I've been using this recipe for five minute sourdough, using my wild-captured starter. It makes some of the BEST pizza crust I've ever tasted, brushed down with a little olive oil and baked in a 425 oven. It also makes a brilliant monkey bread - grab bits of dough and roll them around in a gallon-sized ziplock filled with cinnamon and sugar, and intersperse the bits of dough with lots of butter and - for an awesome twist - strawberry jam. (I made some strawberry jalapeno jam a while back that was AWESOME in this)
Since the starter grows each time you feed it, finding things to do with the excess (beyond gifting it to friends - our starter, named Agnes, has offspring all over the city now) becomes a fun project. One of the easiest things to do is to give it a big old feeding just before bed the night before, so you'll have two cups of sourdough starter. Then make some truly remarkable pancakes in the morning.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Beouf Bourguignon (in a slow cooker)
It's totally not fall in Texas. I mean, technically it is, but the leaves won't really change until November or December, no matter how many pumpkin spiced lattes we pour at the bases of the neighborhood trees. My children's halloween costumes are selected to make sure they don't roast in their costumes. When I was a child growing up in Michigan, we made plans for wearing snowsuits under our costumes.
This is a recipe about faking it till you're making it.
There is no fast way to make beef bourguignon and still get the complexity of flavor that makes it such an amazing bowl of slop. This requires a layering of flavors - like layering for the cold, or laying bricks, or building a house. This is weekend food, something that you take a bit to prepare alongside your bread for the week, that you make while kids lay around in pajamas until noon, playing video games and eating dry cereal out of plastic cups. That said, there are steps in Madame Childs' recipe that can be combined to make a really amazing version that doesn't quite take as much prep time. Once you get good at it, you can pull off your prep in 30-40 minutes.
Gather your bits:
6-7 slices of bacon, cut into bite sized pieces.
3 lbs stew beef, chopped into bite sized pieces.
2-3 cups red wine (boxed wine makes this easy, and lets you feel less sad about all the wine you'll be eating instead of drinking. Pinot Noirs are recommended here, but I used the Black Box Cabernet to excellent effect)
1 cup flour
4-5 large carrots
1 sweet onion
3 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried thyme (or four sprigs fresh)
1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
2 cups fresh mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 package egg noodles, or crusty awesome bread (or both!)
As far as equipment goes, you'll want the following:
A cast iron or stainless steel frying pan. Save the non-stick for your eggs - it has no place in this dish. Your sear will be sad, and you won't be able to deglaze as well - two things that are crucial for this.
A slow cooker. (woo!)
Also, before you get started, go ahead and turn the fan on in the kitchen, or your smoke detector will be singing the song of your people, if you know what I'm saying.
Like many delicious things, this recipe begins with bacon.
Fry those babies up, reserving all of the bacon grease. Set the bacon aside and hide it from your family, or their grubby hands will nip in and swipe bites while you're cooking. Leave just enough bacon grease to cover the bottom of the pan, and return to a medium heat, just until the grease gets smoking.
Meanwhile, toss all your beef into a gallon sized plastic bag filled with the flour and some salt and pepper. Seal and shake, making sure all your tasty beef nuggets are well coated and there are no damp spots.
Add the beef to the smoking hot bacon grease, being sure not to crowd the pan and treating each peice like the special little snowflake that it is. Let them be for a bit to get a good sear. Here's a tip: if the beef is still sticking to the pan, let it stick. It's done searing when it releases from the pan.
When they're done, move them straight to the crock pot. It will take a few batches to get through all of the beef, and that's okay, because in between each batch, your pan will look like this:
This is the stuff flavored dreams are made of. Hit that pan with some of the wine - enough to coat the bottom and slosh around, and scrape up all that goo with your spatula. You don't have to be meticulous about it, but make an effort to get it all up off the bottom.
Pour off the wine straight into your crock pot, and add another bit of bacon grease to the bottom of the pan - just enough to coat the bottom. Let it sit until it smokes again (your pan should be pretty hot, so this shouldn't take long), and add another batch of beef.
Repeat until all the beef is seared, deglazing the pan each time with wine and dumping it all into the crock pot as you go. After all the beef is seared, go ahead and really deglaze that baby - put about a cup or so of wine into the pan and get the sides, bottom, etc. of the pan, then pour all of that into the crock pot.
