Recipe Test, Success, Sourdough!

Earlier today I’ve posted my current recipe (with some rather lengthy and detailed instructions) for Stockholm Sourdough bread, along with a promise to test it again later – so, the result of said test just came out of the oven.

Stockholm Sourdough

I’d say this is proof positive that the recipe does, indeed, work!  Currently it’s scenting the entire apartment to the point where though I am not too hungry, I want to go and tear a piece off… but, banish the thought!  This one is going to cool well, get wrapped up really pretty and come with us tonight to be given away as a present.

Tian d’aubergines (also known as Provencal Aubergine Gratin)

As I’ve mentioned in the previous post, I love aubergines.

To make the long story short, I love them because they are pretty, because they are healthy and good for you, and because frankly, cooked properly they have one of the most amazing savory flavors ever, all on their own.  And I’m not even a vegetarian!  I mean… I am a carnivore, really, but aubergines – cooked this way – are something no one in their right mind should turn down.  Well ok, maybe if they hated one or more of the components specifically, but not otherwise!

So, what is a tian?  Tian is a French (specifically, Provencal) word for a shallow gratin dish, which is universally and frequently used in French cooking, the rustic variety in particular.  Also, it’s the term for what is cooked in it, which is in this case, a fantastically flavorful gratin of assorted vegetables.  To me, this is the flavor of Provencal cooking, and it is truly amazing.  To top it, while it takes a bit of time and assembling, it’s reasonably failproof, and easy to make, which makes it a very, very worthwhile thing to try.

Like in case with the previous recipe, this one is suitable for low-GI/LCHF diets, and in the case you wondered, yes, I eat like that at the moment.  Though, I wouldn’t say I am on a diet, precisely.  It is more that whenever the trousers and I disagree about my size, which happens whenever I’d been overindulging in pizza or ice cream (for I am weak and human), I routinely begin watching my carbs a little more until the trousers and I are in agreement about our relationship again.  And before you wonder, no I don’t believe in cutting out all the carbohydrates, going on a diet of protein bars, or any such silly faddy thing.  That’d be against my idea of what a healthy relationship with food is all about.  But eating more meat and vegetables and less bread and potatoes is simply common sense and a healthy dose of understanding human metabolism (thank you, my university instructors, I owe you a lot in regards to my health!).

But I digress.  Back to the tian d’aubergines – not only is it delicious, easy to assemble, and good for you – it’s also great either fresh and hot, later at room temperature, cold (not my favorite but a lot of people love it as cold tapas-style dish with some crusty bread), or reheated with a lid on the next day.  So, it is also versatile in terms of leftovers, and the only question is – why aren’t you making one yet?

What you need:  (serves 2 as dinner side, 4 as starter)

• A shallow gratin dish (preferably one with a lid, but if yours is unlidded it can be covered with foil) or four individual ceramic casserole dishes (those have lids), or else little individual gratin dishes.

• 1 large aubergine
• 2 large or 3 small tomatoes
• 1 medium zucchini (courgette)
• 1 medium to large onion
• 3-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• Good-quality cheese of your choice (entirely optional and very worthwhile)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste

What to do:

• Wash and dry all vegetables.  Peel onion and garlic.
• Slice aubergine into ~6mm (just over 1/2cm) thick slice, salt on both sides and lay to rest on a plate to drain.
• In the meantime, chop the onion, and preheat a generous 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil in a small cookpot with a tightly fitting (if possible) lid on medium heat.
• Put onions into the pot, stir to coat in oil and cover.  Lower heat to medium-low and cook onions until they are all soft, just begin to color, and are strongly aromatic.
• While that is cooking, slice courgette into 5-6mm thick slices, chop garlic finely, and butter or oil your gratin or casserole dishes.  Check on the onions frequently, stirring occasionally so they do not stick.
• When the onions are ready, turn heat up and add another tablespoon of oil.  Toss garlic into the onions and fry for a few seconds to a minute, until aromatic and just beginning to color.  Take pot off heat, stir garlic in, and spoon the onion and garlic mixture into the bottom(s) of your dish or dishes.
• Wipe the aubergine slices and drain them on paper towels.  Preheat a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick frying pan and fry aubergine slices in a single layer until beginning to color on both sides.
• In meantime, set oven to preheat to 190°C (or 170-180°C if it’s a fan oven)
• Assemble your tian or individual mini-tians:  Lay a layer of fried aubergines over the spooned-in and evened onion mix.  Then layer the courgettes over that and salt+pepper lightly.
• Slice your tomatoes just as you are going to assemble tian, else they will lose all their juices.  Layer slices of tomato over the courgettes.

Ready to bake!

• Drizzle tian with olive oil (a little or a lot, up to you!) and sprinkle with a bit of salt, pepper and chopped rosemary.  Cover with lid or aluminium foil and place in the oven.
• Ovens vary, as do sizes of dishes, and since I do not know either one of yours, the times ahead are a guideline.  The slower the oven/larger the dish, the more time you should use.   Check tian after 45 min to 1 hour, and remove lids/foil.
• Add cheese if using and bake further 20-45 minutes, until bubbling is less violent, and the cheese is completely melted and browned.

Tian d’aubergines

Serve hot, or later warm, or cold, or reheated, with bread or without.

Mediterranean Aubergine Salad

Aubergine – also known as Eggplant – is a gorgeous vegetable.

Now, I am most likely biased, because I love all things purple, and aubergines are an amazing deep dark shade of it, but you have got to agree that the deep color and gloss make them stand out among vegetables like a silk evening dress among T-shirts and jeans.

Of course, if color was the only thing going for it, it’d never have become one of my favorite things to eat, regardless of what is said about how people eat with their eyes.  It’s not true – we don’t eat with our eyes.  We taste with them and decide to take the next step, true – but eating is done with the mouth (and a good thing, too).

In any case, other than its beautiful color and surface, aubergines have the benefits of being wonderfully delicious, good for low-GI diets, and very filling.  The above, along with its wonderful eating quality, fiber content and how well it takes dry preparation, all make it rather perfect for use in any generic LCHF diet.

