The Oyster and Wine

That's Just Offal

2011-12-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

If pressured, I would admit that I don't really believe eating every part of the animal has anything to do with being moral. In fact, so long as the animal has had a good life, eating the parts which are most delicious to you seems like a fitting tribute. Animals, after all, are animals, whatever the quasi-religious left-wing animal rightists, or the even more quasi-religious right-wing hunters, may feel. But, as an eater, some of the best meals of my life have involved cuts decidedly not from the tenderloin/backstrap (in point of fact, tenderloin has never been very enjoyable or flavorful).

Some examples:

-Pho with soft tendon, a meltingly tender mouthful of beef essence
-My first menudo, a soup so perfect I keep chasing it to the bottom of skanky bowl after skanky bowl
-Foie gras, on the line at Au Pied de Cochon; never have the words, "ere, heat this" sounded so right
-Tongue tacos, everyday, anytime

As an anachronist and a minimalist, there is a strong drive to eat the whole animal because not wasting anything is the way it's always been done.

But, chiefly, as a cook, throwing a piece of prime strip on a hot grill with a bunch of salt is boring. What has been done, other than salting the meat and flipping it? There's no challenge, and for a while, my disillusionment with that ease allowed me no joy in cooking with meat of any kind.

One of my vividest memories of Montreal is peeling, with a vegetable peeler, braised venison tongues in the sweltering prep cellar. There was an element of medieval torture (deer are very similarly sized to humans, and the tongues I held were roughly the same shape as mine), but there was also a great deal of skill and knowledge involved. A tongue takes some care to make edible, but when done right, it is true bliss (and at Au Pied de Cochon, the tongues were most definitely destroyed by being soaked in vinegar).

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Thursday: Tongue and Tail

Nose-to-tail eating can get only so much more literal than this.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is my favorite cookbook author, although his recipes aren't the most daring or technically precise or even authentic. Still, he embraces food as food should be embraced: honestly, for what it is, and for what it does to us. A pig, to him, is not a source of excessive culinary creation (like Martin Picard) or traditional nasty bits (such as Henderson), but a pig, as in that animal which lives outside his farmhouse, eating scraps from the garden, and in the fall eats fallen acorns in the oak stand along the hedgerow. A pig, quite simply, is more real to Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall than to any other author I've read. Only Rob Levitt, of Chicago's Butcher and Larder, approaches meat, with a similar mindset (and the mindset, by definition, extends beyond meat to all food, but that is outside the scope of this week's cooking).

This dish intrigued me. Tongue is one of my favorite cuts, and oxtail is a newly discovered delight. So what would they be like, jellied in a loaf with red wine?

Really, really good.

The chunks of meat were too large, and the loaf came apart when I sliced it. Such are the results of making an aspic loaf for the first time. It was also too rich to eat much of it in a sitting, but when it was hot and served over parsnips...

Absolutely soul-warming. Just what I needed when my family were out of town.

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Friday: Tripe

Rarely do I find any food unappetizing. From youngest childhood to now, almost nothing served has made me gag. There have been two, maybe three, times in my life when I simply could not chew - an oyster when I was 4 (which I don't remember), a vegetable terrine in France. One of those times was this last Friday.

Entranced with the romantic portrait Henderson painted on page 88, I decided to make my second dish Tripe and Onions. The second chamber of the cow's stomach is no stranger, with menudo being a favorite meal of mine. Sure, there have been a bad experiences, but in general, the melting quality of the tripe and the spice of the broth combine to be the most perfect accompaniment to masa.

Still, there is an element of revulsion in those memories. The texture of tripe is off-putting to Americans, but the smell is what dominates. At one moment, it is the most homely, warming aroma I know, but there is a strong part of it which disgusts me. As much as I love menudo, the smell and texture have always left me wondering if this was the time I would lose my lunch while still eating.

In the end, it was not menudo, but a warm, comforting dish of English heritage which put me over the edge. Had this tripe been grass-fed, sourced by St. Johns, served in the white-tiled dining room, by respectable waiters, and simmered for hours by their knowledgeable cooks, it surely would have been divine.

But just look at that pile of squishy yellowish goo. I put it in my mouth and gagged. Gathering will power, I bit down and didn't gag. I bit down a second time, and gagged harder. I spit it out, and gagged. I made it to the sink, and while not gagging, I could feel muscles lower down contracting. This, I thought, was surely my stomach staging a protest. No stomach shall be digested by this stomach, it urged.

So, my second meal was a failure, but I am determined now. Between now and the next time my family leaves me alone to my own devices, I shall eat as much tripe as possible, so that the smell of it cooking does not induce panic at the thought of actually eating it.

Or maybe I'll just throw in the towel and stick to less emetic offal (like liver, and kidneys, and hearts (which really isn't offal at all)).
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Saturday: Old stand-bys: roast chicken with golden beets and parsnips, and wine-braised sauerkraut. Recipes I know well, and that can be ready with minimal prep, which was good for having a couple guys over. I only mention it to explain why I didn't make anything spectacularly disgusting.
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Sunday/Monday: Trotters

Le ragoût de pattes de cochon is a traditional Christmas dish in Quebec. (I'm assuming it was eaten more widely than the end of December, but the last 50 years have seen much of the poor rural element give way to a slightly wealthier eating style.) A confession: trotters are not what I would call "edible" or in any way pleasing. I am old enough, and I've eaten enough with a completely open mind, that I feel no embarrassment saying that gnawing through skin to get to cartilage which is surrounded by fat is not pleasant.

But, sometimes, you have got to do something because two days before, you made something even less enjoyable because of some romantic and foolish idea that tripe only needs respect to taste good.

Besides, I cooked at the current spiritual home of Quebec cuisine, and I was using that recipe. I had to do this.

This dish took three days to prepare. I roasted a chicken on Saturday to serve for dinner, then on Sunday used the carcass to make a simple chicken stock with carrots, while brining the pig's feet. The original recipe called for pork stock, but this is a dish from Quebec, and les habitants are nothing if not frugal, so I felt that the chicken stock was more fitting than buying more pork to make the stock with would be. Then, after the stock was made (around 2:00 pm), I put in the trotters to simmer for three hours.

This recipe also has one of the weirdest techniques I know, and it isn't just Martin Picard's insanity. The sauce is thickened with flour, but first the flour is roasted in a 400 degree oven until dark brown. There's no fat added to the flour, so it isn't a roux, nor is it mixed with anything else. It's just oven-roasted flour, which smells rather strange. My only hunch is that this is an ancient French technique which died out on the continent sometime between 1700 and 1900 with the universal adoption of the roux, but which persisted in the francophone enclave of North America.

So, that was all done on Sunday, and the stock with trotters was put in the fridge overnight.

Look at that gel! God, trotters are amazing.

As that heated up on the stove, I prepared the meatballs, which are seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, and pepper, then browned them in a skillet with some of the schmaltz the great cooks at work gave me (they gave me a quart of schmaltz for no reason other than I asked). I reduced the broth while cooking the meatballs through in it, and then put in some fingerling Yukon Gold and boiler onions. Unsurprisingly, given the pork, cinnamon, and clove, it smelled a lot like pho until the potatoes took over.

Finally, I added the roasted flour to the broth, then reheated all of the ingredients in the sauce: the trotters, the meatballs, the potatoes, and the onions. I took them out, and then mounted it, because this is a good dish, a French dish, and what the hell else would you do after cooking pig's feet and meatballs browned in schmaltz in the gelatinous pork/chicken stock, other than melt butter into it?

Here it is:

I took a bite and... best thing I have eaten in months! I was reminded that when I first started at Au Pied de Cochon, I loved the trotters. It wasn't until I picked the bones out of 40 a night that my stomach started to turn. Trotters are a glutton's fantasy, and could only be improved by being stuffed with foie gras (incidentally, the signature dish at Au Pied de Cochon is just that). The stew was hearty, familiar, and yet exotic. It was rich and luxurious, yet plebeian. The roasted flour, by the way, gave it an intriguing, alluring depth.

So, to all of you, a very happy Christmas!

Rice Cooking

2011-05-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

My previous post (the one about oden, which was actually written and posted after the braised oxtail post, but Blogger strangely relegated it to January 31) was my foray into Japanese cooking, but it is a topic with which I have become quite familiar. As I learned more over the past few months, partly because of my cooking colleagues at the restaurant, and partly through obsessive reading of cookbooks and blogs, the simplicity of the cuisine has really stuck hard in my mind.

One thing which I've become very interested in is onigiri. They're basically rice balls, often formed into triangles or pyramids, filled with a savory bite, and then wrapped in nori. I've been cooking a lot of rice for these, and perfecting my rice cooking has become a bit of an obsession. My rice is better than at any time since living in the apartment in St. Peter, when I ate beans and rice twice a day for four months (those were the days!). The idea of waking up to a steaming pot of rice, too, has become very attractive, so I've been looking into programmable rice cookers.

I stumbled across Adventures in Bentomaking, a site run by a Hawaiian woman and mother, while researching rice cookers. Zojirushi is generally considered to be the best brand available in the US, and she was reviewing a new model they released which claims to enhance the umami characteristics through its cooking method. Amazingly, Zojirushi has offered to give one of her readers a rice cooker to test, too, and you can read about how to enter on her site. Needless to say, I have entered, and if I am selected, there will be many posts about onigiri, shari, and also experimentation of all sorts (I am, after all, a former professional cook at two very good and inventive restaurants; I think I can come up with some unique ways to use the rice cooker).

At any rate, a rice cooker is definitely in my future. Although Japanese white rice is a newly acquired taste at home, brown rice has consistently been one of my staples, served with a plethora of legumes. It's going to get a lot of use, now that my job will require something of a commute.

Red Wine Braised Oxtails

2011-01-31T15:39:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine sent me a recipe around Thanksgiving for braised oxtails. Life got crazy, and before I knew it, my mom's family was visiting for Christmas. Aha! I thought to myself, now is the perfect time to try this recipe.

A time-intensive labor of love it was: first, I made a beef stock from scratch, which took a day and a half. I then had to braise the oxtails, which was another day, plus the two days it took me to source the oxtails themselves. (On a side note: I called the Northbrook Whole Foods to see if they had the oxtails and was told they did. I took an hour detour specifically to go by the store, and once inside, found out that they had no oxtails. WTF? One of the two people I spoke to had made a mistake, and it pissed me off so much that I will never return to that store for any reason. I ended up going to Little Mexico to track down the oxtails, and they were not free-range, grass-finished beef.)

So, more than 24 hours went into this dish, and it showed in the end result. Meltingly succulent oxtail was enveloped in a thick sauce made from reduced stock and red wine. I had plans to serve the oxtails with a beautifully smooth purée of root vegetables and a tart cranberry compote to cut the richness, but then reality struck: no one would eat oxtails.

Well, phooey! This was one of the richest, most decadent dishes I have made at home, a dish through which the beauty of peasant food (poor people making good food out of the scraps because they had to) shined in all its beauty. The dish was refined, yet also comforting, and represented what "cooking with heart" is all about.

So, I was forced to gnaw on the bones for a couple days. I'll leave you with this glory shot of the stock, one of many magnificent pieces of this dish that, unfortunately, no one else got to enjoy.

What Am I Doing?

2011-01-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was the oxtail fiasco, which consumed 24 hours of my life and then no one wanted to eat it, or maybe it was the experience (yes, experience) of finally enjoying tonkatsu ramen. More likely, it was too many late nights watching Iron Chef reruns. I'm not totally sure, but I have recently lost my inhibition against making Asian food at home, or more specifically, I have become enamored with the idea of making homemade dashi.

What is dashi, you ask? I had no idea until the beginning of December. It's Japanese stock, is what it is, as foundational to Japanese cuisine as veal stock is to classical French cooking and water is to the Italians. I haven't been able to figure out when certain dashi are used over others, but the most commonly referenced one, the one I have become enamored with, is a simple stock made from simmering kombu (a type of seaweed) with bonito flakes (shavings from a piece of dried tuna). (For those sad, pathetic souls who are familiar with Iron Chef, Rokusaburo Michiba's "broth of vigor" is a very strong version of this.)

To that end, I swung by Mitsuwa today and picked up some ingredients to try my hand at a common wintertime dish utilizing dashi: oden. Oden [Wikipedia article here] is both familiar and exotic, an immediately recognizable melange of hot broth and root vegetables, but dosed with fish cakes and fried tofu fritters. This dish, I decided, was the one to cut my dashi teeth on.

Of course, all I knew of dashi making were a few 3-second clips of Michiba dumping bonito into a weird pot of boiling...water? So, the first thing I did was Google dashi, which led me to UmamiMART's page on the subject [link]. Using this and the TV show as a guide, I started.

Here's the kombu at first.

And after a twenty-minute soak.

The bonito flakes being added to steaming water. (I nibbled on the bonito a little. Let me just say, bonito flakes will probably be a pantry staple for me in the future.)

At this point, I let the water come to a boil, then turned off the heat and let everything steep together for about half an hour. Then I strained the dashi through a paper towel set in a fine mesh strainer, and I had about a quart of dashi. Super simple to make, much easier than a classical French stock. How did it taste? Um... Japanese? It was strong and simple, but the bonito is a very complex flavor. Definitely, this dashi could be worth the trouble (which was really minimal, about five minutes of actual work).

So, on to the oden; going into this, I decided that if the oden was terrible, or at the least not worth the effort of making it, I really didn't have any reason to try dashi again. Well, the oden was simple, at least. I peeled and cut up a couple smallish potatoes and a large daikon, some maitake mushrooms (not traditional), then added those together with some tofu fritters and hard-boiled eggs to the pot. I also took the kombu out, sliced it into ribbons, and tied it in a simple overhand knot, which I either made up or else is traditional. I had read that you're supposed to par-boil everything first, but this was the first time I made this dish, and I had never eaten it before, so I figured, what the heck? No time like a first try to mess up and not feel bad about it. I also added a tablespoon or so of soy sauce.

