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Inspired by a passing line in the book Heat and my new found wonder for farm fresh eggs (not to mention the stock pile of ramekins we now posses) I've been experimenting with baked eggs. I have another egg post in the works (OK it's a little dormant at this point), so I'll save the egg particularities and nerdiness for later, but you need to start by preheating the oven to between 350 and 400F. I looked at souffle recipes too and they had the same temperature variation. So far I've only tried 400F with decent results, but I think it's a little hot or that I need to move my ramekin up a shelf as the top/middle seems to cook a little slow while the outside is getting too firm.
Once you've set your oven to preheat, get out a ramekin, or even small Pyrex bowls will work.
Grease the inside of the ramekin with butter or oil. I opted for extra virgin olive oil, as I was trying out the baked eggs mentioned in Heat that were "eggs baked in olive oil."
Place in the middle rack for 10-15 minutes. I found 12-15 minutes was right for jumbo eggs in our oven. Once the center is cooked to your preference just take them out and serve.
More fennel, this time a French take on this bulbous herb. Braising, a popular cooking method utilized by many folks around the world for tough cuts of meat, shouldn't be reserved just for protein. It gives a nice slow cooked flavor, a little caramelization, and a reduction sauce while you do nothing but give a quick sear and let the oven do the work. Braising works best for meat on the bone, but it can also elevate fennel to new heights. Start by preheating the oven to 425F and putting a pan of salted water on the stove to boil. Trim the stalks and root from the fennel, quarter each bulb, and remove the cores.
While the fennel is parboiling heat a saute pan or dutch oven (aka a rondo/rondeau depending if you're representing the Spanish or French) and melt a pat of unsalted butter. The amount of butter will vary depending upon how many servings you are cooking. Place the parboiled fennel quarters in the hot butter to brown then add a little stock. For one bulb I added about a quarter of a cup. I also tossed in a couple scallion greens and juice of half a lemon for good measure. If you have a little left over white wine, it couldn't hurt, but isn't necessary. Place everything, covered, in the oven for 45 minutes to braise. If the liquid has not reduced enough when you pull it out of the oven, strain it and place a pan on the stove on medium heat to fully reduce. If you're using meat you'll need to skim the excess fat, but otherwise it's the same process. The final reduction with a hot pot should only take a minute max, but you want it pre-syrup phase.
To finish your fennel set the oven to broil, sprinkle a couple dots of unsalted butter over the fennel along with some grated Parmesan or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Place under the broiler for a few minutes until the top of the fennel browns. I could have let the fennel pictures below brown a couple more minutes, but it was close.
If you haven't gathered this already, Meghan likes pizza. One result of this pizza adoration is our now standing tradition of having pizza for dinner on Fridays. This works well for me too as nothing sounds better at the end of the work week than hot, cheesy bread. We usually oscillate between a couple different store bought freezer pizzas, along with a mix of homemade, the rare local delivery, and when we're in MI, Papa John's. This Friday it was homemade and very delicious.
I've made pizza dough by hand a number of times, but this time I tried out our new Cuisinart food processor. It comes with a plastic dough blade that mimics a dough hook on a large mixer. I found out on the first batch that it can heat up the dough to a point where it's hot to touch in just a couple minutes which results in a dough that is broken, like an over-mixed sauce, i.e. hollandaise, but is still usable. It's nearly impossible to over knead some doughs, which strengthens the gluten in the flour, but over mixing via machine can get ugly. I made a second batch, and kept a closer eye on it, which resulted in a dough with great texture for being beaten up by a plastic blade. Nothing beats hand mixing and kneading, but if the goal is quick dough and clean hands and you don't have a stand mixer, this is the way to go. Here is a boring video of the Cuisinart turning flour, yeast, salt and water into dough in 90 seconds.
This is Peter Reinhart's pizza dough recipe. The recipe can be found here and in the book that really showed me how to bake, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.
First up was a Margherita pizza with mozzarella, basil from our windowsill herb garden, and homemade sauce (we didn't have fresh tomatoes on hand.)
Next up was a combo of soft goat cheese and a mix of blue cheeses. I brushed the crust with a little olive oil when it was almost done and it provided a nice crunchy crust.
I loaded up the next pizza with all of the caramelized fennel I made earlier in the week along with some caramelized onion, and a mix of soft goat cheese and blue cheese. This pizza was very good and one I will make again.