The problem – not insurmountable one, mind you – is that if cooked improperly, aubergines (like many other vegetables) turn to awful mush and can sometimes have a bitter aftertaste.  The up side is that this undesirable result is very easy to avoid.

The preparation routine for aubergine, whether you plan to grill it, fry it, or bake it into gratin, must start 30-60 min before you actually do the hot part of the cooking.  What you do is wash and dry the aubergine, slice it crosswise or lengthwise (whatever your recipe calls for), rub or sprinkle it with a small amount of salt and rest on a plate to drain the excess water for about an hour, but at minimum 30 minutes.  Before frying or grilling or assembling the gratin, take a bit of kitchen paper towel and wipe or blot each slice on both sides, then pop the aubergines into pan, oven or onto grill pan, and there you go.  The draining of juice and subsequent wiping not only makes the aubergine crisper and lighter, but also eliminates any possible bitter aftertaste from it, like magic.

One of my favorite ways to eat aubergine is as a lunch salad, the way I’ve had it many many times back in Israel.  The recipe for it is more a set of loose instructions than a recipe, but here it is – such as it is.

Serves 2 hungry people for lunch (or for dinner with a protein portion of some sort).

For dressing:

• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper – to taste
• 1-3 cloves of garlic

For salad itself:

•  1 medium aubergine – sliced crosswise, salted, drained for an hour and patted dry with paper towel
• 2 large handfuls of arugula (rucola)
• 1 red or orange or yellow bell pepper (paprika), deseeded and sliced into bite-sized pieces or thin slivers
• 1-2 ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 10cm of cucumber, sliced
• 3 tablespoons of finely grated parmesan, or other hard cheese
• Some chopped parsley or fresh thyme

What to do:

• Place arugula in the salad bowl.
• Add chopped and sliced vegetables.
• Preheat a non-stick frying pan and add a little bit of canola or peanut oil.
• Fry the aubergine in batches, in a single layer without crowding the pan, flipping once or twice throughout the process, until a little colored on both sides.  Place cooked aubergines into the salad bowl as you go.
• When aubergines are all done, mix the dressing.  If you are not worried about smell of garlic, press the garlic fresh into the lemon juice, add salt, pepper and olive oil, and whisk to mix, then pour over the salad and toss to combine.
• If you do not want to smell of garlic so much, slice the garlic cloves thinly and heat up the olive oil in the pan which you cooked the aubergines in.  Fry the garlic in the olive oil on medium heat until fragrant and just beginning to color at the edges, then add the hot oil with garlic to the salad bowl, pour the lemon juice over it, season with salt and pepper, and toss to combine.
• Sprinkle with chopped parsley or thyme and cheese, and you are ready.

Serve with a slice of crusty bread or a warmed up pitta bread – or on its own for a light and low-GI lunch.

Morello (Sour) Cherry Crumble Pie

It is a real shame, in my opinion, that the only variety of cherries one can buy fresh (i.e. not made into conserves or alcohol of some sort) in stores these days, are the beautiful and shiny sweet cherries.  While they are great for eating fresh – if you are lucky to find some good ones at a market – they are somewhat worthless for cooking anything, and that is really sad, because the other kinds of cherries – namely, the sour Morello cherries, while a bit too tart to eat as a fruit on their own, are utterly amazing, in both food and drinks (not to mention that they color food an amazing, lurid red color which does not fade from being cooked).

Ripe Morello Cherries

The reason for lack of availability of raw sour cherries is simple – they squish easily, and are not luxury eating fruit the way, for example, raspberries are, and so they are not worth cultivating and shipping for retail sales.  They are still grown in various regions for manufacture of conserves and liquors, and can probably be bought at rural markets regionally, but not everywhere and not usually and not ever out of season.

But, in light of the lack of their general availability, it is very lucky for me that T’s parents have a tree.  During our last visit there, his very nice mother has offered that I can pick some for us – which we did by grabbing and greedily pulling handfuls of cherries into a plastic bowl in near-darkness on the way home.

And so it came to be that I was making a cherry pie.  To me, a sour cherry crumble pie is the epitome of a lazy late-summer dessert, the counterpoint, if you will, to the ice-cream of early summer – and few things can compare to the sour cherry pie, in its sharply aromatic red and tart glory.

No food coloring needed!

If you can’t get your hands on sour cherries, I imagine this would work really great with blackberries too – or wild blueberries (aka bilberries), but those would take a bit less sugar in the mix.)

Before I go on with the recipe, I have to make it clear that it’s not actually a “recipe” at all in the sense that it is not a list of set quantities of things which go into the pie – rather, it is a list of necessary ingredients, and a general guideline of process, because when making a crumble pie, there is very little precision needed, which makes it a blissfully easy and relaxed thing to bake.

Essentially, you do five things (or four if the cherries are pitted):

• Pit (remove stones from) your cherries.  You’ll need a cherry pitter or olive pitter tool for this, and there isn’t anything I know of which works as a substitute.
  

  My pitting tool is on the back of my garlic press (very handy!)

• Mix your filling (ingredients to follow).
• Make your crumble topping (same).
• Assemble pie and bake in oven preheated to 200-210°C (or 180-190°C for fan oven) for 20-30 minutes, or until the crumble topping is nicely browned and the filling is bubbling up thickly around the edges.
• Serve (some cream whipped with a teaspoon of real-vanilla sugar does it for me) and eat.

What goes in it and how to do it:

To make the filling:

• Take enough pitted cherries to form a generous layer in your chosen pie dish (I had about 3 cups of pitted cherries).
• For each 2 cups of cherries, add 1.5 teaspoon cornstarch/cornflour, 1 teaspoon good-quality vanilla sugar (or add regular sugar and a drop of real vanilla), and 1-3 tablespoons of sugar, depending on how sweet or tart you want your pie to be (I use 2 tbsp/2cups = total of 4 tbsp sugar).
• Mix in a bowl and allow to stand while you make the crumble topping.

To make crumble topping, mix approximately:

• 2-3dl plain flour
• 50-75g cut-up unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2-3 tablespoons granulated sugar (I like golden to brown varieties – mixing in some vanilla sugar or cinnamon is strongly encouraged!)
• Rub the above together with your fingertips until the texture visually resembles coarse crumbs.