So, here it is with everything added to the pot. I added enough dashi to cover everything comfortably, with the idea that it would slowly simmer down to a more concentrated broth. (It did not, because I covered it.)

Here it is after an hour on the stove, when I served it. Over the course of simmering, the smell changed from one dominated by the bonito to one dominated by a combination of the seaweed and the radish.

How was it?

I liked it. A lot. As with all Asian food, the flavor profile was foreign but not bad, and the texture of the tofu fritter was surprisingly spongelike. All told, I would definitely make this again, although I might not have a chance for a couple winters. It was pretty cool, though, having my home smell like Sushi Kushi Toyo.

New Years' Eve

2010-12-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

I'm finally doing it: shelling out for a prix-fixe dinner on December 31. I've never tried Avec, and after their run-in with bad luck, this year seemed like the perfect time to do it.

Good news: skatewing's on the menu.

Essay Contest

2010-10-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

Anthony Bourdain's new book, Medium Raw, is being published in paperback, and he's decided to publish a short essay by an unpublished author in it, as a sort of way to pay forward the surprise success he enjoyed ten years ago.

My submission can be found here: The Deer and La Lengua. Read it, vote for it if so moved, and please above all leave an honest comment.

Matthew

In Memory of an Artisan

2010-07-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

I only met Daniel once, about six weeks ago. I had gone down to Prairie Fruits Farm for the weekend for reasons that now seem cloudy, although I think the idea had been to talk to Leslie and her husband Wes about getting involved with the Chicago farmer's markets. Almost as soon as I arrived, I was told of a new vendor next to them at the market, a young man who'd followed his passion for bean-to-bar chocolate to starting his own business - Flatlander Chocolate. They were, believe me, absolutely incredible.

He also made caramels, and I'd tried to buy a salted one from him when I was there. Unfortunately, I'd waited too long, and he'd sold out. "Next week," he assured me with a smile. Of course, I couldn't make it to the market the next week, but I'd hoped to go down to the farm again, sometime this summer, and get one then.

Daniel was 24, and had been a graduate student in computer science (or maybe it was mathematics) at UIUC when he'd started playing around in the kitchen with cocoa nibs. Eventually, the hobby became an all-consuming passion, and he left school to pursue his chocolate-making full-time. When I was a the market, his zeal bubbled out from under his awning. He was a very charismatic young man, tall and thin, with a hipster edge. I both related to him and admired him for taking the leap and pursuing his passion full-time.

Daniel died Tuesday morning, an apparent suicide. The news out of Urbana is sketchy at best, but I have to admit, I find it hard to understand how someone who took such glee in his work could also be desperate enough to kill himself. But, of course, I only met him once, briefly, and our conversation never turned to matters of the heart or mind.

Caliente Doug's

2010-07-17T19:20:00.001-07:00

I had an epic day of sexploration yesterday, by which I mean I ate a lot of really good food. The first stop was the always disappointing Hot Doug's. Seriously, could there be a place - anywhere on the planet - more overrated? Above is a picture of the entranceway, a picture that took two hours to get. That's right, two hours of standing in line to get a couple decent sausages.

I ordered the Keira Knightley and the infamous (and rather heroic) foie gras and Sauternes duck sausage (with truffle oil sauce). Those are pictured below, along with the pommes frites en gras de canard, i.e. duck fat fries. I'll let you in on a little secret: Pied de Cochon's fries were cooked in only 50% duck fat and theirs were a lot better. I'll let you in on another little secret: Pdc's fries are only about as good as Nightwood's.

This sausage, however, was a work of art. It was a rib-eye sausage with black garlic aïoli and a double cream Brie. Not worth the wait, but definitely worth eating.

Following a few hours' cooling off in front of HGTV (I was the only guy, that's my excuse), we headed to get some dinner. Xoco was our destination, a place that I have been eager to try since last summer, despite a slightly blah review from a trusted source. Those in the know will be aware that Xoco is Rick Bayless' sandwich shop, serving tortas and soups for lunch and dinner, but also serving coffee, churros, and the most amazing hot chocolate on this side of the Atlantic. It's at Illinois and Clark, right next to Frontera Grill, and words and images really don't do it justice. Just go there.

The tortas we shared were a Yucatecan-style pork offering, called cochinita pibil, with the ubiquitous pickled onions on the side and a fiery (but sooooo delicoius) roasted habanero salso. This one is on the left in the picture. The other was a daily special of shrimp and bacalao (it being Friday), and it was simply good. The bacalao hadn't been oversoaked, neither had it (crucially) been undersoaked. Just two very well-conceived tortas. The chocolate, their Barcelona offering, was just bittersweet chocolate heaven.

All in all, an amazing day. Now I get to get up at 4:30 tomorrow and cook my own amazing food. Cheers.

Happy Food Independence Day!

2010-07-01T20:22:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture of an organic-egg-in-the-whole-wheat-basket. (The bread is from the Great Harvest in Evanston. So good!)

Pasta con pomodoro

2010-06-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

What an exciting time of the year! I love the summer solstice. The excitement of the coming growing season reaches its fever pitch right now, at least for me, just as the days reach their longest. Today, I took perhaps the last chance I'll have for a while to spend a few hours in the kitchen making dinner. I've been working on homemade pasta for a while, and it finally came out the way I wanted it.

Fresh pasta's a wonder to make, super simple: a cup of flour, two eggs, mix into a dough and then knead for ten minutes until it becomes like silk. Let it rest for ten, and then roll it thin (I mean THIN). Cut it into strips, then cook in salted boiling water for a few minutes. The pasta comes out delicate, with just enough bite. For this, i cut very wide strips, more than an inch. In the future, I'd probably cut it a little narrower, but the wide noodles worked well for this sauce.

Speaking of sauce, it couldn't have been easier. Into a hot pan, I put a few tablespoons of olive oil, chili flakes, salt and three cloves of garlic, sliced thinly. I cooked that for a bit, but before the garlic browned, I added a can of San Marzano tomatoes. For me, the flavor of that tomato was really key for this dish, so while Romas or Beefsteaks, or even fresh tomatoes, would work, they wouldn't work as well. I seeded them, too. The sauce simmered while I made the pasta, probably about half an hour. The tomatoes softened enough that they could be broken up with the side of a spoon, and then I finished the sauce with torn fresh basil.

Finally, because pasta with tomato sauce, as delicious as it may be, does not a full meal make, I made tonno e fagioli. Using canned cannellini beans, I made a dressing with about three tablespoons of very good extra virgin olive oil and a tablespoon of lemon juice, two minced cloves of garlic, salt, and freshly ground pepper. I mixed in the can of beans, and then added a can of tuna. After resting in the fridge for the flavors to meld, it made a perfect accompaniment, although it could have used some parsley (if for nothing else than color) and honestly the lemon juice would maybe have been best replaced with red wine vinegar.

So that was the meal.

Black Bean Chili

2010-06-17T15:09:00.001-07:00

Usually, I'm not one to care about the presentation of my food. Well, that's not exactly true, but I usually go for a rustic esthetic, which reflects the flavors of my food: bold dishes, even when they are light (like risotto), the food could be easily found at a restaurant called Peasant Food.

But, Gordon Ramsay made a soup on a show a few weeks ago and it gave me an idea for tonight's dinner. One of my favorite dishes to make, because of its simplicity and almost boundless deliciousness, is black beans. Slowly cooked with onions, a large amount of cumin and an even larger amount of chili powder, I often render fat from bacon to soften the onions in and add it all to the pot. It creates a savory and aromatic dish worthy of a cattle ranch in southern Texas. Seeing the Ramsay bean soup, however, made me wonder: could I turn that bean dish into a delicate soup?

The first step was to cook the beans. Since I wanted a lighter flavor than usual, I softened the onions (about one and a half small yellow onions) in olive oil (instead of the rendered fat of salted pork belly). I added some beans, not a lot as you can see from the finished soup picture below, and then covered them with sufficient water to end with a fairly thick soup. I'm not sure how much of either, but it was probably two and a half cups or three of water, and maybe three handfuls of black beans. They were dry is all I know. I brought the mixture to the boil, dropped it to a light simmer, and then added about a tablespoon of cumin, four teaspoons of chili powder, and a bay leaf, then simmered until the beans were done, which took about the second half of the Mexico-France World Cup match.

When it was done, the beans were soft without any hard bits inside, I spooned out maybe two tablespoons of the beans, trying to make sure they were whole and their skins hadn't ruptured. Then, I pureed the rest, with cooking liquid. I added some salt (since this is a posh dish, I went with Kilauea sea salt, the black one with a deep flavor), and drizzled in high quality olive oil until the mixture was smooth and looked satiny (probably a tablespoon or so). And then I put it back in the pot to await dinner. Below, you can see a picture of the soup base. I should note, I took out the bay leaf before pureeing.

So, on to the garnish. I wanted a contrast of flavors between the soup and the garnish, but not something absurd like strawberries and cream or even fried plantains (although that would be great as a garnish!). Instead, I wanted some flavors that I would normally include in beans and rice, but decided not to include in the soup base to maintain its lightness. I fried some pancetta, and crumbled it, then carefully diced a large shallot (I think the pieces of shallot should be smaller than the black beans, but you don't want a mince). Finally, I mixed in a little lime juice, salt and pepper to taste. Below, you can see the garnish in its little bowl.

However, since this whole preparation, which I've been making for years, was inspired by my mom's vegetarian black bean chili, and that is always served with cornbread, the dish wasn't finished. Anyone who's eaten at a top restaurant knows that there has to be some ridiculous, crunchy accompaniment to a soup, one which is supposed to add a flavor note of nostalgia, bringing the whole dish back to its humble roots, but usually just ends up being a rather flavorless piece of an otherwise brilliant soup. So, I made crispy cornmeal pancakes, which were awesome when I tried them on their own, but probably weren't nearly as awesome with the soup as I wanted them to be. It was fairly simple: I poured hot water over cornmeal to hydrate it, then mixed in salt, some honey, melted butter, then turned it out on a hot griddle and cooked them until they were browned on both sides. It was a brilliant piece of a...oh, whatever. Here's a picture.

And it did taste almost exactly like the cornbread my mom used to make without taking any real amount of cornmeal or time.

To serve, I reheated the soup base, ladled it into a bowl, then topped it with a little mound of the garnish, as you can see above, it came out quite beautiful. Unfortunately, it tasted horrible. (Psych!) Honestly, this is probably the most balanced dish I've made to date. The soup base itself had a rich texture, with a strong foretaste of black beans, accented with cumin and a small taste of chilies. The olive oil left a nice buttery feel on the palate, and there was a lingering bitterness, too. All in all, fabulous!

There isn't much that could improve it, either (well, save the cornbread). Some hot pepper would have been nice in the garnish, and it would also have been nice to have more garnish than I made (read: save more beans before pureeing), but it was still an excellent meal. Of course, it would be easy to make vegetarian (or even vegan), since the only meat in the entire dish was the pancetta in the garnish, and a garnish of onion, pepper, cilantro (or epazote!), and beans would go just as well. The lime juice really brightened it up, too, although I'd probably leave that out on a day colder than about 75.

Caldo de Res Revisited

2010-06-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

One of the few joys of unemployment (entering its third month now) is that I now have the time to spend 20 hours on one dish. This is the sort of luxury usually left for those either too old or too busy (read: restaurant cooks) to fully enjoy it.

Here is the stock, minutes after adding the mire-poix, cilantro, jalapeño, and tomato paste (but after the meat bone had simmered for about 10 hours).

That wonderful mess of fresh vegetables, with a noticeable red hue (well, maybe not that noticeable), would become (some four hours later) this masterpiece of Mexican simplicity.

My favorite soup, made from scratch.

Onion Soup

2010-06-05T20:37:00.001-07:00

Wow, only a month and a day since my last post! There's been a lot of cooking going on, and I have some exciting stuff going on right now, but that'll have to wait for a later post. Hopefully, though, I will have more pics like this to share

So, the point of this post is to go over one of my absolute favorite dishes: the bistro classic French onion soup. The standard preparation is to caramelize onions in butter, then add beef stock and perhaps a little red wine and cook. Occasionally, in American recipes you'll find the soup thickened with flour, but the classic dish has a thin broth given body by the gelatin in the stock. (A well-made stock, using bones, is one of the most amazing things I know of to cook with, but that is a completely different post for another day.)

However, years ago, when my cooking skills were nascent at best, I read a brief mention in a Cook's Illustrated recipe of a French chef once preparing onion soup for the test kitchen where the only ingredients were onions, salt, pepper, and water. He spent hours building up a fond on the bottom of the pan, then deglazing with water, and repeating until the onions had softened to a dark color. The simplicity of the preparation really appeal to me, and I've made it a couple times. Let me tell you: the results are spectacular. The depth of flavor gives nothing away, but it is a time-consuming dish and requires - REQUIRES - a thick-bottomed pan: cast iron, copper, All-Clad. If you don't have a pan that strains the wrist when lifting it, don't even bother attempting this.

Because the key to this dish is low heat and patience.

Today, I experimented with a few things: pancetta, white wine deglaze, red wine deglaze, and tomato paste (aw yeah!). But I want to stress that what follows can be done using only water and onions, with some butter, and therefore can be an incredibly hearty and entirely vegetarian winter soup. Never mind that it's June 5th. With that, let's get on with it.

The first step, done last night, was to slice three pounds of onions. Then, I cut lardons from about a fifth of a pound of pancetta, rendered their fat, then removed them from the pot and added the onions. Below is a picture of the pancetta browning, with the onions in a bowl behind.

The onions were added, and softened over medium-low heat until a fond had formed. This takes a while, since the onions have to soften and their moisture cook out before the Maillard reaction can occur and develop that beautiful fond. Fond, in case you don't know, refers to the brown bits that form on the bottom of a pan. Le fond, in French, refers to stock, though, so don't act like you know anything now.

