Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day
I have finally cracked open Peter Reinhart‘s new book for more than just perusal! After last week’s nasty flu virus which eradicated all interest in food, my excitement about food has been renewed by my return to health.
I am having a few people over for a potluck this evening and really wanted to make some bread for the evening. I got a late start on planning, so the 5 days of sourdough process were definitely out. I needed something that I could start last night and bake up this evening. Reinhart’s recipes yield some of the best bread I have ever had, and I am really looking forward to seeing how his simpler versions of them hold up to taste testing.
I made up the dough for his basic french bread last night – super easy, especially with the addition to my kitchen of a scale. No more measuring cups and cups of bread flour!
I will report on results tomorrow. If bread is going to be this easy, it is going to be happening all the time. =)
Cubicle Foraging – Cotija Cheese – part 2
I am finally getting around to posting about the tasty things that I made with my cotija cheese. I got nine delicious ounces of it to take home a few weeks back and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it as I had never made anything with it before.
I found two recipes that sounded good, Cauliflower Gratin with Cotija Cheese (found on myrecipes.com and apparently taken from Sunset magazine) and Black Bean and Corn Quesadillas (found on recipezaar.com and apparently originally from Williams Sonoma in some fashion).
I didn’t have quite enough cheese for both recipes, so I ended up doing reduced portion versions of both items (albeit on different days). Both dinners ended up being a bit of a study in what you can do wrong and how it is wonderfully tasty anyhow. =)
Cauliflower Gratin with Cotija Cheese
(adapted from what I found on myrecipes.com and apparently taken from Sunset magazine)
1 large cauliflower head, trimmed of the stem and leaves (roughly 1.5 lbs)
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 pound poblano chilies
6 ounces cotija cheese
Salt and fresh ground pepper
First, deal with your poblano peppers. The original recipe calls for roasted, peeled, seeded, and cut into strips.
(If you are like me, and skimmed the recipe, you may have ended up doing this bit somewhere in the middle and having to delay other parts while you do it. I ended up doing a combination of two things, some dry pan cooking to toast them and then some time in the oven to bake them through. Ideally, you would bake them til they got very soft and peeling would be easy. I ran out of time, so I went ahead and seeded them, peeled what I could, and then diced them with bits of skin left on. This seemed to work fine.)
Next, trim, rinse, and cut your cauliflower. You want relatively small floret pieces, perhaps 1/4 inch wide. Try for fairly uniform pieces, as it will help them have a similar consistency once they are cooked. Prep a large pan of boiling water to put the cauliflower in. Cook them at a boil for about 3 minutes. Rinse them in cold water to stop the cooking process and set aside.
Take your heavy cream and stir the cayenne into it. Turn your oven on to 450 degrees F.
Assemble the gratin. In a baking dish (I did mine in a round casserole dish, which I believe was 2.5 quart capacity) layer about a quarter of the cauliflower across the bottom. Cover this with a quart of the cream. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper. Add a layer of poblano pieces and some of the crumbled cotija. Repeat this process until you have used all the ingredients, ending with the cheese on top.
(If you accidentally forget to layer the cheese in, like I did, and you can choose to stick it all on top or to mix the whole thing and just sprinkle the top. I would recommend mixing it all up, as the large layer of cheese on top didn’t let the dish get the proper texture through out. It was still incredibly tasty, however.)
Bake in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, keeping an eye on how brown the cheese top is getting. Let the dish rest for about 15 minutes prior to serving.
Serrato – Italian Restaurant
My best friend and I were supposed to head out to a nice dinner last night (we both share a love of fine restaurants and dressing up), but the weather was stunning and we got side tracked into a Coldstone Ice Cream appetizer. We wandered a bit outside and ate our treats in the sun.
When we finally were starting to be hungry again we headed over to Northwest Portland. We drove down 21st, and I thought we were heading to Lucy’s table, but he had some place new in mind. We browsed one of my favorite shops for a little bit and then headed for the Italian place he was thinking of. Turns out it was Serrato, which is a place I have passed by many times (always admiring their cute little snail decals on the windows) but had never been in.