• Next, pour your cherries into a pie dish and even them out somewhat.
• Sprinkle your crumble topping over the cherries, trying to get it more or less even, but it is not a huge problem if it does not cover the cherries entirely.
• Place in preheated oven and bake.

You can also separate the crumble filling and topping into single-portion ramekins or mini-casserole dishes – simply place them on a baking sheet and bake as you would a large pie form, but reduce the baking duration by 5-10 minutes (I don’t know the size of your ramekins, so watch them closely as they near end of baking time).

So, there you go.  This is about as easy as baked dessert gets without resorting to shortcuts such as prepared pastry dough – and this is really, really gorgeously tart and goes great either warm, just from the oven, or cold the next day.

Sometimes, Oranger Is Better (Winter Squash Soup)

August weather has turned unexpectedly rainy today, starting with a rain and then a thunderstorm, and following with a cold wind which dried up the puddles but did nothing for the chill that set in earlier.  And so, when I have wandered into my kitchen in search of the meaning of life, or, failing that, of weather-appropriate food, it came to be that I emerged from the fridge holding a rather large chunk of Long Island Cheese squash (similar to pumpkin) puchased as an impulse buy a week or so ago because I simply could not resist its luridly-orange color, and a leftover piece of Butternut squash which had been aging in the back of my fridge for far longer than that.  (Not that the latter suffered any from it – wrapped in cling film, it keeps nearly forever – or well, for weeks at least! – in the fridge.)

Gorgeous, isn't it?

With such happy-colored start, it is difficult not to make something perky and summery and beautiful.  I’d first considered a salad with roast slices of squash, but in the end, I succumbed to the desire for comfort food, and thus, in this case, soup.

Pumpkin or winter squash (not to be confused with zucchini or yellow squash – aka summer squash) soup is a very, very easy to make dish, and the full-flavored and warmingly-spicy result is oh so rewarding.  The natural sweetness of the squash can take quite a bit of heat added to it (if you like that), or stands quite well on its own seasoned with just the cumin and a bit of salt for a very rich-flavored, satisfying meal.

What you need:

• A blender OR a potato masher (in a pinch, a fork and some attitude will do)
• A large soup pot

• A chunk of squash (like the one pictured) or a medium-sized butternut squash.
• 1 onion
• 4-8 cloves of garlic (depending on size of cloves and how well you like garlic)
• 1 red chili, seeded and chopped or a flat teaspoon of red chili flakes (I’d not go for more, but you can use less if you are sensitive to hot spices)
• 2 teaspoons salt (or more to taste)
• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
• Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
• ~500ml boiling water (+ more to desired consistency)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, AND
• 2 more tablespoons vegetable oil or bacon fat

To serve:

• 1 pack cubed bacon or pancetta, fried, drained and kept warm
• 10-17% fat yogurt or creme fraiche
• Freshly shaved parmesan or other hard cheese
• A pinch of dried oregano, or if you have some on hand, a handful of chopped green herbs of your choice
• Slices of hearty rye or wheat bread

Orange!

What to do:

• Preheat oven to 200°C (if fan oven, use 180°C) and line a baking tin or dish with a bit of foil
• Scrape seeds out of your squash, then peel it (careful, it is far harder than potato), and chop into manageable chunks.
• Put chopped squash into a bowl, add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, season with black pepper and mix to coat.
• Pour onto the baking dish and roast for ~45 minutes or a bit longer, until squash is fork-tender.
• In meantime, cut the root tips off garlic cloves and smash them gently, but do not peel.  Wrap the cloves in a piece of aluminium foil to make a small packet, and add that to the oven, near the squash.
• Peel and chop onion, and heat up a nonstick frying pan on medium-high heat with the other 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or bacon fat in it.
• Fry onion until it turns translucent and add chili or chili flakes, then take off heat.
• When squash is about ready, remove garlic foil-packet from oven carefully, unwrap it, and squeeze garlic cloves out of their papery shells.
• Once the squash is fork-tender,  place squash, roast garlic cloves and onion-chili mix and oil from it in a blender with a bit of water and puree until smooth.  Alternatively, omit water and put it all in a potato masher and mash into the pot.  Or, place it all in the pot, omit the water, and mash violently with a fork until it is mashed. (Latter approach results in an obviously less smooth but still very delicioius soup).
• If using blender, transfer puree to the pot and rinse blender goblet with a bit more water, adding that to the pot.  If using one of the other two methods, dilute the puree in the pot with boiling water to desired consistency.  Turn heat up to medium.
• Season with salt to taste, adding little by little and mixing well with each addition.
• Add cumin and further season with pepper as desired.
• Slowly warm the soup up until nearly boiling, then turn heat down and allow the soup to barely simmer for about 10 minutes – this will allow it time to thicken itself naturally.
• Place a heaping tablespoon of yogurt or creme fraiche in the bottom of each bowl and ladle the soup over it.
• Sprinkle soup with bacon bits, parmesan shavings and herbs and serve with bread.

(Very orange) squah soup with cumin.

I find that for a dark, gloomy day, few things are as hearteningly bright and happy as this.  And yes, it tastes even better and warmer than it looks.  Honest!

Homemade Taco Spice Mix (or why I don’t buy seasoning packets)

I have a love-love relationship with spices and seasonings.

Taco Seasoning Mix

Always have, and barring some monumental changes in the universe, always will.  To me, bland food is generally sad, and I love anything full of flavor – be it real vanilla in whipped cream, Thai curry, citrus and pink pepper, Ras-al-Hanout over meats or rice dishes, garlic in anything savory – you name it.  I don’t think I’ve met a spice I didn’t like yet (unless you are talking about something patently misused like garlic ice cream… don’t get me started on that).

(If you want the recipe for my homemade taco seasoning but not to read the entire rant, please feel free to skip the manifesto and scroll to the end!)

I also have a hate towards the over-processed, “value-added” and chemically preserved and enhanced where it comes to food.  And one of the most frequently overlooked places where this all hides are pre-mixed seasoning packets, the sort you buy in the Mexican or Oriental isle of the supermarket for “taco seasoning”, “singapore stir-fry seasoning”, etc., that you are supposed to just open and sprinkle into your food and suddenly your “boring” meal “is transformed into a sumptions meal” (insert marketing babble here).  I’ve bought and used those before, on the lure of “ease” and to try it out and let me tell you – my opinion, after trying a few different ones, is that they are all vile.