Put one last round of bacon grease into the pan (if you're out of grease, like I was, just use some olive oil), and add the carrots and onion, roughly chopped, and season with salt and pepper. Stir occasionally until the onions are translucent, about five minutes. Dump all of that into the crock pot.
Add the bay leaf and thyme. Go ahead and try one of the pieces of beef, because they're amazing - crispy coated and smokey. The wine should cover about 3/4 of your meat and carrots. If not, add a little more wine (or beef stock, if you're starting to feel a little stingy with your wine. Don't use stock from a can, because that stuff is terrible, and as it reduces it will produce a metallic taste that will put a real damper on the whole meal).
Set to high, and let simmer for about five hours, stirring occasionally.
About an hour before you plan to eat, add that bacon, half the parsley and the mushrooms into the crock pot, stirring.
Serve over egg noodles tossed with two tablespoons of butter or with some crusty bread. Top with the rest of the parsley.
This is a recipe about faking it till you're making it.
 |
| Sweet baby Jesus. This is good stuff. |
There is no fast way to make beef bourguignon and still get the complexity of flavor that makes it such an amazing bowl of slop. This requires a layering of flavors - like layering for the cold, or laying bricks, or building a house. This is weekend food, something that you take a bit to prepare alongside your bread for the week, that you make while kids lay around in pajamas until noon, playing video games and eating dry cereal out of plastic cups. That said, there are steps in Madame Childs' recipe that can be combined to make a really amazing version that doesn't quite take as much prep time. Once you get good at it, you can pull off your prep in 30-40 minutes.
Gather your bits:
6-7 slices of bacon, cut into bite sized pieces.
3 lbs stew beef, chopped into bite sized pieces.
2-3 cups red wine (boxed wine makes this easy, and lets you feel less sad about all the wine you'll be eating instead of drinking. Pinot Noirs are recommended here, but I used the Black Box Cabernet to excellent effect)
1 cup flour
4-5 large carrots
1 sweet onion
3 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried thyme (or four sprigs fresh)
1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
2 cups fresh mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 package egg noodles, or crusty awesome bread (or both!)
As far as equipment goes, you'll want the following:
A cast iron or stainless steel frying pan. Save the non-stick for your eggs - it has no place in this dish. Your sear will be sad, and you won't be able to deglaze as well - two things that are crucial for this.
A slow cooker. (woo!)
Also, before you get started, go ahead and turn the fan on in the kitchen, or your smoke detector will be singing the song of your people, if you know what I'm saying.
Like many delicious things, this recipe begins with bacon.
Fry those babies up, reserving all of the bacon grease. Set the bacon aside and hide it from your family, or their grubby hands will nip in and swipe bites while you're cooking. Leave just enough bacon grease to cover the bottom of the pan, and return to a medium heat, just until the grease gets smoking.
Meanwhile, toss all your beef into a gallon sized plastic bag filled with the flour and some salt and pepper. Seal and shake, making sure all your tasty beef nuggets are well coated and there are no damp spots.
Add the beef to the smoking hot bacon grease, being sure not to crowd the pan and treating each peice like the special little snowflake that it is. Let them be for a bit to get a good sear. Here's a tip: if the beef is still sticking to the pan, let it stick. It's done searing when it releases from the pan.
 |
| Beef nuggets, looking FINE. |
When they're done, move them straight to the crock pot. It will take a few batches to get through all of the beef, and that's okay, because in between each batch, your pan will look like this:
 |
| A crusty pan never looked so yummy. |
This is the stuff flavored dreams are made of. Hit that pan with some of the wine - enough to coat the bottom and slosh around, and scrape up all that goo with your spatula. You don't have to be meticulous about it, but make an effort to get it all up off the bottom.
Pour off the wine straight into your crock pot, and add another bit of bacon grease to the bottom of the pan - just enough to coat the bottom. Let it sit until it smokes again (your pan should be pretty hot, so this shouldn't take long), and add another batch of beef.
Repeat until all the beef is seared, deglazing the pan each time with wine and dumping it all into the crock pot as you go. After all the beef is seared, go ahead and really deglaze that baby - put about a cup or so of wine into the pan and get the sides, bottom, etc. of the pan, then pour all of that into the crock pot.
