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My latest effort with fermented chilies was inspired by this article on Fresno chili vinegar. Alas I was missing some of the sweeter ingredients. Relying on Thai bird chilies, I added sweet peppers to tame the heat. Then I left my first batch on the shelf for about a week, almost forgetting about them. When I opened them, the mixture was bubbling. I passed them through a fine sieve and then took a taste. Hot. Way hot. Hot enough to warm me even with this very cold Thanksgiving.
Paris's Les Marais is the home of the Jewish quarter. Walking through this neighborhood my Thanksgiving escape to France, I found this enclave, with it's family named delicatessens, bakeries, and food vendors. There's a lot of history here, not all of it pretty. What's interesting is the neighborhood continues to thrive as an everyday neighborhood, here are the things I saw.
This past summer visiting my sister in Switzerland, trips around the country were highpoints. Ticino, for instance. An area on the Italian border, it's breathtaking. Seriously, words fail me. Same with photos. It's not just the vistas, it's the entire feeling of this sweeping geography and local culture.
There's a local bread named for the area called Valle di Maggia. Nostalgia this weekend led me to bake some loaves. Though it didn't quite bring me back, the results were a crust and crumb as richly satisfying as the hills and valleys of Ticino.
While in the past, I've written how easy it is to produce a slow levain, recently my boasting turned flat. Concretely, I found it wasn't so easy. Goes to show this crazy passion is equal measures craft, science, and luck. Anyway, pumping up the ferment, the results were awesome. Back to boasts, or just sharing photos of a great bread.
Zopf is something between challah and brioche, main difference, it's less enriched or sweet, and it's from Switzerland. Sundays were the days we'd enjoy zopf at my sisters along with gipfeli (croissant). Generally it's a yeasted loaf and so I had the notion of making it with a sweet sourdough, and I'm pleased to say it worked! Just add some jam, butter and your fine.
After a five-hour winding road trip up the California coast to San Francisco, I went to lunch at Pim Techamuavivit's Khin Khao. The flavors were clean and unique. I ordered the pork bowl, which was divine. Pim Techamuavivit is a restauranteur and chef who commands well-earned respect. Here's a link to an article about her. And here's what I enjoyed at Khin Khao.
Arriving home from visiting my sister in Basel, a few days later I was nostalgic for Swiss bread. Adapting a recipe from a book produced by the baking school Richemont, I used a sourdough which had previously laid dormant for three weeks while I vacationed in Europe. Here are the results for Pain Lucernois (Luzern bread) I made. The flour I used was from Bakers Field Flour, Prosper was the variety of high extraction bread flour.
Zencancook. Actually Stephane, the wonderful guy who runs that blog, can cook. Unfortunately, he's no longer blogging, but lucky for the world, he left it up. So periodically I return for some of his recipes, most recently for his take on pickles. I made a batch with Kirby and Persian cucumbers. Delicious.
Visting my brother in California, my first stop was to baker Pascal Rigo's La Boulagerie de San Francisco. Actually, I had initially tried Chad Robertson's Tartine, but it was closed for a staff party. Interesting aside about Pascal Rigo; a few years ago, Starbucks invested in his bakeries, after which he left to reorganize a series of bakeries in France. Anyway, we had a good visit to his La Boulangerie.
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