Why?  Because they neither impart that much flavor, nor is it good flavor – and in most cases, flavor enhancers are among the ingredients.  Why?  Because without those, the packets containing mostly starch and salt/sugar with a small amount of spices really wouldn’t do a whole lot for your food.  That’s value-added food for you, which in layman’s terms just means – “let’s add some [bleep] to this premix of sugar, salt and cornstarch so it smells a little like food, and sell it for a lot of money to gullible consumer!“  Worst part is that these premix packets foster a very bad kitchen habit of not learning what spices go into what food, or why, and thus the result is a “learned [kitchen] helplessness” in the form of inability to cook food without a packet of mysterious pre-mixed stuff on hand.

The silly bit here is that most of those “flavor packets” contain nothing mysterious nor anything you can’t buy off a spice rack in the same supermarket for far less money: for example – a tablespoon of sugar, teaspoon of salt and some minor amounts of spices which go into a packet of taco seasoning (let’s call it “Brand X”) don’t cost the 10-15sek (€1-1.5) they sell for in a packet.  Really, they don’t.

In fact, homemade taco seasoning requires very little in the way of exotic ingredients (nothing I don’t keep on hand in my kitchen and perhaps one or two things someone with a less stocked pantry may need to buy), takes 2 minutes to assemble while the frying pan is preheating for the meat, and tastes much, much better than anything you can buy in a premixed packet in a shop (I am not talking about gourmet spice mixes you can get – those are a whole different – from packets – kettle of fish, and are essentially the same thing as what I mix at home, only packaged in a fancy jar).

Let’s examine the packet – total weight 40g.  That’s roughly 3 tablespoons of stuff.  What stuff?  The first ingredients are sugar and then salt.  Following them are onion powder, ground chili and cumin, followed by modified potato starch (?), garlic powder, yeast extract (?), potato fiber (?), maltodextrin (?), “spices” (paprika, oregano), paprika extract (?), acidity regulator (E330 – that’s ascorbic acid aka vitamin C).

I’ve marked questionable ingredients with a (?) because in my view, when Mexican people came up with a seasoning mix for their regional street food (tacos), they never in their wildest dreams thought that what it needed was … these things.

1. Modified potato starch – this is added to the seasoning mix to make the meat “gloopier” once it’s cooked, and make it look like there is more of it as it won’t lose as much water in the cooking process.
2. Potato fiber is most likely added to prevent all of this clumping into a messy mass while in the packet.
3. Yeast extract is a savory-flavor enhancer.  Natural insofar as it’s made from yeast, but authentic or needed?  You decide (I already ahve).
4. Maltodextrin is a carbohydrate (essentially, sugar), which is used as a food sweetener.
5. Paprika extract (oleoresin) is added for color and possibly flavor – to compensate for either insufficien quality, quantity or both, of actual paprika powder used in the mix.
6. I can’t fault the addition of vitamin C as a preservative (it is used as an antioxidant here), since it decomposes harmlessly when the spice mix is heated, but neither is it needed if the spice mix is made fresh.

Now, the ingredients in the above list are ranked in order of weight (note that oregano and paprika are combined into one entry, “spices”, as separately they’d probably fall further down the list), but obviously without any indication of how much of any of them is contained in the packet.  For all I know, it’s 99% sugar and 1% everything else in fractions of a %.  It isn’t, but from reading the label it may as well be – and it’s not in the manufacturer’s interest to add more of the expensive spices into this.  For my own mix, however, I am going to go for flavor and color, not profit margin.  Obviously.

An important thing to note here is that the actual recipe on the packet, if I throw out all the questionable items, is a fairly standard taco seasoning recipe.  So what will happen if I do omit all those additives, and instead use spices readily available in my cupboard to make up about 3 tablespoons of seasoning, is that it – trust me on this! (or don’t, and try for yourself) – will taste much, much better.  Since, as we should establish, it is a spice or seasoning mix, not “food-additives for your dinner” mix.

To make your own taco seasoning mix (enough for 500-600g of uncooked ground meat), you need:

• A small bowl or a cup (cereal or soup bowl or a large teacup will do)
• A tablespoon and a teaspoon

• 1 tablespoon of brown sugar such as demerara or golden caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of fine sea salt
• 1 taspoon of dried chili flakes (more or less to taste and depending on your heat tolerance)
• 1 teaspoon paprika (I use smoked hot paprika if I have it, but any will be good)
• 2 heaping teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 heaping teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons garlic granules or powder (I don’t use dried onions in my mix, but you can do a teaspoon of dried onion and garlic each instead if you like)

Note: all quantities are approximate.  Please, please feel free to add/substract/adjust to your own taste – you aim to please yourself, and your taste buds, after all!

What to do:

• Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix with a spoon.
• Fry about 500g ground beef or blend of beef and pork in a pan until browned and any water evaporated.
• Sprinkle the entire bowl of seasoning over it.
• Add about 100ml boiled water to the bowl, rinse it out and immediately add to the meat.
• Mix the spices and water in, and allow to cook on medium-high heat until liquid is absorbed.
• Eat.

Yes, it’s that simple.  Yes, it’s much cheaper than buying that packet.  And yes, it tastes and looks far, far better.

And the best part is that this same process of eliminating anything questionable and then mixing up the spices yourself to your liking can be used to get rid of any variety of spice-packet-addiction.  Rejoyce, eat delicious food and be free!

How (not) To Glue Yourself To Kitchen Counter (adventures with rye bread)

This post is dedicated to all those well-meaning bread-baking books and blogs which I have consulted regarding baking rye bread.  They have all been full of good and helpful (no sarcasm) tips and explanations, and the result of my efforts has been lovely and very, very worthwhile.

Finnish 100% Rye Sourdough Bread

In fact, these worthy sources have even mentioned, offhandedly, that rye dough tends to be sticky but that I should not add more flour because it will not become any less sticky from it.  That’s fair enough.  There is just one thing none of them thought important enough to mention – and that is, that by “sticky”, what they actually meant is – it’s a bloody glue!

