STIR THE POTS

Anno domani

So it's New Years Eve, yech! What a stupid gluttonous time, too much drink, puking and a hangover in the morning! Seems like it never ends this holiday festive brouhaha! Enough to make you want to cook a dinner for yourself and sulk over a glass or bottle of red wine! Well then that is what I am doing on this evening, instead of spending it amongst the millions in front of the boob tube or even in that over lit party on Broadway, some say they are using environmentally friendly light bulbs in the lantern!
So this end of the year I tried making a meal for two, roast rack of lamb with an herb and sun dried tomato
Crust, accompanied by some winter root vegetables. Dinner was fabulous, vegetables were so nice and cooked just perfect, lamb pink, ok my dinner partner screeched at the red and asked for some heat to make it medium well, sacre bleu! You just can't please some people, next faux pas was my putting scallions in the salad of arugula, roast red peppers, pear tomatoes and Parmesan shaved with balsamic vinaigrette! By this point I am livid, next the wine, "too strong!" Finally roasted apples, "not cooked enough, too much butter!",(not to worry, they were deliciously polished off!)  "Go wash the dishes!" That was the straw that broke the camels back I thought? My cigar was too moist and I couldn't light it!
Next year I am going to the local bar and getting very wet, come home kick the cat and beat the wife, that is my resolution!(Highly unlikely, I have a cute cat and a Latin wife!)

Happy New Year indeed!

Féte accompli

Just as I was nodding off in front of the television on Christmas Eve my wife prodded me awake, "lets go!" Off we went to go celebrate Christmas at my sister in-laws house, still a bit hazy and feeling a bit verklempt by the fact that my mother hadn't arrived yet! When I called to find out why she was late in arriving at our house. I realized that she had made a mistake and thought the invitation for dinner was for Christmas day, rather then Christmas Eve! She told us to go without her because it was late. We were going alone and I felt a bit sad she wasn't celebrating with us like every year!

Our dinner this evening was a suckling, nothing to whine or squeal about, eh? For our appetizer we had a mix of Atlantic oysters, Beau Soleil's from Canada, Wellsfeet and Flowers. I made a spicy mignonette sauce and we started with a prosecco which was fabulous pairing with the briny oyster juices, vinegar, shallots and the bite of the black peppercorns in the sauce! Are baby suckling pig was anointed Benjamin? No idea why but it was a good way to make some jokes about midnight snacking of my niece who felt bad for the little oinker! I suggested that when she would be sneaking some pieces out of the fridge at night and her mother would ask who she was talking with in the kitchen,her response would be, "I'm talking to Benjamin mom!" It was sort of sad and we commiserated the poor little porkers demise none the less we devoured him! Perhaps we should of sang a song or something to the spirit of Benjamin, we always forget to thank the animals rather then some idol or whatever? Accompanying the little pig, we had a wonderful array of traditional Ecuadorian corn dishes, mote (hominy), tostaditos (corn nuts, that are toasted and salted), some avocados as well some more traditional side dishes, like braised red cabbage, a stuffing made of veal and rice and so on. A real pig out you could say! The wines were organic, from Australia, France and Spain, the best was the one from down under a very fruity Syrah, Rams Leap. Finally our piéce de résistance, Büche de Noel that I made in record time consisted of genoise with Italian meringue butter cream, a gianduja spread, cocoa nibs and of course the ubiquitous mushrooms made of French meringues!

Whew!

Just finished the last lunch at work today, it felt like a three-week marathon! With endless hours of festive holiday parties, V.I.P.S., silly menus and annoying wait staff! I finally can gather my own mind around celebrating, and how do I do that? Cook, what else! I thought I would say a few things after folding my two dough’s for my morning brekkie! I can't wait to have some hand made loaves instead of a bagged loaf of supermarket sponge that my wife has in the fridge,that is a sin.
The thought that it will be Christmas in just a few days hasn't really sunken in yet either,I guess it's because I'm too tired. As my eye's gaze over the rack of red wines I purchased between service at work,it is waiting to be drunk, and they will be!  Tomorrow I will try my hand at some Panettone and then the annual Büche de Noel.(Will do some nice shots of that as well!)
So before heading to bed I wait for my fancy Niçoise style bread to rise and will shoot a picture of it in the morning light as well retard the other wholesome ale imbibed loaf slowly proofing in a basket!

