmers' market at the Ferry Building is not something foodies can afford to miss. I went once before, in December, and am anticipating an even more bountiful selection of fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and other specialty comestibles. It's really all about the samples, though. Last time I sampled everything from pummelos to persimmons, so I'm looking forward to some new things this time around, too.

But back to the kitchen...

I thought I'd share a little entertaining tip that is becoming one of my favorite ways to play hostess. Some might call it half-assing, but that's OK. Half-assing is better than full-assing, right? In any case, the tip is: make half and procure half. Or, as it happened a few nights ago, make one really fantastic thing, and supplement it with some other, prepared things.

The really fantastic thing was homemade sushi, and the prepared thing was Whole Foods sausages that we grilled at home. OK, I know - not the most, um, cohesive meal. But it wasn't my fault - I was in charge of the sushi, and left the guests to pick out something else to supplement it. A few months ago we tried the same technique, but purchased the sushi and prepared some miso-soba noodle soup.

The make half procure half route is not just about half-assing though. In our case, it's about being able to entertain for a larger crowd and in a more relaxed setting. The kitchen and our cookware probably wouldn't be able to accommodate cooking a full meal for 8 people, but if you procure, instead of prepare, half of your food, dinner for 7 or 8 becomes completely possible.

On Friday night, we had a few people over and started rolling away. The sushi was such a huge hit that Jonathan and I decided to make it again this evening, just for ourselves. This way, we could stuff ourselves with 5 times as much sushi without having to expend any more time or effort actually preparing it (sushi, as it turns out, is a rather time-intensive affair). Tuna is the only sushi-quality fish we can get our seaweed-flecked hands on, so we had tuna, cooked shrimp, tofu, cucumber, carrot, and scallions in our maki.

I've made sushi in the past, but never with as much success as we had these past two times. We used short-grain brown rice instead of regular sushi rice, but it was fantastic sprinkled with some seasoned rice vinegar after it had finished cooking. I think the key to professional-looking rolls is to use very little rice. I hate maki with too much rice - it gets gummy and messy and hides the flavors of whatever it is that's rolled up in the middle. I'm not including a recipe here, but take a look to get an idea of how we roll:

The whole set-up: rice, vegetables, tofu, tuna, shrimp, nori, bamboo mat...and beer


See? Not much rice - only half of the nori sheet is covered.


Don't skimp, but don't over-stuff, either. Here is tuna with scallions and cucumber:


And the rolling. The key is to squeeze that baby tightly so everything is nice and compact when you go to slice.


Speaking of which:


And here it is, the finished product. These are tuna rolls and shrimp rolls.


This time around I think our rice was on the bland side; I couldn't find the right rice vinegar, and the one that we used was seasoned, but apparently not seasoned enough. That was mostly remedied by an enthusiastic approach to soy sauce and wasabi dunking. And scallions. Scallions make everything delicious. All in all, a fun little project and a really yummy meal. This is definitely not the thing to make when you want something quick, but now that all of this free time has reappeared in my life, I won't be wanting anything "quick" for quite awhile. Is there any better way to spend one's time than rolling maki?

One final tip for anyone looking to make vegetarian sushi (which, this time around, was actually my favorite): Use the tofu that comes in a cardboard box (ours was Mori-nu) - not the Nasoya stuff in the refrigerator case. The vacuum-packed variety is far superior in both taste and texture. To prepare the tofu, slice into thin rectangles, lightly oil a hot skillet, and let the tofu brown on both sides, being careful not to let it break when you flip it. Slice into strips and roll it up with some carrot, scallion, cucumber...you get the idea. For some added flavor, I drizzled a miso/rice vinegar/soy sauce dressing over the maki before rolling it up. Yum! Nothing (especially not thesis-writing) beats some time well-spent in the kitchen.

A Bit of Baking Philosophy

Now that I've come down from my Daring Bakers high, I thought I might give you a little window into how I like to bake when I don't have a 15-page recipe staring me in the face. As you might imagine, most of my baking occurs sans 15-page recipe (like my French?).

For me, baking is one of those things that I can get really, really into. As in, if I make any more scones/cookies/bread/muffins/granola, I'm going to barf. But then I do it anyway. Like most people, I started baking before I started cooking, mostly because when you're 10 years old, making a chocolate cake is much more enticing than dicing up onions or browning chicken breasts. Baking is a comfort, an indulgence, and something I like to do when I feel the creative juices flowing but can only afford a brief diversion from some more serious endeavor or another.