To help motivate me to actually post something and break the cycle of starting a handful of posts only to let them hover half-done in hidden mode for months I'm going to make it short and sweet today. Caramelized fennel. I've mentioned before I'm slowly incorporating and understanding the complexity of fennel in my daily cooking and this is one of the quickest and easiest intros to fennel. All you need is a medium-hot pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, a bulb or two of fennel and 10 minutes.
Sometimes dishes necessitate their creation by me walking around and surfing the internet and spotting either an interesting recipe or ingredient. This cherry cobbler is the combination of both when I saw the recipe on Heidi's site and Bing cherries on sale at True Nature, where I've been shopping more lately as they put more and more fresh organic produce on sale. (Between True Nature and Morse Market along with the occasional commuting pit stop at Whole Foods for a harder to find ingredient Meghan and I rarely enter Dominick's lately.) This recipe takes just a little longer to make as it would to pick one up at the store, is much better for you, and tastes really good. Below is Heidi's recipe with a couple notes from me.
2 1/2 cups sweet cherries, pitted - I think 3 C would be better
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup fine-grain raw sugar1 1/4 whole wheat pastry flour - I used unbleached white whole wheat flour, but whole wheat pastry flour is ideal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup fine-grain raw sugar (or brown sugar) - I used brown
1/4+ teaspoon salt
1/4-1/2 cup toasted nuts (optional)
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled a bit
First comes the messiest task of pitting the cherries. Many companies make cherry/olive pitters, but I don't have one so I used my knife and my hands. It went fairly quickly, but made my hands look like I was digging around in the dirt all day. I did this the night before I made the cobbler to help make everything come together quicker in the morning. Like most baking recipes, get your oven preheating, to 425F in this case, right off the bat to ensure it is up to temperature by the time everything is assembled. Toss the cherries with the cornstarch and sugar and either set aside or place in the bottom of a pie or similarly sized baking dish, just make sure you butter the baking dish first.
Next combine the remaining wet and dry ingredients separately.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir or whisk together. I was surprised how quickly the dough came together. It's great texture pre-baked was indicative of the excellent crust to come.
If you haven't placed the cherries in the baking dish yet, do so now. Then take a tablespoon and place dollops of the dough to evenly coat the cherries as best as possible. I still have most of the dough to go in the photo below, but even without a dollar bill for scale (sorry, inside joke) you get the idea of the size of the dollops. When you've used all of the dough give the dish a few thumps on the counter and level it off a little if needed, but keep a few cracks and holes in the dough to let the cherries ooze up in spaces. I also sprinkled a teaspoon or so of raw sugar on the top to help give the crust a little extra color and crunch.
Come on baby, do the Locavation!
Maybe it's the media outlets that I purposely consume, but in the past week I can't get away from one word
Locavore
Locavore was touted as the word of the year in 2007 by the New Oxford American Dictionary and roughly describes someone who tried to eat only locally grown foods, which in many circles means 100 miles.
Now good luck getting your coffee fix, but this movement, a Bay Area concoction, builds on the local, organic, nose to tail, mindset of California (again Bay Area centered) cuisine that I identify with. This movement has spread like wildfire among the affluent Bay Area foodies and has spawned a whole new array of economies and publications.
As if the Bay Area wasn't already a dream location of weather, culture, and of course, gastronomy, now it's also the location of a dream job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/dining/22local.html
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a vastly popular book that documents this lifestyle and life as an organic farmer.
http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.htm?programID=08-P13-00030#feature7
And from Smart City, a piece on Edible Estates which blends architecture, hordiculture, and art by turning a front yard into a garden with an edible and aesthetic focus. It's an odd mix of public/private space although I wonder if lawn ordinances in some areas would deem these illegal.
http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/main.html
There is even a festival to celebrate and publicize this movement in San Francisco this Labor Day Weekend. (Meghan and I will be in the area later that week, but have bigger plans for that weekend.)
Slow Nation Festival
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/dining/23slow.html
I did a google search after I wrote the above and found the group has a website with the best-practices of a locavore as well as other information.
http://www.locavores.com/
I'm not sure if Taco Night is still in the American dinner repertoire, but Meghan and I tried our hand at it for the first time in a few years recently. (Upon googling "taco night" I found this Onion piece, making me believe taco night is alive although potentially not well.)