It was your usual sort of Italian restaurant atmosphere, rather dim, with white table cloths. The space was L shaped and had a fair bit of room for tables in addition to the bar. The blue wall in the back of the restaurant really caught my eye. It was the color of dusk or of certain summer storm skies that I have seen. I really appreciated that they had a rather larger candle at the table, as I was able to read my menu without trouble, the lack of visibility being something that tends to plague nearsighted people in dim restaurants.
We ordered the calamari for a starter, though the kitchen didn’t bring it. We ended up receiving it at the end after I mentioned that it hadn’t arrived. They comped us the appetizer. It was quite nice. Tender calamari takes care in picking how long you cook it for.
He ordered the special, which was a lamb shank served over polenta and topped with tomato sauce. The bite of polenta I had was lovely. Just the right amount of additional flavor to make the polenta interesting, but not overwhelm its natural appeal. It was creamy and buttery. The lamb (by report) was very good, but not quite good enough that he felt he had to convince me to try a bite.
I order the seared sea scallops. They were served with diced Yukon Gold potatoes, zucchini slices, sautéed chanterelles and onions with greens, and drizzled with a saffron-citrus cream. The scallops managed a wonderful crust on top and bottom that drew out that savory Maillard reaction, but very tender everywhere else. The potatoes would have been extremely dangerous had there been slightly more of them, as they were very tasty. They were cooked just enough to be soft, yet retain their structural integrity and had obviously been slow cooked with herbs of some kind. Probably at least a bit of rosemary and garlic. The mushrooms and vegetables were also good. Over all, the flavors balanced very nicely.
We were quite full after our meal (especially after snacking on the calamari which came mid-course with the entrées) and didn’t end up ordering dessert, though there were a few things that looked like they would be worth trying. We certainly plan to go back another time.
Cubicle Foraging – Cotija Cheese
Well, I lucked out on Friday and got some tasty stuff to take home. Part of which was 9 ounces of Cotija cheese. Cotija is rather salty and often crumbly, though there is a less salt and more cohesive version out there as well, which I believe is called Tajo cheese.
I went digging around on the net, and there were recipes for many tasty things. But what struck my eye (and appetite) most, were two things: a cauliflower, poblano, cotija gratin (I already have a cauliflower that has been languishing in the fridge), and a fantastic looking quesadilla recipe. If I follow the recipes to the letter I don’t have enough cheese, but seeing as it is just me at home most of the time, I am planning on halving the recipes and making both of them part of my week. I haven’t yet managed to settle on which one to make this evening.
Teleggio Cheese
Life has run away with me and between being extremely focused and busy at work and feeling over scheduled (with good things, but none-the-less) outside of work I have found very little time for writing, and honestly, very little time for cooking as well the last few days.
I did, however, try a new cheese. Cheese has got to be one of my favorite things and one of the reasons that I will never be vegan. I have had people rail against cheese as non-vegetarian, and technically they are often right. Rennet is very much non-vegetarian. There is a lot of cheese made with synthesized enzymes these days, though, and if I eat eggs and seafood, both of which are true, I think that it is also acceptable for me to decide that I am going to eat cheese. Lots of cheese. =)
I bought this cheese over a week ago and kept eyeing it and then not opening it. Monday morning I realized that I didn’t make any food for the week during the course of Sunday (Sunday evening was spent at friends’ celebrating Chinese New Year and I did not host or cook). So I opened my fridge and poked around. I found a few things that could readily be grabbed on my way out the door and did so. Let me tell you, boiled potatoes with salt and pepper, half a green pepper, and a hunk of cheese is not the worlds most balanced meal.
I am also letting you in on my dirty little secret that I don’t cook gourmet food all the time. But in the spirit of getting back into posting more, I intend to start including what happens when I cheat, when I don’t want to cook, or the comfort food I make that happens to be partially coming pre-prepared or pre-packaged.
