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Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

Consommé

Posted in Food, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , on 26 Oct 2012| 8 Comments »

Obey the Kitty!(All the puns I could have used to title a post on stock, consommé, and au jus are terrible, so I refuse to pain you with them. Besides, you’re hearing them all in your head right now, anyway.)

Egg whites and I have a long, antagonistic history. I don’t “get” them, and they don’t do much for me. It all goes back to my attempt, at the age of about twelve, of making an angel food cake, from scratch, while my family was out for the day. “Whip the egg whites until they form peaks,” the recipe said. So, bowl in arm and whisk in hand, I beat them until my wrist was ready to crumble. What’s a “peak” anyway? How does one judge”peakiness”? I poured the resulting froth into the cake pan, presuming it would rise during cooking (don’t all cakes rise during cooking?) I took it out of the oven just as my family arrived home. The resulting half-inch high hard-pan custard…jerky…would forever be known as my Angel Food Flop. Egg whites and I have never gotten along, since.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to be able to make is a nice, flavorful, crystal clear beef stock. A consommé, to be precise. Years ago, I went to my copy of La Varenne Pratique to find out how to do it. Great. Egg whites. I tried again and again, and all I got was cloudy stock and a couple of wasted eggs. Or worse. Enter Julia Child.

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Conserve-ation

Posted in Food, Gardening, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on 11 Sep 2012| 1 Comment »

What do you do with forty pounds of plums? You experiment.

In an attempt to capitalize on this year’s bumper crop of Italian prune plums, I have been trying several new recipes, like the clafouti I tried a week or so ago. Last night, I tried a couple of conserve recipes, but I’m only going to share one of them.

Italian plums are tricky when it comes to judging ripeness. Even the ones that fall from the tree still have green-colored flesh under the dark, dusty purple skins, but occasionally one goes yellow on the inside, but those are not especially sweet. However, if you cook these little guys, they make up for their tart edge with an especially “plummy” taste, so I’ll forgive them. Besides, a little bite never hurt.

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Clafouti: I Just Love Saying It

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 03 Sep 2012| 1 Comment »

Say it with me: Clafouti!

This time of year, the fruits of summer are coming thick and fast. If you have a tree in your yard, you’re probably trying to figure out what to do with umpteen pounds of <insert fruit type here>.

For us, it’s Italian plums, aka “Italian prune plums.” This year, it’s a bumper crop. All our friends who also have Italian plum trees in their yards are complaining that the branches are bending near-to-breaking under the weight of all the fruit.

What do you do with a hundred pounds of Italian plums? Well, here’s one thing I found this weekend: Clafouti. (more…)

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Two Gadgets

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , on 03 Sep 2012| Leave a Comment »

While First Reader is, well, reading, I’m veering off to the side a bit. What I have for you today are two cool gadgets for the kitchen.

I like multi-use, long-lasting kitchen tools. They have to work well, and they have to last a long time. These two are no exceptions.

First up are the Joseph Joseph utensils. I found these up at the outlet mall, and picked up the angled spatula and the long spoon. (I got them in understated grey, but I like them so much that I’m thinking of getting the set, despite the eyesore color scheme). (more…)

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No-Knead Bread, with IPA

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 12 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »

As a follow-up-follow-up to my No-Knead Bread recipe, this addition.

I carried through on my threat to replace all the moisture in this recipe with a more robust beer. And, in my tradition of not doing anything by halves, I used some Ninkasi Total Domination IPA. This is one of the hoppier beers you’ll find in non-specialty groceries, and I thought it would be a good test to see if there was an acceptable outer limit to the hops flavoring that this recipe can take.

As usual, I went with 500g flour to 308-310g liquid. The long rise went well, and it baked up (in a covered pot) as well as any other variation I’ve tried. What we came up with was a very beery bread, with good texture and nice big artisanal bubbles inside. The crust was chewy without being tough or crackly. In short, another good bread.

Except for the hops. This experiment proved that there is, indeed, an acceptable outer limit to the hops flavor a bread can accept, and as much as I like this IPA as a beer, it is outside that limit for bread making.

The intense hops flavor imparted a delayed but lingering, top-of-the-palate bitterness that just didn’t work. I even wondered if, properly paired, it might be a good addition to a meal and decided, no, it isn’t. It was just too much.

So, lesson learned. Nice malty beers or clean, lightly-hopped pilsners/lagers all work fine, but the strong, knock-your-teeth-out IPAs are to be avoided.

k

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No-Knead Bread Follow-up

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on 08 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »

As a follow-up to my No-Knead Bread recipe, about which I cannot say enough, this addition.

I tried a new variation last night. I replaced all the water in the recipe with beer. I didn’t want to go overboard, so it was just a nice Canadian Pilsner, but it added a lot of depth and character to the flavor. I’m going to try it again, this time with a stronger choice, like Lagunitas Lucky 13 (one of my favorites) or some of our local Fremont’s Unlimited IPA (that’ll be interesting).

But it again proves how versatile this recipe is.

Loving it!

k

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A Moveable Feast

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , on 03 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »

FYI, I’m moving my recipes over here, from their less friendly location in GoogleDocs. Go to the Sustenance page for links.

k

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