A dissertation on sourdough

If you are not a bread nerd, this may be a boring post. I am mainly posting it to keep track of what I did, to help improve my baking.

This was my second attempt at Wild Yeast's Norwich Sourdough. This time, I replaced part of the white flour with whole wheat, but kept the amount of rye the same as in the original recipe. (I am not the most scientific baker: I didn't keep track of how much whole wheat I used. I guess about 1 part WW to 3 or 4 parts AP.)

I divided the dough into 4 roughly 500 gram loaves. Two were baked after 2 hours in the fridge, the other two were baked after about 12 hours in the fridge. (They were baked straight out of the fridge.) None of the loaves got much oven spring, but the ones with the longer fridge time were noticeably flatter than the others. Given the mix of flours I used, I probably should have added a little vital wheat gluten (since I was using AP flour and not bread flour).

I increased the baking times a little, because the recipe is written for 400 gram loaves. The bottoms of the loaves got pretty badly burnt. (I've been having this happen a lot with my baking stone recently. I have a hunch that it has something to do with my new habit of sliding things in on parchment paper and leaving it there for part of the baking time. I've also been meaning to get an oven thermometer.)

The bread's texture was great, but the flavour wasn't as sour as I would like. (I've only tasted one of the short-rise loaves so far.) This may have to do with my starter, which I had only taken out of the fridge and fed the day before. Next time I might increase the out-of-fridge proofing times somewhat, to make up for my wimpy starter. Too-warm temperatures can decrease sourness, but I don't think that was the problem.

You don't have to tell me twice

I have done as you commanded. They're still cooling down as I write this. I know they're going to be great because I had a few tastes of the dough before I cooked them. (It tasted inexplicably like malt to me. And I love malt.) I had no black sesame seeds, so doubled up on the regular ones. (Sesame in cookies? Genius.) And the dried fruit is cranberries. Has it been 10 minutes yet?

Hawks and Flutes and Hipsters in Chucks

That's right.  It's the monthly vegan potluck.  I overheard some seriously bizarre conversations, but under the big sky of BRUNCH, I also ate some fantastic scramble.  Ecchem.  (Honesty enters.)  Scrambles.

I made quesadillas stuffed with scramble and a tofu cheez sauce.  I wanted them to stay dry-ish, so I didn't stuff them with black beans.  I brought  them in a pot on the side.   No sense of color here in the photo OR in person.  (Says she with a big bag of parsley in her fridge.)  

Next month: Green foods.  PS: I learned that cashews have been used to treat depression (high levels of niacin.)  AND Nola has a new restaurant, "Bamboo," which takes its name AND its menu from the NYC establishment, Red Bamboo.  The South rises again.  

Stop Everything and Make THIS Cookie

Preheat oven to 375.  In a medium bowl, mix: 1/4c w/w pastry flour (spoon and level), 1/4c oats, 1/4c light brown sugar (I've cut this a bit), 1/8t soda, generous pinch sea salt, 1T black sesame seeds, 1T brown sesame seeds, 2T dried fruit (I've been using golden raisins).

In a small bowl, whisk 1T (generous) tahini, 1/2T canola, 1T (generous) unsweetened "milk", 1/2t vanilla.

Combine wet and dry ingredients, divide dough in 4 equal portions, and bake 9 minutes.  Leave them on the baking sheet for at least (seriously) 10 minutes before cooling them on a rack.  

I cannot tell you how much I love these cookies.  Wow.  Seriously wow.  And Yum.  (PS: They freeze beautifully.)

Lunch - HM style

How lovely to have a proper lunch!  

Pan-braised kohlrabi (it has become my favorite vegetable) with carrots and turnips, something green, brown rice, and a small bowl of Smitten Kitchen's curried lentils and sweet potatoes.  Burnin' through the vegetable drawer in preparation for the farmer's market.   

I be knowin' the Muffin Man

Behold!  Yet another recipe from the Moosewood goes low-fat.  Cornmeal and spelt and APF (it's true)... but more importantly, prune puree.  My local Wholefoods doesn't sell it by the jar, so I bought a 1 cup package of them and whizzed them up with some orange juice concentrate after simmering the mix in 1/2 cup water for about 10 minutes.  Muffin baking has been part of my routine the past few weeks, and I have to say, it makes my lunches so much more appealing.   