Put one last round of bacon grease into the pan (if you're out of grease, like I was, just use some olive oil), and add the carrots and onion, roughly chopped, and season with salt and pepper. Stir occasionally until the onions are translucent, about five minutes. Dump all of that into the crock pot.
Add the bay leaf and thyme. Go ahead and try one of the pieces of beef, because they're amazing - crispy coated and smokey. The wine should cover about 3/4 of your meat and carrots. If not, add a little more wine (or beef stock, if you're starting to feel a little stingy with your wine. Don't use stock from a can, because that stuff is terrible, and as it reduces it will produce a metallic taste that will put a real damper on the whole meal).
Set to high, and let simmer for about five hours, stirring occasionally.
About an hour before you plan to eat, add that bacon, half the parsley and the mushrooms into the crock pot, stirring.
Serve over egg noodles tossed with two tablespoons of butter or with some crusty bread. Top with the rest of the parsley.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Capturing Free Range Wild Texas Yeast
Free-floating out there, like micro-cowboys, are strands of yeast. It's on your skin. It's in the air you snuffle. All of this is profoundly facinating to me.
For the last six or so months, I've had a bin in my fridge filled with 5 minute dough. I've made french bread for banh mi, pizza crusts, and all manner of quick-fix type breads. They're fast and easy, but they're not really special. And I go through a LOT of quick-rise yeast.
So when I started looking into bread "starters" (also called sourdough or levain) and discovered you can harvest your own wild yeast, it seemed like a totally awesome experiement. I'd be lying if I said it was, in any part, an attempt to provide some sort of teaching opportunity for the kids. The desire was totally born of wanting to have a jar of microorganisms flourishing on my counter, and have that NOT be gross.
I read the entire internet in search of tips and tricks for starting wild yeast colonies. There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is conflicting. Whatever. I picked something that looked the easiest and set out for an experiment.
Here's what you need, if you'll want to follow along at home:
1) Water (say 1/2 a cup)
This should be bottled water if you live in the city. Chlorine, which lives in most city tap water, is really good at killing off microorganisms like yeast. There are TONS of websites about getting chlorine out of tap water (apparently leaving it out overnight will do the trick), but getting distilled or spring water at the store is hella cheap, and it's not like you use a lot of it in this process.
2) Flour (the same amount as you have water)
I read a LOT of conflicting information about what sort of flour to use. A LOT. I used store-brand, all-purpose flour for this experiement and it totally worked. Some websites required incredibly precise ratios of specialty flours, usually from companies who make specialty flours.
3) a Vessel
I used a wide-mouth mason jar. Stick with glass or ceramic if you can. Apparently some metal and plastic containers can something something something? Eh, an old mug or olive jar will do just fine, and will prevent whatever dastardly thing metal or plastic leeching will do to your yeast.
4) A loose covering
I used a clean men's handkerchief. A dishtowel or other similar cotton bit of fabric would also do.
Mix the flour and water and set it out overnight somewhere warmish (between 72 and 80, therebouts). We live in Texas, so finding warm spots isn't a problem for us, but the hubby cranks up the air conditioning overnight, turning our kitchen into an arctic tundra. I stuck our jar outside to trap yeast (I figured there'd be more outside? Maybe?), as the low was 72*.
I scampered downstairs the next morning like it was Christmas, an discovered this:
Real, live, burping and farting Texas yeast, captured in my mason jar.
It really is as simple as that, though I've read about people having a harder time. Sometimes it's taken people a few days to catch it.
So why bother? Well, for starters, making something entirely by hand is profoundly satisfying, and bread is among the most satisfying - something fundamental to share with family and friends. From an early age, I'd make Irish soda bread with my mother, and it seemed to be a strange thing to substitute a chemical to make bread rise, and I can always taste the chemical flavor of baking soda any time I cook with it. The recipe I use for soda bread is over 150 years old, and it's always struck me as a curiosity that chemical leavening was a regular option in rural Ireland.
Then I started baking breads regularly, and it seemed even more strange. Ancient Egyptians didn't buy commercial yeast at the store for their bread and beer. If you're going to go through the trouble to make things by hand, why not really make it by hand? In an era where everyone lives on the back of a rocket ship, why not find the slow rituals that make things special?
