You Betcha Want This Ciabatta !

‘Bout time we make some darned bread around these parts, isn’t it?  I mean, there’s that pesky title of the place, about “Yeast” and all, and we haven’t seen bread in months !  Literally MONTHS I tells ya !

Bad Roberta.  Bad baker.

Well….it’s not that bread *hasn’t* been being made in the little kitchen (OWWWW, grammatically massacred, much?), it’s just that they’ve all been recipes/techniques I’ve shared with all y’all before.  Like a loaf of my sourdough or two, and some cornbread (no need to share that one, who can’t make cornbread??) and some of that M. Grill knock-off rosemary-olive oil bread.

And this ciabatta.  I actually baked this a few weeks ago, but got sidetracked telling you about it with the surprise that was that cranberry jelly (still loving that, by the way) and the gnocchi.  See, I get easily distracted…..EWW, Pretty !  SHINY !!  GLITTERY !!!!!!!!

And bread, bread….bread is not pretty, shiny nor glittery.  Bread is humble, bread is plain, bread is modest and unassuming.  Well, not really, but you get the idea.  Compared to the flash and dazzle of homemade gnocchi, bread is pretty unpretentious.  But then you pull a fresh-baked loaf out of the oven, and schmeer (highly technical cooking term alert) it with good, sweet butter, and sprinkle it with coarse salt, and of course you remember how sublime good bread is, for all its simplicity.

So, now’s the time to revisit bread, and a damn fine bread this is.

And considering how wet (slack is another term you’ll hear for wet, soft doughs) this dough is, pretty easy to work with, and get an acceptable result from (good heavens, my internal Grammar Police must’ve taken the night off….).  Just take a deep breath, read the technique through, and follow the internal Zen that is working with a slack dough.

Uhhhhhh, yeah.  I’m still working on finding that Zen.  Sometimes the dogs get a little worried when Mazzie’s trying to shape an artisan loaf.

This one, though, because of the signature shape of ciabatta, is pretty much a breeze.  You “plour” (that’s a combination of plunk and pour) the dough onto a parchment, and then gently prod and coax the edges into that “slipper” shape.  Gentle, careful coaxing.  Don’t even try to “shape” the dough into a loaf, it’s so slack that ain’t gunna happen with this dough, and you’ll just get frustrated and yell and scare the little dogs.  We don’t want to scare the little dogs.  Plus, you’ll be tempted to use too much flour to get the dough to a manageable state, and then your bread will be too tough and hard, and well, you’ll get frustrated and yell and scare the dogs.  See caveat about not scaring the dogs, above.  Trust the inner Zen that the little yeastie bugs will do grand things with that blob of ploured dough.

Don’t ask me how I know that yelling scares little dogs.  Nothing that a few doggie treetz won’t cure, though.  Usually.

BTW, Lulu still has a Mohawk…..but I digress.

Another One Off Of The Culinary Bucket List



Are we all done with turkey now, at least for a while?  Everyone raise their hands if you agree.  Yeah.  Thought so.

Let’s see.  So far, I’ve done turkey sandwiches with my lovely cranberry/jalapeño jelly, with a side of reheated dressing (day-um but I made good dressing this year), turkey in reheated gravy on mashed potatoes (oh yeah….), a snack of turkey on White Lilly flour biscuits (with more of that jelly) and tonight, turkey seco tacos (spread the shredded turkey on a baking sheet, toss with olive oil, garlic, chile powder and whatever other spices float your boat, throw into a 300° oven until it gets dry, about half an hour, that’s the “seco” and then make into tacos with all the usual suspects….tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cheese, cilantro, avocados, radishes, corn tortillas….).  Those rocked.  I may, may have one more turkey meal left before any dregs go into the freezer for future consideration.  Or, there may not be any dregs…we’ll see what the circling turkey-scarfing vulture dogs have in mind !

Yeah, THOSE turkey-scarfing vulture dogs.  Fresh from the doggie spa, replete with the frou-frou little ear bows.  Rosie rocked the look.  Lulu, ehhhh, not so much.  Sort of like putting a tutu on Peppermint Pattie.  Just….doesn‘t work somehow.

But Lulu most certainly DOES rock this look....

It's Mohawk Puppy !

But I digress.  Amazingly enough, this isn’t about leftover turkey, or even adorable vulture dogs.  It’s about tackling yet another food project *I Thought I’d Never Be Able To Make*.  The culinary bucket list.  We all have one, don’t we ?  Stuff we love, but think we can’t make at home for any variety of reasons.  Involved techniques, amount of time/effort required, exotic ingredients, there can be any number of excuses.  But most can be vanquished with just that little bit of the “courage of your convictions”.

This time around it was gnocchi.