Below is what was on the menu
Black beans
Spanish brown rice
Roasted tomato & jalapeno salsa
Smashed sweet potatoes
Grilled cactus
Corn tortillas (toasted)
Cabbage (julienned)
Tomatoes (diced)
Vidalia onions (diced)
Scallions (sliced)
Chives (chopped)
Cilantro (chopped)
Avacado (sliced)
Queso fresco
Soy milk horchata
Thats quite a spread, but most of it just involves a little slicing or dicing and other appliances, such as a slow cooker and rice cooker can help make it easy and fool proof, but aren't necessary.
Black Beans
The day before I rinsed and sorted a 1 lb bag of black beans and then let them soak overnight in a large Pyrex bowl.
I cooked the beans the easy way; in the slow cooker. Just cover them with water, throw in some salt and anything else you want, such as onions or garlic, set to low and they're ready in 6-8 hours.
Spanish Brown Rice
I started off by caramelizing half an onion followed by a couple cloves of garlic in a cast iron skillet and then added 2 C of brown rice to toast for a few minutes. While that was toasting I went to the window sill herb garden and grabbed a sprig of oregano, removed the leaves and chopped them as well as some tomato. I recently got a Rick Bayless cookbook that has a Mexican rice recipe with lime and parsley, rather than oregano and tomato, and that would work well here too.
This oregano also is currently flowering, which I had never seen before.
After the rice toasted for a few minutes I added the oregano and tomato and let it hang out in the pan for another minute.
Then to make my life easy I just put everything in the rice cooker with 4 C of "second" stock and let it do the hard work.
Sweet Potatoes
While the rice and beans are cooking in their respective appliances, now is the perfect time to scrub a few sweet potatoes, toss them in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, wrap them in foil and toss in the oven at 400F for 45-60+ minutes, until soft. I used smaller sweet potatoes so they would be done around the same time as it takes to cook the brown rice, about 45 minutes. When cool enough to handle, remove the skins (optional), mash and double check the seasoning. Other herbs and spices can be added to these as well, especially if served as a side dish, but since there were so many other flavors crammed into each taco I kept it simple and didn't muddle with the complexity the roasted sweet potato already brings. When they are done keep the oven on to heat the tortillas, or you can use the pan that you toasted the rice in as well.
Soy Milk Horchata
Grilled Cactus
I have seen cactus leaves at Morse Market every time I stop in and never had a good excuse to pick them up until mentally prepping for taco night. This was my first time cooking them and I was amazed how gummy they are. They ooze out a liquid that reminds me of aloe when cut, which makes sense, but was odd witnessing it for the first time. To prep them use a peeler to remove the thorns while the grill pan heats up and season with salt and pepper.
While everything is cooking you can continue to prep all the remaining accompaniments and even have a beer.
In honor of Bastille Day I'm posting a spread of photos I took while making the menu Meghan and I ate at Bouchon. Although I said it in my previous post on the French Laundry Cookbooks vegetable stock, I've learned countless French cooking fundamentals from both The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon Cookbook. Bouchon serves French Bistro fare and Meghan and I are lucky enough to eat there again soon on our honeymoon.
Heres the first in my promised Taking Stock series. I'm starting off with The Best, followed by The Rest, and The Mirepoix.
Stocks ans Sauces (pg 220 - The French Laundry Cookbook)
You can't have a good sauce if you start with bad stock. Too many people take stocks for granted. In many restaurants the stock pot is like a garbage can; they throw in all kinds of trimmings...
Thomas Keller is on the short list of best chefs in the world, and although the culinary world has exploded in popularity and innovation in the past few years his awards speak for themselves. I don't want to focus on his potential jumping the shark, but rather focus on Keller's Magnum Opus; The French Laundry.
Keller (and Ruhlman) expounds for pages on the importance of veal stock in French cooking in The French Laundry Cookbook and the necessity of proper technique with all stocks. Ten years after its initial publication The French Laundry Cookbook continues to be celebrated for its focus on technique and perfection. Although far less complicated than meat stocks, Keller's vegetable stock reflects this focus on fundamentals and quality. The first thing that struck me about this stock is the inclusion of fennel and the exclusion of celery. Keller's omission of celery, citing its potential bitterness, is only complimented by the complex flavors of leeks and fennel.
I'm not going to give a detailed ingredient list, as its not available online and The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon are worth their price tags.