Good cheer and good health to all!

P.S. Gracias Leo for the autographed book by Mario!

Jeremy

Hydrocolloids...what?

Returning home from the  wet cold day outside I needed something hot to eat. As I set  my chicken soup that I was going to re-heat on the stove top, I noticed it had congealed.Sign of a good clear stock, the chicken and herbs were  suspended in the  cold broth and it made me wonder about what I could add to it to make it gel more and cut it into cubes for a salad? (like a jambon persille?)
It was in part due to my having  attended a class  on hydrocolloids  this morning.The instructor Alex Talbot and his wife Aki Kamozawa who's  Ideas  in food website is where I had first seen some interesting food pics  on the subject and information on some of their food concepts.
This mysterious molecular gastronomy, currently the rage with all the it's strange food glue sort of ingredients. Though the jury is still out on what I really feel regarding this new school or "nouvelle cuisine", it was time for some education. So I contacted the Chef who was instructing the demo, at first I wanted to ask for an interview. My interest was piqued around Thanksgiving after seeing his turkey saucisson that was "glued" with some ingredient and vacuum-packed, so I signed on.
"Drink the water", Alex told us, I quipped, "is this part of the demo, right?" Of course it was, he said in a serious tone!   
Hydro=water is the medium and colloids=are what sets the water to a gel through dispersion! (A better definition), here!
Although I would dearly love to try some of these methods, I would find it hard to try to explain this to the caliber of the cooks I work with. Some how they wouldn't be able to grasp what I was getting at, they still are figuring out basic plating and how to make a vinaigrette!
There are some ideas that really clicked for me though, in terms of cold plated dishes and even desserts. Still there is a bit of trepidation for me when it comes to additives that come from Multinational companies, or just the idea of processing food to an unrecognizable state, or for that matter taking away it's natural state; admittedly I know we already are changing chemically the structure of food when we add any thing, including spices, or we change it's overall composition by cooking period!
Alex was stressing as Chef's or cooks to choose the best products,(meaning the carrageenan or agar-agar)as if you would when purchasing your meat or vegetables.The flavor and textural palate can be adjusted to your taste, more glue or less! So I got a bit of what all this new food is about, having only seen Ferran Adria on an episode of Mark Bittmans show as well as reading some things about Wylie Dufresne. Some how I feel this will be a part of the cooking worlds next step or it is just a flash in the pan, so to speak? If that isn't stirring the pot!

Pigging out!

Last night was our annual Christmas party, one of those traditional buffet deals with a turkey dressed in chaud froide and covered with vegetable designs! When I first took over the duties of making this piece I had never thought about how really old school it is, but while reading Marco Pierre Whites book, he mentions the hams that they would make in a hotel he worked in the 70's! So I guess there is still a place for it and this year I really took my time to make a real Matisse,as one of the cooks called it! When we finally hauled the food up onto the table to be laid out. We caught our breaths, that is when I suddenly realized that it was only Wednesday and we had another two monster events in the next two days! I surveyed the tables from behind the bar, chatting it up with our bartender, when a member of the board saluted me. He asked how I was hanging on for the duration, I told him we would make it through, no problem! No matter that we were overbooked and the waiters were screwing up the service at lunch today, no,no problem!

Since I haven't really had a minute to snap pics of exciting dishes I would leave this one as an idea of how I feel about this gluttonous time of the year! Ho,ho,ho!
Thats all folks!