Gnocchi.  Little, pillowy dumpling-ish nuggets of pasta/potato goodness.  Good gnocchi are very good.  VERY good.  Like dreamy, sublime good.  Like, go home and fantasize about gnocchi for a month or so good.   I’ve had that kind, rarely.  But often enough to know that’s what I aspire to.

Bad gnocchi are, well, really REALLY bad.  Leaden.  Heavy.  Dense, sodden little gut-bombs that sink to the pit of your stomach, not to mention your soul, and leave you not only with a bad taste in your mouth, and a sick feeling in your tum-tum, but a fear and loathing of ever trying to make them at home, let alone ever eating them again.

Because….they’re hard to make.  They have to be.  Because anything that’s THAT good (when they’re good) and THAT bad (when they’re bad) can’t be easy.  But after growing increasingly frustrated with the gnocchi I can find commercially i.e., frozen, dried/dehydrated and/or fresh/refrigerated (with nice green mold as an option, apparently, see an earlier post about a summer veg gnocchi dish…), I was toying with the idea of breaking down and trying to make them from scratch.  But it all seemed, so….daunting.

And then I was presented with another lovely, petite butternut squash from The Growing Experience.  Literally the same day, I was channel-surfing, and found a repeat of an ancient “Good Eats” (I *heart* Alton) episode on Cooking Channel.  It was about making…..butternut squash gnocchi.

I figured it was a Sign From Above.  Or sumpthin'.

Celebrating The Harvest

It’s that time of year.  There’s just…something…in the air.  Lord knows, in Southern California, I wouldn’t dare call it a *nip*, but there’s something.  Of course, the days are getting noticeably shorter.  The afternoon sunlight hits the living room floor at a lower angle, the shadows are deeper.  Although our days are still plenty warm for the most part, the nights have a definite edge to them.  The froggies that live in my front flower bed and in the neighbor’s bed that runs along my driveway are not quite so boisterous in their night songs.  In fact, the froggie in the front seems to have already gone wherever he/she goes during the fall/winter/early spring.  I no longer hear him/her as I fall asleep, and I miss him/her.  The froggie by the drive, I only hear, very softly, when I let The Grrrrrlz out for their last Dooty Duty/Yard Patrol of the night.  By midnight, he’s tucked in for the evening too, chilled no doubt by the dampish Fall air.  There are smells of cinnamon in the grocery stores, from the scented pine cones and brooms that will soon become seasonal décor.  I love that smell...

But still, I have to celebrate, while not quite “The Harvest” in the true sense of the world, surely the bounty that comes at this time of year.  The past few shares I’ve received from my CSA, The Growing Experience, have been absolutely overflowing with goodies.  Figs and corn and tomatoes and greens and salad mix and herbs and apples, OH MY !

Plus the overload of tomatoes that my heroic, beleaguered, embattled, but so valiant surviving tomato plant has produced against pestilence, disease, plague, mockingbirds and all odds has been peaking in the last two weeks or so.  Sadly, soon to end, but certainly appreciated while it lasted.

So, between the heroic yield of the tomato plant and the CSA farm’s output, menu planning for the last month has been much less about “what do I feel like making/what do I crave” and much more about “what do I need to use before it rots”.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad way to cook, it’s just not a way to cook that I’m particularly familiar with, nor particularly comfortable with.

I *used* to be a list maker.  Back in the day, Friday night, as I walked in the door from work, I’d toss my cocktail glass in the freezer, get into my jammies, pull out my recipes and cookbooks and the grocery sale fliers, make a dirty Tanquery martini, not too dry, with two olives and two onions, (shaken hard, please) heat my frozen pizza or other ready-to-heat snacks (Fridays were always cook’s night off for me), and peruse my menu options for the coming week.  It was the only way that I’d pull off making something resembling home-cooked food during the week, and not fall into the trap of “I’ll just swing by the MegaMart and pick up something easy”, ensure I had sufficient leftovers for lunch that I didn’t have to hit a drive-thru everyday and also unwind from a usually over-the-top intense week at work.  I’d set my menus for the week, make my shopping lists, eat my snack foods, have another martini and then get up Saturday and hit the grocery schleps.

It’s a lot more free-form now.

It’s A “Corn”-ucopia Of Corn Dishes

It’s that time of year, yes, it is….just makes me want to burst out into song.  “When the corn is as high as an elephant’s eyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeee”...

OK, sorry.  If you know me, you don’t want me singing anything at all, let alone the libretto from “Oklahoma”.

Actually, even if you DON’T know me, you don’t want me singing anything at all, let alone the libretto from “Oklahoma”.

Trust me.  Ella Fitzgerald I ain’t.

But, as always, I digress.  This isn’t about singing, or 1940’s musicals, or simply the best female singer that ever lived (that'd be Ms. Ella thankyewvermush), it’s about corn.