So I started looking into commercial yeast, and was fairly bummed about what I found. Yes, it's uniform, trustworthy, and requires no maintenance. But that's what makes it so weird. The slow-rising process of natural yeast, combined with the symbiotic relationship between the yeast and the lacto-bacteria that accompany it, breaks down parts of the wheat husk that are indigestible. There's a really lovely article that discusses a number of health benefits of bread made with wild yeast, from reducing the body's glycemic index to reducing the number of colds and flus contracted.
So, once captured, what do you do with it?
For the last six or so months, I've had a bin in my fridge filled with 5 minute dough. I've made french bread for banh mi, pizza crusts, and all manner of quick-fix type breads. They're fast and easy, but they're not really special. And I go through a LOT of quick-rise yeast.
So when I started looking into bread "starters" (also called sourdough or levain) and discovered you can harvest your own wild yeast, it seemed like a totally awesome experiement. I'd be lying if I said it was, in any part, an attempt to provide some sort of teaching opportunity for the kids. The desire was totally born of wanting to have a jar of microorganisms flourishing on my counter, and have that NOT be gross.
I read the entire internet in search of tips and tricks for starting wild yeast colonies. There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is conflicting. Whatever. I picked something that looked the easiest and set out for an experiment.
Here's what you need, if you'll want to follow along at home:
1) Water (say 1/2 a cup)
This should be bottled water if you live in the city. Chlorine, which lives in most city tap water, is really good at killing off microorganisms like yeast. There are TONS of websites about getting chlorine out of tap water (apparently leaving it out overnight will do the trick), but getting distilled or spring water at the store is hella cheap, and it's not like you use a lot of it in this process.
2) Flour (the same amount as you have water)
I read a LOT of conflicting information about what sort of flour to use. A LOT. I used store-brand, all-purpose flour for this experiement and it totally worked. Some websites required incredibly precise ratios of specialty flours, usually from companies who make specialty flours.
3) a Vessel
I used a wide-mouth mason jar. Stick with glass or ceramic if you can. Apparently some metal and plastic containers can something something something? Eh, an old mug or olive jar will do just fine, and will prevent whatever dastardly thing metal or plastic leeching will do to your yeast.
4) A loose covering
I used a clean men's handkerchief. A dishtowel or other similar cotton bit of fabric would also do.
Mix the flour and water and set it out overnight somewhere warmish (between 72 and 80, therebouts). We live in Texas, so finding warm spots isn't a problem for us, but the hubby cranks up the air conditioning overnight, turning our kitchen into an arctic tundra. I stuck our jar outside to trap yeast (I figured there'd be more outside? Maybe?), as the low was 72*.I scampered downstairs the next morning like it was Christmas, an discovered this:
Real, live, burping and farting Texas yeast, captured in my mason jar.
It really is as simple as that, though I've read about people having a harder time. Sometimes it's taken people a few days to catch it.
So why bother? Well, for starters, making something entirely by hand is profoundly satisfying, and bread is among the most satisfying - something fundamental to share with family and friends. From an early age, I'd make Irish soda bread with my mother, and it seemed to be a strange thing to substitute a chemical to make bread rise, and I can always taste the chemical flavor of baking soda any time I cook with it. The recipe I use for soda bread is over 150 years old, and it's always struck me as a curiosity that chemical leavening was a regular option in rural Ireland.
Then I started baking breads regularly, and it seemed even more strange. Ancient Egyptians didn't buy commercial yeast at the store for their bread and beer. If you're going to go through the trouble to make things by hand, why not really make it by hand? In an era where everyone lives on the back of a rocket ship, why not find the slow rituals that make things special?
So I started looking into commercial yeast, and was fairly bummed about what I found. Yes, it's uniform, trustworthy, and requires no maintenance. But that's what makes it so weird. The slow-rising process of natural yeast, combined with the symbiotic relationship between the yeast and the lacto-bacteria that accompany it, breaks down parts of the wheat husk that are indigestible. There's a really lovely article that discusses a number of health benefits of bread made with wild yeast, from reducing the body's glycemic index to reducing the number of colds and flus contracted.
So, once captured, what do you do with it?
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