Now that I'm responsible for crafting my own meals - not just my own desserts and treats - I have come to love cooking as much I love baking. But still, there is an element of surprise in baking that doesn't quite surface in the faster-paced, more evolutionary art of cooking. When I cook, I test, adjust, season, taste, and repeat until I'm done. Baking doesn't allow you the luxury of adjustment, though. Once it's out of the oven, that's it.

Of course, that doesn't mean that baking doesn't allow for experimentation. It just makes the experimentation that much more exciting. People always say that baking is a "science," which, in the chemical sense, it is. There seems to be a misplaced loyalty to following a recipe in baking, though, which I don't quite understand. I agree that when replicating a dish - from a restaurant, cookbook, etc. - it's essential to follow the recipe to the letter. An extra dash of salt or a misplaced 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda can make or break a fickle batch of popovers or a fussy little cake.

But baking doesn't always have to be about replicating, and for me, it's often about creating. In the past year or so I've started creating my own baking recipes, often drawing from other sources and applying my own modifications, but sometimes also starting from scratch. An idea pops into mind and I take it to the kitchen, where, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, it gets whipped, beaten, crumbled, folded, and kneaded into shape.

Even more recently I've started baking without a recipe at all. I start with an ingredient and keep adding until I think I've got something tasty. That's how my ricotta-veggie muffins were born, and they turned out pretty well.

But, in an effort not to bore you to pieces with my baking philosophy, I'll leave you with a quick recipe for some scone/biscuit hybrid specimens that I made this morning. I've spent a lot of time working recently in an adorable little cafe, and although I don't usually indulge in their baked goods, the sight of them (and my lonely coffee mug, with nothing dunked into it), has been making me crave something sweet and scone-like.

These little scones are a cross between rolls, scones, and biscuits - and they are full of whole grains. I had some leftover chai-poached prunes which I chopped up and mixed into the dough, but any dried fruit, frozen fruit, or nuts would also taste lovely. Enjoy these, or better yet, use them to inspire your own original recipe!

Improvisation Breakfast Scones

1/2 c. Bob's Red Mill 8-Grain Cereal (or substitute other cereal)
1/4 c. wheat bran
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/2 c. skim milk
1/2 c. barley flour (or use regular flour)
1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1-2 tbs. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
pinch of cardamom
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (optional, but so delicious!)
handful of prunes or dried fruit, chopped if large

Directions:
Combine cereal and bran and add buttermilk and milk. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit until softened, about half an hour. Add vanilla and dry ingredients, and stir to combine. Add dried fruit and stir until evenly distributed. Drop heaping spoonfuls of dough onto parchment-lined baking sheet (you'll get about 9 scones), and bake at 375 degrees for 15-18 min., until lightly browned on top and bottom. These will be softer than traditional scones, and are perfect dunked in coffee or tea.

1st Daring Bakers Challenge: Baking (and kneading, waiting, deflating, shaping, proofing, and slashing) with Julia

The moment you have all been waiting for: Red Ramekin's first foray into the exciting and borderline cultish world of the Daring Bakers. "The Daring Bakers?" you ask. "Wow, you must know basically nothing about the culino-blogosphere," I chortle, possessed and covered in flour. It's OK, though, I'll explain anyway. The Daring Bakers is a baking group composed of lots and lots of food bloggers from all over the world. Each month, an illustrious blogger or two "hosts" the event, which means that they pick a challenging baking recipe, disseminate it to the eager and less-illustrious members of the group, and then try and moderate the endless discussions that go on throughout the month surrounding the specifics of the recipe. This often includes topics such as the percentage of gluten in bread flour, the appropriate proofing time for bakers living in Malaysian huts with no air-conditioning, and whether it is acceptable to use a linen towel for covering your dough, even though the recipe explicitly says canvas. It's awesome. No, seriously, the Daring Bakers, and the Daring Bakers blog, are really awesome.

The recipe is released to the group members on the 1st of each month, and must be kept a secret until the last day of the month, when all of the bloggers get to post about their successes and/or failures in making the chosen recipe. The event is not a competition, but rather a way for the blog-obsessed to branch out and try recipes that they might not choose to try otherwise. There's more information, and a complete list of members, at the Daring Bakers blogroll.

So, this month's challenge was.....Julia Child's French Bread. Compared to some of the previous challenges (strawberry mirror cake, lemon meringue pic, sticky buns, buche de noel) this one seemed a bit ordinary. However, most ordinary recipes don't require 12 hours to complete. Ordinary recipes don't require that you set your resting dough on a heating pad to achieve the desired rising temperature. Ordinary recipes aren't 8 pages long. You get the idea. It may be bread, but let's face it: bread-baking is anything but easy. Besides, it's a Julia Child recipe, which makes it extra-special. I (like everyone else who has ever cooked) grew up on Julia Child. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit, but Baking with Julia, on PBS's How-To Saturdays, was the best show. Ever. At that age (maybe 12 or so) when watching TV for an entire Saturday was still a reasonable undertaking, I watched Julia religiously.