Corn.  Specifically, summer sweet corn.  The last leg of that perfect triangle of summer-only goodness; tomatoes, figs and sweet corn.  A trifecta, if you will.  Oh yeah, stone fruits and melons and berries are important now, and certainly welcomed in the little kitchen (I just ate a perfect peach, and was again amazed at how wonderful a creature that is).  But summer without sweet corn, figs and tomatoes is unthinkable.

Since we’ve done our homage to tomatoes, and I shared the seductive glory of a fig upside-down cake with all y’all, it’s time to complete the trilogy.

Let’s talk corn.

The Mezze Was Not Messy (But The Kitchen Was…..)

In fact, it was very, very tasty.  The mezze, that is.  According to the Great God Wikipedia (which we all know is unimpeachably accurate…. {/end snark}), mezze is “a selection of small dishes served in the Mediterranean and Middle East as dinner or lunch, with or without drinks”.  To me, as my boy Alton Brown would say, mezze is just, ermmmmm….good eats.  And, it goes without saying, my mezze was going to be served with drinks.

And so it was a couple of weeks back, the day I made the pita bread I last shared with you.  Because, good as homemade, fresh, pillowy pita bread is, that really doesn’t constitute a full meal, especially not a full meal for friends.

So, there was mezze.  Really good mezze.  Homemade falafel, made from dried chickpeas, mixed with fresh, lushly flavorful herbs and fried gently in olive oil.  Tzatziki, too, creamy, thick Greek yogurt, mixed with more herbs and garlic and cucumber.  Tahini sauce, to drizzle over.  And a Greek salad, since that’s the direction we were leaning, more towards the Mediterranean end of the mezze spectrum than the Middle Eastern one.  All dishes I’d made before, in one iteration or another, but never in this gathering of yummies, and not usually made totally from scratch, from hopefully quasi-*authentic* recipes.

My falafels had, previously, come from a box mix of dehydrated chickpea (garbanzo) flour and dried herbs.  Reconstitute with some water, let sit, form and fry.  They were….passable, but I knew I could do better.  My Greek salads had been laden with extraneous ingredients.  My tahini sauce had been from a jar.  It was time to up the ante a bit, and try to see if I could concoct some semi-authentic mezze.

Oh, the teaser picture.  For some reason (insert head-smack here), I didn’t get a picture of the entire table when everything was done, nor of the finished sandwiches with the falafel patty on the pita, drizzled with the tahini sauce, and the tzatziki and dressed with lettuce, tomato and onion.  I *think* I tried….and the shots I got were out of focus and/or poorly lit.  It did sort of all come together very quickly at the end, and it got rushed.  Too many tasks, too few hands, too much potential to burn down the house with hot oil.   So, up there we gots the tahini sauce (in the small bowl to the bottom left), the tzatziki (in the medium-size bowl to the bottom right) and the Greek salad up top.

We’ll see the falafels later….

When Life Gives You Tomatoes….You Eat Really Well

Isn’t that picture just the epitome and embodiment of Summer ?  A huge, (and I do mean HUGE, that puppy weighed in at over a pound !), vine-ripened beefsteak tomato, dripping with dew (OK, full disclosure, that was water from my having rinsed it before I cooked with it, but still, it *could've* been dew).

Here’s a shot of that monster in my hand, so you can get an idea of how gimogeous this thing really was.

It was truly massive.  *AND* it had flavor, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

I love tomatoes.

No.  Let me qualify that.

I love tomatoes that have ripened on the vine, and have been grown carefully and fed and watered regularly, and have had lots of sun and lots of care.  Tomatoes that are soft and sorta squishy, and that spew juice all over your counter when you cut them.  Tomatoes that are warm from the sun, that you rinse off and slice and inhale as is, or on bread, or in a Caprese salad, or over pasta.  Or that you just bite into on your way from the garden to the kitchen, the juice and seeds dripping down your chin, and over your hands.  The tomatoes that explode with sweet, tangy, acidic, tomato-y flavor, and fill your mouth with tomato joy.  The tomatoes so full of that lovely “jelly” interior they remind you of one of those fruit gel candies called "Pâtes de fruits”.

*THOSE* tomatoes (and these) I love.

I most assuredly do NOT love those supermarket cotton balls with the mealy, tasteless centers, the ones you could pitch a major league baseball game with, the ones that are picked totally green and gassed with ethylene oxide to turn their skins a pale imitation of the deep red color we expect, but which will never, ever achieve the glory that is a REAL tomato.

*THOSE* tomatoes I loath.

I’ve grown tomatoes before, and while they’re not particularly a difficult plant to grow and harvest, like anything alive, they need some care and some fussing with.  And, due to some health/mobility issues, I can’t work any kind of a garden in the ground any longer.  I could probably get DOWN to sit by the bed and work it, but it’d take a sky-hook crane to get me back up.

