Because cooking is about going with the flow

I took this Crispy mustard roasted chicken recipe from Ina Garten as inspiration and made this eggplant. Same basic idea, but eggplant instead of chicken, and I made some other changes as well. Cooking for me is often doing a variation on a theme.

Shallowly pan fried then into the oven for a bit. We had already eaten 3 pieces when I decided to take this picture.

So I made this completely different dish. This eggplant was salted and laid out on paper towels to remove the excess moisture, and yes I was keenly aware of how precious those are right now. #stillapandemic

I’ve been making dressings using pickle juice, so I decided I would use a mixture of wine and pickle juice with a sweetish swedish mustard from Ikea (because I somehow have no grey poupon!). I also added Greek yogurt because it’s my business. [Shout out to Tabitha Brown.]

I mixed the panko with thinly shredded fresh parmesan cheese (~2 to 1 ratio) and some garlic powder. I have no quantities, but I used/would use Ina’s measurements as a rough guideline.

In the mix I had yogurt, pickle juice, white cooking wine, mustard, salt. I dipped the slices of eggplant in and then pressed firmly into the panko mixture. I coated both sides, and don’t worry about the skin. With just enough oil to almost cover the pan I fried the slices on medium heat until brown on both sides and then placed into a 350° oven to continue cooking for a bit. I had to replenish the oil a few times, in which case let the oil heat up again before adding the next round.

To say this is a vegetable dish is both absurd and sublime. Absurdly truthful, and sublimely ridiculous. The wife ate two helpings and didn’t even want a red sauce accompaniment which was offered. She doesn’t mostly like vegetables on the whole. Win!

All that remains…

Beleaguered bread dough still bakes. Don’t panic!

It’s bread! Don’t overthink it.

I made this bread. It is delicious. Here’s what happened along the way.

I started this dough using the same recipe I have a few posts back. I let it proof once, I let a proof twice. At that precise moment I forgot to place the dough onto the tray I was going to bake it on. I left it back in the bowl. I was going to have to let it prove a third time. Then I turned on the oven. Quickly realizing I still had a little bit of time to wait because my dough had to prove again, I turned the oven off. And then I thought to keep the bread dough away from my cat, and my large baking tray didn’t fit in the microwave where I had it before, so I put the dough into the now slightly warmer-than-it-should-be oven. And proceeded to completely forget about it for several hours longer than I had planned. (Translation: I forgot to set the timer.) When I realized what I had done it was 12:30am and I was about to go to bed. I looked in the oven with trepidation and saw a completely over proofed dough pushed out to the sides of the upside-down bowl that I had placed over it to keep the skin of the dough from drying out. I had put down a fair amount of flour on the tray so that the bread would have a nice flour-y bottom. When I pulled the dough back together of course that moist dough picked up big clumps of flour which created the effect you see above.

Bread Recipe here!

I love to bake. I am not an ACF certified Master Baker. This beautiful rustic look was achieved by accident. And the bread still tastes great.

So the point of this long narrative is to illustrate that you should never throw it away, never chuck it in the bin in frustration. You should never give up until you’ve tried everything you can. Just because it wasn’t how you planned it, doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Keep trying! Keep baking!

Just keep swimming.

Dory

Like tectonic plates, the bits of flour shifted apart from each other and the crust of the Earth, er, I mean bread, expanded.

Also, please forgive the lack of shitty in-between shots of my beleaguered bread. Not everything I do is with a thought of blogging about it afterwards. I was tired. At the time I was just thinking of how I didn’t want to be dealing with rearranging the fridge in order to hold the bread until the next morning. Oh! I guess I should mention that I didn’t wait another hour or two for the bread to prove that night. So I brought the dough back together, it had the big flour crust on it as I mentioned. I put the dough in the fridge overnight where it proofed a little bit overnight. The next morning, I let the dough sit out for about 2 hours and it proofed to the size you see in the second picture. I baked it 425 degrees for 20 minutes and then lower the oven to 350 for 10 minutes. I did not need to score the bread, as it had over-proofed there were already gaps in the skin. The main purpose of scoring is so that the gas is trapped inside of the smooth surface you’ve created have a place to go.

A most excellent vehicle for butter.

Quarantine Cake…steamed!

This brave new world of Covid-19 might have me baking a little bit more since I’m home for 2 weeks.

More baking = more blogging, maybe

So I’m going to keep this one simple.

I made this cake.

This is the cake

I used this recipe.

It’s the cake one. Not the pork one.

I got it from this book…

Foreword by James Beard. Printed in 1976.

and it was really good!

I made half of the recipe above and baked it in a 6″ circular mold. I used a hand mixer for the batter, and it worked out well. The cake is very light in texture which you would expect from building the meringue in the beginning. The flavor is also light and not too sweet. I’ve never steamed a cake before, so I don’t know if this is a representative recipe/result.

It looked like this, but with cake batter in it.