I have been pretty busy with work this month, but I didn't want to delay membership in the Daring Bakers another month. So, last Sunday was dedicated to Julia's French bread. We prayed for success on the first try, because there probably wasn't going to be a second try. And nobody likes blogging about failed French bread. Luckily, all went according to plan. We ended up with 3 lovely, uber-French batards with golden, crispy crusts and feather-light interiors.

I will spare you the entire recipe, because it is basically the longest recipe I've ever read and I don't even want to think about typing it up. If you are curious, though, check it out here. I'll lay out the basics, though.

First was the mixing, and then the kneading. Lots of kneading:


Then the dough rose until tripled in size, at which point we deflated the dough and set it to rise again. After the second rise came the shaping:


And then another rise:


And then the baking, which involved, among other things, a silicone pastry brush, two baking sheets, a pizza peel, a baking stone, a cast-iron skillet, lots of floury towels, and 10 ice cubes. Look!


Since this was a rather momentous event in my life as a food blogger, I have taken some time to seriously (and not so seriously) reflect on the whole experience.

Overall, it was wonderful. I've been really into bread-baking lately, and this was a kind of baking that I haven't done so much of. It's a totally classic recipe, and it's one of the staples of any decent baker's bread repertoire. I am pretty obsessed with creating my own recipes and using lots of whole grains and alternative ingredients, but it was fun to have an excuse to go completely balls-to-the-wall refined flour for a change.

We have also been doing a lot of that new-fangled no-knead stuff lately. I must admit that I love the no-knead method. It takes literally 5 minutes to mix the dough, and then you just let it hang out for a while in your fridge until you get your lazy ass around to baking it. That's what I'm talking about.

Still, though, there is something about doing bread the real way - I'm talking about kneading now - that is utterly satisfying. This dough was so great to work with, and it was very nice to actually make a successful kneaded loaf. I've tried doing kneaded loaves in the past - just a few times - and have never really been successful. I discovered that it's because I never really knew how to actually knead dough. This recipe explained it very thoroughly. Turns out when a recipe says "10 minutes" it actually, literally means 10 minutes. My arms were tired. When I was kneading the French bread dough, I could see and feel the dough transform from a mish-mash of gluten and liquid into a smooth, soft, cohesive bread-to-be.


The dough was also amazing in the strictly tactile sense. I'd really been missing out by not kneading dough. After a few minutes, this lovely, white, little lump was so soft and smooth that it almost melted (not really, but it felt like that) into my hands. It wasn't sticky, but just barely tacky; it cleared the surface and became delightfully springy and elastic. By the time I was done pounding that sucker, it was like a refined little bubble of yeasty velvet. If my fingers could talk, they would have said something like: "aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooeeeeeeahhhhhooohh." Oh yeah, it was that good.

The evidence for that was in the rising: our precocious little dough-ball puffed up to triple its volume in less than 2 hours. You don't see that with whole-wheat dough. Trust me. The risings went smoothly, so that was good, if not overly exciting. I went to yoga class during the second rise, though, which was a little bit exciting.

And then there was the shaping. This part scared me the most, since I've never had to shape my free-form loaves into "batards" before. The directions were thorough, although not altogether clear; it was hard to visualize them without actually having the dough in front of me. When the time came, though, the directions pulled through. I won't claim that the loaves were perfectly shaped, but they were at worst a rough approximation of a traditional French bread shape. Long, thin, and not horribly disfigured.

Baking was also a breeze, although it required brushing the loaves with water every 3 minutes for the first 9 or so minutes of baking. Hey, I told you this wasn't easy. Miraculously, though, everything seemed to work more or less as written. After letting the loaves cool for a ridiculously long time, we sliced into one and were pleased with both taste and texture. The crust was crispy with a slight chew, and the crumb was close and fine but light as a feather and subtly yeasty.


So, the real test: is it something I'd make again? Well, to be honest, probably not. For one, this loaf requires 100% white flour. Substituting whole grains here would not be pretty. Nor would it be tasty. While I make some exceptions to my whole-grain regime, when I bake for myself I try to stay away from white flour.

And then, of course, there is the time commitment issue. I do like making bread, and I'm excited to try some more kneaded loaves, but this recipe is a bit over-the-top, time-wise. Three rises, really attentive baking, fairly involved shaping....it all adds up to an entire day dedicated to bread. Not that I don't like the occasional day-dedicated-to-bread. But still. This recipe isn't messing around.