No, I am not exaggerating.  If you’ve made wheat bread, or even part-rye bread, you have no idea what this means.  Allow me to elaborate:  the dough will be sticky and it will remain sticky.  And it will stick to your bowl, utensil, stainless steel mixer dough hooks, your (floured) kitchen counter, and yes, your hands.  And gods forbid you let it set on your hands for a few minutes while kneading it, because – get this! – it will then be difficult to scrub off even with liberal use of dish soap and a nail brush under running (cold) water.  I’ve never encountered anything like this short of superglue – paint and regular wood glues are normally easier to get off hands than rye dough!  In the end, I had de-ryed my hands with just that bit of extra effort and scrubbing, however.  So, here’s your warning – by floured surface and hands, all those helpful sources mean: cover that counter with a thick layer of flour when you do the final forming of the dough, and drown that sucker in flour, else you will never be apart from your kitchen counter, bowl or utensil you happened to grab again!

Now, if this has not made you run away screaming discouraged you, I will, by all means, share my other insights (other than the “don’t try this at home unless you do own a nail brush”) into making a 100% rye bread.  All in all, glueing self to items aside, it is both, doable and rather worth the while.

The bread is absolutely fantastic – it fills the entire apartment with a wonderful fresh rye bread scent while it bakes.  It is aromatically sour (both from the sourdough which I fermented for approximately 20 hours, and from the rye and caraway), dense and, to abuse a buzz phrase, literally packed full of flavor.  A friend of mine, after having tasted it, said that most of all it reminded him of Finn Crisp, only in softer bread form (they actually have a caraway version which really does taste similar!).  The texture and density allows it to be sliced into very thin slices with a sharp serrated bread knife without breaking.  We’ve eaten it lightly buttered with Serrano ham, heavily buttered on both sides and toasted for breakfast, and simply sliced with dinner.  If you like sour rye and strong flavors, this is the bread for you, and I can’t recommend it enough!

... goes amazingly with thinly sliced salami, garlic, dill and robust-flavored chanterelle mushrooms, too!

This recipe for Finnish Sourdough Rye is adapted from Jan Hedh’s “Bröd” (“Bread”) book, which I can happily suggest to anyone who wants to bake bread and can read Swedish, or, failing that, Danish or Norwegian.  Sadly, the book is not translated into English (that I know of), but this is what I am here for (tonight, anyway)!

Before I list the recipe, a few notes regarding 100% rye bread in order not to confuse expectations:

1. Rye has a low gluten content, and therefore cannot develop the typical elastic dough texture the way wheat flour does.  The dough will remain dense and somewhat chunky, with a slight wet-sand texture even when it has risen.
2. Pure rye will never rise as high as wheat or wheat-blend dough does.  The loaf will not be a “brick”, but it will be fairly dense, with close crumb and small pores.  It will be heavy for its size compared to wheat bread.  This is a recipe of Finnish origin – those of you who know what traditional Russian breads are like, this will be similar to those.
3. This recipe requires a 12+ hour fermentation period, so it is best to prepare it over the course of two days, unless you want to be baking in the middle of the night at the end of day 1.

Yield:  2 breads

Ingredients:  Day 1

• 250ml water, finger-warm
• 125g active rye-fed sourdough starter (wheat starter will do if it rises properly after a feeding of rye flour)
• 400g fine wholemeal rye flour

Ingredients: Day 2

• All the dough made on day 1
• 30g fresh yeast
• 180ml water, finger-warm
• 500ml sourmilk or buttermilk
• 675g fine wholemeal rye flour
• 30g sea salt
• 1 heaping tablespoon caraway seeds (entirely optional but I like)

Instructions: Day 1

• Place flour into a large mixing bowl and mix in starter and water.  I use a handheld mixer with dough hooks on low speed, but I am sure a larger mixer or a spoon and putting one’s back into it will work.
• The dough will be pretty thick – add more water by a spoonful if the mixture is too obviously dry.
• Cover with cling film and allow to ferment for 12+ hours (from midday to morning the next day in my case) in a warm non-drafty place.

Instructions: Day 2

• Mix cake yeast into water and allow to stand 10 minutes.
• Add all other ingredients except salt to dough from Day 1, and mix on low speed for 10 minutes.  (You can mix with a spoon or knead with a hand in bowl, but in case of wholemeal rye, a mixer really does wonders.)
• Add salt and mix another 5 minutes.
• Place in a slightly oiled bowl, cover with clingfilm and allow to rise for an hour in a warm place.
• Prepare 2 baking sheets lined with parchment.  I use aluminium mesh sheets so that they can be placed directly in a hot oven, but you can preheat your pizza stone if you have one and place breads onto that when done proofing instead.
• Take dough out onto well-floured surface and cut in half.  Form two round breads and place on baking parchment.
• Allow to rise at room temperature for 60-90 minutes until roughly doubled in bulk and the dough surface has begun to visibly crack.
• Preheat oven to 250°C.
• Place your bread sheet (I did this one after another, not two together in the oven) inside, or use a board or peel to transfer your bread onto your pizza stone if using, and toss a few ice cubes into the bottom of oven.
• Shut the door quickly and watch the oven for the first 10 minutes, adding ice cubes as each previous batch evaporates in order to maintain steam pressure.  Make sure to keep face out of the way when opening oven with steam – this will be very hot!
• Reduce temperature to 190°C and bake another 50-55 minutes until bread is dark brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
• Cool on a rack for at least an hour before eating.

Note: After removing the first loaf, I reheated the oven back to 250°C and repeated the process with the second loaf – an extra hour of proofing harmed it not at all.  Also, your bread should come out even more floured than mine in the picture if you want it not to glue you to the aforementioned counter.  Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way!

The bread keeps for up to a week without any sign of mold wrapped in a plastic bag at room temperature.  I’ve frozen one half of one loaf, as the book suggests it will freeze well, but have not defrosted it yet, so the judgement on that is still out.  However, considering how well it kept without it and how fast we ate it, I am not sure I needed to freeze it at all.