Once the first fond formed, I deglazed with six ounces of white wine. Deglazing just means pouring a liquid into the pan and boiling it to dissolve the fond in the liquid. At this point, I refilled the glass with six ounces of water, set it next to the pot, and waited until a fond formed again. I then added just enough water to deglaze the pot and a generous pinch of salt. In all, the six ounces of water allowed for eight deglazings. That took about two hours, but since my pan is a thick-bottomed cast iron masterpiece, it took very little attention from me. I'd check the pan about every five minutes and when the fond looked like the one below, I'd deglaze it.

Just before the final deglazing, I added about two teaspoons of roughly cracked black pepper and a bay leaf. Then, I deglazed with six ounces of red wine. This, as with the white wine before, is completely optional, although both wines do add a lot of flavor and some body.

I boiled off the alcohol, then added enough water to make it look like onion soup along with a tablespoon of tomato paste (aw yeah!), brought it to the simmer, and let it go for about half an hour.

The harsh flavor mellowed and came together beautifully and the broth gained body during the simmer, but my final tasting (or what I was hoping would be my final tasting) told me that the sweetness of the onions was way too strong and the salt had done as much as it was going to do. So, I squeezed a little lemon juice in to cut that sweetness, then let it simmer for five more minutes so the soup didn't taste like I'd just squeezed lemon juice into it.

Top it off with a broiled crouton with Gruyère on top and there it is: three-hour, four ingredient (five, six, seven, whatever, they're optional) onion soup.

Skating down the Wing

2010-05-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

It is May, which means the return of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the greatest* annual sporting competition. This post, however, is not about that. Rather, it is about overcoming my fears and discovering something truly magical.

I have always been afraid to cook seafood.

This may seem strange. Rarely has a preparation intimidated me. My first mayonnaise was made, without breaking, only minutes after reading a recipe. I dove headfirst into breadmaking, only to discover that it is not nearly so hard as a Quebecer's head. And how many complicated curries did I merely laugh at before attempting to butcher in many painful ways?

Seafood, however, has always been an exception. Living in the Midwest, it is hard to get fresh fish, so I decided to only indulge when on the coasts. Since it was a treat, I left it for professionals to prepare it, which eventually turned into a slight hesitation to prepare it myself, and this state of affairs eventually (and quickly) spiraled into a full blown apprehension towards cooking fish and other seafood. The only thing I have prepared in recent years is ceviche, and only because it is both mind-blowingly simple and stupidly delicious.

For whatever reason, on Sunday, I jumped. On a heart's fancy, I talked my mom into trying out a fishmonger in Lake Bluff, and the fishmonger suggested I try skate wing. To make a long story short, the skate wing was very thinly filleted, so I pan fried it for just a few minutes on each side, made a pan sauce with white wine and parsley, and served it for dinner. The fish was so undercooked, it may as well have been sushi.

What?

I had always heard that fish hated overcooking. The number one rule is to err on the side of undercooking. And this was a very thin filet, cooked for not a very short amount of time. It made absolutely no sense.

The fishmonger had given us three of the skate wings. Two had been prepared. Monday morning, I went online and did some research and found out something rather surprising: Skate wing, as well as monkfish, like to be cooked for a long time. In fact, the longer the better, within reason.

Cue second attempt: same pan, more butter, longer cooking time. Much longer. Probably twice as long. The same pan sauce, although I reduced it down a lot more (lemon juice, white wine, reduced until thick, a little salt and lots of black pepper, chopped parsley and monter au beurre) than on Sunday.

And the results?

A delicate fish with a rather strange but very delicious flesh. Plus, I learned two lessons:

1) I don't know how to cook everything, so there is no reason to avoid the internet. It's an amazing tool and chances are good that someone else in the English (or French) world has already written about the very thing I'm ignorant on.

2) There is no reason to be afraid of seafood.

*Feel free to argue, but I honestly don't think the closest competitor - the Champions League - holds a candle to 31 best-of-seven series in two months' time.

Today's Madeleine

2010-02-07T22:33:00.001-08:00

When last in Paris, my mom made a lunch of spaghetti with an egg cracked into the sauce, turning it a bright orange. I remember eating it in our small apartment on Rue Bourg-Tibourg and being as happy as a child. That same week, we went to Les Mariages Frères, a tea salon in Paris. The scent upon entering was like breathing in something more than air. It was cold that week, and damp. There is something special about Paris when it is cold.

There is always something special about Paris.

Montreal, for all her glories, is not a moveable feast.

It is amazing what thoughts a simple bowl of pasta can stir up.

Ireland to the Rescue

2009-11-14T21:01:00.001-08:00

None of that made any sense, but that's not the point. The point is, I had a wonderful meal at a Dublin pub which consisted of Irish brown bread, a baked potato, a pint of Guinness, and a dish called Dublin Coddle* which was one of the most comforting meals I've ever had.

So, tonight, I decided to reproduce it. Quite simple, really: cut a couple strips of bacon into square and simmered them with a couple sausages in a cup of water for 20 minutes. Then, I added two small onions (sliced), three small to medium potatoes cut into chunks, and a coupe carrots cut into pieces. Simmered that in the meat-cooking water for nigh on an hour, and then served it with dark bread, butter, and a stout. (St. Ambroise by the McAuslan brewery, a surprisingly good beer for Montreal, which should not be known for its beer).

Today's high was 6C, which is 43. With rain, you have one of those bone-deep chills that I know so well from my time in Britain. So, where better to turn for tonight's meal than the Irish (Eire's near Britain, right?)? During my all-too-short visit to the Green Isle, I learned a number of things: stout tastes better when you're eating a potato; Dublin Coddle is an amazingly warming food; in spite of all expectations, coddle is served with a baked potato; if coddle weren't served with a baked potato, I would still be cold.

*For years, I searched in vain for Dubline Cobble. It was quite by accident that I stumbled across the correct spelling. I am glad I did, because my memory of the first meal was hazy at best.

My Coffee

2009-08-01T11:42:00.001-07:00

My coffee reminds me that I am alive. Like so many other things in life, it brings together pleasure and disgust, textures and smells mingling into a hot, bittersweet ichor.

My coffee is slow, removed from the technological simplicities which allow us to forget that our coffee is often harvested by hand, slowly dried, and then roasted by hardworking people thousands of miles away from our breakfast table. It starts with a kettle, placed on a burner. There is no electric heating coil to replace the primal element of fire.

My coffee starts as whole beans, poured into the hopper of a brass grinder from Turkey. As the fire heats the water, I turn the handle on the grinder, laboriously crushing the beans into a fine powder. The brass starts cool to the touch, but warms as my grip tightens and my muscles begin to tire ever so slightly. Removing the lid, I can check on the level of beans in the hopper, to see if I need to speed up the grinding. It is an inexact method: sometimes, the kettle whistles steam long before the hopper is empty; other times, I finish the grinding and can empty the coffee into a mug.

The smell of the grinder used to disgust me. The acrid scent of tarnishing brass wafted up from the hopper combines with the harsh smell of beans. The inside of the grinder has become caked in a layer of coffee dust from the years of use. The smell now reminds me of the pleasure to follow and of the past, and it is strangely comforting. I've drunk coffee like this since 2007, when I used a friend and roommate's grinder and the pain kept me from standing up while I cranked the burr. It reminds me of the rejuvenation I felt that spring, and the summer after returning home when I got my own grinder. It reminds me of grinding a cup an hour before my Modern tests a year later, the jitteriness of the caffeine hitting me just as I needed my mind to work as fast and as efficiently as possible.

When the beans are ground and dumped into the bottom of a mug, I am always amazed at just how thick the layer of coffee is. It seems to fill up the mug, before any water is even poured on top. And when the water is poured over the grounds, first a thick black sludge to wet them, and then a second pour to fill up the mug, a layer of lightly-colored grounds floats to the top. It sits there as the coffee steeps.

My coffee is a sensual awakener. I have never found coffee which assaults and nudges the senses so completely as this does. To be truthful, it is disgusting, but it is also grounding. The word organic is one which often comes to mind, in the sense of an experience which flows naturally from that which surrounds it. The layer of grounds on top becomes bitter, so the first sips of the cup is filled with bitter grit. Perhaps because of this first impression, the liquid below always surprises with its wonderful richness and smoothness. Towards the end of the cup, the coffee itself starts mixing with the liquid, and I have to admit that this is my favorite part. The grounds thicken the liquid, giving it body like a good cup of hot chocolate, and it lingers in the mouth as the tongue and teeth are covered with fine sediment.

My Coffee

2009-08-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

My coffee reminds me that I am alive. Like so many other things in life, it brings together pleasure and disgust, textures and smells mingling into a hot, bittersweet ichor.

My coffee is slow, removed from the technological simplicities which allow us to forget that our coffee is often harvested by hand, slowly dried, and then roasted by hardworking people thousands of miles away from our breakfast table. It starts with a kettle, placed on a burner. There is no electric heating coil to replace the primal element of fire.

My coffee starts as whole beans, poured into the hopper of a brass grinder from Turkey. As the fire heats the water, I turn the handle on the grinder, laboriously crushing the beans into a fine powder. The brass starts cool to the touch, but warms as my grip tightens and my muscles begin to tire ever so slightly. Removing the lid, I can check on the level of beans in the hopper, to see if I need to speed up the grinding. It is an inexact method: sometimes, the kettle whistles steam long before the hopper is empty; other times, I finish the grinding and can empty the coffee into a mug.

The smell of the grinder used to disgust me. The acrid scent of tarnishing brass wafted up from the hopper combines with the harsh smell of beans. The inside of the grinder has become caked in a layer of coffee dust from the years of use. The smell now reminds me of the pleasure to follow and of the past, and it is strangely comforting. I've drunk coffee like this since 2007, when I used a friend and roommate's grinder and the pain kept me from standing up while I cranked the burr. It reminds me of the rejuvenation I felt that spring, and the summer after returning home when I got my own grinder. It reminds me of grinding a cup an hour before my Modern tests a year later, the jitteriness of hitting me just as I needed my mind to work as fast and as efficiently as possible.

When the beans are ground and dumped into the bottom of a mug, I am always amazed at just how thick the layer of coffee is. It seems to fill up the mug, before any water is even poured on top. And when the water is poured over the grounds, first a thick black sludge to wet them, and then a second pour to fill up the mug, a layer of finely-colored grounds floats to the top. It sits there as the coffee steeps.

My coffee is a sensual awakener. I have never found coffee which assaults and nudges the senses to completely as this does. To be truthful, it is disgusting, but it is also grounding. The word organic is one which often comes to mind, in the sense of an experience which flows naturally from that which surrounds it. The layer of grounds on top becomes bitter, so the first sips of the cup is filled with bitter grit. Perhaps because of this first impression, the liquid below always surprises with its wonderful richness and smoothness. Towards the end of the cup, the coffee itself starts mixing with the liquid, and I have to admit that this is my favorite part. The grounds thicken the liquid, giving it body like a good cup of hot chocolate, and it lingers in the mouth as the tongue and teeth are covered with fine sediment.

Caldron of Beef

2009-04-23T11:31:00.001-07:00

Even this die-hard Mexican food fan can grow a little tired of masa and beans. Such had happened over the past few months; the luster of tacos and even tortas had begun to tarnish in my mind. But, for whatever reason, I decided to hit up my secretish spot in Waukegan for lunch today.

I could not have made a better decision. In fact, I think this rates as one of the best choices in my life, although I pretty much always feel that way when I go to this place. I decided to get something different, rather than the usual gordita or taco, and let the home-style cooking of the little taqueria shine through. That made all the difference.

I ordered caldo de res, which for those not in the know is beef stew. Man, alive, it was good. Imagine a huge bowl brimming with spicy green beef broth, two huge chunks of braised beef with fat on, green beans, potatoes, and Mexican summer squash, served with fresh masa tortillas and lime wedges. From the first bite, two things were immediately apparent: this was going to be the best meal I'd had in a long time, and I would die if I ate all of it. In the end, I left a few bites of beef, some green beans and broth, and a single tortilla.

I may still die.

On a side note, I flipped on the Cubs game as I drove back to work. Now, much has been said about the decline in advertising revenue and the desperate measures to which newspapers and television are going (like going out of business). But I don't think it had really sunk in until about twenty minutes ago. The last commercial break before the game started began with one of those old school used car dealership commercials, complete with echo effects and an over-the-top reader.

I know these commercials never really went away, since I'd hear them occasionally on 670 or 890 on non-prime times, and they are alive and well in all their glory on the Spanish stations, but the pre-game WGN broadcast for a day game starting during the construction workday can probably be described as the primest of prime advertising spots, up there with the morning commute hours. For WGN to accept such a trashy commercial strikes me as a big deal. But maybe I'm reading too much into this.

Meat Musing

2009-04-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've never been a big fan of the rather bland succulence of pork.

For me, beef, lamb or venison are infinitely "superior" meats, regardless of what the Euro-centric foodie culture prevalent in America claims.

French cookery relies on the pig because their beef is horrible! American grass-fed beef, whether from the western Great Plains or from the eastern Gaucho, may be less useful as a tool in the kitchen, but it is ten times more interesting as an ingredient.

Ice Girls

2009-04-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've now been to three Hawks games, with a fourth coming up in about a week, and I can say with no uncertainty in my opinion that Ice Girls are a stupid attempt to bring cheerleaders into a sports setting which has no tradition of cheerleaders.

Are hockey fans so desperate to see attractive women during an hour-long game that they needed to invent a reason for bikini-clad skaters to appear?

America's a Funny Place

2009-03-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

My grandfather is a great man. He grew up in a working class neighborhood of Louisville during the Great Depression, the son of a street carman. Like my equally great father's father, these experiences shaped my maternal grandfatehr's view of money and excess, but he was left with a strong self-indulgent streak (I might even go so far as to say he's a sensualist).