The final kicker? Yeah, our French bread was good. But it wasn't any better than a loaf you could get in any bakery or (gasp!) supermarket. Yep, I said it. Store-bought loaves won't make your kitchen smell wonderful, but seriously, they will save you 11 hours of your precious time. Even if your time isn't that precious, that's still a freaking lot of time. I refuse to use this argument when talking about a) breads that don't take huge amounts of time or b) breads that are in some way unique and can't be replaced with store-bought loaves (there are many). But French bread? It's pretty much everywhere, and baking it is definitely not my comparative advantage (just ask Jonathan, the resident economist, what that means). Oh, I almost forgot: sourdough is better than French bread. If I try to do a traditional white loaf again, you can bet that some serious sourdough starter will be involved. Snap.

So, that's the wrap-up of my first-ever Daring Bakers challenge. Totally worth it, totally enjoyable, and totally educational. I can't wait for the next one (I find out tomorrow, but you have to wait until the end of the month!).

Also, if you actually read this entire post, you can officially consider yourself a food blog geek. You're basically a step away from joining the Daring Bakers yourself. But look at what lies ahead:

The World's Best Pizza

I really like the pizza we make at home. We get to choose exactly the toppings we want, and we know what goes into the dough. But the truth of the matter is, we have neither an oven that gets up to 800 degrees nor a 30-foot peel for sliding pizzas in and out of such an oven. New Haven, CT's Wooster St. has at least three such pairs. So, naturally, we rented a ZipCar and headed for New Haven. Ostensibly we were going to see my friend Aaron, but there was mutual acknowledgment that this short trip was about one thing and one thing only: pizza.

Our experience with Wooster St. pizza ended up roughly par for the course. We drove past Sally's, which had a line of about 3 people out the door (which I declared to be interminable) and pulled over at Pepe's, a few blocks down. The line outside of Pepe's was suspiciously short for a Friday night, and it turned out that Pepe's itself was closed (just to emphasize: it was closed, but there was still a short line). However, Pepe's has a backup location behind its parking lot, "The Spot," whose pizza is identical. Mia and I stood in line outside Sally's in the pouring rain for about 15 minutes, watching the line grow in front of us as a few families cut to the front (they must have had the infamous "secret number" for reservations). The Sally's line shortens only by attrition; no one without a reservation ever seems to get a seat.

So we doubled back to The Spot and met Aaron, who was saving us a spot in line there. The quality of the pizza was evident through the window, through which we could see Connecticutians biting down on every variety of irregularly shaped piece of pizza. We sat down and ordered two red pies with mozz. - sausage and onion, and vege (without the green peppers). Naturally, the sausage and onion was for me.

The thing that separates New Haven pizza from the rest is the crust. It is thin and crispy, with a smokiness that you do not find anywhere else. Only rarely is it completely blackened, but even then it is delicious after soaking in the pizza's oils and toppings. But anyone can make a crust merely thin - New Haven style crust is not too thin. There is just enough dough to have the perfect bite once you get through the crisp outer layer. The tomato sauce and cheese are of course top rate (though Mia might disagree), but the crust is what makes New Haven pizza one of the most delicious foods in the world. It's hard to capture the crust in a picture, and harder still when your camera is attached to your cell phone, but here is an attempt at close-up of the vege pie:




and here is my personal pie:

If you're ever in New Haven, it is imperative that you head to Wooster St. Pepe's is open for lunch, but the traditional time to go is Sunday in the late afternoon. Show up 20 minutes before opening and you'll be sure to be in the first wave of customers. You won't be disappointed.

Grrrrr(anola)

I've been toying with the idea of making my own granola for a while now. It just seems so....me. What could possibly be more exhilarating than taking an ubiquitous grocery item and health-ifying it (i.e. cutting fat and sugar and experimenting with some wacky tastes)?

I had a little time on my hand this past week, so I decided to give it a go. I'll start off by saying that granola, while incredibly delicious, usually doesn't make it into my breakfast rotation. I'm an oatmeal kind of gal, and although some people get a little grossed out by the whole hot and runny porridge thing, I lap it up. Literally. The runnier and porridgier the better. But back to granola. The truth about it is that granola, though loaded with healthy stuff (oats, flax, nuts, fruit) is usually also loaded with sugar and fat (that's why it's so delicious!). I'm not on a fat-free sugar-free granola crusade, but when I eat it, I would like to know what - and in what proportions - goes into it. Hence homemade granola.