When I opened the cheese I had a moment of worry that perhaps I had let it sit too long. It is a pretty soft cheese, and sometimes they are unhappy sitting in their saran wrap for very long. I wondered if perhaps I had purchased a stinky cheese without realizing it. But the flavor was lovely. I only had a few bites, as I couldn’t manage to hunt up any crackers at work. Upon looking it up on Wikipedia I discovered that its strong fragrance and mild flavor is typical of the cheese. It has an almost nutty or fruity sort of taste to it and is thickly creamy. I am excited to cart it back home with me this evening to polish it off.
You can find an interesting article about Teleggio at After Cheese Comes Nothing. There is a map of where in Italy it is traditionally made and some lovely tidbits about historical production (cows are milked on their way down from the alps). This Teleggion was purchased at New Seasons for 12.99 a pound, and I have no idea how to tell if it was made in the old style, or at a large factory. Though from the availability out of the country and its fairly reasonable price, one can probably assume that it was not small production.
Cubicle Foraging – Poppy Seeds (Poppy Seed Lemon Cake)
Taking a deep breath…. and trying to get back into posting things. Life has run away with tons of new things cropping up at work and things not letting up as much after the holidays as I had expected.
I finally got around to making this lovely cake, which I saw over at SmittenKitchen. M joined me for the evening and brought his camera. We made pizza for dinner and then made cake while trying out one of my holidays gifts, a nifty new board game.
I got an entire tupper ware container of poppy seeds from work a couple of weeks back. I am not a huge fan of poppy seeds, but her descriptions of the cake were so intriguing that I had to try it. It was a huge hit with people at work and I enjoyed a couple of small pieces myself. It has made me determined to try making some lemon flavored cakes some time in the future, perhaps also trying out the gorgeous frosting recipe SmittenKitchen has been playing with. It takes the zest from two medium to large lemons, which makes the batter very fragrant and lovely light lemony color (at least until you add the poppy seeds).
Poppy Seed Lemon Cake
(recipe found at SmittenKitchen, adapted, from Kurt Gutenbrunner via Food & Wine)
2/3 cup sugar
8 large egg yolks
1 large whole egg
1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
Pinch of salt (edited to add this)
2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
1/2 cup poppy seeds (I got this from one 3-ounce spice bottle)
Preheat the oven to 325°F Butter and flour a fluted Bundt or tube pan generously. Butter the dull side of a 10-inch piece of foil.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the sugar with the egg yolks and whole egg at medium-high speed until the mixture is pale yellow and very fluffy, about 8 minutes. Beat in the lemon zest. Sift the flour and cornstarch over the egg mixture and fold in along with the pinch of salt with a rubber spatula. At medium speed, beat in the butter, then beat in the poppy seeds.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and cover tightly with the buttered foil. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake pulls away from the side of the pan and a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. She made note that she had a ten inch pan for her cake and it was done ten minutes early. I also only had a ten inch pan and mine was done at roughly 35 minutes, so it should be a pretty good guideline.
Remove the foil and let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto the rack and let cool completely before serving, at least 30 minutes.
I am afraid that I was not thrifty and didn’t end up using my egg whites for anything. As this was the second thing baked in the evening, I decided against having more clean up. I am eyeing a crème brûlée and angel food pair up sometime in the near future, though. Which hopefully will remove the slight feelings of guilt at having tossed the extra egg whites. I did look at recipes to use them, I just didn’t end up doing an of them.
The Holidays have eaten my life
Well, as many people are probably used to having happen in their own life, the holidays seem to have consumed most of my life for the last few weeks. I am horribly behind at posting the various things that I have been cooking. And, of course, it seems that I don’t have time to type up any of that now, nor the recipes in front of me for reference. But I have been away for what feels like far too long, so here I am.
I lucked out like crazy and ended up with five cookbooks for the holidays. All of them about baking of one sort or another. I am really excited to try them out, especially the various bread books (yes, there were three of those). Here is what I got:
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients
Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day
Luscious Berry Desserts
The Splendid Spoonful: from custard to creme brulee
I am sure you will see some various things posted from these in the next few weeks.
