Home Again

This is Springheel Jack, happily meditating on my lap.

We have returned from our sojourn in Tennessee, and my uncle is feeling better and for the first time in three weeks, is going out of the critical care unit into a more regular hospital room. He is not fully recovered, but he is much, much better. I suspect that he will have a long row to hoe yet as he struggles towards health.

It is good to be home, with a cat on my lap, and in my kitchen, though I have to admit to not having had a chance to cook much of anything interesting yet.

I probably should have taken the camera with me; while visiting, I took over my aunt’s kitchen and whipped up puttanesca with a salad of roasted beets, pears and mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette one night. Another night, I threw together Chicken and Portabello Marsala (the mushrooms were for my vegetarian cousin), roasted asparagus, and wild mushroom risotto with asiago cheese, and the last night we were there, I made a nice pasta primavera with chicken, asparagus, mushrooms and a light lemon cream sauce.

So, I kept busy.

Also, while we were there, we ate some fandamnedtastic southern food, which, of course, is what I grew up eating. And if I ate it every day now, I would be as big as my house–it is all so laden with pork fat that just looking at it makes my arteries want to jump out of my body and run away screaming, but boy, does it taste fine and dandy. I think my favorite meal out was at Linda’s Pic-a-Rib, where I had pulled braised pork sandwitched between two hoecakes (that is cornmeal pancakes for the uninitiated) that had been fried in bacon grease. That was delicious in a totally down-home, unpretentious way, but I am glad to be home.

I missed my kitties.

Oh, and that cat up above–that is Springheel Jack, also known as Jackanape, Jackster, Jackie, Jackal, Jackalope, ‘Nape, and Napester. He is a bizarro creature who is quite neurotic and skittish most of the time, but who has great fits of affection where he will swoop upon us and fling himself bodily against us and turn into a lump of purring fur. So, we pet him, and he is happy, until he starts twitching and then without warning, dashes away, and returns to his habit of skulking in the shadows and creeping under furniture.

I cannot explain him, but I do love him.

Now, I am off to go sign the papers that will close the deal on the sale of our old home, and to eat good Chinese food at Shangrila.

I will return to my regularly scheduled food blog entries in the next few days, after I get my bearings.

I will be gone for a while….

I just got a call from a relative; Zak and I are going to have to go out of town in support of someone who is very ill and needs us.

So, Tigers and Strawberries will be uncommonly quiet until I get back.

Thanks to all my loyal readers, friends and family.

I hope to be back soon.

Dumpling Duds

From far away, they don’t look too bad. But they still were not right.

I discovered something night before last.

When you have a fever, you really shouldn’t try out a new recipe, especially one that requires numeric memory and nimble fingers.

Yes, I have the flu, but I decided that even though I had a fever and was woozy and dizzy and had a screaming headache, that shouldn’t stop me from making potstickers.

I don’t know why I decided this. Probably because I was delerious or something.

And I decided that instead of using gyoza wrappers, which is what I generally do because I was afraid of the dumpling dough, I should make the wrappers by hand. Because what I really wanted were the excellent pan fried dumplings that they make at Shangri-la. But since that restaurant is now about two hours away from where I live, that wasn’t going to happen.

So, feverish and deluded, I tried to recreate them.

And failed utterly.

Now the dumplings that I ended up making were not bad. They just were not good.

And they were ugly.

Butt-ugly.

They looked leperous.

Making the dough wasn’t so hard, or bad as I had imagined it. It was simple, really. It was no harder than scallion pancake dough, which I can make with my eyes closed.

It all went awry when it came to rolling them out and shaping them.

Why?

Because I was supposed to roll the dough into a fifteen inch long rope and cut it into thirty pieces, and then flatten each piece into a small disk and then roll out each disk into a little circle, and then fill those with a little spoonful of filling, and then pleat one edge and there we are.

I forgot the thirty part. I only remembered the fifteen part. I cut the rope into fifteen pieces and then wondered why my dumplings kept coming out as these massive freaks of nature.

Zak tried to say, “Maybe the dough disks are too big?”

“No!” I declared. “It cannot be! It said to cut them into fifteen pieces, and I cut it into more than that–more like nineteen pieces, and they are still coming out funny. And for some reason, I can’t pleat the dough today. I don’t know why.”

Gently, my husband suggested, “Could it be because you have a fever and your eyes are glassy and your fingers are shaking?”

“No, of course not!”