I've found over the past few days that granola can be a bit frustrating. Let me give you a quick rundown of the granola making process: Mix dry ingredients (grains, nuts, seeds), mix wet ingredients (sugar, syrup, fat, fruit puree), and pour wet over dry, moistening everything. Spread mixture on a baking sheet and toast in the oven until dried and crisp. Add dried fruit. Most recipes are pretty standard, and while many leave out the oil and butter or substitute something for it (egg whites, for example), almost all of them still have a lot of sugar. That means I've had to do some experimenting...some rounds of which have been more successful than others.


So far I've learned a few things. The first is that it's fun to add a lot of stuff to the dry part of the granola. Instead of doing straight rolled oats, I've been doing a combination of oat, barley, rye, and wheat flakes (sold as a dry mix for hot cereal). I've also been tossing in some Kashi 7 Grain puffed cereal, in addition to wheat bran, wheat germ, almonds, flax seeds, pepitas, and even sesame seeds. I know what you're thinking - I'm crazy.

The second is that it takes more than you might think to actually make granola with flavor. In other words, granola is loaded with sugar for a reason: crunchy-toasted rolled oat flakes are a bit, well, bland on their own. This is where my main challenge lies: coming up with a good recipe that yields flavorful, if not too sweet, granola.

The first batch I made was based on this recipe, which calls for applesauce as a fat substitute and flavor-enhancer. I added pepitas, almonds, and sesame, which worked quite well. I also sprinkled a lot of cinnamon and ground ginger on this batch - I've discovered that spices and extracts (vanilla, almond) are essential for a flavorful granola. This batch was tasty, but the flavors were pretty standard, and I wanted to expand my granola horizons.

The next batch was blueberry-ish: I used some blueberry-pomegranate juice as the base for the syrup, and tossed in a few frozen blueberries, as well. This batch, sadly, was mostly flavorless - not nearly enough sugar, although a hefty sprinkling of cinnamon and cardamom salvaged it mid-way through baking.


Ok, so the experimentation continues...I haven't hit the granola jackpot yet, but I sure am trying. I did make a rather tasty creation today: peanut butter-banana granola, which gets its sweet-salty flavor from the peanut butter. I still have a few more ideas in mind, so bear with me as I search for the perfect recipe to share...wish me luck, and try to keep in mind the quantity of mediocre granola I've been consuming in an effort get to the bottom of this culinary challenge.

Homemade Bread: A Primer

Having decided to pursue home-baked bread in earnest, we picked up a copy of Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The title is alarmingly infomercial-like, but the content is decidedly unso. It is also a little vague -- it should be "Artisan Bread in an Average of Five Minutes a Day," since the dough-mixing day involves half an hour of measuring out cups of flour and then the other involve sliding the dough into the oven -- but our schedules conform to this regimen easily enough.

In an attempt to placate Mia, I picked the 100% whole wheat sandwich bread for the first experiment. In retrospect, the simple master recipe boule would have been the right choice, since in general the best way to develop any skill seems to be to start with its most basic application. But we like our germs and brans, so I reached for the bag of whole wheat flour and added it to the yeast, honey, olive oil, and milk waiting in the food processor. The authors suggest making a large amount of dough and then storing the residual in the refrigerator so that fresh bread can be available throughout the week without mixing more dough. Expecting to learn quickly by doing, I made half a recipe, enough for two small breads; luckily, this also happened to be the maximum amount of dough that fit in the food processor, so I didn't have to mix the dough by hand.

After mixing the few ingredients together and letting the dough rise for 3 hours in a covered bowl, we transferred the sticky blob to two cleaned-out quart-size yogurt containers and put them in the fridge. The dough expanded to fill the container, but there were no explosions or eruptions.


The next day, we removed the dough, shaped it, and put it on the pizza peel to rise again before going in the oven. After rising, we covered the top in flour and cut slashes in the bread:


Then we slid it off the peel and onto the warm baking stone. 55 minutes later, we had our first finished product.

Though I may have declared it an "unqualified success," our first bread's success wasn't without its qualifications. It tasted good and looked and felt like real bread. But the texture and moisture of the interior, and the crust, while not problematic, could stand improvement. We will continue to update you as our experiments unfold.

French Food, In Baby Steps

I'm the first to admit that I know almost nothing about French cooking. Sure, France is the birthplace of all things culinary, but it isn't really my style. Too many rules, too many "techniques." Cooking for me is much more Italian, Mediterranean, or Indian: a pinch of this, a bit of that, toss it together and dig in.