One of the ways that this shows itself is in a joy, which is inexpressible to those who don't know him, at finding bargains when eating out. I remember fondly his broad grin as he would tell me where he was taking me for lunch during my summer visits: a Greek place in Rockville where you could get a salad, bread, and more pasta than a man could eat for $6 was his favorite stand-by and eating with him there was de rigeur for much of my adolescence. I once made a pot of beans - beans, onion, some decent sausage, and salt - and the look of pure bliss as he ate what is really one of the simplest things ever was enough to make the whole back-breaking trip down to Louisville more than worth it (this was during my lost Herniated Disc era).

My personal favorite of his discoveries was at Chipotle. I went there today to yet again feast on the greatest unknown deal in pop culture America. It turns out that you can get rice and beans (ask for more rice; no one ever says no) for $1.75. That's right - you can eat at one of the most popular lunch spots in America for less than $2. And this isn't some cheapo white bread/deep fried fish sandwich king at Burger Thing for Lent. This is a year-round offer. It's called sides, two of them, and they aren't listed on the menu anywhere. But, oh the joy of standing in line with people paying $6 or $7 for lunch and knowing that I am going to get delicious cilantro-lime rice and really beautifully cooked beans for less money than the Wall Street Journal!

One of his favorite parts of this meal is the experience of Russian roulette when you order it. If his grin was big when he told us of the deal, it only got bigger when he related how no one ever charged the same amount: $1.50 was the norm at the time, but he'd been charged 75 cents and $3.25, too. Once, as he neared the register, he noticed the tomato salsa and asked for some of that, too. The total was a whopping $5.75! It turns out two sides is two sides, but three sides is a meal.

And, I have to admit, the eccentric joy of eating cheaply at a popular place is good enough, but the confusion behind the counter today when I ordered "beans and rice...yes, just beans and rice" made it the highlight possibly of my week (and it's been a pretty amazing week). The first guy just stared at me, then warmed up to the idea and, after asking repeatedly if that was all, he even smiled and wished me a good day. I could tell he was getting a kick out of the incongruity of my order with the petite women in front of me ordering oozing mounds of pork topped with cheese and guacamole. The next guy just flipped the lid on and folded it down, before handing it to the guy who marks the lid in marker, who paused, false stared a couple times, and then gave up on writing anything at all. He interrupted the cashier to tell her it was two sides, repeating it a few times as if to make himself believe it as much as to tell her what to charge me. When she rang it up, the sweet total of $1.75 came up on the display, before she asked me one final, incredulous time: Do you want anything else?

And the weirdest, greatest part of all of this? Where in the world, other than America and maybe Western Europe, would anyone consider $2.00 for a plate of rice and beans cheap?

Steel

2009-02-25T01:23:00.000-08:00

Ruhlman's post yesterday (still today for me; had to stay up late because of an ill dog) put to paper my own pet peeve: the willful ignorance, bordering on stubborn refusal, by people to learn even the most basic of knife skills and care.

I realize that I am somewhat a strange case: my dad had trained as a chef in his 20s and felt that learning to cook was an important part of my upbringing, and learning to cook to him revolved around two basic skills he introduced me to at the age of 7 or 8. They are both very important; the first was making an omelette, the second was proper handling, care, and use of a chef's knife. And, for the past five years, I shaved exclusively with a straight razor (though practicality makes that impossible now that college is a waning memory). So, my skill with a blade, and my comfort with sharpening, is far and above that of the average American.

So, yes, one could make a very strong case that I shouldn't judge other people for not knowing how to use a knife. In fact, I will gladly give you that point. But, I don't see any possible excuse for the way so many people act around knives. They refuse to buy good knives, they buy knives that are grossly too small (a boning knife should not be used to dice an onion), they never sharpen them, they refuse to learn safe cutting techniques. And, of course, no one likes to be told they don't know what they are doing, even if they would readily admit their ignorance to someone who is just as ignorant (not that I ever patronize someone while they have a knife in their hands).

The point is, the knife is central to the kitchen. Unless one's entire kitchen repertoire consists of whole roasted vegetables and Chateaubriand, every dish starts under a knife. Properly honed knives, when used correctly, make such easy work (even if one doesn't work quickly) of prepping ingredients that cooking hardly seems time consuming at all. And the vast majority of my friends stubbornly refuse to pick up a chef's knife and a steel and learn even the simplest cutting stroke.

It can be intimidating to learn a new skill. Cooking on a daily basis, for all my meals, used to seem like something I would never be able to do. I certainly did not get to the place I am now in a week. Truth be told, even my knife skills could use some practice. But why don't more people at least want to learn these skills, even at the rudimentary level?

Here's a great example of the sort of benefit one can gain from proper knife skills. At Thanksgiving, I walked into the kitchen to see my mom slicing a carrot for turkey soup. She was gripping the handle, not the bolster, and was using straight up and down strokes to cut the carrot with the heel of the blade. The blade wobbled whenever she applied pressure, and her fingers were in danger of receiving a glancing blow if the carrot were to spin before the blade bit. Since it was my mom, I didn't feel too horrible a person for pointing out to her that if she gripped the bolster and kept tip of the blade on the counter, the whole affair would be smoother and safer, especially if she pushed the knife forward as she brought it down.

Reluctantly, she made the switch, more to humor me than anything else. However, just that tiny switch made the slicing so much safer and the carrot/blade so much more stable, that her speed immediately increased and she visibly relaxed. She actually remarked at Christmas, the next time I was home, how glad she was I'd made the comment.

Intelligentsia's Clover Fetish

2009-02-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

Say what you want about coffee, passions run high, especially here in Chicago. One of our leading coffee establishments recently announced the phasing out of standard drip coffee, to be replaced with made-to-order cups from a Clover machine. If you don't know what this is about, don't worry about it, you probably wouldn't care anyway. However, it's a rather contentious issue to those who know both Intelligentsia and the Clover machine (mostly for pricing reasons), and Gaper's Block's food page ran a post complaining about the shift (among other changes). I was kind of put off by what the post said, because I sometimes lose my head in battles of customer service, and wrote a letter complaining about the decision to Intelligentsia. I was pretty impressed with their response, which was sent less than a business day after I originally complained. Here's what Intelligentsia had to say:

Matthew,

Thanks for your email. Also, thank you for being a long time customer. I suspect some of your information you may have gathered from Gaper’s Block, which didn’t quite get the pricing right. Coffee of the Clover will not be twice as expensive as brewed coffee was before. Although it will not be as inexpensive as coffee out of the urn, there will always be a “Pick of the Day,” that will be quite reasonable and brewed to order. Here is what the new menu looks like:

COFFEE

Espresso - 2.50

Macchiato - 2.75

Con Panna - 2.75

Cappuccino - 3.25

Latte - 3.25 / 3.50 / 3.75

Valharona Mocha - 3.75 / 4.00 / 4.25

Americano - 2.75

Coffee by the Cup - Made to Order
Today's Pick - 2.00 / 2.35 / 2.65
Select Offerings - 3 & up

Chemex For Two - 6 & up

Valharona Hot Chocolate - 3.25 / 3.50 / 3.75

House Chai - 3.25 / 3.50 / 3.75

Most drinks may be served iced.

We really believe that brewed to order is the way to go as it highlights what we do, brews a better tasting cup and never sits on heat. We do feel that it is much more in line with our mission. I realize this may not be exactly what you wanted to hear, but we do feel it is how we need to move forward.
To take the sting out of all of this, if you would be so kind as to send me your mailing address, I’ll send you a gift card so at least the next few drinks will be on us.

Kind regards,

Doug Zell

Needless to say, I sent them my mailing address. [Update: Due to a comment made by James (below), I now have reason to believe that this was actually sent by Doug Zell. I am pleased and somewhat impressed.]

Eerie Similarities

2009-02-03T14:55:00.001-08:00

I walked all over the Gold Coast today trying to find a free wi-fi spot so that I could find directions online to a Jewish deli which is rumored to be great. I almost found the deli before finding wi-fi. Only a few blocks farther north and I would have been there. Unfortunately, no deli for me today; my hunger got the best of me before I could make it to either, and I settled for a drenched beef with sweet peppers. The fries were disappointing. And who would have known that Starbucks had such a complicated system for getting internet access, involving cards with minimum limits and other more complicated things, like Green's theorem.

At least I got to take the Brown line north, for my first day of class at NEIU. I was planning on doing the Red line to the Berwyn and taking the bus west, but after I finally found an internet place that didn't charge an exorbitant fee, I discovered that the Brown line in fact terminates only a few blocks south of NEIU. So, I got to take that north, and then walk the rest of the way. The Brown line has got to be one of the coolest L lines in Chicago. It travels from the Loop to the northwest on elevated tracks which go behind apartment buildings, through Lincoln Park, to the west of Wrigley Field, and then veers due west and, after Western Ave, drops to street level and runs in the alley between two rows of houses. That drop really surprised me, as did the crossing gate arms which kept cars from dying beneath our massive train's wheels. It was weird to hear a dog barking when the doors opened at Francisco. This is one of my new recommendations for tourists: ride the Brown line to the Kimball terminus and then walk around a bit (but just a bit). You'll get to see the real side of Chicago, and one of the most unique public transit lines I've ever ridden - half subway, half streetcar.

When I finally got to NEIU, I walked straight to the science building, which it turns out is a slightly rundown lecture building from the late 1970s or so. I walked in and was immediately struck by a sense of deja-vu: the building reminded me of Nottingham University to an unnerving degree. Such a strange and unexpected feeling to get.

Burris

2009-01-12T14:34:00.001-08:00

Whatever goodwill I had towards politics, both Illinois and federal, died today.

Chicago My Home

2008-12-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

It's now less than a week before I return to Chicagoland for Christmas. A few finals, a train ride, and then I'll be in the heart of the city. I'll be cooking and, maybe, baking, and I'll be eating a lot. I'm not sure what my holiday will look like (I may end up spending a few days in Louisville, which would be an amazing, if tiring, trip), but I'll be sure to post on any interesting culinary experiences I have.

In other Chicago-related news, Obama named his HUD secretary today. As a long-time believer in the importance of cities as cultural and economic centers, and having watched in agony as the last two administrations pursued short-sighted and ultimately doomed policies, I hope that Mr. Donovan can take us in the new direction which we so desperately need to head. I am hopeful (imagine that!) given what Obama said:

"We cannot keep throwing money at the problem [of affordable housing], hoping for a different result. We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas, and a new, efficient style of leadership. We need to understand that the old ways of looking at our cities just won’t do. That means promoting cities as the backbone of regional growth by not only solving the problems in our cities, but seizing the opportunities in our growing suburbs, exurbs, and metropolitan areas."

Cities are the most economical way to house a large population: apartment blocks are energy efficient, as is the centralization of services and markets. The flight from urban centers by many in my parents' and grandparents' generations has taken a toll on the US that is becoming more and more apparent.

Happy Day!

2008-12-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

It may have nothing to do with food - beyond the celebration parties which should be held in the coming weeks - but Rod Blago has made a very public face-plant!

All of Illinois cheers!

Vive la France!

2008-11-24T23:54:00.001-08:00

Articles like this have become all too frequent. While reading this one, I was struck by the peculiarity of the subject matter, especially here in America.

Turkey-Day Palin

2008-11-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

What am I thankful for this year?

I'm pretty gosh-darned thankful for this.

Especially at 2:26.

I'll let it speak for itself.

Update 22.Nov.2008: After rereading this post, I think I need to point out that it is not a political statement per se; I posted this link because of how it relates to the Sky Full of Bacon podcasts. (Although 2:26 is too sublime a moment not to point out.)

Sky Full of Bacon

2008-11-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

I've been busy the last few months, partly dealing with the stresses of studying a subject I have no interest in, but mostly getting over the Cubs hang-over (something which is quickly becoming an annual October "occurrence").

I've discovered a small but thriving community of passionate food bloggers based in Chicago. The Local Beet is a site dedicated to everything about eating locally-grown food in Chicago, and one of the contributors there also runs a blog called Vital Information. There is also a site named Sky Full of Bacon. It's run by a guy who makes very well produced podcasts about food, usually with a focus on Chicago restaurants and the stories behind their chefs. It's really something special and I highly recommend checking it out.

The newest podcast at Sky Full is actually a two-part series. You can watch part 1 here:

Sky Full of Bacon 05: There Will Be Pork (pt. 1) from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

The second part here:

Sky Full of Bacon 06: There Will Be Pork (pt. 2) from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

The series follows three pigs from farm to abattoir to butchery to table at a dinner hosted at Blackbird (in Chicago). It's an incredibly wonderful statement of the care that can and should be taken (but often is no longer) in raising and slaughtering animals. I think the most important part of the video lies in the discussions with the farmers themselves about the importance of raising these heirloom breeds, the emotional connection they have to the animals, but the necessity they see in raising them to be eaten. As one of them points out, it's not the job of a farm to raise zoo animals.

When I first started reading widely and deeply about food, I was always struck by the obsessiveness so many of the writers I read placed on being a part of the slaughtering process. Videos like this podcast, as well as articles like this one just didn't make sense to me. I didn't think they were mistaken - respecting the animals we eat is something I was raised with. What struck me was how novel the idea seemed to them and how much garment-renting went on. Whenever numerous writers (Bourdain, Pollan, even Gordon Ramsey) wrote about their experiences, I felt left out of their reasoning and emotions when I usually followed it so closely. Their descriptions of the emotional trials they endured during the blood-letting always struck me in the same way as Troylus' whinging about his love of Criseyde.

At first I thought it was me; maybe a faulty ethics switch somewhere or too many years of indoctrination in the prepackaged meat culture. I found the same problem when I spoke to vegetarians in college; when they spoke of ethics, I just didn't get what they were talking about. With the food writers, the disconnect was on a more emotional level, but it came from the same place. Taking an animal's life struck everyone else as something barbaric and unknown, while I didn't feel that way at all.