Pain sur levain liquide (rotted dough bread)

Sometimes when you are googling for a certain subject or maybe not even meaning too ,most often  your likely to just happen on to something that piques your curiosity. The case in point is a French Boulanger site with a strange techno-boulanger title, a link that sends you to a cool recipe site with techniques and methods for good old traditional French breads!
I made one the other day a basic levain using liquide levain, result, phat! The formula uses  farine de tradition, and I know we don't have that at my local grocer, KA flour is too far away to wait to make this great bread so I chucked into the flour some 25% whole wheat and just followed with the recipe!Sometimes baking a good bread makes one impatient! I tried to stay in the bounds of the recipe, paying attention to detail, though I mixed by hand rather than machine and got a wonderful feeling dough! Taste was wheaty and nutty, just fabulous, I don't think retarding the dough would benefit the flavor though, it had a tang already, so it could be too acid if fermented overnight in the fridge! The next bread I want to try that is on the site is a Lodeve bread, a twisted baguette from the ville de l’Hérault.

 

Kastenbrot

Nils at Ye Olde bread blogge is always amazing me with the loaves he produces, and I have yet to make a decent German loaf, so what do you do but follow a German bakers formula and see what happens, right? This particular loaf has some flour, (quellmehl) unavailable here in the U.S., it must be the dollar exchange rate! I followed Nils advice and used a bread soaker which I toasted before hand, fed my starter as he explains, though I took the liberty to use spelt instead of rye. To be a bit different I added another Nils special flavor enhancer, hemp seed as well the flax and Styrian pumpkin seed and oats for the grain soaker. Trouble was my dough was wet, more a batter, so I heavily floured my basket and hoped for the best! No chance this wasn't going to be a disaster, and it was! The loaf came out with bits of itself stuck in the banneton. I quickly divided the dough into two small loaf pans, let them rise a second time and baked them.
They feel light enough, perhaps not as dark, I may add ale on my next try but I can't wait to dig in with some sausage or cheese, a real brotzeit for sure!

On the 7th day of Christmas....

My true love said to me... stay at home! Whew, ten more days of tedious and repetitious Christmas gluttony! Bah humbug, indeed! This has been the first of many hectic days and nights to come, but we broke record attendance for an annual soiree, with plaudits. I even had a client come to the kitchen thanking me for the food we make, which makes for a good day for sure!
Of course there are the headaches, fatigue, the occasional annoying waiters, amongst other things, but on the other hand this is not a commercial restaurant where I tend the stove, no this is an enclave for the wealthy. I sometimes look at this sort of my own episode of upstairs downstairs; we have our own cast of strange characters on both floors to deal with! So before I go to bed, I will feed some hungry bread starters, for some baking tomorrow! Meanwhile here are some pictures of food, the kitchen staff at work and play. See you on the rebound!

Landbrot 60/40

It's been a sort of quest of late, like the holy grail or at least a wish to bake a decent loaf of rye for some time now like my friend Nina in Denmark who makes a mean 100% rye.

so I refreshed some starters for a bake-athon weekend with the first out of the oven being a Landbrot with some gewürze I bought in Maisprach this summer!  I dug through my baking school recipes choosing Landbrot a 60/40 loaf of wheat and rye. Being cautious I decided to make life easy, a touch of commercial yeast in case my rye starter was not too awake, then I forgot completely to mix half whole wheat and white flour for a sort of bise flour  effect, as the recipe called for whole wheat in the final dough.Then I could smell the gewürze in my baking bin wafting so I added it in. Gewürze are generally comprised of  fennel, coriander,cumin and caraway spice that are common in German and Swiss breads, though I have even seen pepper added in for certain loaves. This time too I was actually being an observant baker, no notes, but not my usual "lazy baker" routine. Times were maintained, mixing,pre-shaping, shaping and even the slashing of the loaves! First observations from the oven to cooling rack, a nice caramel color with definite spice smell and a light loaf, probably the added commercial yeast! Sourdough purists, forgive me!