I think, though, that it is time for me to confront the French beast. I've been reading the wildly popular blog Chocolate and Zucchini, which is about as French as French can be, in my opinion. The cute creator/writer/hostess/chef, Clotilde, is petite and cheerful and loves to entice her readers with tales and photographs of butter-rich sables, creamy fig glace, and all manner of enticing tarts. I recently happened upon her cookbook (also called Chocolate and Zucchini) at a local bookstore and couldn't resist buying it. Thus my cookbook-buying bender continues, and I am obligated to add a little French flare to the kitchen.

A little frightened by the technique-heaviness and fat-filledness of Clotilde's recipes, I opted for something simple on my first go: Soft-boiled eggs. You might be thinking that this isn't really a French recipe, but wrong you are. With a name like Oeufs a la Coque, how could this recipe not be French? Also exceedingly French is Clotilde's story accompanying the recipe: a tale of a lovely French family, each with a single oeuf for Sunday dinner. Ah yes, I remember those Sunday night family dinners at my house, when we would all eat a single egg and be perfectly satisfied with our supper's simplicity. If we weren't feeling particularly ravenous we might even share two eggs between the four of us...

In all seriousness, though, this dish is just right for breakfast, brunch, or, I suppose, dinner - as long as it's not the only thing you are eating. To make the eggs, add them carefully to a pot of boiling water. When the water starts boiling again, set your timer for four minutes and cook at a gentle simmer. Immediately remove eggs, rinse with cool water, and serve in precious little egg cups, like the ones we just bought specifically for the photographs in this post.


To eat the eggs, tap a knife around the top of the egg, cracking the shell gently. Pull off this little hat of egg shell, and season with salt and pepper. Eat with a small spoon, or by dipping pieces of bread into the egg. You are bound to feel very sophisticated. Almost French, I'd say.

Thanksgiving Redux

Due to popular demand, I thought I'd post about my most recent culinary adventure: cooking for Thanksgiving at my parents' house in Westford, Massachusetts. Luckily for me, I was put in charge of everything from turkey to dessert, and didn't stop baking/brining/cooking/roasting from Tuesday evening until mealtime on the big day.

I won't bore you with the all the turkey-day details, since most of you have probably moved on from T-day to bigger holidays at this point. However, I'll give you a brief rundown of the menu, some important tips that I discovered while preparing it, and my favorite picks. And for your enjoyment I offer a mental image (no photos were taken, unfortunately): I decided to brine my 12-lb. turkey, which meant a whole lot of wrestling with my raw little bird, trying to get it just right in the brining bag and the big, plastic bin I had readied for the job. Twelve pounds only seems small - trust me, it was a struggle.

So, here is my menu:

Curried butternut soup with wild rice
Fennel and orange salad with black olives
Smashed peas with mint and walnuts
Roasted, Indian-spiced sweet potatoes with chick peas
Sauteed brussels sprouts with shallots and chestnuts
Turkey, brined and basted with butter and riesling
Cornbread stuffing with apples and chestnuts
Cranberry-fig sauce
Carrot and sage cornbread mini-muffins
Pumpkin mascarpone pie
Chocolate amaretto torte with candied almonds
Vegan apple tart
Almond biscotti

The most notable aspect of my cooking experience was brining the turkey. I followed a Martha Stewart recipe for the brine and for the roasting process itself, which involved unheard-of amounts of butter and an entire bottle of white wine. The turkey was indeed moist and incredibly delicious, although I must admit that I'm not convinced that this was due to the brining process. Since roast turkey is something I have only once a year, it's hard for me to accurately assess the value of the brine, but my mom also suspects that an equally delicious turkey can be had without the wrestling involved with brining.

As for the rest of the menu, my big tip is not to do brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving. I love brussels sprouts, but they are really best eaten fresh - directly after sauteing or roasting. Unless your Thanksgiving schedule allows for immediate eating (mine didn't, and the result was slightly bitter sprouts), I'd say save the sprouts for more laid-back occasions.

What were the favorites, you might be wondering? My favorite dish was probably the soup, but as has previously been established, I am obsessed with all things squash. My aunt Caren raved about the sweet potatoes, which were moist, spicy, and a nice change of pace from traditional Thanksgiving sweet potato dishes that are loaded with butter, cream, and sugar. The cornbread stuffing (made with homemade cornbread) was also a hit. The apples were the perfect touch. Two more of my personal favorites were the cranberry-fig sauce and the cornbread mini-muffins.