Denial is not just a river in Egypt, folks.

Around the time that I pleated the last pathetic glob of dumpling, I looked at the recipe and wanted to bang my head into a wall. Because right there, in black letters it said, both in Mandarin and English, though I will admit to the letters swimming around in my vision: “Cut into thirty pieces.”

Thirty pieces of silver, thirty pieces of dough, thirty dumplings. Oy vey.

So, I fried the little bastards anyway, until they were golden brown and crisp on the bottom, and then added the broth and closed the lid and steamed them until they were done.

And once they solidified, they didn’t look nearly as much like alien life forms.

And they tasted okay, but the filling was too lean, I realized. And the filling was overcooked by the time the extra dough was cooked.

The usual pork I use is from Bluescreek Farms, and it has a good proportion of lean to fat. The local pork I bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday, however, was not fatty enough.

I didn’t cry, but I was frustrated.

And I had a lot of filling left.

So, yesterday, I left it alone, because I still had a fever and had learned my lesson. We had pizza for dinner, needless to say.

Today, I will use the ground pork filling to make Ma Po Tofu for dinner. Waste not, want not.

And, next week, after I teach at Sur La Table in Columbus, we will pick up Bluescreek pork, and I will make pan fried dumplings again, from scratch, and I will post pictures and a full recipe at that time.

And, the next time I am feverish and decide to do something ambitious and stupid, I have told Zak that he must hold a pillow over my face until I change my mind or pass out, thus saving the world from dumplings that look rather like embryonic alien lifeforms.

Blueberry Whole Grain Tea Bread

Zak liked this bread better than the Harvest Fruit Bread; but I don’t agree. It is just a matter of personal taste–I like all the chewy, nutty goodness of a whole grain bread, and he likes a finer textured bread with fewer inclusions. The white flecks in the picture are whole grain oats that have been cut when I sliced the bread, exposing the uncooked interior.

Okay, so apparently this week’s theme at Tigers and Strawberries is bread.

I didn’t intend that, but it just seems to be going in that direction. So, rather than argue with it, I will go along and have fun with it. I am a big one for going with the flow of the Tao and letting it lead me to interesting places, so here we are, in the midst of a baking mood, talking about bread.

My favorite part of the two baking classes I took in culinary school was when we studied bread bakery, in Intro to Baking and Pastry. Every day, we created the breads for all of the dining rooms on campus. We made baguette, rolls, whole wheat breads, multi-grain breads, croissant, brioche and some rustic hearth breads. Every morning, we had a lecture on the science of bread bakery, a quiz on the material we learned the day before, and then we broke into groups and started baking bread before lunch. After lunch, we worked on desserts.

I am not a morning person, but the bread happened in the morning, and I was so into it.

I am into bread, in large part, because I love the fact that bread dough is alive. The yeast critters, when given food, warmth, water and air, create one of humanity’s basic foods–bread.

Bread dough is intensely sensual. I love the feel of the dough under my hands; the springiness, the way it seems to pulsate and breath as I work with it, kneading it beneath my palms. I love the smell of yeast as it works at fermenting sugar into alcohol, and the scent of the wheat in the flour itself is intoxicating to me.

At the same time, bread baking is also intellectually satisfying. There are specific measures, proportions and formlae to learn in order to bake good breads, and there is a chance to learn to flex mathematics muscles left long dormant in the brain. There is the joy of knowing the reason behind all of the formulas, there is the thrill of discovery and experimentation.

Bread baking has it all.

And I have loved it ever since I stood on a chair at the counter with my Grandma, who never measured a thing as she turned out loaf after loaf of delicious farm bread and rolls in every shape you could imagine. She kneaded her dough with the skill of long practice, and her gnarled hands seemed to go about their business without any help from her, while her face would take on a peaceful expression, as if she were deep in meditation.

Perhaps she was.

So, in the spirit of experimentation and intellectual curiosity, and for the sensual joy of it, I offer you my recipe for Blueberry Whole Grain Tea Bread–which may get a more fun and funky name later on, when I think of one.

Blueberry Whole Grain Tea Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup bread flour
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup + 1/3 cup wheat germ
1/3 cup Harvest Grains Blend from King Arthur Flour
4 teaspoons Lora Brody’s Dough Enhancer
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons instant yeast (SAF is what I used)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup milk
1/2-3/4 cups water (in this loaf I used a very little over 1/2 cup of water)
1/4 cup dried blueberries, packed

Method:

Put all dry ingredients except blueberries into the workbowl of a Kitchenaid or similar mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add all liquid ingredients, using the smaller amount of water to start with.