The Whole Pie

I have a friend whose daughter is diabetic, and I've been curious about cookbooks with nutritional information as a result.   Turns out, I only own one: the Moosewood Low-Fat cookbook.  Apparently, I haven't used my copy in years, because there are event tickets and fliers from a whole other country marking the pages.  This is their pizza crust -- a mix of ground oats, APF, WW, and spelt (my own addition).  It wasn't that good.  I think next time I'll add some olive oil and oregano to the dough.  But whatever -- this week I have frozen slices of pizza to pack in my lunches!   (Plus, I'm proud to say I made the cilantro pesto and the roasted tomatoes on top.)

Weekend Lunch

I fired up the oven last weekend... working between 375 and 400 degrees, I made my week's food.  This was lunch.  The pizza was the last to come out of the oven... and the arugula is fresh from the farmer's market.  (Given that it's still January, you'll be happy to hear that the peas are from a plastic bag, frozen.)

Baked doughnuts

There's no mistaking these for real fried doughnuts, but they hit the spot. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the cinnamon sugar. The recipe is from 101 Cookbooks. I made some adjustments (half AP, half whole wheat flour -- this was a weekday breakfast after all, we need some whole grains in there -- and no egg) and it worked just fine.

I made the dough last night, cut out the doughnuts and left them in the fridge overnight. This morning they warmed up for an hour while I walked the dog, then were baked for 8 minutes, brushed with some melted EB, and rolled in cinnamon sugar. And then they were gobbled up.

Chestnuts

I scored some bargain canned chestnuts at the local close-out grocery store recently. At first I thought I was really clever -- clearly they were on sale because no one wants them at this time of year (everyone else only wants chestnuts for their Thanksgiving stuffing) but I, on the other hand, would have many other ideas for what to do with them.

Actually, not so much. After racking my brain (and google) for ages, I made a pretty forgettable pasta dish with sauteed mushrooms, caramelized onions, savoy cabbage and chestnuts. The taste of the chestnuts got totally lost.

But then I made a stew based on the recipe for Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy from VWAV. (Clearly a favourite of mine for clearing out old veggies at the end of the week.) This time, the stew contained chickpeas, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes and chestnuts. The chestnuts were very good in it -- their almost sweet-potato flavour contrasted nicely with the salty miso gravy. The stew was later reincarnated as Shepherd's Pie.
Now I only have one can to go (and this time it's chestnut puree). Some kind of dessert, maybe?

Reuben

I've been sort of obsessed with sauerkraut recently (see also, here). This obsession morphed into a need to make reuben sandwiches.

The seitan marinade was inspired by a recipe printed in Vegetarian Times -- the Radical Reuben from Chicago Diner. For the rest of the sandwich, I basically followed the Tempeh Reuben recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. There was no rye bread to be found in town today, so we had to make do (ha!) with spelt bread from the Hungry Ghost.

This was a great sandwich. I think that the subtleties of the seitan got lost amongst the sauerkraut, avocado and Thousand Island dressing, though. So the overnight marinade was kind of a waste of time. But on the other hand, it was bright pink and looked great against the green of the avocado.

By the way, how's this for a specialized blog? They review all the vegan reubens available in Portland.

Chowdah

I've never had clam chowder of any kind, but R tells me that this was a very authentic tasting Manhattan (not-)clam chowder. The recipe is from Bryanna Clark Grogan. On that page there's also a recipe for New England style chowder which is very good too.

Photographic evidence

Tonight we had some tasty tasty golabki, based on this recipe from Vegan Visitor.

The filling was a mixture of ground seitan, rice, carrot, capsicum (bell pepper), onion and garlic, plus some Worcestershire sauce, thyme and dill. (Now that I have discovered the wonders of ground seitan, failed homemade seitan no longer bums me out.)

I like Vegan Visitor's freezing technique for softening the cabbage. The sauerkraut on top was a good idea too.

R liked these so much, he checked to make sure I'd taken a photo.

Just ask your mum today

I figure since they're food-related, these belong here. These ads were seared into my brain during childhood.





If you haven't had enough, the series also included ads about why you shouldn't eat dirt and why you shouldn't be a "ding-a-ling".

Carnival Season's Back!

Starting Twelfth Night, King Cake (and it should be capitalized) is back.  The quick cultural tutorial: holidays follow the holidays follow the holidays.  Whoever gets the baby (there's a plastic baby inside) has to buy the next King Cake.

This one is from Wholefoods.  It's cinnamon flavored.  Other flavors include raspberry cream cheese (berry chantilly) and praline pecan.  Basically, it's flour and eggs and SUGAR.  (And therefore fun.)  I believe you can see the grease.  Add butter to that list of ingredients.

Hey hey it's the Fifties!