Thai Opulence In Your Kitchen

A few weeks ago I had decided that I wanted Thai food.

In particular, I wanted proper Phanaeng (aka Panang) curry, and I wanted to cook it myself.

So, with that goal in mind, we (that being myself and a Thai classmate from my Swedish course) went to the local Thai supermarket for various Southeast Asian food supplies.  Yes, I know regular Western supermarkets have them these days too, but neither the price nor quality compare.  Not to mention that the regular supermarkets flat-out don’t have some things, which even in my non-Thai view, are essential – such as frozen gyoza wrappers or fresh or frozen kaffir lime leaves (no, dry ones don’t do it for me, and neither should they for you if you are after that good-Thai-restaurant flavor).

I find it interesting that a lof of Westerners (I use the term loosely and as opposed to Thai or other Southeast Asian people here, i.e. those who know about this sort of food from home kitchens) consider Southeast Asian food a bit of a mystery, despite loving it and eating in frequently in restaurants.  (I also consider it a bit of a mystery that after eating at some of those restaurants they still love it, but that’s a point aside…)  Yet, despite loving the food, very few ever learn how to make it, and most (that I’ve talked to) consider it both, complicated and difficult.

Truth be told, that while there are dishes in every cuisine which challenge even renowned chefs, most of the food you’d get served in a Thai restaurant is not that difficult to make at home, nor are the ingredients unobtainable in major cities throughout EU or North America.  And, if you have trouble getting to one of the major cities, they are even available (as is everything) for online ordering.  But, to keep in line with where I was going – Thai curries are easy.  And, we were going to the Oriental supermarket to buy supplies.  Why?  Because, as anyone who had tried to cook Thai curry from the packets or pastes bought in a Western shop has discovered, they just don’t taste the same as the stuff they’ve had in that nice Thai restaurant.

Unsurprisingly, people then assume that they are missing out on some far-Eastern secret and give up, resigning to the supermarket route for their fix – and they really, really don’t need to.  The solution to the authentic and rich taste is simple – do as the Thai do, not as the supermarket packets say.

How do the Thai do?  Well, the ones I know here in Stockholm, and the Thai acquaintances in the USA, would buy a bucket of the real, strong and concentrated Thai curry paste (Mae Ploy brand is commonly imported and has no artificial colors, flavors or MSG or MPG and it keeps forever in the fridge), and then invest in fresh vegetables and greens, which is what really imparts the distinct flavor of Southeast Asian dishes: fresh galangal rhizomes and lemongrass stalks, chili peppers, and fresh or frozen Kaffir lime leaves.  No, I would not substitute dry versions for any of these.  If pressed, I might sub ginger for galangal, but the flavor would be different then.

I returned from the Oriental supermarket victorious, bearing frozen gyoza wrappers (not for the curry, but I will give them their due and speak of them another time), a bucket of Mae Ploy Panang curry paste, a packet of frozen lime leaves, and fresh galangal and lemongrass.  From the sauce isle, I got a bottle of rice vinegar, a bottle of fish sauce aka Nam Pla (it’s cheaper there than in regular supermarkets, and probably fresher, having a likely higher turnaround rate), and a bottle of toasted sesame oil (not for curry, but the aforementioned reasons apply to it as well).

The remainder of the ingredients could be easily purchased from a regular supermarket – full-fat coconut milk in a can, prawns, fresh coriander leaves, a lime and Thai Jasmine rice.

The how-to for this Tiger Prawn Panang Curry is simpler than one’d think, but for easyness’ sake, I recommend cutting up all greens in advance and defrosting the prawns (especially if they aren’t deveined and you need to cut their backs and devein them before the cooking).

Ingredients:  (serves 3, or 2 very hungry people)

• Jasmine rice (cooked or steamed, to serve)
• 300g raw (fresh or defrosted) tiger prawns – deveined.  Shell on (but if you prefer neater eating, you can use shelled prawns)
• 1-3 tablespoons of Panang curry paste (the real, thick thing – Mae Ploy or other brand such as Peacock, you pick – but, please please don’t be tempted to use the soupy jarred stuff like this!)
• 1 can full-fat coconut milk
• 1 cup (about 250ml) prepared vegetables of your choice.  I like bite-sized paprika, sliced green onions, but you can use whatever you like
• 1 stalk lemongrass, washed, trimmed and sliced crosswise into 1-mm thick slices.
• 5-6 kaffir lime leaves, defrosted or fresh, chiffonaded
• 4-5cm piece of galangal, cleaned and trimmed, then sliced into thin slivers or slices
• Fish Sauce – to taste
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar or palm sugar
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 red chili or 1 birdeye chili, seeded and chopped (optional, to taste)
• A handful of chopped fresh coriander leaves, to garnish (optional, and can be skipped if you – like some people – dislike fresh coriander)

Instructions:

• Prepare all ingredients (wash, dry, devein, drain, chop, as needed). Set aside in bowls.  This step simplifies the entirety of the process immensely – if you are new to curry, don’t be tempted to cut-as-you-go.  That way lies burnt curry.
• Cook rice according to package directions or your rice cooker directions if you have one of those.  Cover and keep it warm.
• Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot or deep pan on medium heat.
• Open the coconut milk can without shaking and spoon some of the thick or solid portion of the milk (coconut fat that floated up on top) into the pan and let it melt.
• Spoon your curry paste into the pan and mash it into the coconut oil with a wooden spoon, then fry gently until it softens and releases aroma.
• Add remaining coconut milk to the pan, along with sugar, galangal, lemongrass, chili (if using) and 2/3 of the kaffir lime leaf strips.  (Reserve remaining 1/3 of the leaves for garnish.)
• Bring to a gentle simmer and add the vegetables.  Stir.
• Slowly add fish sauce – 1 tablespoon to start, then stir in and keep adding until the sauce is salty enough for you.  You can add a little sugar to taste as well.
• Cook until vegetables are just about ready, then add the prawns and stir them in.  Prawns cook very quickly and will be ready in just a few minutes – once they are opaque, shells are bright red, and the prawns are curling up some.  On average, this takes about 5-6 minuges, but it will depend on the size of your prawns (smaller ones will obviously cook faster).
• Once prawns are cooked and the curry is simmerling gently, take it off heat and add lime juice little by little, stirring and tasting after each addition – again, to taste.  Stir in chopped coriander leaves (if using).
• Ladle into bowls, garnish with remaining kaffir lime leaf strips and serve with rice.