Mix together, starting on low, scraping down the bowl as necessary, until a slightly sticky dough comes together and is pulled from the sides of the bowl. Once it comes together coherently, turn speed up to medium and knead until gluten development is sufficient. (To test for this, take a tiny ball of dough, and holding it up to the light, stretch it gently to see if it will form a very thin membrane that you can see light through. This is called “the windowpane test.” Be aware that the whole grains in this bread will mean that you cannot make a big windowpane–the whole grains will cut the gluten strands before they can stretch fully–this is part of why whole grain breads have trouble rising as much as breads made without inclusions of sharp-edged whole grains.)

When the gluten is developed sufficently, spray a bowl (I use a clear Pyrex one) with vegetable oil, and form dough into a ball, and roll it into the bowl. Spray the top of the dough with vegetable oil spray and cover with plastic wrap. Leave one side of it a little loose so air can get inside. Put into refrigerator overnight to slowly rise until double.

In the morning, bring out dough, and warm up oven to about eighty degrees. Put dough in and warm it up for about an hour or so. It should continue to rise.

Roll dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and pat into a thin disk. Sprinkle blueberries evenly over the surface, roll into a rope, and then cut into four chunks. Knead each chunk thoroughly to mix the berries into the dough. Flatten each chunk into a disk, and carefully pat them together into a rough rectangular shape. Roll this up into a thick rope and seal the edges. Tuck the two ends under and seal the edges.

Spray vegetable oil into a loaf pan, and lay dough carefully into pan. Spray top, cover loosely with plastic wrap and put into the oven, which hopefully is still around eighty degrees. (If it isn’t, warm it back up.) Allow to rise until it is doubled and fills the loaf pan–about an hour to an hour and a half.

Take dough out of oven, set it carefully aside, and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 30-45 minutes at this temperature (if you have a convection oven, check bread after 25 minutes) until the internal temperature reads at 200 degrees. If the bread begins to brown too much on top, cover it for the last ten minutes or so of baking with a tented piece of aluminum foil.

This is a finer-textured bread than the Harvest Fruit Bread, and the dried blueberries are very fragrant when they bake. Adding the fruit after the first rise may have allowed the dough to rise more high than the Harvest Fruit loaf, or it may have been that I used bread flour and more dough enhancer. For whatever reason, this bread rose higher.

I like them both, but I think I prefer the first recipe.

And now for the weekly dose of feline pulchritude:

Here are our two eldest cats: Ozymandias, King of Cats, on the left, and Tristan on the right. Ozy is fourteen, and Tristan is nine or ten, give or take a few months. They are the best of friends, as you can see.

Zak’s Cardamom Boule

Cardamom boule with a platter of pear and apple slices, havarti, gouda and good roast beef. In the background is the banneton Zak used for the final rise of the bread.

I have been promising to post the recipe for this bread once Zak was happy with consistent results and felt that it was perfect. It is based on Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Basic Hearth Bread recipe in The Bread Bible, which has been his primer as he learns the art of bread baking. In her book, she gives measurements by weight in ounces and in grams, and by volume. Zak measures by weight for all ingredients except the spices, honey and yeast, so that is how I am giving the measurements in this recipe.

If you really like bread baking and are really obsessed, I mean precise, then you should probably pick up a copy of this book, or at least check it out from the library. It is a very, very good textbook on how to learn to make bakery quality breads at home one loaf at a time.

His next project is to learn how to make olive bread. When he gets around to it, that is; right now he is fighting off a flu bug and so is not into playing with dough.

As for me, I have a variant on the Harvest Fruit Bread I made last week in the fridge for an overnight rise. After I bake it tomorrow, I will let you know how it turns out. This one uses less of the grain mix in deference to Zak’s preferences, with more wheat germ to make up the difference, and instead of apples and cranberries, I am using dried blueberries. We’ll see how it turns out.

Until then, here is the recipe:

Cardamom Boule

Ingredients for the Sponge:

5.5 ounces bread flour
1.25 ounces kamut
3/8 teaspoon instant yeast (We use SAF Red yeast)
1 1/4 teaspoons honey
11.2 ounces water (by weight, not volume)

Method:

In workbowl of a stand mixer, or just a large bowl, place all the ingredients for the sponge. Whisk until very smooth in order to incorporate air, for two minutes. You can do this by hand or use the whisk that comes with your Kitchenaid. Guess which venue we of the carpal tunnel wrists choose? You got it in one: the mixer. If you do it with a mixer, though, you only need to do it for one minute. It will be a nice thick batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and cover with plastic wrap while you put together your flour mixture.