A couple of years ago, I tried one of those “topsy-turvy” tomato growing things.  It was….not a success.  I put the thing in the same spot (a narrow bed by my driveway, with a Western exposure, against a light stucco wall) where I’d successfully grown tomatoes (albeit in the ground) before.  The plants (I had three of them in the hanging baggy thingy) started out great guns.  And rapidly faltered.  I had only used really easy-to-grow cultivars I’d successfully grown in the ground in previous years, so I thought it was going to be a slam dunk.  Not so much.  I think I got a total of 20 tomatoes out of the 3 plants that year, and they were small, fairly tasteless and generally not stellar.  I think the soil in the bag got too hot, and steamed the roots when I watered them.  In the plastic, there was no way for the soil to "breathe".  Plus I don’t think there was enough soil in the baggy thingy to support 3 full plants, even though it had 3 ports for planting and the instructions indicated it could support all three.  The bag was unwieldy, it was hard to water and fertilize, and as I said the yield was dismal.  It finally went into the trash and recycling bins as was appropriate to the parts of the contraption.

For the next few summers, I tried to make do with tomatoes from the local farmers’ markets, Trader Joe’s “Heirloom” tomatoes (which are actually pretty decent, not top tier, but not bad….) and lately from my CSA, The Growing Experience.

This year, though, I was determined to grow my own.  I had an unused, huge PVC pot, which had previously held a rose bush, so I knew it was plenty big enough, I had the tomato cage/support gizzies, all I needed was the soil and the plants.  Which, I promptly obtained in mid-Spring.  I planted, I caged, I watered, I fertilized, and I waited for the succulent harvest.

It started out really well, and then took a dramatic turn to disaster land…….

The Tao of Bao

Not too long ago, I was faced with the most hated and feared of all leftover situations….the dreaded LEFTOVER leftovers (GASP !).

Way back before time began (OK, last winter to be honest) I made one of my favorite recipes for a pork roast.  You take a shoulder roast (sometimes called a butt for some unknown, butchery reason…), either bone-in or boneless works fine, rub it well with 2 parts chipotle chile powder to 1 part kosher salt, and toss the meat into a roasting pan or Le Creuset-type Dutch oven.  Cover the pan with foil or the lid, and throw THAT into a preheated 275° oven for about 3&1/2 to 4 hours, and then pull the pan from the oven, let the meat rest for about 15 minutes, and pull it into shreds and chunks with 2 forks.  Served on warm corn tortillas (homemade is best, come on…….YOU can do it, I showed you how), with a sprinkle of cilantro and a drizzle of fresh-squeezed lime juice (OK, simple salsa cruda if you must), folded over to make simple, soft tacos, well, that’s about the best eats you can get.  One of my favorite techniques, ever.

And the initial round of leftovers makes great enchiladas or tostadas, mixed with the appropriate sauces and cheese and other add-ons.  Or spectacular pulled pork, gently reheated with some barbeque sauce.  Homemade would be best, but Trader Joe’s (yeah, TJ’s again, so…..?) “Kansas City BBQ Sauce” is a perfectly fine alternative.  And the leftovers chill out in the freezer really, really well.

Which is where my about 1 pound hunk of chipotle slow-roasted pork shoulder has been hanging out since about January, when I made it.  In the freezer, that is.  A couple of weeks ago, I got a hankering for some pulled pork sandwiches.  I’d gotten a lovely, small head of tender, just harvested cabbage from The Growing Experience in my share, and that cried out for slaw.  Which led to pulled pork sandwiches.  I had the requisite TJ’s BBQ sauce in the fridge, I had the makings for slaw, I had hamburger buns in the freezer as well, so sounds like dinner to me.

So I pulled the pork out and let it thaw (it was already shredded down when I froze it).  The day I made the sandwiches, I plopped the shredded pork in a saucepan, and added just enough of the bottled sauce to moisten it.  I have a bad habit of making this dish too drippy when I reheat the meat in the sauce (same technique works for slow-cooked roast beef as well, try it with brisket and swoon), so I was careful to use just enough BBQ sauce to loosen up the shredded meat.  Heat it over a very low flame for at least half an hour, covered.  As it warms up, the meat will release some liquid, and the steam will condense back up and drop down into the saucepan, to help “juice up” the mixture.  Which is why you want to go easy on the sauce you add to the meat.

Yes.  The sandwiches were great.  Some standard slaw (with a hit of horseradish in the dressing) and bread and butter pickles on the pulled pork, it was delightful.

But, not only have I digressed (which is not all that surprising, now is it….?), I have gone completely off track.  Because this post is NOT about using left-over slow roasted meat for pulled BBQ sandwiches, delightful though that may be, it’s about using the LEFTOVERS from that.

And finding your inner peace with the never-ending wheel of leftovers.  As in…the Tao of bao.

Get Your Grill On

Ah, yesssss.  ‘Tis Summah time, and the livin’ is easy.  Or should be, lest you  raise a sweat and begin to, shall we say, *glow* in the summer heat and humidity.