I've thought about this a lot over the years, but it wasn't until this podcast that it struck me why I feel that way. During part 2, which is much harder and much more important to watch, chef Jason Hammel talks about how the experience of watching the slaughter wasn't what he thought it would be; there was no moment when life ended, rather life was ending during the whole day. His words caught my attention and stirred up memories that I'd all but forgotten about and I knew why I've failed to connect to much of the writing on this topic over the years: I've already gone through the ethical and emotional turmoil which is so new to these writers.

A little background explanation might be useful. I'm from a northern suburb of Chicago and I really identify with the urban side or the area. I'm also pretty liberal, so I've run in left-leaning circles since before college. I haven't fired a gun since I was a senior in high school, and I haven't gone hunting since I was 14. So, the years between then and now have made the memories of that period of my life hazy. But, as I'm sure you know if you're reading this, those last two sentences are not normal for an urban-dwelling liberal. And that's something I forgot; I come from a strange background for someone in the Whole Foods marketshare.

Hammel's words about the process reminded me of the first time I helped my dad with a deer. It was November in the northern Wisconsin woods, a brisk day, but the sun was still giving warmth. I remember the pile of guts, the split-open carcass, the blood-stained leaves. Blood pooled along the spine of the upturned deer, and the bluish glean of fresh meat is something that I have never forgotten. Dad and I carried the carcass by the hooves - me at the back - to the car and hoisted it up onto the roof. There was, as Hammel said, no clear cut moment of ending, no moment at which you could say that the disturbing part had happened and on either side it was merely a deer and then meat. The whole day was infused with a sense of malaise, but there was also an excitement to it. And you'd be a fool if you thought any part of that deer was wasted.

It's important to know that killing is disturbing, very much so. But it's an important process. Eating a vegetable will never give you the same sense of thankfulness as eating an animal you've seen butchered. Meat deserves its revered place at the center of the meal because life was given to place it there.

I know where meat comes from. I've known for a long time and that knowledge, without my even realizing, has influenced my opinion on the meat industry and meat-eating. Gebert's podcast clued me in to that, which is a testament to how good a piece of journalistic art it is.

Play-Off Tipples

2008-10-01T19:31:00.001-07:00

Anything as momentous as a World Series title for the Cubs deserves both alcohol honors and a properly codified and complex rule system regarding those tipples. I submit the Play-Off Beer Laws:

0) There are 11 victories needed to clinch the Fall Classic.

1) At the conclusion of the regular season, two six packs of beer will be purchased. These six packs are to be designated the Play-Off Beers. These play-off beers are preferably locally produced in or near the city of the competing team (which should and always will be Chicago), but must necessarily be of the highest quality. The two six packs can be of the same type or different, but they must be bottles, as only bottles have the necessary level of quality necessary to propel a stinking team of farm league rejects through 11 victories against clearly superior pitching and fielding talent.

2) On game days, one bottle of play-off beer is to placed in the refrigerator for the possibility of consumption following the game. The bottle may only be consumed in the event of a victory by the team for which the play-off beer was purchased. Only the one bottle is to be consumed. One bottle of play-off beer is to be consumed the night of each victory during celebrations. Consumption of alcohol on game days is not exclusive of other beverages, but the consumption of a play-off beer is compulsory in the event of a victory.

3) As there are eleven victories required to win the NLDS, NLCS, and the World Series, and there are twelve bottles of play-off beer, the twelfth bottle must be poured onto the ground following the eleventh victory. This is yet another of the many superstitions required to propel a team of incompetent hacks through a field of much better teams to claim a trophy they have no business winning. Do not disrespect the twelfth bottle by consuming it. Much like talking about a perfect game during said game, drinking of the twelfth bottle at any point in the future will cause the team to lose all remaining games in the present. [Accidental consumption of the twelfth bottle by a third party while said bottle is being poured onto the ground is not to be considered infringement of the third law.]

4) In the unlikely event of early elimination (i.e. loss of any of the three postseason series), all remaining play-off beers--not including the twelfth bottle--are to be consumed by the owner of the play-off beer in a timely manner. The twelfth bottle must be poured onto the ground in any event.

5) Play-off beer must be consumed exclusively by one person, although the consumer need not be the purchaser. As always, drink responsibly and stay off the roads.

Note: Budweiser, Miller, nor any affiliated brewery may not be chosen as the play-off beer for any Cubs postseason appearance. Also, please note, as Inbev is now the owner of the Budweiser name, all Inbev-owned breweries are to be considered off limits for play-off beer.

Back at School, No Friends

2008-09-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

My life right now is pretty dominated by the fact that 1) I have returned to Gustavus for what is apparently my last semester and 2) everyone I know in more than passing has either graduated or gone on sabbatical. Which means that I am 1) very alone on the Hill and 2) looking forward very much to my breaks.

This isolation, at least in this first week, has also helped me focus on myself in a way I've not been able to do for quite a while. In many ways, it's like my first semester in England, except I've so far been spared the intense depression and homesickness of that fall. I've found that I'm concentrating more on my school work, that I am eating healthier than usual, and that I am drawn more into my philosophical musings which have gone unheeded since the spring of 2007.

To that end, I've started thinking about nonviolence and pacifism again. Namely, I'm starting to wonder how I am exemplifying the pacifist beliefs which I so strongly hold. The truth is, I really don't know if I am. Obviously, I'm not going around and picking fights, but pacifism goes beyond that sort of tension-releasing violence. Pacifism, as I once described it, is constant action in order to prevent the occurrence of violence. Am I doing this at all?

I'm also not cooking right now, but the last few mornings, I have awoken to the most treasured thing man has ever given another man: domesticated coffee beans. Now, I've had coffee before, but it's been months since I drank it on a cool morning, in my preferred manner of Turkish grind and boiling water. Those months nearly made me forget just how wonderful a pleasure warm, nutty, rich coffee is, about an hour after waking, about an hour before the day's activities start. I think it's entirely possible that, given a stack of books, a larder of beans and rice, and a lot of green coffee beans, I could spend a year almost anywhere completely alone.

But why would I want to?

No

2008-03-16T04:27:00.000-07:00

It might be possible, I'm not completely sure, by my initial feeling is that is is a very big mistake to try to flavor bread with curry powder.

Jim McCurry

2007-10-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

My mother-dear was out of town last weekend, so I decided to use the oppotunity to experiment with garlic. That's right, I made the famous salsa chimichurri of the Gauchos.

A bit of background: Argentina is famous for its beef and the cowboys are called gauchos. They eat their steak with a steak sauce made from, in its most basic form, garlic, parsley, and olive oil. Supposedly, it gets its name from the first person to serve it, an Irish chuckwagon cook named Jim McCurry, which became chimichurri in Spanish.

So, how did I make it?

A small bunch of Italian parsley, which I chopped whole (I chopped the stems finely and the leaves coarsely), to which I added one small tomato diced, two cloves garlic smashed into a puree, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, enough olive oil to bring it together into a sauce-like consistency, and quite a bit of salt (it's a sauce, right?).

I put it, covered, in the frigo overnight and then cooked my steaks. With a bit of this on top, they were like biting into the most delicious garlic-salad-covered pieces of undercooked meat I've ever had. I should work on my cooking times for steaks.

By the way, the way I cooked the steaks seemed to work really well. It produced an excellent char and, if I'd cooked them long enough, they'd have been done perfectly. Here's how I did it.

I put a cast iron skillet in the oven and then set it to 500 degrees (that's F). I waited until everything was good and hot, and then I put the skillet on a burner turned to high. While that was heating up some more, I covered the steaks with oil and then salted them (again, quite heavily). I then put a tablespoon or so of oil in the skillet, waited the half-second for it to heat up, and then laid the steaks in. I left them for maybe a minute and a half untouched, then I turned them over, left them for another ninety seconds, and then put the whole thing into the oven. Once there, I waited until they were cooked to medium-rare (except I didn't actually do that and so my second, thicker steak, was about a rare as a steak can be).

Perfect steaks with an amazing char, just like being in a steak house, only much more expensive (I bought some really good steak at a high-end grocery store without looking at the price first).

One note of importance: The cooking method for the steaks produces a TON of smoke. It was fairly billowing out of the oven vent. Make sure you have a well-ventilated kitchen with a fan on high.

I also found some Argentine-style chorizos, which are like a bratwurst flavored with garlic. I made choripánes, an Argentine sandwich consisting of split French bread with a sausage cut lengthwise in the middle and topped with chimichurri. That was a garlic-fest if I've ever had one. After eating it, I told Timth that I was seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing garlic and only garlic. Then I went to see Joanna Townsend. Boy, was that a weird day!

Muhalo.

Siwichi Revisited

2007-10-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

I decided to try again, using what I had learned from my first try. This time, I bought the much cheaper tilapia (and it seemed quite fresh). I cut it large, but I used an equal mixture of lemon and lime juices. The bitterness was gone. I also salted it much more. Half an onion and the other half of the jalapeño, though this time I didn't completely de-seed it.

Also, I didn't have any cilantro as what was left over smelled, strangely enough, fishy. I threw it out.

I mixed it up and let it sit for only about twenty minutes this time before starting to eat. I ate it while I drank an all right Czech beer and watched a Fire game. Here's what I noticed:

The fish started out stringy, but after it had been sitting in the acid for the better part of a half, it was perfectly tender. Definitely, letting the fish steep for maybe an hour would make the ceviche just about perfect (as would letting it sit overnight).

It's very rich. I ate nearly a pound of ceviche and felt rather ill afterwards. I'm sure it was the large amount of acid I consumed (that's citrate, not LSD). It really does need to be drained.

It needed chips or tortillas or tostadas or something.

Cilantro, though a very nice flavor, is not necessary and, at $0.99 a bunch, maybe a luxury I can't afford right now (of course, I paid something like $5.50 for the fish).

The Fire are good, but not great, and they seem to lake the cut-throat mentality of the perennial powers of Houston and DC.

Czech lager is still not as good as English ale, but it does go better with ceviche than the former.

Muhalo.

Siwichi

2007-10-02T15:30:00.001-07:00

Supposedly, the Quechua word for that wonderful dish of citrus juice and raw fish is siwichi, and that became ceviche in Spanish. Others suggest that it comes from the word escabeche. Either way, this South American dish is one of my favorite things in this world, as is anything that involves seafood, especially when it does not involve the application heat (uh, oyster and wine, hello?).

So, I decided to make some this past week. It's a simple preparation. I bought a half pound of halibut, which was actually the most expensive fish I could buy. I really should have gone with the tilapia, which was half the price, but I didn't see it until the fishmonger was already cutting off my piece.

I diced the fish in fairly large pieces, then I juiced two limes and a lemon and poured the juice over the fish. I also finely diced half an onion and half a jalapeño (minus the seeds). I put those in with the fish, along with a fair amount of salt, and put the whole thing in the frigo overnight.

The next day, for lunch, I heated up some tortillas, chopped a large amount of cilantro (probably three tablespoons), poured off the juice into another container, and served up some ceviche tacos.

Criticisms:

I think I used to much lime juice, because it was very bitter. Salting more helped. Maybe ceviche has to be a salty dish, or maybe it needs lemon. I would also like to try out sour oranges.

The fish flavor was also lost in the midst of all the other ingredients. I think, if I make it again, I'll either use a stronger-flavored fish or else cut the pieces to be larger (closer to the size of a gumball).

The tortillas got water-logged almost instantly, and a water-logged tortilla resembles masa more than a tortilla. Also, they cooled off almost instantly, which was kind of disappointing. I think tostadas or just in a bowl are the ways forward from here.

There was no spice from the chiles. I'm not sure if the dish is supposed to be about the flavor of the chiles, rather than their spice, or if I made it wrong, but I definitely got no capsaicin whatsoever. Maybe I should crush some seeds next time (but just a few, I don't want it to be overwhelmingly spicy).

Mahalo.

That Other Old Familiar

2007-09-24T07:09:00.001-07:00

I finally found time to write a new post, but only because I have fallen ill. It's a shame, because I was so healthy up until I got sick, and now this sets me back to square one. I had actually hoped to avoid getting this bug which seems to be going around, but my luck evidently is focused on other things.

Unfortunately, making good food is not one of those things. I made a pot of beans last week. It's a simple recipe and one which I love to make: one pound of pinto beans (soaked overnight), add to that one sweated onion, a few rashers of browned bacon, cumin and chili powder to taste (and salt). The final addition, which I don't always add, is a browned chicken cut into pieces. It makes the final product more of a stew, rather than just a pot of beans.

It's been a while since I cooked, so that probably explains why I left the skin on the chicken. Here's a tip: if you're going to stew a chicken, don't leave the skin on. It was a little disgusting to have chicken covered in gummy skin.

Other than that, the dish was great.

I like to serve it with an equal portion of brown rice and freshly made tortillas, while sitting on the veranda, watching the hacienda workers harvest the yucca.

That Old Familiar Feeling

2007-09-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

When I told Becky that I was going to post on this blog, I had a very clear idea of what I was going to write. I have, from extreme fatigue, completely forgotten in the few minutes since making the promise. Sorry, dear. I'll write something soon.

Bear Grylls

2007-08-03T10:56:00.001-07:00

Does Bear Grylls have to do this? No, but you might have to.

Un Platillo de Plátanos

2007-07-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

I think I should get at least one post a month on this thing, so here goes.

I haven't cooked or baked very much since getting back to Illinois. I vaguely remember doing something with the oven, but I haven't got a clue what it was (I just remembered, I made my excellent scones, although the batter was too wet). I made tortillas a few times, but without a press, they were thick, though still good. ANd that's about it.