Since the towel is absorbing the condensing steam, don’t forget that it will be hot. Really hot. Ask your friendly chef or line cook. A wet towel is almost as dangerous as an open flame.

Light but with really excellent structure. Delicious!

I was attracted to this recipe because it was steamed, but also because it has very few ingredients. Doing a lot with a little is at a premium right now. So, have fun! Enjoy! Keep calm and bake on.

Real-time food: Making bread easy

This is me making bread.

If you thought making bread was difficult, challenging, or just takes too long, in this series of videos I take you through the process step by step.

Expect to spend 4 hours total with only about 20 minutes of actual activity.

The video below is eleven and a half minutes of delicious awkwardness.

After the first proof, we need to punch or round the dough and let it proof again.

For an idea about what this is like, see this next video, where I do very little, and my dough arrives at it’s final destination…the oven.

Finally, we taste the bread! Watch me chew in your face, and be so grateful that I’m the one eating and not the one watching.

Here is the recipe:

Whole Wheat Bread

8 oz water

2½ tsp yeast

1 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp molasses

1½ cups bread flour

¾ cup whole wheat flour

1½ tsp salt

*This is a base recipe. Have fun with it! You could add approximately ½ cup of oats, seeds, raisins, craisins or other dried fruit, olives, roasted garlic, cheese…don’t be afraid to experiment.

Happy baking!

Extra Fine Motor Skills

About a month ago I fractured my right wrist, and I’m right-handed. I ended up having surgery, the result of which is a screw in my arm, and literal black (or rather, white) mark on any future x-rays of said wrist.

Another result of this fracture is my inability to do anything. For a person who is not used to asking for help, being left short handed is a real burden. No pun intended.

In spite of my limitations, I wanted to surprise my wife because our anniversary is coming up.

I wrote all of this with my left hand, if you can believe it. I could hardly believe it myself. I thought it was a pretty good showing. It took me an hour though, so  there’s a trade off.

Along with the challenges of writing, eating is also a special time. It is impossible to cut anything myself, so in order to not ask for help, I’ve been eating a lot of sandwiches. A girl may not live by handhelds alone, so the other day I bought some fried chicken at Publix. It was great then, but  today I’ll add them to some cheese and a flour tortilla.

For our viewing pleasure, my wife had downloaded An Extra Slice, which is a recap show for the Great British Bake Off. We love this show, and we watch them both religiously.

I saw this mold kit at Winn Dixie for $2.99, which is pretty much a no-brainer. Who doesn’t love Jell-o? Next time, I’ll add alcohol!

Savory Vegetable Bread Pudding – 39 years in the making

So this must be how my mother feels when she makes something on the fly and people ask her for the recipe.

It took me 39 years to make this one dish. I kid you not. I was not born with the ability to throw stuff together and have it taste good. I always marveled at my mother when she would open the refrigerator doors and within moments (it seemed) she would announce that she knew what we’d be having for dinner. Or more accurately, what she’d be making.  I always wanted to have that ability, and whether through osmosis, or from watching years of that magic happen before my eyes, I seem to have aquired it.

So you may have figured out, there is no recipe, but here is what I did…more or less.

15 – 3″×3″ vol au vent puff pastry squares that my work was going to throw away (roughly equivalent to a little less than 4 – 11″×15″ sheets) these were baked and frozen for a good many weeks, although that is obviously not a necessary step. Use any old bread, croissant, doughnut…get creative! You won’t know if it sucks til you try it. 

9 eggs
4 cups milk (give or take)
1 and 3/4 sticks butter, melted
12 sliced sauteed mushroom
1 sliced sauteed vidalia onion
1 bag baby spinach sauteed with 4 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 raw red pepper 
2 – 3 oz shredded cheddar cheese
Salt to taste (yes you have to taste it!)

I whisked the eggs together to break the yolks then added the milk. I did not actually measure the milk. I just added some and thought it looked alright.  You could reduce the eggs if you want it less eggy, but I liked walking the line between quiche and bread pudding. Then I melted the butter and added some of the milk/egg mixture to it to temper it. If you add hot melted butter to cold milk, it will still bake up fine, but it looks all lumpy and the butter forms little globules that don’t seem to get as well distributed. But in the end it will still taste good. Just those things are a basic bread pudding; old bread, eggs, milk, and butter. From there you could literally go in a million directions as far as flavor. Go crazy! See what happens!

I didn’t use a spoon or a whisk or a spatula. I smushed the bread, which I had been allowing to soak in the egg/milk/butter mixture, with my hands until it was all incorporated. At this time I added the veggies above. The mushrooms and onions I had sauteed the day before…in bacon fat. The spinach I did just before I started making the milk mixture. I mixed most of the cheese into it, but I saved some for the top. Sprinkled on before I baked it. I did taste the bread (and raw egg and yes I’m still alive apparently) for salt, and added some until I thought it was enough. Then I tasted again, and continued to add more in this way until it was actually enough.