OK, true confessions time.  This has been, for the second year in a row, an uncommonly cool and cloudy summer here in SoCal.  NOT THAT I’M COMPLAINING.  Not at all.  I tend to get cranky when the temperature gets too much above about 85°, and downright surly and churlish (LOVE that word) when it approaches triple digits.  So mid-seventies to low eighties is just ducky by me.  Granted, my roses look a bit forlorn and ratty, they do like their hot days and clear nights, and my tomatoes were damned slow to set and ripen, but me, I’m diggin’ my very cool Left Coast Summer and hope it lasts.

The rest of you, especially those in the middle of the U.S., babe, I feel for ya.  I see the news reports, and, having spent my early years in Chicago, and having visited the South and D.C. in the summer, I sure don’t envy you.  And I hope all y’all get some relief soon.  I’d love to send you my marine layer.  Some screwy weather going on for sure…

Anyway, for most of us, even those of us still sleeping under a blankie (with two hermetically attached fuzz bombs), in Mid-July, Summer certainly means grilling, because who the heck wants to turn on an oven, or heat up a range-top when the mercury’s about to blow out the top of the thermometer like it used to in the Loony Tunes.  (Do they still even PUT mercury in thermometers any longer?  I’d bet not….hazmat and all that stuff…but again, I digress.)

No single day, of course, speaks more to grilling and cooking outdoors than the 4^th of July.  Here’s what went down in the little kitchen, and the larger patio, for that commemoration of our Independence.  As you can guess by the header shot, there was an adult beverage (or 2….maybe 3) involved and these guys made an appearance….

The Continuing Evolution of The "Baker"

As I think I’ve mentioned before, this whole journey towards becoming “a baker” is a relatively new chapter of my life.  I’ve been cooking for a long time.  A LONG time.  A very LONG time.  Since dirt was young, if you want to know the truth.  But it wasn’t really until about 4 or 5 years ago that I seriously decided to teach myself to bake.  I’d tried before.  When I was young and snot-nosed and cocky.  And I’d failed pretty spectacularly.  Baking wasn’t something I learned at Granny’s (or Mom’s knee).  Granny, unfortunately, had passed by the time I was 6 months old (otherwise, I’m sure I’d have learned how to make paczki….a long, sorry story perhaps I’ll share one day).  Mom was a great cook, but no baker she.  Cakes were from a box, pies from the freezer.  Bread from the MegaMarts or, back in the day, a real, live, Mom&Pop bakery (pause for a small *sniffff* for corner bakeries, of which there are NONE in my ‘hood).  She did bake a mean cookie, but everything else involving flour, ehhhh, not so much.

And so I thought it was hereditary.  My failure to bake, that is.  At some point, though, I dug in my heels (stubborn, moi??? Why ever would you think so???) and said, possibly channeling Scahhhlettt, “as God is my witness, I *WILL* learn to bake”!!

Or something like that.

In the short amount of time I’ve been serious about “baking”, especially yeasted doughs, I am continually amazed by how much BETTER I’ve gotten at the process.  Not that I’m a superstar yet, far from it.  The folks at Poilane (note that there should be one of those cutesy little "^"s above the "a" in Poilane, but it wouldn't take in inserting the link...) in Paris got nothing to worry about from me.  But I have gotten noticeably, appreciably better.  And I have fewer problems handling “difficult” doughs.  Doughs which, 4 or 5 years ago, consistently ate my lunch and caused me to tear out my hair, rend my clothes and cry bitter tears of frustration.

Doughs much like this one.

Salad Daze

Now that the weather’s turned towards Summer’s warmth, (OK, sorry…..downright, screachin’ miserable hot in most of the country, and I feel for ya, I really do), a lot of people are thinking about salads.

Living in SoCal, I think of salads year ‘round.  We have 100-plus days in October regularly, and I’ve baked Christmas cookies in shorts, a tank top and with all the windows open more than once.  Plus, I’m just not a huge fan of cooked vegetables.  (Unless they’re battered and deep-fried, which may be why I take cholesterol-lowering medications, ya think?)  Some cooked veggies I do love, grilled corn on the cob, oven roasted or grilled asparagus, ARTICHOKES of course, oven roasted Brussels sprouts, maybe some caramelized carrots.  But steamed or boiled green beans, peas (fresh peas I’ll eat raw thankyouverymuch) or broccoli, sautéed zucchini, I’ll pass right by on those.  They just seem so *boring* to me.  I HAVE had some transcendent veggie sides in restaurants….so I know it can be done.  Maybe I just haven’t figured out how to cook them well.  As a component in a dish, like an Asian stir fry, I do OK.  But as a stand-alone dish….eh, not so much.  Maybe I get too distracted by the main, so I can’t give my full attention to the veggie side.  I dunno….in my little kitchen, unless it’s a salad of some ilk, or is the focus of the meal, veggies get short shrift.