This last week, I finally got the things I've been wanting since leaving St. Peter: a Turkish coffee grinder (with birthday money) and a tortilladora. Good stuff. My coffee finally tastes good and the tortillas are thing again.

Anyway, the reason I write is that I find I'm suddenly intrigued to use ingredients I've never used, never even had before. Last week, I made mustard greens, which were good, although underseasoned. It was simple: simmer some water, add some bacon and softened onion, then put in the greens, washed and torn into small pieces. Simmer for twenty minutes or so and then serve. Good, but, like I said, missing something (I used too much water, for one, and they were undersalted).

Another thing I've been excited about are plantains, the starchy bananas. I sliced up a plantain, then fried the discs in bacon grease, serving them slightly salted with the bacon. Excellent! They're really quite different from anything I've ever had before. The peel is incredibly thick, and the texture is more like a stiff potato than a banana. The flavor is somewhere between the potato and the banana, but very starchy (at least for the very green one I used). I have another one ripening in the kitchen so that I can see what they are like when ripe.

One last thing and then I'm done with this post. About a month ago (it was the weekend before the Gold Cup final, if that helps), a friend and I went to a taquería in Waukegan on a Friday afternoon. Now, for those of you not from Lake County, Waukegan has the largest Hispanic population north of Chicago. It's a great place.* But, it is a little intimidating, given the lack of English (all the billboards are in Spanish, and most of the shops obviously cater to an Hispanic majority). Still, after working there for a summer, I knew that there had to be some great restaurants and I was just waiting for the opportunity to go there with another person.

Thus, we went to a place that I'd never been before and it was, simply stated, one of the best meals I've ever had. For those of you who got my Top Meals list two years ago, I'd say it would displace at least number four. I got a bowl of menudo, the slow-cooked tripe soup served on the weekends, and a tamal con frijoles topped with molé. Amazingly good. So good, in fact, that I have vowed never to bring anyone there from this area. Orgasmically good. Without a doubt, the best tripe I've ever had (it was no repeat of that pho meal in the Cities). Everything was homemade: the tortillas, the salsas, the molé, the delicious agua fresca (I got tamarind, of course). So good.

Muhalo.

*On a side note, I'm always amazed by the rampant racism of my friends from this area. There was one shooting in Waukegan in 1999 and they all think of it as some ghetto, simply because of the race of people who live there. In truth, Waukegan is a nicer place than Fox Lake, where I grew up, and everyone overlooks the fact that there was a murder in Fox Lake as recently as 2004. There are no places in Fox Lake that I would say are a nice neighborhood. However, Waukegan is replete with beautiful brick houses, parks, great restaurants, and it's a mixed place. Truly, I can think of few places I'd rather live. It's a shame we whites are so rabidly racist, because the town seems to be dying. Despite efforts to attract businesses to the county's largest city (and seat of government), the downtown feels empty. Fortunately, there are strides being made, but they aren't easy: the Genesee theater is open and seems to be running well, the places around the county government complex seem to have business, and the holes-in-the-wall in the poorer neighborhoods have a booming business (and for good reason: the best barbecue in the county can be had in a black neighborhood, and there are two excellent taquerías besides the one I went to). But that doesn't change the fact that even my most liberal of friends has openly scoffed at the idea of moving to Waukegan. It just goes to show you that as much as things have changed since 1964, they've stayed frustratingly the same.

Pesto all'Argentina

2007-06-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Ciao, tutti,

I've been meaning to post this for a few days, but I keep forgetting. I made a pesto last weekend that was quite good. A little background, however, is necessary.

The sauce comes from Genoa, in northern Italy and is properly called pesto alla genovese, which , as nearly everyone is aware, is made of basil, pine nuts, and garlic (often with a hard Italian cheese, too) minced together and suspended in olive oil. One usually finds these ingredients combined in a food processor in the States, forming a paste which is then spread on bread or mixed in with pasta. However, pesto properly is hand-minced, so the ingredients are coarser and the texture is much more pleasant on the tongue to my mind. I wanted to make a hand-minced pesto for a number of reasons, but this superb mouthfeel was one big motivation.

On to the recipe. It's a little known fact, but Argentina has strong ethnic ties to Italy. In Buenos Aires, much of the local culture is inherited directly from Italy, and Italian food is common in the River Plate region. Always wanting to be odd, I got my recipe for pesto from Argentina and it has a few interesting differences from the usual American recipe. First off, besides the basil, the recipe calls for an equal amount of parsley (Italian or leaf, I know not). Since Argentina is not known for its olive trees, corn oil is called for, which gives it a decidedly American feel. Finally, and this is the change I find most interesting, walnuts are subsituted for the pine nuts, which changes the flavor of the sauce in amazing ways.

Unfortunately for me, I have no basil, and I don't like corn oil when I have a very good olive oil on hand, so my final recipe looked something like this hybridization: A lot of parsley, minced with three cloves of garlic, mixed with a handful of walnuts chopped coarsely, and then I poured on enough olive oil to bring it all together. I then let it sit for a number of hours so the flavors could meld. It was served with angel hair pasta, thus making capellini con pesto all'argentina.

The first thing I have to say is that one should never make pesto without basil. The core of the dish is that wonderful aromatic and, without it, I may as well have been eating iceberg lettuce covered with a Miracle Whip ranch. That's of course a bit extreme, but parsley alone was just too much.

Secondly, it takes a long time to mince by hand. I'm rather proud of this, but I had to hold my knife so long that I developed a blister at the base of my index finger.

Third, I needed to add more oil. The sauce was not moist enough.

Finally, it paired perfectly with the angel hair. Pesto is such a dainty sauce that it needs a dainty pasta to go with it. Or, one could replace "dainty" with "delicate." However, I was still hungry after eating my rather hefty portion and if I had to do it all again, I think I'd make more pasta. Or maybe serve some soup with it. Still, it was a perfect dish for a late spring day.

Muhalo.

A Late Lunch

2007-05-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

This is a bit off topic from what I usually write about (soccer and bread), but it's in the food category. Plus, it's sensationalist.

My lunch today, which I'm going to prepare as soon as I'm done writing this, is about as unlikely a meal for this weather as anything. I'm hearkening back to my time in England, actually Ireland more, with a classic plate of:

-Heinz baked beans
-Fried eggs
-Toast with Marmite
-Black pudding

Oh, yes, I got some black pudding and I can hardly wait to eat some. Although it's taken me nearly two weeks to get around to it. Go figure.

Muhalo.

Eight a.m. phonecall - Yes!

2007-05-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

I bought some cheddar the other day and, not having any pickle in this country, I've decided to try apple butter as a replacement. You may have guessed, if you are wonderful and righteous and an anglophile and I love you forever if you did, that I am in the mood for the perfect late spring meal: the ploughman's sandwich (or just the ploughman's to those in the know).

Mmmmmm, I am reminded of a large pub on a hot day in York, my cheddar to Dan's Cornish yarg, and I've been regretting not ordering the chef's daily choice cheese ever since. Pickled onion there was, and an apple. If only...

But, I was left with my cheese and apple butter (as well as some Spartan apples) without any bread and way too much flour. Thus, I decided to remedy the situation. This afternoon, I made some baps, or are they butties? No, wait, they're cobs. Dang nabbit, they're rolls. What? Not rolls? Sarny, stotty, what are those words you're speaking? The blasted thing is a roll. A ROLL! Do you hear me? Do you understand me? It is a roll, you English tomfoolers with the language of my ancestors. A roll.

Yes, I made rolls, using the last of my whole wheat flour, and they smell delicious, soon to be adorned with thick slices of cheddar cheese, slathered with apple butter, and devoured by one hungry and somewhat anglophilic American.

By the way, I rolled some cumin seeds into one of the rolls (hence why a roll is called a roll, Mr. Braithwaite). I don't know what it'll taste like, since I didn't use any ground cumin and all the seeds seemed to clump together, but it was an idea. Really, it was an ideal, because I'm trying to recapture a fleeting taste of a cumin gouda I had in Notts last spring that made me want to die from ecstasy. I don't think a roll will ever be as amazingly death-inducing and awe-inspiring as a slice of cheese, but it can at least be delicious. I'll let you know how my experiments with flavored breads go, just as soon as la Maquina Roja win the Club World Cup.*

Muhalo.

*You don't think I'd actually let an entire post go by during soccer season without mentioning the game I'm currently madly obsessed with?

******BREAKING NEWS FLASH UPDATE******

Although the Fire have yet to win the world, I ate one of the rolls and my, oh, my is it good! Not as sweet as my previous breads, I reduced the sugar because I didn't think it would go well with the cheese and apple butter (and I didn't want the sweetness of the bread overpowering the flavor of the filling). However, I increased the salt and it has made an exciting flavor. I guess you don't need to have sugar in bread for it to be delicious (which I already knew, else explain the French baguette). And with the nice little crust I put on these bad boys, they're practically pub quality (although even the heavy-food-eating English would be find the wholly whole wheat a bit daunting, i.m.h.h.h.h.h.h.o.).

AC Milan Are Kaka (too easy, too easy)

2007-05-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

What about those Rossoneri? Man, alive, I was watching the tie in the caf and there were only a few other people there. After the Seedorf goal, some new guy walked up and he wanted to know who had scored. This guy was talking about Kaka's brilliant one-touch finish and then he said, "And Clarence Seedorf scored. I don't even know how he did it. He was falling over a guy and he just kind of hit it on the bounce... I can't explain it; you have to see it." It really is one of those goals that cannot be explained.

Liverpool are in serious trouble.

Now, to MLS and my previews. I'm going to blow through these because this week still doesn't interest me, as the only match I'll catch is tonight's. I just can't get that excited about teams that I've never seen play and that I won't be able to see play for another two weeks.

The Revs v. DC - 1-2, goals by Twellman and Luciano Emilio, should be good, nationally-televised, I cannot wait to see DC win their first match of the season.

Crew v. KC - 0-2, goals by some new guy and EJ. I like KC, they're my backup team, as in baseball, and EJ should be every child's hero. Besides, KC will be BBQ-powered for this match. (And Onalfo, how good has he been so far?)

Energy Drink v. Fake SL - 3-0, goals by who knows, but with Ellinger finally gone, it's going to be a long road this year and Checketts should be glad the league doesn't have relegation yet (but your day is coming, mediocrity).

Las Naranjas v. Crapids - 0-0, with goals by

The Goats v. DC - 1-2, goals by Razov and Emilio and maybe someone else (Moreno?). Once DC gets the bug, they're going to win a lot, and the bad luck will fall to a Chivas side still reeling from the "SuperClasico," which is about the most ridiculous name MLS has come up with for anything so far.

The Reds v. the Revs - 3-0, this is a very hard one to call, and I'm just falling back on my standby score, but with Mapp questionable and the history (even this season), it's going to be hard for us to get even a point in New England. Expect lots of "graft" and even more fouls than the usual NE game. Is Franchino back yet? (see below)

The game to watch is tonight's ESPN2 match, 'twixt the Revs and DC. I think this match could also decide Sunday's against the Fire: if the Revs are solidly defeated by DC, we'll have an easier time. So, I guess I want DC to win.

Player to watch: Mapp, because his wincing expressions as he sees his team lose with him on the bench should be very entertaining. Here's to his fast recovery. Also: Emilio, Twellman, Dasan Robinson, Joseph and DeRo (to break their slumps).

That's all for now.

Jose Mourinho Is Not Nice

2007-04-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

I've dropped the ball on my predictions, but I frankly don't care. How could I care with weather this superbly beautiful?

I did get to watch my first MLS match of the season last night, although I'm not sure how much of a privilege it was to see the biggest toddler blubbering because the ref didn't card him for diving (I refer, of course, to Ruiz of the Burning Hoops). Since Dallas is our league-mandated rivalry, it was nice to see them lose, but I don't like the smell of wealth which currently hangs about the dried bones of the MetroStars, so it was ultimately a disappointing affair. (Is anyone else worried that the big markets are trying to model themselves after Chelski? I don't know why I even asked that because everyone is worried about that.)

Here's my one prediction for the week: The Fire will win at Houston. This is mostly because, with the exception of the very well-run Red Bulls, no team in the league realizes that the purpose of the DP spot was to get Beckham over here and then be able to afford some excellent talent. Joseph and DeRo are that excellent talent which is supposed to be afforded, but until the league stops misunderstanding the new rule as a way to get stars into MLS and starts understanding it as a way to keep talent in the league, the Fire will coast to second in the East (as mentioned above, the Red Bulls understaaaaaaand).

With that in mind, I will offer some predictions for the season:

East:
Red Bulls
Fire
DC (defense will hurt them)
KC
Revs (Joseph will hurt them)
Columbus
Toronno

West:
LA
Chivas
Crapids
Dallas
Houston (DeRo will hurt them)
Real Madrid (Checketts will hurt them)

Playoffs:
Red Bulls
Fire
LA
Chivas
DC
KC
Crapids
Revs
with Red Bulls, LA, or Fire winning

Open Cup:
Fire

Red Bulls will win the Supporters' Shield

MVP:
Me, after a midseason signing with the Fire

I know I don't play, but my big day has to come sometime and I really can't be bothered to think at all, because it's nice outside, my back is only mildly uncomfortable, and I feel like ruining all the gains I've made in the past few weeks with some ill-advised soccer practice.

Muhalo.

Weekly Prediction

2007-04-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

Since it's Thursday, I guess I need to post my predictions for this weekend's matches. It's going to be hard to match my accuracy from last week; in case you couldn't be bothered to look it up, I got all of my predictions right (although the exact scores were slightly smaller). Here goes for this week.

Dallas v. Los Angeles: 1-1, because I'm nervous, I don't feel like I can gauge this one. Donovan is, of course, an excellent player, and I don't really like Dallas, so I'm tempted to give it to LA, but somehow Dallas manages to score in most games.