This recipe (if you want to call it that) yielded 3 – 8″×4″ loaf molds.

I baked them at 350º for 30 min and then checked them every 10 minutes thereafter until the top was just turning golden brown colors. You should also be able to touch the center and have it feel a little springy.

If you want to cut some cholesterol (and deliciousness!) reduce the eggs and butter by half and you should still have a nice bread pudding just nowhere near as excellent as mine. In this case, spray the mold with Pam to prevent sticking.  The added butter in the recipe acts as a natural releasing agent.

Obviously, this base mixture could be made sweet as well. Stay tuned for my vague outline on how to make a guava and cream cheese bread pudding. It will be a first!

Those were not beignets!

I wish I had taken a picture! Oh, wait, Disney took one for me!

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this one says it all.

My first bite into this so called beignet, and I immediately said, “this is not a beignet!” Liz had already eaten one, and considering our love of food, I thought she would have said something if it wasn’t up to par. Apparently, she isn’t very familiar with beignets.

The “beignet” in question was at at a Disney Resort. It wasn’t at just any Disney Resort, it was at the Port Orleans French Quarter Resort. I would have thought…well, anyway. The thing (not really a beignet) was HOLLOW! A proper beignet is NOT hollow. It is a soft pillow of fried dough, bathed in powdered sugar. It needs nothing else. This was like an empty pillow case. It was SO disappointing, and it wasn’t even tasty. It was tough and chewy, and I could not finish it. Anyone who knows will tell you I finish most everything even when I don’t care for it. If it is edible, I eat it, because I hate to waste food (or alcohol).  So when I don’t finish, it must be really unpalatable for me.

I don’t know what was going on that day, but whoever made those, or supervised, was not from New Orleans and knew nothing about beignets. Honestly, it was as if they ran out of beignet dough and used the cinnamon roll dough instead. It also had cinnamon in the dough, which on its own would not be a bad thing if it had been executed well, even though a traditional beignet does not have cinnamon.

Now that I think about it, while I was there I did see a woman smashing two pieces of dough together behind the counter and I thought, ” I wonder what she’s making?” Since you don’t make beignets or cinnamon rolls by smashing bits of dough together, I assume she was making my faux beignets. What a let down!

I’m feeling the need to make a real beignet now. Until next time…

Chachos = White Trash Nachos

Saltines, cheddar (or Velveeta for the discerning palate), bacon bits. ‘Nuf said!

Right Back Focaccia

I used to work in a bakery, but it wasn’t a bread bakery. It was a custom cake and high end dessertery (yes I just made that word up). When I would say this to people they would inevitably lift their heads a bit and say, “Ooooh, what time do you have to wake up in the morning?” We opened at 9am, and I got there at 9am. No early mornings here! All of this is to say that until my current position at a restaurant where we make our own bread daily, I had never made bread, except in school.
The Sous Chef where I currently work is always challenging me to make new things or to make them fresher or better or more authentic, all of which I resist because it is so much easier to stick to what I know. The other day he made some spectacular roasted caramelized onions and suggested we use them on a focaccia. We had some slightly overproofed pizza dough, and I suggested we use them instead, but he said I should make a real focaccia dough. Begrudgingly, I proceeded to pull out my book and look for a recipe. The end result was so amazing that the kitchen staff and servers ate most of it, and left very little for any customers. One of the perks of the kitchen, I guess.
So, Tony, here in black and white, thanks for pushing the boundaries of what I want to do. Thanks for believing that I can do anything. I will push back, you just need to keep pushing a bit harder.

My first Tarte Tatin, or How I learned to never question Jacques Pepin

This is the only picture I could take as it did not turn out of the pan.

Inspired by the Great British Bake Off, I made my first Tarte Tatin today. My first caramel did not spread so easily, and Mary Berry is right, you can’t make a proper caramel in a nonstick pan. So in my infinite wisdom, I made another batch of caramel right there in the same pan with practically no regard for the potential recrystallization of the sugar. What I didn’t take into account was that even though it didn’t seem like a lot, I effectively doubled the amount of sugar and water to the recipe, thereby cooking the apples practically into stew. It is, without a doubt, absolutely delicious, but it’s not quite the Tarte Tatin I was hoping for. Don’t tell my mother, but the recipe I butchered was Jacques Pepin‘s. My mom loves Jacques Pepin. She used to take cooking lessons from him every year or so when I was much younger. I think she loved bugging us by always ogling him and hearing us say, “oh Mom, gross. He’s like a hairy gorilla with gorilla arms”, because have you seen his arms? Seriously though, mad respect for Jacques Pepin, and I will never question you again. I thought the crust wasn’t going to be thick enough, because I had in mind an American style Tatin that might have a thick biscuity bread, and what you have here is no doubt the real thing. A little simpler than we imagine, the French are famous for making food simple, and extraordinary, and simply extraordinary.