But I LOVE the taste of raw veggies.  Raw broccoli, raw zuke, raw cauliflower, they rock my world.  Short of serving them just as crudités though, there’s not a whole lot of creative options out there for veggies au natural.

And of course, I’m always conscious of the ever-looming-now-discarded-and-replaced- by-the-FDA-food-plate, food pyramid.  I KNOW I need to get more fruit and veg into my diet than I currently do….

And so we return to salads.

In Search of "Naan-vana"

One of my favorite things about eating in good Indian restaurants is the basket of naan bread they bring you when you sit down.  Hot, steamy and charred from the tandoor, usually painted with ghee, it’s a savory prologue to the deliciousness of the Indian meal to come.  And it’s so great alongside the meal, to sop up the spicy, flavorful sauces.

I think naan was one of the reasons I fell hard in love with Indian cuisines.  After all, I am, first and foremost, a carb freak.

Naan is a flat bread, and puffs in the middle to form a pocket similar to a pita.  The two are very different animals, though.  I feel the pita is somehow “sturdier”, and the naan a bit more delicate.  Naan typically have dairy in their recipes (usually yogurt, but sometimes milk, or both), and most recipes require an egg, as does this one.  Pita breads don’t use eggs or dairy, hence (hence???  HENCE???? Where the heck did HENCE come from?) the more delicate crumb of the naan.

Naan is difficult to recreate at home because, unless you’re very, very lucky, or very, very dedicated, or more likely, very, very obsessed, you don’t have a tandoor in the backyard.

Confession time….if I win the Lotto tomorrow, I'll *HAVE* a tandoor in the backyard.  And a wood burning pizza oven.  Of course, it won’t be in THIS backyard, but I’ll have them in whatever multi-acre backyard I purchase with my MegaMillions.

Tandoor ovens are cylindrical (usually beehive shaped) clay ovens fueled with a live charcoal or wood fire.  There’s a grill above the fire level.  Tandoors are used to make some of the most iconic Indian dishes, most notably (along with naan), tandoori chicken.  Skewered meats can also be cooked in a tandoor.  The intense heat from the fire below, plus the radiant heat from the clay walls, crusts the outside of the proteins into charry, smoky lusciousness, while keeping the interior moist and juicy because the intense heat cooks so fast.

Naan is “baked” by slapping the dough onto the sides of the oven, then pulling them off with a long hook  Since temperatures in the tandoor can exceed 900°F (yeee-IKES), no matter how we hack our home oven, or how long we preheat it and our baking stone, we’re not gunna achieve that.  But seriously, if Lady Lotto finds me, making authentic naan would be worth the tsuris of installing a tandoor.

So.  What can we do with our feeble home ovens?  Well, it’s not necessarily “authentic”, but it’s pretty darn good, and it did PUFF, so I claim success.

The "You Know You Love It" Rosemary-Olive Oil Bread From *THAT* Restaurant Chain

Even though I love the flavor of the so-called “artisan” breads that have long, slow, usually overnight rises or ferments, they don’t always fit into my schedule to make.  More realistically, (not to mention more truthfully….) I usually don’t get my act together in enough time to make them when I decide I want bread.  So I’m always on the lookout for bread recipes with a great taste, but that can be put together in a half-a-day or so.

A couple of months back, I found one of those type of recipes in, of all places, the “Food Network Magazine”.  Yes, I know.  The Food Network.  I’m ashamed to even type those words, because in other places out there in the cyber ‘scape, I’ve been one of the most vocal critics of the turn that FN’s programming has taken in the last five or so years.  I’m tired of watching other people eat, I want to watch people actually cook.  I *know* how to eat, and I’m pretty good at it.  Cooking tips, them I’m always in the market for.  I’m tired of challenge shows.  I’m tired of endless shots of whirring assembly lines, with admittedly cool machinery, churning out candy and potato chips.  I’m especially tired of watching people eat grossly huge amounts of food (lookin’ at you Guy Fieri).  I realize I’m not in FN’s demographic, nowhere near it.  But still…..

That said (and rant over), the “FN Magazine” is surprisingly very, very good.  I’ve got to give them props for it and credit where it’s due.  I got an issue as a freebie about a year ago, and liked it, so picked up a copy or three off the newsstands.  Liked them too, so I subscribed (see, I truly am a dinosaur….I subscribe to paper magazines !).

According to “FN Magazine”, this is a copy-cat recipe for a “famous Italian chain restaurant’s” rosemary-olive oil bread.  You know the chain….it has a “Grill” in the name, and a “Mac” on the front end.  While I think that the chain’s food quality has really declined in recent years (day-um, I’m cranky today aren’t I?  Or at least hyper-critical…sorry, I’ll go get another glass of wine and see if I can’t lighten up a bit), I do think that their bread is every bit as stellar as it was when they started out.