Crew v. Real Madrid: 1-2, because Real is just the better team and the Crew have way too much history of being horrible to turn it around in a single week. Still, if Ngwenya can play as well as he did at the Fire home closer last season, and everyone who knows more about soccer is right about Gaven being a good player, then the Crew could do something more than I'm giving them credit for. But Real have the Kid and he seems like he wants to prove himself this year.

KCMO v. DCU: 2-3, with goals from Johnson and Emilio, DC will dominate, but I really feel like Eddie's on the brink of regaining his form. If he gets one, he'll get two, but DC will still win.

Toronno v. the Revs: 1-0, because the Revs are horrible.

The Goats v. Las Naranjas: ? v. ?, again, Houston is the team in the game to watch. Personally, I think the Goats will win it, but Houston's still one of the best teams in MLS.

The Reds v. Arsenal: 3-0, look for more amazing work by Mapp, and the pairing of Rolfe and Barrett will produce.

Dallas v. RBNY: 2-0, first win for Dallas, which will be good for no one.

Match to watch: The Goats v. Las Naranjas.

Players to watch: Mapp, Emilio, Donovan, Johnson, and whoever scores against the Revs.

Weekly Prediction

2007-04-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've decided I'm going to predict the outcome of the week's MLS matches every Friday. But, first, I just want to ask why pretty much everyone in the entire US soccer world thinks that the Fire are going to implode after Blanco arrives? It really seems to me that, outside of Chicago's fanbase, it is obvious that Blanco is a deathtrap. Sure, there are the Fire fans who think this, too, but I think most of us in the 312 and surrounding Land are pretty sure he's either going to be awesome or benched. Actually, I ask the question just to setup my answer, which I think is ingenius: the Blanco signing has succeeded already. Of course the Fire won't implode; but everyone hates him so much, they want the team to fail. If, or should I say when, the Fire destroy the league in July, there are going to be a lot of really sad people. I'll be one of them, because, I mean, it's Temo we're talking about, but I'll be so overjoyed at the domination which the Fire mete out to the other dozen "teams" that I won't even care that it's because of a horrible, evil, bad man (who is also from heaven and a Mexican).

So, this week's predictions:

Colorado v. DC: 3-2, with goals from Jaime and Emilio, my new hero: It's in the net. Also, Bobby Boswell will assist on all five.

Crew v. RBNY: 0-0, although Altidore will have 14 goals declared offsides, even though he picked the ball up in his own penalty area and dribbled to the half, before slamming home perfectly flat shots into the upper right corner of the net.

Real Madrid v. FC Dallas 96: 3-3, with goals from the Kid and the Cooper, maybe some other people; I don't really know who's on these teams.

Goats v. Toronno: 3-1, look for Guevara to shine, and Canadian Chicago's team to get off to a slow start, but don't expect it to last.

Las Naranjas v. Los Angeles: ? v. ?, to me, this is the match to watch. Houston was my pick for best team of last season, and LA should be an amazing side, but anything could happen. I think Ching and Donovan will both play amazing games, and I don't expect much from Jaqua, but I could always be wrong. I would like to think that DeRo will be the most incredible player on the field again, but he won't be, which is actually fine with me, since I won't be able to watch it. Wait, it's on Telefutura, I think we get that here.

The Reds v. The Revs: 3 v. 0, look for Mapp to shine, and a good teaming between Barrett and Rolfe. Barrett's going to be amazing this season, as he was last season before breaking his foot (odd that both Rooneys would get the same injury in the same year). Pickens won't even have to make a single save because of my man Soumare (who will be known as the Baka Bomb from tomorrow on). Also, look for the Revs to totally suck and play some of the least attractive, English-style footie you've ever seen, while our largely homegrown youth side will play a game that is reminiscent of Brazil v. Argentina at Emirates last fall.

Game to watch: Las Naranjas v. Los Angeles, The Reds v. The Revs (who suck, suck, suck the big green weenie), Goats v. Toronno

Players to watch: Donovan, Mapp, Guevara, Adu, Luciano Emilio, and the Baka Bomb; of course, Altidore's amazing performance will go down in the history books as one of the greatest games for a striker ever, but will be mindnumbingly similar to Romaria v. Keller in '99, except that all the shots will end up in the net.

I Rock

2007-04-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since the sage-eating wizard I call Peter realized that Great Harvest uses enough salt to preserve their loaves in perpetuity, making a loaf of delicious bread has become a laughing matter. I just whipped up a loaf without even batting an eye. I guess this weblog has served its purpose, so I don't know what I'm going to do after this last post. Maybe continue to refine my breadmaking process? Include other recipes, interspersed among my soccer rants? Who knows? For now, here is a basic list of what I've learned about breadmaking:

1) Do not use a recipe; the necessary ingredients are flour, water, yeast, some sort of sugar, salt, and oil. Just experiment with amounts. And bake somewhere between 350F and 400F.

2) If the dough is sticky, add more flour and knead longer. If the dough is stiff, add more water and knead longer. Kneading longer is usually the preferred course of action (although it is supposedly possible to overknead).

3) Bread is usually thought of as flour, but this is wrong. The flour is a base into which you mix salt and sugar. All the flavor of bread comes from salt, and the complexity in a bread's flavor comes from whatever type of sugar is used. Adding seeds and stuff like that is also good, but you really must use salt. A lot of salt. Bread should be salty.

4) I haven't figured out how to make a sourdough yet. Maybe with warmer weather coming, and a warmer kitchen, I can change that, but I have a feeling I'm going to just opt out and make tortillas for the next few months.

5) Salt really is what makes bread worth eating. Don't worry about using too much. It's hard to oversalt a loaf of bread. It's the easiest thing I've ever done to undersalt.

6) Knead the loaf for a long time, at least ten minutes, and make sure that there's plenty of salt in the dough. Taste the dough to check. You can always knead more salt in if there's lacking.

So, those are my six tips. Maybe I'll codify them into something resembling the Rule of St. Benedict. Or maybe I'll just make tortillas.

Muhalo,

Matth

Food's Still My Passion

2007-04-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

Despite the stated purpose of this blog, it is a blog, and since the only bread I've been making recently has been unleavened cornmeal cakes (called tortillas), I need to broaden the scope. The obvious place to look is to the other dishes I make on an almost daily basis to feed myself, but I'm going to look instead at football.

That's soccer, rubes.

Actually, I quite like the word soccer, especially given its history and the general level of scorn the English have for it.

Anyway, I'm growing increasingly tired of the talk of how to increase the fanbase of MLS*. The Designated Player Rule--which allows teams to sign one player of whose salary, only $400,000 counts towards the rather tight league-mandated salary cap--is supposed to allow greater publicity (by bringing in world-famous stars) without threatening the still tenuous economics of MLS. The DP Rule is just the largest example of a widely held belief that there are things which the league can and should be doing to increase the fanbase.

I think this mentality is completely misguided. It reminds me of the belief which is so intrinsic to many evangelical churches: If you advertise your product (spirituality, soccer, or a combination of the two) in the right way, you will have to beat people away as they swamp your organization with intense curiosity and undying support. There's often little doubt that the curiosity will immediately become support.

Come on! Who are you kidding? Is there a single person, ever, who was attracted to a church (when they weren't actively looking for a church to join) by a giant black-on-yellow billboard proclaiming "Jesus." and an address? You sports fans who read this--which I'd assume is no one--were you attracted to the sport you're most interested in by advertising? In other words, before you were interested in football (the common type) or baseball, were you attracted to the sport through advertising put out by the sports teams?

Of course not! I am a baseball fan because my parents had me play Little League, my childhood friends all played, and my best friends back home are all fans. It's not because the White Sox won the World Series in 2005 (although that did reignite my interest). Sure, I'm a White Sox fan because the team signed Bo Jackson in 1990, for the same year I moved from Kansas City to Chicago, but I already liked baseball because it's what people around me watched. Similarly, I got into soccer in high school because the people I thought were cool and unrube-like played soccer and because I worshipped European culture (things changed). I thought that supporting soccer was cool because of the people I saw around me who were into soccer. Even with MLS, the reason I'm a fan has nothing to do with advertising by the team. I had only the vaguest notions that Chicago had a soccer team. But, after my year in England, I was looking for a place to vent my new-found enthusiasm; I wanted to yell and sing like the English had done during the World Cup. I actively searched out the Fire, and that's the first time that advertising from the team could have helped.

That's right: the first time that the team or MLS had any part in getting me to go to those three matches last summer and buy a strip was after I already had zeal for 1) soccer in general 2) being a fan of soccer and 3) supporting my local club. The further thing I want to point out is that I developed that zeal purely from interactions with the people around me, mostly my friends. I would suspect that the same is true for most people.

MLS and US Soccer will not be able to get 100 million Americans to start supporting the clubs and national team through any amount of advertising and press. However, I can get maybe one or two people to start paying more attention to soccer through conversations with friends. (Incidentally, the same is true of religious conversion and church attendance; see Rodney Stark.) The other thousand strong supporters of the Fire in Chicagoland, too, can talk with their friends and, slowly, Section 8 (the Fire supporters' group) will grow. In ten years, maybe it will be 1400, or maybe it'll be 3000, but I'd bet that every one of those 400 or 2000 new fans will have come to support the Fire through a personal relationship with another supporter, not through a billboard advertising David Beckham's hot visage.

But what do I know? I'm just your average bread-baking genius.

Cheers,

Matth

* MLS, for all you rubes I've already addressed once, is Major League Soccer and is generally thought of as the premier soccer league in the United States (and now Canada). USL, or the United Soccer Leagues, make up the second and third tiers, with the USL First and Second Divisions. Both MLS (properly referred to without an article) and USL (likewise) were founded following a FIFA (that's the international oversight committee for soccer) requirement that went along with the World Cup being awarded to the US in 1994. Both MLS and USL are about 15 years old and have suffered from underwhelming fan support, teams often having about 12000 fans at games in all but the largest markets (DC, LA, sometimes Chicago).

Lot's Wife Would Have Been Helpful

2007-03-30T23:17:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted. I have been making bread, but I've gone down to only once a week and I think I missed a week, so I've only made a loaf of challah and then a regular pan loaf. However, I've learned two very important lessons and figured out one not-so-important thing.

Not-so-important thing: Adding egg to dough makes the final bread's crust somewhat flakey.

Important lesson #1: My breads have been crumbly because I have not kneaded them enough; the dough should stretch when pulled, not rip.

Important lesson #2: Salt. The. Hell. Out. Of. The. Dough. Salt is a breadmaker's friend. Salt is the source of flavor. Salt is the most eternally blessed substance in cooking and it holds even more honored of a place in baking. Salt.

By far, the second lesson is the most important. Also, since the last time I posted, we ran out of the Fleischman's yeast and had to get some more from the co-op. Not only was it a mere one-eighth the price, it has a much stronger and more natural smell and flavor. Huge improvement. I think I might make a poolish and some French bread for Easter. Whatever, we'll see.

On another note, the weather is about as perfect as a human could possibly hope for. Namely, to go outside is no longer to risk death.

Cheers,

Matth

Fookken' Shite

2007-03-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

In a break from my usual bread-based posts, I just want to say that Nottingham Forest have really let me down this season. They led League 1 for most of the year, and then slumped, and now they've lost 0-1 at the City ground, which makes their bid that much more difficult (they hold onto second by one point, but they're behind in goal differential). If this team fails to win promotion, I will be so livid, I just might fly to Notts and beat the fookken' shite out of every last one of the Garibaldis.

To bring it back to bread for a moment, I made boiled wheat berries today for lunch, with raisins and chopped walnuts, and goat's milk. It was quite delicious, hardy, and not nearly as filling as I'd hoped (maybe if I'd had breakfast, it would have gone farther).

Bread Revisited

2007-03-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

My idyllic loaf of last night, on further eating, held up to the high standard I'd set for it. The pastry flour made it so the crumb barely held together and I'd put salt on the top of the loaf, which was maybe a little over the top, but the flavor and feel of the bread are divine, as I said last night. It's only up from here, I hope.

Bread

2007-03-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

I took Wednesday off from breadmaking. I don't really know why and I think it was probably a mistake, but it happened. However, I did make a loaf today and, to shroud it in fog, I did it. I did it today, for the first time, and certainly not the last.

What I did, in the step by step and rather boring way I've come to tell you, was simply this: I poured a smaller amount of hot water than usual over brown sugar, covered the top of the liquid with yeast (no idea how much I used, none at all), and after ten minutes I started adding flour. Mostly, it was whole wheat pastry flour, which Peter informs me does not have as much gluten and is not from the usual red wheat. At any rate, that's what I did, adding between three and four cups. I also salted the hell out of the dough and added more than a tablespoon of oil. I might have only added two to three cups of flour; I don't know how much measure my hands hold. I kneaded it until it was the way it should be, then I let it rise once, took it out, set the oven to 375F, formed it into a long loaf by rolling it lengthwise, placed it in a loaf pan and salted the top. It was very small in the loaf pan. I let it rise during the preheat, scored it thrice, and then baked it for maybe forty minutes, maybe less.

But what I DID was create heaven. The salt finally brought out the full wheat flavor and the pastry flour does have a better taste (Peter does know bread). I'm not even going to try to describe this loaf. Everything about it is perfect and I don't even know why I continue to exist after creating such a wonderful delicacy. It's tempting to view this as proof that I am a god, but of course that would just be ridiculous. The bread was not just good, the bread was divine.

Back to Modernity

2007-02-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

I was getting fed up with the sours and levains of my last few loaves, the constant feeding (which I would invariably forget and thereby kill off most of the culture), the smell, the mess, and I have to admit that the sourness was just too pungent on some of them. I wanted to make a lighter loaf (since I never waited long enough for my partially-killed culture to leaven the dough) that wouldn't assault my sense of taste. So, I used commercial yeast yesterday to make a whole wheat loaf and it is strikingly different.