I made the cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries, red wine, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and dried black mission figs. I also added a tiny bit of orange juice, and seasoned it with cinnamon sticks and cloves. The flavors were strong and just barely sweet enough, and the leftovers were perfect smeared on crackers...or straight from the Tupperware. The mini-muffins were a last-minute idea, and I improvised the recipe. Fresh sage and a bit of parmesan cheese made for cute and savory little morsels, which went well with the soup.

And then there was dessert. The pumpkin mascarpone pie, which I took straight from Bon Appetit's Thanksgiving issue, was hands-down the best pumpkin pie I have ever had. I made the crust, and my sister Emma made the filling. The chocolate amaretto torte was also a hit. It turns out that you can't go wrong with high-quality chocolate, absurd amounts of butter, and liquor. Who knew? I, however, am partial to the biscotti, because I can eat an infinite amount of them and not feel like barfing. Not so with the torte. Trust me.

Oh, and the apple tart: My cousin Matt, who eats vegan, came for dessert, so I needed a Thanksgiving sweet that did not include butter, eggs, cream, or chocolate. Yikes. I bought a vegan pie crust from Whole Foods (shh, don't tell anyone!), let it thaw until pliable, and used it as the base for a free-form apple tart made with honeycrisp apples. It was incredibly simple, and turned out quite well.

So, there it is: Thanksgiving 2007. I can hardly wait for next year.

Gators, Pythons, and Bears Oh My!

I have blogged in the past about Savenor's, a famous little market on Kirkland St. in Cambridge that sells rare meat. The venison tenderloin that I declared to be the most delicious meat I had ever eaten was a Savenor's treat. I returned to Savenor's with some friends on Friday with more ambitious goals than venison - bear and wild boar. I also secretly hoped for some moose after reading John McPhee's description in the food issue of the New Yorker a few months back.

Unfortunately, our wildest gastronomic dreams were not to be met. While some grayish bear meat was available in the freezer to the tune of $50/lb, there was none in the fridge. I didn't see any moose at all. We were tempted momentarily by rattlesnake, farm-raised python (Ian now wants to be a python and bear farmer), and gator, but the meat looked far from appetizing. We settled on a French rack of wild boar and a hunk of venison loin. The crazy guy behind the counter declared that "venison is the tastiest treat in the world. Besides possum." I didn't know whether to laugh or engage him in conversation, so I awkwardly tried to do both, or neither. We paid our $45 and left for Chris's, whose barbecue (unlike ours) was ready to see some action.

Chris barbecued the wild boar after salting it and painting it in olive oil, while I mistakenly chose to pan fry the venison instead of throwing it on the grill next to the boar. Perhaps because the venison was a loin as opposed to a tenderloin, perhaps because I was lucky last time, or perhaps for some other reason, the venison was all but inedible. It seemed to be made up of two different and unfortunate animals haphazardly forced to coexist in one loin. The outer layer was mostly fat and gristle, and everyone in the room not allergic to salmon agreed that it tasted sort of like a really bad piece of salmon. The inner layer tasted more like a sick deer.

The boar was more successful. It had a nice, smoky, wild taste, and some of us (like Chris, below) ate it the way it was meant to be eaten (not me, I like knives):


In the end, we were glad to have tried it - mostly for the story-telling value - but won't be racing back for more any time soon. The prospect of fresh bear, though, might warrant a third trip to Savenor's.

Home-Made Ravioli

Last weekend, Mia and I house-sat for her parents, so we had a large kitchen and a lot of time on our hands. She suggested, and I readily agreed, that we make our own ravioli. I've always been curious about fresh pasta, and fresh ravioli in particular - what is pasta made from? How do you turn pasta dough into ravioli? Why is it so delicious? Whenever I claim that pasta is made from wheat, I am corrected because it's actually made from semolina. But as it turns out, semolina is actually just a type of wheat. It is the inner, starchy endosperm of durum wheat. According to the package, semolina contains an unusually large amount of gluten, which is why you can stretch it and shape it so much without its breaking up.

Satisfied with that, we moved on to the production process. Mia put the dough together (a cup of semolina, a cup of whole wheat flour, and three eggs; next time we might try a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil) and kneaded it. Next came the fun part: rolling. Pasta is usually made with a pasta machine, which does all the dirty work for you by mechanically or electrically rolling the dough into long, lovely, paper-thin sheets. Lacking such a device, Mia rolled it out by hand with a rolling pin, which, in addition to serving as her upper-body strength training for the week, produced charmingly (?) and irregularly shaped pieces of dough. The sheets were then cut into ravioli-sized squares.


We prepared three fillings - ground lamb with mint, buttercup squash with ricotta, and mushrooms and walnuts with sage, sherry, and goat cheese. We filled them - a dollop of filling in the middle, wet the edge of the pasta dough with water, and fold it over and push the ends together until they stick. Then we cooked them, 4-5 minutes in boiling water.