In my experience, depending on how long it takes to chop/prepare all the ingredients, the actual cooking normally takes 30 minutes or less total.  All in all, faster than phoning up a local Thai takeout and getting the food from there – and (unless you are really lucky with your Thai takeout!) one heck of a lot fresher and better, if I do say so myself!

Note:  I would like to thank my friend Maneewan for helping me out with some of the selections and recipe tips.

Sourdough Experiment Continued – Rye Blend Edition

Since my Sourdough Experiment posts last month, I have spent some time reading about sourdough, and also practicing baking with it.

Part-rye retard-fermented sourdough loaf

The results have been wonderful, and I have found out a lot of very interesting things about sourdough – the chief one among them being that once you get how it works, sourdough bread-baking is not difficult at all, and is actually quite easy to schedule.  The long fermenting times, whether in refrigerator or out, work wonderfully well overnight, which means you do not need to be at home during the day for it to work.  But, I am getting ahead of myself.

One of the first questions I encountered while growing my starter was – is an acetone (“paint thinner” or “cheap nail polish remove”) smell from the starter all right, or is it a sign of something wrong?  I mean, acetone does not exactly smell great, and it is a poison, so it is hard not to wonder if you are doing something terribly wrong and are about to poison yourself and your loved ones.  Searching the net has at first netted me a load of “expert advice” that it’s wrong, bad and it means I should throw my starter away.  Why didn’t I?  Well, this brings us to my friend Sylwia, who comes from Poland, and who is an Nth-generation traditional sourdough home baker, and her words to me, as she handed me a well-travelled Polish starter piece were: “… and you make sure it has a good whiff of acetone, means it is alive, and then proceed…”  So, on I went researching and apparently, those experts who said to throw things away were about as expert as the ones which recommend starting your sourdough starter with commercial yeast – i.e. didn’t know how to find their behind with two hands and a flashlight.  The acetone smell is normal to sourdough starter that hasn’t been fed in the last 12 hours, and it is not actually acetone at all – it is ethyl acetate, which is harmless and produced by the acetic acid bacterial strains normally present in sourdough.  So therefore, my advice is – unless the starter is full of liquid that’s separated, stinks to high heaven, or is turning weird colours, and as long as it rises happily if you take a bit of it and feed it in a clean jar, it’s just fine.

Another interesting discovery I have made is that not all starters produce same-flavoured bread.  As I have mentioned above, my friend Sylwia has brought me a sample of her starter, which according to her has changed hands at least 5 times so far that she knows of (I get to be the at-least-6th proud keeper!).  According to her, the tradition in the part of Poland she comes from (near Warsaw) is that upon moving out on your own, your first sourdough starter should come from a piece given to you by a neighbour.  I guess in my case, one given by a friend counts as well, and now I maintain two retention-sample jars in my fridge, one jar of Sylwia’s Polish-heirloom one, and another of my homegrown Swedish yeast cultivated from local wheat here in Stockholm.  The last bread I’d made was a wheat loaf baked in a pan with a newly-located 12% protein flour and a tablespoon of caraway seeds per 3.5 cup flour batch of dough.  It was the best bread I have ever baked, and one of the finest I’d eaten, and now I am experimenting to see what it was that contributed to it being so wonderful – the pan baking, the caraway or the Polish starter.  I would guess it was a combination of all three, but I do plan to try to combine the factors differently to see which one makes the most impact/difference.  Control group in experimentation is very important!  ;)

As to the bread in the photos, it is a 30% wholemeal rye (finely ground rye flour has been used for better texture) with caraway seeds, which I have done in a single rise with an overnight fridge retardation to extend fermentation time.  Wheat-fed sourdough starter (my own Swedish one) has been used.  This bread was meant to be baked for a Saturday dinner, but I got forgetful and did not feed my yeast until the morning, which meant no sourdough on the day.  As a result, I did not start the sourdough until Sunday daytime, and baked it today (Monday) at mid-morning.  The approximate recipe and instructions follow – you can skip the forgetting and messing up your schedule bits, it works fine without them!

The basic point about scheduling a single-rise sourdough is this -  you need about 12-24 hours for it to rise after the initial knead, rest, knead and shape.

You can start the dough either in the morning, to be raised at room temperature and baked late in evening, or to be put in fridge and baked the next morning.  Or you can start it in evening, stick it in fridge overnight and bake it towards lunchtime the next day after letting it come to room temperature.  Or you can start it in the evening and leave it to rise out of the fridge overnight (provided your weather is not too tropical), and bake it first thing the next morning.  Sourdough is flexible, and since the proofing does not happen too fast, it is not as if missing an hour or two with this will make anything too catastrophic, and certainly not if the dough is left in the refrigerator (what is called a retarded, or cold fermentation – and, as the name implies, is slow and therefore rather controlled).

Double-rise sourdoughs are a little more complex to schedule, and I will be trying them in the future, but in the meantime this works fantastically well (and easily!) for me.

What you need:

• Time:  12 hours to refresh starter, 12-24 hours to ferment, 40 min to preheat oven, 45 min to bake, 1 hour to let cool.
• Optional hand or standing mixer.  I use a hand mixer with dough hooks attachment on low speed.  I imagine that a paddle attachment on a standing mixer (those who own one would know how to set it up), or simple wooden spoon and hand kneading will also work just fine.
• Sourdough starter, fed (refreshed from fridge) at a ratio of 1:2:3 by volume (1 – starter, 2 – water, 3 – flour) in a clean jar.  I used 2 level tablespoons of starter to start with, which makes for 4 tablespoons of water and 6 (level!) tablespoons of flour approximately.
• Other ingredients as follows:

Dough – Ingredients:

• The above starter (all except 2-3 tablespoons for refrigerating for the future bakes)
• 1.5 cup rye flour – I use wholemeal rye, finely ground
• 2 cups high-protein (12%) wheat flour
• 1.5 cups of water (not to be added all at the same time!)
• 1-1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds (if you like them, or fennel, or none at all)