This is the pot pie from Veganomicon -- and man is it good.  The roux and topping made so much that I made a second "pie" with freezer scraps (frozen peas, fake meat purchased at Hong Kong Market, etc.)... comfort food.

I'd been to two farm stands (George's included) and came home, turned on some Johnny Cash, and went to town.  I baked, roasted, chopped and chopped... created a full bag of compost to bring with me to the farm.

I used spelt flour for most of the crust, and as you can see, it didn't brown.  It still tasted good... but that's some science I just don't quite get.  I keep wanting to use spelt flour like it's APF, and it doesn't always fly.  

This is a perfect meal to freeze.   I've got one big pyrex full of it in the freezer.  (Horray for you and your big ideas!)

When Stinky Tastes Good

It is the gift that keeps giving.

May I suggest that you bring it to a party, leave it there, and remember to light a candle in your apartment so that you don't come home to the (ecchem) aroma of slow-cooked onions, fennel, and sharp Italian cheese.

I present to you - at a safe distance - the onion tart from SmittenKitchen.  Ta da!

Peppers 2 for a dollar

Cincinnati... it's the best.

This is Findlay Market, the tried-and-true been-there-forever Saturday farmer's market that I had never - not once - been to in all of the seventeen years I lived in the Queen City.

Lots of German butcher stalls, some Amish meats and jams, and spectacularly cheap produce.

Good, strong coffee too.  With cream.

  

Breakfast of Champions

I've been advised to start all my workouts with "a shot".

It's tri-berry.  ...At least it offers 100% of daily Vitamin C.

(Sigh.)  And it works.

Dal loves cranberries

Last night's dinner: baigan bharta, paratha, cranberry dal, saag.

The baigan bharta used up the last of my freezer stash of roasted eggplant from the summer.

The cranberry dal is based on this recipe from Mahanandi. It was amazing! (I used red lentils because I didn't have the toor dal that the recipe calls for.)

The saag is curly kale, rather than the usual spinach. I sauteed some onion in the pressure cooker, added a bit of crushed tomato, a little bit of water, and then the kale. It cooked on high pressure for 4 minutes (basically twice as long as it would normally take for kale) so that the kale was very soft. Then I added some mimiccreme, cumin, cayenne, cinnamon, ginger and salt, and pulsed it with a stick-blender. Yum.

Pizza dough from 2008

Our friend here looks worried, but he shouldn't be. This is the same batch of dough I used last time (last week, last year), and this time it was just as good. This pizza was topped with mushrooms, spinach, kalamatas, caramelized onions and FYH mozzarella. (Yes, I am plugging this pizza dough recipe again. I love it.)

Goodbye to How to Eat Supper

So, How to Eat Supper has to go back to the library.

I tried four recipes from the book: Curried cauliflower cream soup, Moroccan green bean tagine, Almond-turmeric potatoes and Greek pot-crushed potatoes.

The Greek pot-crushed potatoes were amazingly zingy and fresh (but how could they not be? -- potatoes mashed with garlic, red pepper flakes, black pepper, fresh oregano, parsley, scallions and lemon juice. I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to add all of that stuff to mashed potatoes at the same time). Here's the potatoes with orange-ginger glazed carrots, steamed kale, and seitan.
The cauliflower soup was unimpressive (but I disobeyed the directions and didn't finish the soup with lemon juice and yogurt, which I'm sure would've improved things). The soup ended up as a pretty good Indian-inspired pizza topping, though:
The Almond-turmeric potatoes tasted much better as leftovers than they did the first day. I definitely want to make this again. The green bean tagine (recipe here) was good, but didn't taste very Moroccan to me. I found that the spices were overwhelmed by the vinegar. But I like vinegar, so that was okay.

I liked this book a lot. While it's written for beginners, and people without much time to cook, I found it quite inspiring (or at least hunger-inspiring). It's very approachable, and the photos are gorgeous. Here are some things that I didn't get to try, but that sound interesting:

• Spring grill of asparagus and scallion salad
  
• Thai cantaloupe salad with chile
• Coriander-orange-scented red lentil soup
• Edna Lewis's sugared raspberries
• Green apple, cheese and chard oven omelet

Red food

I just realized that we've been eating a lot of red things recently.

Bean tagine from How to Eat Supper:
Posole from Tigers and Strawberries:
And one of my favourite dinners for when we need something quick and hearty: it's a kind of goulash-type thing made with seitan, peppers, paprika, tomato and sauerkraut. (It's inspired by a recipe in the Native Foods cookbook.)