And this…?  This is a pretty damn good clone.  It certainly was, as they say, “close enough for government work”.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

What once was lost, is now found, or the return of the prodigal pizza

One of the downsides of being an inveterate recipe collector is that I'm always captivated by the NEWEST, BESTEST, HOTTEST, TRENDIEST recipes.  And so, naturally, some of the old favorites fall by the wayside, cast away in search of The Next Best Thing.  That's too bad, really, because I have a huge stash of older recipes, both clipped from newspapers and magazines (back in the Old Times before the interwebs...), and also what I guess you'd call "vintage" cookbooks.  And some of those sources have some real gems, that deserve to be revisited.  Every so often, I'll have a thought (always a scary time for me...), and think, hey, I should make "that dish from XYZ again".  And I'll pull out the book, or the magazine, and realize that by the time I've found the recipe I was actually looking for, I've re-read the entire publication, and also found a bunch of other things that sound good and interesting.  And then I wonder, why don't I cook from this book any more?  Never do have a good answer, other than there's so much good stuff out there, it's simply impossible to get to it all.

So, I've been trying (trying being the operative word here) to remember to include some of the old favorites, or untried recipes from the neglected books and files, with the new ones I've found in my recent recipe forages, when I plan my menus.  And sometimes, I do get that thought about an old favorite, and rummage through the collection to resurrect it.

Which led, last weekend, to Asparagus Pizza...

The incredible, morphing menu...or, how to keep leftovers from haunting your refrigerator, not to mention your dreams

As I think I've mentioned, I'm single, and usually cooking just for myself.  OK, myself and the fuzz bombs.  (Lest you get the wrong idea about how I feed my dogs, they really don't get a whole lot of people food.  I will, occasionally, give them some of the leftover protein, if it's lean, or leftover rice mixed in with their canned food.  And raw veggies, they love raw veggies...*ALL* raw veggies.  I give them a lot of raw veggies.  And cooked veggies.)  So, over the years, I've gotten very skilled at cutting down and adopting recipes so that I'm not over run with leftovers.  Because, you see....I really don't love leftovers.

Once I've filled a craving for something (and I'm usually very driven in my menu plannings by, "geeeee, I have a taste for....."), then I don't want it again for a good long while.  I certainly don't want it the next night again for dinner.  When I was working, I would take leftovers for lunch later in the week, or the next week, happily.  That never bothered me.  But having the same entree more than once in a week, or month even, just doesn't make me a happy girl.

Since I now have no outlet for "reusing" leftover, completed dishes, I've become very familiar with my freezer.  I have nice, labeled (!) and inventory-listed (!!) plastic containers with single-servings of gumbo, short ribs with a lovely gravy, lasagna, chili, and other goodies, waiting for that craving to strike again.  Baggies of cooked meat too, portioned out into one- or two-meal, amounts, also labeled and listed, live in the deep freeze, waiting to be called into action at a later date.  I also have trained myself to freeze the unused portion of a package of uncooked meat or poultry, if I'm not going to use it before it goes bad, again divided into amounts that I'll likely use at one time.

Sometimes though, as the saying goes, the best laid plans don't always work out.

The world's easiest oven-roast beef

A while back, after ruining one too many expensive pieces of beef trying to dry-roast it in the oven, I set out to do some research on the "Interwebs" to see if I could find a consensus about the best technique.

Oh.  Such conflicting theories. 

Start it low, then blast it on the highest heat you can get.

No.  NOT *that* way !  Start it in a jet engine-hot oven, then turn it way down and let it coast.

WHAT ?!?!  Heresy !  NOT *THAT* WAY !  Sear the roast first, then put it in a hot oven, then turn it down.

NO, dude !  Put the roast in a canvas bag, bury it under a full moon, chant over it for 3 nights, then dig it up and roast for a while.  Or a little longer.

OK.  I made that last one up.  But only by a little.

Now.  Just to be clear, I can cook a mean pot roast.  I've got the moist-heat/flavorful broth/long slow braise thing down just fine.

But the dry-roasted, well-seasoned, crusty, but still rare roast of my dreams eluded me.

Methods?  I tried all yer steenkin' methods.  I got, in various iterations, beef jerky, shoe leather, warm, bloody, mooing beef that, while The Girls appreciated it, their Mommydog, not so much.  What I was aiming for was nothing short of (drum roll please)...."The Perfect Prime Rib" (or sirloin, or tenderloin, or whatever...).  What I got, over and over again, was disappointment.

You know the feeling.  The "meet nice" first-date euphoria that fades into the realization that the guy lives with his grandmother and collects belly-button lint.  The "I love this new car smell" goes south rapidly into "crimeny....I'm spending $150 a week on gas".  The "day-um but these shoes make my legs look good" morphs into "I'll do anything to get these "*&$~+&#^" shoes off my feet....NOW".