Ingredients for Flour Mixture:

10.3 ounces bread flour
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Method:

Whisk all ingredients but the salt together by hand to get it all nice and combined happily together. Scoop it into the bowl with the sponge, covering the sponge completely. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and stick it in the refrigerator to ferment overnight. (Here is where he differs with Rose’s method–she says to do it for 1-4 hours. We like 8-10 instead.)

While it is fermenting, the sponge will come bubbling up through the flour here and there. That is normal, right and proper; do not be afraid. Leave it alone, it is doing its thing.

When you get up in the morning, mix the dough with the dough hook on your mixer. (Or, if you are a masochist, do it by hand, which is what I liked to do before I destroyed my wrists being a writer.) Mix on low speed (2 on a Kitchenaid) for about a minute, or until the flour forms a rough dough. Scrape down the bowl, cover and allow to rest twenty minutes.

Sprinkle the salt over the dough, and knead on medium speed (4 on the Kitchenaid) for about seven minutes. The dough should be elastic and smooth, but still sticky.

Scrape the dough into an oiled two-quart rising container or bowl. Oil the top of the bread (Zak and Rose both agree that spray oil stuff is great here; I have to agree with them) and cover tightly with a lid or plastic wrap. Allow dough to rise (ideally in a warm environment–about 74-80 degrees), until double. If the rising area is warm, this will take about an hour. If it is cooler, it will take as long as it takes.

After it has risen, scrape your dough with an oiled spatula or scraper onto a floured counter and press down on it gently to form a rectangle. Fold it up from the bottom into a third (like a business letter), then fold down the top, then round the edges. Oil the surface again, and put it back into the bowl, cover it and let it rise until double again–it will be puffier and will fill the container fuller than it did the first time because of the addition of air and more carbon dioxide. This will take about forty five minutes to an hour.

Now, you need to flour your banneton; use a lot of flour and coat the inside thickly. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and press it down to flatten it slightly. Use as little flour as possible in shaping it. Round the dough into a ball, and set it into the banneton, putting the smoother side down. Seal any seams on the bottom carefully. Cover with a large bowl or oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise until nearly doubled, which should take anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes. You know it is ready when you press gently on the dough and the depression from your fingertip fills in very slowly.

Preheat your oven tp 475 degrees an hour before baking. Have an oven shelf in the lowest part of the oven, with a baking stone on it.

Now, you have to get the bread dough from the banneton to the baking sheet. This takes finesse and practice. Zak usually sets the sheet on the banneton, then carefully flips over the banneton and the sheet together, then lifts the basket away. It works, if you are quick and careful.

Then, slash the dough–this takes a very sharp knife (Zak uses a box cutter we bought especially for the job at Lowes–it is sharper than the lame we bought from Sur la Table, and it isn’t curved–the lame was meant to be used on baguettes) and you must be quick and decisive. Oil your knife blade and move quickly, and slash the bread in one or two or four quick slashes in a pattern. Zak does a “Z” on his; I suppose I could have then called this bread “Zorro Bread,” but I don’t think he would appreciate that.

Then, finally, you put it in the oven, and bake for ten minutes. Turn the heat down to 425 and keep baking for twenty to thirty minutes or until the bread is golden brown and an instant read thermometer inserted into the center reads 2oo degrees (put it in from the side of the round loaf so you don’t mess up your pretty design on the top.)

Cool on a wire rack.

Completely cool it before eating it. I know, I know. You want to eat it hot. But believe me, Zak and I have learned that Rose isn’t lying when she says that it tastes better if you let it cool all the way. In fact, it tastes better if you can wait until the next morning to eat it. I know, you can’t, certainly not for the first loaf. Well, try it on the second one. Really. Would I lie to you?

Variations:

Use all purpose flour instead of bread flour, or instead of kamut, use whole wheat flour or wheat germ.

You can use all purpose flour intead of bread flour for this bread; however, the texture becomes finer and more soft with the all purpose flour, as with this loaf. Zak prefers that texture–I like bread flour better, with its chewier texture and more uneven, larger holes.