Directions:

• Mix flours, seeds (if using), and salt in a large bowl.
• Add the starter to the bowl and begin mixing with a wooden spoon or dough hooks on handheld mixer (this is what I use, for lazyness’ sake).
• As the starter works into the flour, begin adding water very slowly bit by bit and mixing on lowest speed of mixer until the dough starts to come together.  This should make a fairly stiff dough.  Note: Flours vary in humidity and so does air, so if you are out of water and the dough is too dry, add water a teaspoon at a time and mix thoroughly after each addition.
• Remove dough to a lightly floured surface and knead a few times.  Mixer should have gotten gluten developed fairly well and this is just to smooth the dough.
• Pre-shape into a round by tucking ends under and stretching top of dough into a ball.
• Rest on floured surface and cover with lightly oiled cling film to avoid drying, and allow to rest for 30-45 minutes to relax.
• In meantime, prepare your baking parchment sheet or lightly grease and thoroughly flour a bread pan (whatever you are using).
• Come back to your dough, give it another short and gentle knead (a few seconds), and shape into a round or a loaf for the pan (as per above).
• Gently place onto parchment or into pan, cover with oiled cling film and allow to rise out of the fridge for a couple of hours.
• Wrap in a plastic bag (over the sheet or pan and the cling film), to avoid drying out.
• Place in the refrigerator overnight.
• In the morning, take the bread out of the refrigerator and remove bag – it should have risen to nearly double in bulk.
• Allow to come to room temperature/proof/rise for 1.5 hours or until doubled or more in bulk from original dough size.
• Preheat oven to 220°C.  Remove cling film and slash the loaf to avoid tearing (as you can see, my slashing still needs practice!).
• Set the bread in the middle of the oven, and throw a couple of ice cubes into the oven to create steam.
• Bake at 220°C for 15 minutes, adding 2-3 (small) ice cubes at a time when the last of the water is gone from the bottom of oven.
• Turn the oven down to 190°C and bake additional 20 minutes without ice cubes until bread is medium-brown in colour.
• Using oven mitts, remove bread from oven and from the pan (if using) and tap on the bottom.  It should sound hollow when ready.  (Bread can be returned to the oven without the pan to brown the bottom and finish baking a little if necessary – think 5-10 extra minutes with bottom heat only.)
• Cool on a rack for an hour, or as long as you can stand the smell without cutting/tearing/biting into it.

Proceed with the tearing, biting, etc. as you like!

Yup. Slashing definitely needs more work!

Of Ruined Fondue And Unnecessary Disappointment

The following post is half a rant and half the instructions for those wishing to avoid the aforementioned disappointment.  And I will try to go gently on the rant bit, as I try to avoid those without a good cause.  Sadly, this is a good cause.

I make no secret of the fact that if I have to pick my one favorite celebrity chef for cookbook-buying (I don’t normally watch TV so I have no idea of how entertaining or useful their shows are, so I go by the reading and cooking quality of recipes myself), it’d be Nigella Lawson.  (If I had to pick two, the other would be Nigel Slater, and if I could have three, Emeril Lagasse deserves an honorable mention.  Just so you know.)  Now, as she herself says, her qualifications regarding food are not those of a chef, but rather of an eater – and, incidentally, also a cook.  Which is also fine by me.  I tend to find her recipes easy, good to eat, and generally have nothing but positive things to say of her.

Which makes last night’s occurrence all the more sad and disappointing.  The story is simple – I had some decent smooth-melting-type cheeses in the fridge which needed to be used, leftovers of a box of white wine, and a freshly-baked loaf of sourdough bread and I thought I’d make a lazy dinner of fondue.  Now, I’d not made fondue before, but being a decently good cook, I did not feel it should be too difficult if I got a good recipe and followed the instructions.  And because I like and trust Nigella’s cookbooks, I did not turn to my usual internet-scouring for tips, but opened up my Nigella Express book and found the fondue recipe I’d seen it on previous read-throughs.

Note, that I am not saying the book is bad in general – in fact, I’ve cooked out of it, and done so successfully, and the food was gorgeous as always.  But not this recipe.  I have followed it to the letter.  Unfortunately, the instructions were, simply put, wrong, and my cheese clumped despite my best efforts.  Again, I had at first thought the fault was mine, but a bit of research on the net (something I should have and would have done before ruining the cheese had I not trusted said cookbook so well) showed that there are several steps and an ingredient omitted in the recipe as it is written which actually have to do with cheese clumping prevention.

So, here are the steps you’d need to take in addition to the aforementioned recipe to make it workable:

1. Add 1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice to the white wine.  Most traditional fondue recipes have this, and one or two helpfully explain that it helps break the cheese down.  Why it is omitted from generally lemon-in-fridge-assuming Nigella book, I do not know.
2. Preheat the wine.  Nigella’s recipe says to add wine and cheese to the pot and heat it.  No, no and no!  Preheat wine with the lemon juice, specifically until hot but not quite boiling to help melt the cheese as you later add it.
3. Add cheese to hot wine in little batches and stir in figure-8 to avoid clumping.  Add cheese as previous batch more or less melts.
4. Use low heat once the wine is hot and while you add the cheese.  The recipe simply does not mention the heat setting and sadly, it really should have.
5. There is also the additional bit where the cheese should ideally be at room temperature and not straight from the fridge, but I suspect if the previous 4 items are followed, this step could theoretically be skipped as cheese does not have a very high heat capacity (unlike meat).

So there you have it.  A recipe that would have been fantastic had it been actually complete.  That is to say, it still tasted good, it just was clumped and not pretty enough that I’d have served it to any visitors.  T and I ate it, and were happy, but it was a bit labor-intensive with the long cheese-gone-stringy bits in what should have been smoothly melted sauce.

Better luck next time, and I will make it with the addition of lemon juice and the above instructions and feel confident that it will work just fine.  And taste fine again, which is why I will be reworking it.

I am by no means disappointed in the food writer herself, nor in the book as a whole, but I think – shame on you, Nigella, you really could have easily done better.  And, in my opinion, should have.