Baking English Muffins

I recently watched an old Julia Child show on English muffins that was both informative and hilarious. She used cat food cans for rings to shape the muffins as she cooked them on a range top griddle. Julia managed to burn almost all of the muffins she made plus she completely mangled the one muffin she used to demo the proper way to split these platforms for Eggs Benedict.

Since I had a recipe for English muffin bread, I thought I would experiment by baking these little gems instead of the traditional way of cooking them on a griddle. Also, rather than use cat food cans, I used some 3-inch stainless steel rings molds. My muffins turned out looking like they were on steroids. In retrospect, the amount of dough I used was probably about double the amount I should have used. The muffins were pretty tasty with a nice texture to them.

Orecchiette con Broccoli di Rape and Sausages, recipe from Lidia Bastianich

The other day I happened to see this recipe demonstrated on the PBS series Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs. The chef put this together with little effort and it just looked good and tasty. Coincidentally, I had never tried/cooked broccoli rabe or orecchiette so this recipe seemed like a good one to try as it has a simple, non-tomato based sauce plus it features Italian sausage as the main protein.

I guessed correctly that Whole Paycheck would have both the veggie (about $10 per pound) and pasta but decided that every store would have the pasta. Well it turns out that I finally found a box of orecchiette reasonably priced at WalMart ($1.96 for 10 oz.) after three other nonproductive stops.

I cut the recipe in half for this experiment and used half sweet/half spicy sausage. I also added a squeeze of fresh lemon juice before it was served. It turned out to be a definite keeper - very tasty!

Check out this delightfully written recipe: http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/free/pasta.html

Beet and Swiss Chard Risotto with Horseradish

Tonight's adventure was Beet Risotto and Swiss Chard with Horseradish. Beets have never been on my list of vegetables to cook but I thought I would try this out after buying some beets at Whole Paycheck. The colors were very much in the Christmas season - bright red with bits of green Swiss chard throughout the dish (the green doesn't show up well in the picture - the chard appears to be dark green).

The risotto supported some thick cut (Husker) pork chops which I brined for a couple of hours; they were then breaded with crushed oyster crackers, parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning, browned in a pan and finished in the oven.

I've only eaten beets once before (in class) and this was the first time for my food critic. I sauteed the beets before adding them to the risotto - they didn't really have a lot of flavor. I think when I repeat this recipe I may roast the beets first rather than saute them.

It's Alive

I've been getting a sourdough starter underway for the last two weeks. Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery fame has a chapter in one of her cookbooks on this process which uses grapes, flour and water to create a starter. After ten days, the starter gets fed three times per day with a total of 38.5 ounces of flour plus seven cups of water. The last feeding results in a nearly full container that weighs about seven pounds. Each day starts with discarding all but two cups of the starter before the feeding process starts anew. After four days of these feedings the starter is supposed to be ready for use.

This morning (day 14) instead of throwing out the usual amount of starter before the first feeding, I poured off some and made pancake batter. The recipe called for starter, eggs, oil, maple syrup and some salt, baking powder and baking soda. Ever hopeful, I mixed the ingredients together and ladled some into a pan. Apparently the starter is alive and well as witnessed by the mass of bubbles in the batter as the pancake cooked.

I'm getting close to making some bread dough - maybe tomorrow I'll begin the two day process of baking some bread. However, I've already gone through a number of 5-lb. bags of bread flour creating this starter so I think I may head out to Sam's Club and purchase a 40-lb. bag of bread flour . . .

Salty Oatmeal Cookies

One of my favorite foods is a salty oatmeal cookie which my mom used to bake. However, she hasn't made them in years and I've never bothered to make them even though we had a recipe for them.

I finally decided to make them and I even searched the internet for similar recipes. Mom had changed her recipe by substituting shortening for butter so when I finally made these wonderful cookies, I used unsalted butter. I also refrigerated the dough to firm it up before I baked the cookies. The first batch was sort of bland; I guessed that using kosher salt instead of table salt was the reason (even though additional salt is sprinkled on top of the cookie before baking).

My second attempt I thought was better. I used table salt in the cookies and also added a small amount (1/2 tsp) of cinnamon. I might try using a small scoop next time to get a more uniform size cookie . . .

I really like these cookies!!

Happy in the Kitchen

We are on break now, between quarters. I have accumulated a few new cookbooks along the way since starting school. Curiously enough, I haven't added as many as I would have thought but I really like the collections that are more like a text book, i.e., ones that contain both commentary and photos.

When I started cooking, one of the first cookbooks I used was The Joy of Cooking. My copy is a paperback and it is falling apart. This edition (older than a lot of my classmates) explains some things but, other than a few illustrations, it has no photos. It was my cooking reference for years.

I ended up with two books from our Protein Fabrication class, Lobel's Meat Bible and James Peterson's Fish & Shellfish as part of our reading assignments. Lobel's provides a fair amount of information on a variety of meats but could benefit from some illustrations such as diagrams on primals. The Peterson book is well written and provides a lot of information on cooking techniques which I believe could be another whole level of instruction at school.