Saving that yeast, or bread au natural

After I fully and whole-heartedly committed to bread baking, the next challenge I wanted to conquer was "natural" sourdough.  No added, commercial yeast, just whatever happens to hit from the air around the kitchen.

I love, love, LOVE sourdough bread.  The tang, the crust, the chew.  Just wonderful.  Of course (and I know there will be debate....) the best is from San Francisco.  Those little yeastie bugs up there are special.

Still, I wanted to give it a try down here in SoCal.  But all the methods I'd seen just seemed so....wasteful.  I'm single, and even though I'm a bread freak, it's all I can do to eat a loaf of homemade bread before it gets so stale even the scavenger pigeons outside don't want it.  And as I said, all the sourdough starter methods I'd found had you either using commercial yeast as a "helper" or discarding up to half your starter each time you refreshed it.  That just seemed wrong to me.  Plus the quantities involved were HUGE.  HUGE.  I'd have had to have cleared out my entire refrigerator to accommodate the starter.

Late last year, on a most wonderful website called "Serious Eats", there was a tutorial on sourdough starters, how to well, start them, cultivate them, use them and store them that seemed not only reasonable in terms of quantity, but pretty darned easy in terms of effort.

So I took the plunge, and started....(drum roll please)....."The B*tch".  (A sly, or not, homage to Anthony Bourdain in "Kitchen Confidential").  I started my starter (hmmmm, start the starter....grammar, much?) in December, and she's still alive and thriving.  She takes a little nap, now, pretty much all the time in my fridge, in a nice, sealed 32-ounce jar.  Once a month (and I have a reminder in my Outlook task list), she gets pulled out and fed.  Sometimes I use some for a loaf, sometimes she just gets warmed up, fed and sent back to cold storage.  But she keeps workin'.

Last weekend was feeding time in the little kitchen.  So while I had The B*tch pulled out, I decided to not only pull some starter for a pizza crust to stash in the freezer (always a good thing to have on hand), but also to make a loaf of bread.

Here's the starter in her little jar:

All nice and bubbly and active.  She'd been fed the day before I harvested some for the crust and the bread, and left to sit overnight.

Here's the preferment after an overnight rest (starter plus some new flour and water):

Again, nice and bubbly and active.  And, remember, there's ZERO commercial yeast in here.  Just starter, that *started* (there's that pesty grammar again....) out with nothing more than flour and water.  Just amazes me every time I do this.

So, you mix your preferment (rested overnight) with more flour (I used bread flour, the starter is usually all purpose) and water, a bit of olive oil and some salt, and knead until it's happy.  About 10 minutes in my KitchenAid.  Then you form it into a ball, and tuck it into an oiled food storage bag.  Tuck that into the fridge again overnight.

That's the only downside about the whole sourdough experience.  It does take some forethought....

After it's rested for a night (or 2) in the fridge, it's time to make bread (or for pizza crust, to toss into the freezer for future use).  Pull it out of the zippy bag, and form into a ball.  It'll look something like this...

before you take it out of the bag.  It grew !  And this....

after you dump it out.  Form it into a ball.  The best way to do that is to take your hands (floured lightly) and cup them around the edges of the dough.  Push lightly with the underside (pinkie side) of each hand in to the center of the dough, as you rotate it around, forming a ball.  A lightly floured counter helps.  After you've got a nice, fairly tight ball shape, turn it over, and pinch the edges of the bottom seam together, like this:
  

Then flip it over again, seam down, and repeat the cupping, rotating, pressure motion to ensure that seam will stay sealed.  Put it onto a baker's peel, or a flat sheet pan (or the back of a rimmed baking sheet) that has been dusted with corn meal, and let the dough rise until it's doubled.  Right before it goes into the oven, slash the top with a sharp knife or a single-edged razor blade.

Then slide it into a very well preheated 450° oven, onto a preheated baking stone if you have one.  If not, preheat another flat cookie sheet, or an inverted sheet pan, and slide the bread onto that.  The stone or the baking sheet should be on the middle rack.  Pour some hot water into another pan you've put on the bottom shelf of the oven, and close the door quickly.  Bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the loaf is around 200° (and it sounds "hollow" when thumped on the bottom).

Remove from the oven, and cool on a rack before tearing it open, slathering on that sweet butter and fleur de sel and enjoying.

Here's the baked loaf:

And the sliced bread, to see that lovely crumb and rise, all with, remember now.....NO COMMERCIAL YEAST!

Pretty cool, huh?

Here's the LINK to the cool, multi-step tutorial on "Serious Eats" which will take you to all the other steps in the process, as well as the original bread recipe.

And here's the link to Cookistry, which is the tutorial author's (her name is Donna Currie) own, most excellent and informative blog.  I think you'll enjoy that blog as much as I do.

Sourdough.  It's one of Nature's miracles.