First off, I used brown sugar to start the yeast in about two and a half or three cups of water, using less than a tablespoon of yeast. I added whole wheat flour to that after eight minutes and continued adding flour until a very wet dough had formed. I turned it out onto a very heavily floured counter (more than a cup) and then floured the top of the mass with another half a cup and (having forgotten to add it earlier) a very large pinch of salt (maybe a quarter teaspoon). I started needing, adding flour from time to time (I maybe used four cups total; it's a large loaf). Eventually, I had a nicely elastic dough, when I remembered that I hadn't added any oil. I had melted nearly three tablespoons of bacon grease, which was sitting on the stove, but I'd neglected to add it in, so I kneaded it into the dough at that point. It was quite messy, but the dough became somewhat stiffer and much more elastic. I guess oil does make a big difference in the characteristic of the dough itself. I let the dough rise in the oven with the light on for forty-five minutes. I then greased a cast iron skillet (about a foot in diameter) with bacon grease. I turned the risen dough out, turning it inside out (so the top, which had dried out somewhat, was pushed into the bottom and the uneven surface which had been in contact with the bottom of the bowl was stretched out to be the top), forming a round loaf which was quite tall. I scored the top with a cross about half an inch deep and placed it into a 380F oven without steam (I wanted to know what happened without trying to get a crust). I baked it until it sounded fairly hollow when tapped on the bottom and cooled it upside down.

Notes:

More salt.

Definitely.

Without a crust, the thickness of this loaf was too much. The weight of the inverted loaf during cooling nearly crushed the flimsy Great Harvest style crust. It wouldn't be bad on a sandwich loaf or a smaller round loaf, but this is a very tall rustic country round and the bread just cries for a loaf. But now I know.

Bacon grease is good.

The crumb is superb, although bordering on blandness, the springiness and cohesivenss is ideal. I don't know what caused this, but it is quite nice. Possibilities include the yeast leavening, the improvement of my kneading technique, the late addition of the oil, or just luck. I like to think it's the second.

Next time, I'm going to take off the gloves and just add salt until I feel like I should stop. No more of this wishy-washy salting; I'd rather make an oversalted loaf next time than be left with a bland loaf which is otherwise perfect. I might also try an overnight or daylong poolish, in the boulangerie style.

I'm getting tempted to try a white loaf, but I must resist. Must resist, at least until my brown bread is world class.

Follow Up

2007-02-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

Jonathan said, and I agree with this, that the bread's flavor was too simple, i.e. there was not any complexity to the flavor of the wheat. I think he wanted a slightly sweeter bread, which is understandable, since the only sugar in the sourdough was whatever the wheat had. Some more salt would also have help it, I think. Still, it was delicious, albeit it dense. It reminded me of the dark rye bread in Scandinavia (except this had little rye).

The density was another thing which Jonathan mentioned after trying it. It was definitely dense, but that, as mentioned earlier, was due to punching down the dough when forming the loaf.

I've got some more dough rising right now and the starter was a little wilder this time, but I'll hold off telling the secret ingredient until I've tried the bread.

Sourdough Whole Wheat

2007-02-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I made the loaf with the sour I mentioned in the last entry. I started in on Thursday and fed it through Saturday night. There wasn't much activity for nearly three days, but then, when I went to bed on Saturday, I put the sour in the oven with the light on. About seven hours later, it had grown by a third, so I was relieved. I had a quart of sour in the end, to which I added an unknown amount of flour and kneaded it before heading to church.

The sour had been started with about a quarter cup of whole rye, but I used whole wheat after that. I don't think I used enough flour when making the bread, because it was awfully wet still (although not that bad, just on the wet side of a good dough). I think I should have saved some of the sour rather than using it all. I really only needed a couple cups.

I let the bread rise while I was at church, and then for a few hours more. I then flattened it out on a baking sheet greased with bacon grease (bakin' grease?), rolled it into a log, and let it rise while the oven heated to 425F. I also placed a bowl of boiling water in the oven to steam it up (actually, Peter did most of that because he was baking a loaf, too.

Since I'd punched down the dough when I formed the log, and the sour culture was slow acting, and the dough was wet, the preheating time for the oven did not allow the loaf to reach its full size. Consequently, the loaf was very dense, and the side split in the oven from a large secondary rise.

So, lessons: use less sour for a single loaf, let it rise a long time before placing in the oven, use more flour (or otherwise make a drier dough).

Improvements from previous loaves: the dough was not too dry, I didn't have to use commercial yeast, there was hardly any rye flavor.

As to the loaf itself, it was incredible. I didn't expect it to taste as it does. It has a strong whole wheat flavor, but there is a strong sourness as well. It's a strange flavor, but good.

A few things to keep in mind next time: a little more salt, some oil (there was none and I don't know if the bread would have been better with it), the addition of honey to the sour, a longer final rise time for a sourdough, less sour or more flour (in the second case, make two loaves). Also, I'm tired of putting water in the oven. I want to make a loaf without steam next. Maybe I should try only one or two of these changes. I'll be thinking of what my next loaf will be. I'm seriously considering a, well, I'll let you know later.

Trye Poolish

2007-02-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

I ate the loaf the next day, partly for lunch and partly as a snack in the library. It was, being rye bread, quite heavy, and I guess maybe that's why I fell asleep at the study table for an hour. Anyway, it was delicious and, unlike many heavy rye breads, I didn't feel as though it sat heavily in the stomach after eating.

Definitely, the size of the loaf was too small. Also, since I'd tried extra hard to make a crust on it, the small size combined to make it way too crusty. I think if I ever make such a small loaf again, I will not put a crust on it if it can be helped.

My next bread will probably be on Sunday. I've started a sour using maybe a quarter cup of rye flour and water. I'm going to feed it (in fact, as soon as I finish typing) with whole wheat flour, so the rye is just in there to get the culture going. After reading, I decided that I need to let a natural yeast dough rise a lot longer than I would a common type dough; as much as four hours, perhaps. Thus, my plan right now is to feed the sour through Sunday morning and then get up before church and make the dough, letting it rise through church and then bake it around noon. I'll let you know what happens.

First Proof - Rye Poolish

2007-02-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

Last night, before I went to bed, I started a basic poolish using whole rye flour and water, maybe a little less than a cup each. Of course, I did all my reading afterwards, but I now know both what a poolish is and how I should have done it differently. Allow me to share the first now.

A poolish is a type of yeast starter, I suppose one could think of it as a sourdough starter (although it's more watery), which is used to preferment some dough to use as a leavener. Rye flour naturally has a very high wild yeast content, so one needn't add the extra yeast which is required for a wheat starter (in fact, for flavor, rye flour is often added to a wheat starter).

So, I started my poolish, put it in the oven to ferment, and went to bed, hoping to bake a rye loaf when I got up. Although it had activated, I found that the poolish was not active enough to leaven a loaf (which was the same problem I'd encountered last week when I tried to make a similar loaf of bread before deciding to embark on this breadmaking tutorial). I added some more yeast (Fleischmann's, I think) about midmorning and then went to class. When I came back, I defered to Peter's expert advice (the guy's been making bread since he was seven!) and he told me that, in fact, the starter was ready now, although I wouldn't have known it. That was due to a combination of the huge growth I'd gotten last week and my forgetting where the original fill level was for the poolish.* So, I started to make bread.

I poured the poolish into a mixing bowl, poured about another half cup or so of rye flour in, as well as maybe two cups of whole wheat flour, mixed in some more water, and started needing on a well-floured counter. Sorry I can't tell you how much flour I used, but I'm trying to learn to do this by touch. I'd decided with the bagels that the dough was too dry; I erred on the side of caution and got pretty much the same result, although the dough was slightly limp tonight. Also, since it was at least a quarter rye, and probably more, the gluten didn't develop nearly as much as in a wheat dough. I think I'm starting to get a handle on this whole rye thing (haha) and I need to make more slits in loaves made with rye to ensure that they don't split the sides because of the generally short stretching ability of the gluten strands.

I placed the ball of dough, which was quite small, in the oven to rise for an hour. Although it had risen some, I decided to add some more yeast, as much to find out what happens when yeast is added after the first rise as to aid in the crumb development. I think I put in another teaspoon (in addition to the teaspoon I'd added before going to class) and kneaded it in. I then let the bread rise for another hour in the oven. When I took the bread out, I formed it into a small loaf by flattening it out into a rectangle and the rolling it up (I've heard this creates tension in the surface gluten both inside and out), set the oven to 370F, put a kettle on to boil, and then let the bread rest until the oven was preheated. When the kettle was done, I poured boiling water into a pan I'd placed on the lower rack of the oven (my 8" omelet pan) and when the oven was heated a few minutes later, I put in the bread. The water is supposed to aid in the formation of a crust and, given my results, it does.

I left the bread in for an hour or so (I think 50 minutes, to be exact). I'd read that crust formation can be better aided still by turning off the oven and leaving the loaf in for half an hour to an hour, so I tried that, as well. Does this loaf have a crust or what! It's a small loaf, with a strong rye flavor, again, which I'm getting sick of, and a rather loose crumb which is itself made up of rather dense crumbs. It is delicious and I'm going to look forward to eating lunch tomorrow with my little loaf.

A few observations:

It is a small loaf, too small for all the work that went into it. The crust is too thick for its size, as well. The flavor is good, although I'm not sure I can taste the fermentation (maybe a product of the additional yeast and short fermentation time. The slits in top were not large enough and baked through almost immediately, not allowing much additional rise to be absorbed (perhaps the knife didn't actually cut the surface gluten, merely compressed it).

Maybe more to follow later.

An idea just occurred to me, spurred on by a delicious Gouda I ate in Nottingham months ago: I should add cumin to a bread sometime. I love cumin and it might flavor (and color) the bread very nicely, much like caraway in American rye.

*After reading on starters while the bread was rising and baking, I learned that a starter, even a poolish, should be allowed to ferment for at least three days in all cases. I have heard that a poolish can be started in as little as five hours, but I now realize that the finished starter in those cases won't have fermented, merely it will have started to produce enough carbon dioxide to leaven a loaf.

Follow Up

2007-02-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

After eating another three of the bagels and getting feedback from Peter and Jonathan, I have a few more comments.

The flavor was actually quite incredible, and the poppy seed flavor grew overnight, as did the bageliness (meaning, as it grew stale, it acquired that dry, dense texture of a classic bagel). I'm not sure what the plain bagels would have done overnight, but the honey-scent (which was very strong last night) actually diminished. I looked at some pictures of bagels online today and I think that I didn't overlap the coil enough. It looks like the Montreal bagels I was modeling mine after overlap a full third or more of the circumference; mine only overlapped about a fifth.

I've got to get to Montreal. Eat some smoked meat, too. Stop in at one of the many francophone used bookstores. And have fondue; maybe that same waitress is still working there...

A First Proofing

2007-02-11T17:56:00.000-08:00

This weblog, for the moment, will function as my public journal of pain. Over the next few months, I'm going to attempt to learn the art of breadmaking. I have two main reasons for doing this. Firstly, bread is such a basic joy in life, I want to be able to make a number of varieties of bread well. Secondly, I think the act of making bread will help my quite painfully injured back to heal, through the kneading and other activity (hence the pun in the first sentence).

A few notes before I procede.

I have never made bread before this week, except a loaf two years ago which ended up being made with dead yeast (not just inactive).

I eat mostly whole foods, so don't expect to see any recipes for white bread (although I expect to perfect a french baguette at some point).

I will not use any machines for this. Not only do I find the noise of electric motors disruptive, and their use would make nul half of my reason for doing this, but I also don't own anything which would help in breadmaking.

So, now that I've set out that rather inadequate description, let me get on to my first attempt at bread.

On the spur of the moment, I threw together some rather passable bagels after church today. It was pretty easy, although I'm trying to use up a bag of rye flour I bought in November, so the gluten didn't develop as I would have liked. They also have a strong rye flavor (imagine that). Basically, the recipe I used was something like three cups of whole wheat flour, a cup and some of whole rye flour, and some salt, mixed with some activated yeast in a maybe a cup and a half or two of water. Then, I kneaded the dough, let it rise for half an hour, and got a large pot of water simmering with maybe three or four tablespoons of honey. I shaped the bagels by cutting off a chunk, rolling it out in a cylinder, and wrapping it about my hand, overlapping the ends. After letting them rise for another fifteen minutes, I boiled them for between one and three minutes per side, and then put them in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes (although I put them in initially while the oven was still preheating). Also, four of the ten got an light eggwash and a dusting of poppy seeds (because I love poppy seeds).

Problems:

The overlapping ends didn't hold together in the water. The bagels developed too much of a crust for their thickness (they have a large circular diameter, but a small cross-section). The flavor of the poppy seeds is overwhelmed by the wheat and rye flavors. As for flavor, the crust and and the mou flavors weren't quite in harmony (the crust was honey-sweetened quite nicely, while I think the mou was lacked some sweetening and also tasted too much like bare wheat and rye).

Ideas for the future:

I think I make my doughs too dry (I also attempted a rye sourdough with a friend's help last week); perhaps a bit more water or a bit less flour during the kneading. When shaping the bagels, work faster and cut up all of the dough at once (otherwise, the rising causes each progressive bagel to be larger and larger and larger and larger). Make the holes smaller and the cross-section larger (roll it out less and wrap around a small object than the palm of my hand). Maybe the oven was too hot; 375F might not be a bad idea. Since the dough wasn't sweet enough to match the flavor of the boiled outside, I think honey is necessary in the dough as well, but not much at all, probably less than a tablespoon. Maybe some more salt would be good (I'm pretty sure I ended up using less than a teaspoon, but certainly not more).

All in all, the bagels are delicious. Their flavor is incredibly strong!!! I put that as a warning, not a criticism. One nice thing about that is that the overwhelming flavor of the wheat and rye requires a lot of cream cheese, so once I adjusted the quantity, they were almost too good to be true.

lChayim!