All this is leading to some recent acquisitions, one by chance (Momofuku) and the other (Happy in the Kitchen) recommended by my knowledgeable friend, Nichole.

Momofuku is David Chang's New York restaurant group and the book by the same name chronicles the evolution of his noodle bar as well as provides instruction on how to create some of the dishes served at the restaurant. It contains a variety of interesting photos along with the commentary. Curiously enough, we are planning to visit some friends who live near the CIA in upstate New York and they recommended (out of the blue) visiting Momofuku.

Nichole recommended Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen last month and I finally got around to getting a copy of it. It typifies exactly what I like in a "cook book" – some history in its commentary, great photos wrapped around some new techniques. The foreword by Thomas Keller echoes what I have learned in school, "Pastry chefs and savory chefs rely on a completely different set of skills and use their intellects in different ways. Pastry chefs are like mathematicians. Savory chefs, we're like free thinkers. . ." which helps explain why I'm neither so to speak.

Last class for Soups and Sauces

We concluded our final lab for our Thursday class with a straight forward assignment - cook something with whatever was in the refrigerator - as long it had an integral sauce. Our proteins were steaks and chicken; we had the usual suspects in terms of vegetables and stocks. I started with some thinly sliced potatoes which became Pommes Anna in a small Teflon pan. After the first side browned up, I successfully flipped it over and put it into the oven to finish. Next I chose a split chicken breast which I lightly floured and sauted in some oil. It then went into the oven to finish. I started my sauce by deglazing the pan with some shallots and some white wine (actually too much white wine). Then I added chicken stock and started a reduction. Well, too much wine translates into a very sweet sauce (you would think by now I would have figured this out). I started getting concerned that my efforts at a reduction would not turn out but it did as the sweet liquid slowly but surely turned into a sauce. I also sauted some broccoli while this sauce was forming - I used some extra chicken stock on the broccoli to help it along as well. My sauce actually shaped up quite nicely going from a light tan liquid to a nice brown pan sauce. My lack of multitasking skills caught up with me as the sauce became too thick while I messing around with the broccoli so I had to add some more stock to the pan.

Long story short - I got my ingredients plated and in from of chef in a timely manner. He thought the plate looked good. I used the potatoes with a wedge removed, filled that spot with some broccoli and cut about half of the chicken into some slices. The uncut portion went on top of the potatoes and the slices were placed on that piece of chicken. My sauce then went on the slices. Nothing too fancy but (for me) decently executed.

Overall, this class exposed us to a lot of concepts in a short amount of time - I wish in some respects that the amount of time could have been at least doubled. Chef pointed out that true sauce artists spend their whole careers perfecting their craft - we had ten weeks . . .

The Aftermath of Practicals

In my January 17 post I mentioned something about washing dishes - part of the glamor of attending culinary school. Today we had our practicals for Veg, Starch & Protein Cookery. I'm not sure why one plate and a dessert would generate so many dishes - but it did. This picture only gives a glimpse of the accumulated bowls, pans and other equipment required for today's test. Anna worked at the dish washing station for an extended period before this picture was taken (so did I and I have dish pan hands to prove it) and a number of other people were concurrently washing dishes at other sinks - cleanup was longer today than any other class all quarter . . . we even had so many dishes piled up that we expanded into a work area next to the sinks (no, Jonah did not create that mess by himself!)

My own plate had some issues and chef gently pointed out its failures as well as suggested a number of alternatives to my choosen ingredients and the way I presented them. He liked my dessert (a Blueberry Mango Crisp with cinnamon dusted vanilla ice cream) so my practical ended up on a positive note (chef finished my dessert - a true compliment).

This was our last lab for this class and a special thanks to Jennifer (our Lab Assistant) who scrounged up some blueberries for me after I discovered that I had left mine at home.

Infused (and confused?)

Our current assignment for Soups and Sauces was to create an infused oil. I just happened to have some grapeseed oil in the pantry - however its age was unknown (most likely several years old) although it had never been opened.

I was surprised at the color of the oil, I thought it would be clear like canola. I also thought its taste would be very bland, it wasn't, and in spite of its color it was not as fruity as olive oil. After some thought about garlic and roasted garlic infusions, I finally decided on simply using a dry Italian herb mix that consisted of oregano, basil, marjoram, thyme and cracked rosemary. I heated one cup of the grapeseed oil to 150 degrees F and dumped about one and a half tablespoons of the herb mix into the warm oil. After a few days, I strained the oil and did some taste tests of my infused oil with some plain bread. I also tried adding some freshly grated parmesan cheese, black pepper and some more of the herb mix on a plate.

My initial tasting left me with two impressions, either the amount of time was too short for the infusion and/or the amount of dried herbs needs to be significantly increased. On to plan B.

Goodbye old friend

At about 8:25 AM, my Waring Model 11CM10 lost one of its blades while grinding some coffee beans. This little machine was probably older than most of my classmates as it has been around for a long time. It will be missed at least until I get a replacement later today.

My friend Mary points out that "You might be a foodie if . . .

you fill your bath tub up with carp and whitefish to make your own gefilte fish for Passover."