The result was delicious. The pasta itself was tasty, chewy, and fresh. The ground lamb wasn't much of a success, but the other two fillings were superb. Mia's favorite was the squash (she's obsessed with squash), and my favorite was the mushroom-walnut - savory, earthy, and nutty. Overall a success, if rather labor-intensive. Next time we'll tweak the dough. Or make pizza instead.

Coffee Roasting I

When worked at Analysis Group, before I drank coffee, I used to listen wide-eyed to the VPs' tales of home coffee roasting. Steven Shurmann had just convinced AG to shell out for a fancy in-office espresso maker, with built-in water filters and surely more than the standard 15 bars of pump pressure, and he and Armando brought freshly roasted beans from their homes every Monday morning. Coffee roasting appealed more to my aesthetic sense of the good life than to my tastebuds.

But then, that fateful night when I first started to study hard for the microeconomics general exam (a big test grad students take at the end of their first year) a few years ago, I decided to give coffee another try. Maybe it was several years worth of beer bitterness, or maybe it was simply my more advanced age, but that night, the free coffee at the Bureau (National Bureau of Economic Research, where I have a desk) actually tasted sort of good. It wasn't long before I ordered my own coffee roaster (I went with the economical Fresh Roast) and sample pack of green beans.

In this post I will describe the basic roasting process. When I do my cupping later this week or early next week (depending on when the beans arrive), I will talk about comparing different roast styles and different coffees. The beans arrive (from the ubiquitous sweetmarias.com) processed but unroasted. They are green and have a faint earthy smell totally unlike the smell of roasted coffee. Here, for example, is a picture of my new India Anohki beans ("a rare and intense coffee, odd blueberry sweetness and hidey, rustic chocolate, low acidity, bizarre!").

The unroasted beans can survive at room temperature for years.

To roast, you throw the beans in the roaster, which is really just a glorified popcorn popper (with a special basket for the chaff - during roasting, the beans shed their outermost layer). They slowly turn a light brown, and you smell a popcorny smell. Then they start to crackle - the "first crack" is loud and assertive.


As they get darker in color after the first crack, the smoke becomes stronger and smells a little bit more like the coffee smell we're used to. A light roast is stopped before the second crack, which is characterized by more frequent but less powerful crackling noises. Here's a darker roast, which I stopped about 15 seconds into the second crack:


After the second crack, there's a lot of smoke, and you're getting into French and Spanish Roast territory. If you get to the mythic and dreaded third crack, head to Peet's after desperately waving a towel under the smoke detector to ward off the fire department's expensive and probably unnecessary visit.

My sources vary on how long you should wait to drink the coffee after it's roasted, but it's certainly no more than on the third morning after roasting. I'm beginning to believe in the roast-10-minutes-before-you-drink model, which my new coffee roasting book attributes to the Italians. I can't resist anything the Italians do.

Venison

As I was fortunate enough to sneak in a dinner sans Mia this evening, I was able to enjoy one of the few great pleasures in life, red meat. Beth proposed venison, and I agreed to walk to Savenor's to obtain it. Savenor's is about the size of my bedroom, and, in addition to a few readily obtainable potatoes and fruits, it sells meat. And I'm not even sure it sells regular meat - what it really sells is irregular meat.

I asked the butcher for help finding the right cut of venison. We wanted something that we could sear and/or roast such that we could finish eating before Josh Beckett threw his first 12-6 snapdragon for a strike. He brushed off my question by saying that, obviously, any of the multitudinous venison cuts available could be prepared in my fashion, but really what I wanted was bear or wild boar. I was careful to be both contemplative and noncommittal. When he was done explaining how truly stunning the $60 blob of bear meat tastes, I kindly asked him to give me one of the two venison tenderloins that were co-packaged.

An uncooked venison tenderloin is an alarming thing to behold. I have pictures, but they're available only by special request and after a background check. The best description I can think of is that a raw venison tenderloin looks like a common leech, but 20 times the size. Anyway, I did a simple kosher salt and black pepper spice rub, and then, after washing my hands thoroughly, I used the new silicone pastry brush to paint the entire thing with olive oil. I sauteed it over medium heat for about 4 minutes per side, and then we put it in the oven at 450 degrees for another 5 minutes or so.

The result was superb. It was the best meat I have ever tasted - tender, free of any gristle that might get in the way of the eating experience, and, most importantly, intensely flavorful. I really have no choice but to urge strongly that you head to your favorite specialty rare meat grocer and try it for yourself.