If you enjoy Log Cabin syrup, here’s something to pour it on. This is a breakfast cabin, made with sausage links, bacon curtains, and a waffle roof. Please don’t eat the chimney. Or the curtain sashes. In general, I’d look out for skewers, toothpicks, and possibly some metal.
In the future, I’m sure pretty much all our food will look like this.
- Derrick Snyder
Since we’re on the subject of fun food, please let me point you in the direction of Jim’s Pancakes. Jim has figured out a great way to make artistic pancakes…by using a squeeze bottle filled with pancake batter! He adds a bit of food color at times to make pancakes that resemble, well, anything. Here’s a giraffe:
Giraffe Pancake
His daughter then eats the pancakes, which I’m sure works out great for her. Here she looks pretty psyched about her pink monster pancake.
Pink Monster Pancake
- Derrick Snyder
An engineer takes a crack at perfecting the PB&J. According to his post here, he says, ” The jelly spreads more than you think. The first bite may a have a little more peanut butter, but there’s still jelly in it. Try it some time.”
And so proudly forward strides human progress. Click on the picture to enlarge.
- Derrick Snyder
Here at Chez Alaska, we use a Yukon sourdough starter that has been passed down from person to person by Alaskans since the time of the Klondike gold rush. Drop us an e-mail if you’d like to buy some; we’ve dehydrated the starter culture, and it can be reconstituted in a flash.
This past winter I did a bit of experimenting with sourdough, and breads in general. In particular, I tried to replicate the flavor and texture I associate with San Francisco-style sourdough. The flavor has a very pronounced tang, and the crust is chewy and pliable, with an almost bagel-like shine, and bubbles. I think those little bubbles are key. The interior, or crumb, is rather dense, and has a heterogenous character, holes of all different sizes.
Local supermarkets make sourdough in their bakeries, but I think for the most part, these supermarket bakeries now just thaw frozen dough rather than making their own from scratch. (I’ve visited institutional bakeries where almost everything, breads, pies, cookies comes in pre-made and frozen, and the baker’s prep work essentially consists of opening hundreds of boxes from a giant freezer.) Often this kind of sourdough is as light and airy as french bread. Seems like they just added tangy chemicals to their basic french bread/baguette dough, and called it a day. Maybe they throw in a small amount of real sourdough culture so they can label the product as sourdough.
My own initial attempts with sourdough breads turned out extremely dense, with homogenous hole structure, and hardly any discernible sour flavor. By switching from all-purpose flour to unbleached bread flour, I got a lighter, better rise and better hole structure. Unbleached bread flour has more gluten than almost any other flour, and the gluten is responsible for the rise. All whole wheat flour produces a sourdough that’s almost as dense as pumpernickel.
To increase the tangyness, I tried increasing the rise time, from 2 hours to 5, and that helped a bit. What worked even better was to make a pre-ferment with the starter and half the amount of additional flour, and then let that wet mixture work for a few hours, then let it rise in the refrigerator for a half day or more. Then I would add the rest of the flour and the salt, knead it into a good dough ball, and let that rise for a few more hours. So basically we’re talking a two day procedure, minimum. This also helps the crumb develop different-sized holes, rather than coming out like Wonder Bread.
Sourdough starter is a culture of many different wild microorganisms, mostly yeasts and bacteria. The tang comes from bacterial acids, primarily from lactobacilli, which are used for making yogurt, cheese and kimchi, and Acetobacter and other acetic acid bacteria, used for making vinegar. Enzymes already present in wheat flour break starch down into simple sugars, and the yeasts convert the sugars into CO2 gas and alcohol. Lactobacillus converts sugars into lactic acid, and Acetobacter converts alcohol into acetic acid. Refrigerating the dough inhibits lactobacilli more than the other microorganisms, leaving more sugar for the yeast, and producing more alcohol. This in turn encourages the production of more acetic than lactic acid; and acetic acid is much tangier. Letting the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator will help produce a stronger sour flavor. I suppose some people prefer sourdough that has less tang, but I figure if you’re going to go for sourdough, you might as well go all in. In either event, a very tangy sourdough bread when toasted, beats all other breads hands-down.
Longer proofing times are great, but it’s possible to overproof. When that happens, the yeast has consumed most of the available sugars, and is on a maintenance diet. Starch is still continuing to be enzymatically converted into sugar, but a a constant rate. But the dough needs to contain some free sugar for it to spring in the oven. When the dough hits the hot oven, the heat initially turbocharges the yeast into super-activity, causing the spring, or oven rise. Later, the heat kills the yeast and crusts the bread, fixing its final shape. But if the dough has overproofed, it won’t spring, and will remain very dense.
King Arthur has a solution for achieving extra tangy sourdough by adding citric acid. The recipe is here. Powdered citric acid can usually be found in the baking section of the supermarket, or sometimes in the health supplements section.
In order to get that shiny, pliable crust, you need to use a spray bottle of water, and mist the oven when you toss in the bread, to increase the humidity. Some people also place a pan on the lower shelf, and after preheating, fill it with ice or water when putting the bread in the oven.
Peter Reinhart illustrates this technique beautifully. If you’ve never heard of Peter Reinhart, he’s pretty much one of the reigning gurus of artisanal (AR´-tizz-i-nul) breads. He’s also a former monk, which is kind of cool. There are some other videos of his here, which are very informative.
He’s using a baking stone here, and has had his oven preheating for probably an hour at its hottest temperature, then he probably turns it down to 400°F or so when he slides in the bread. The baking stone will quickly transfer its heat into the dough, creating a good spring. He has let the bread rise on pieces of parchment paper to facilitate transfer to the stone, and he uses the back side of a baking sheet in lieu of a peel.
A baker's peel.
Another baking tool you might consider getting is a baker’s blade, or lame (lahm). That’s what you use to make the characteristic slashes on the top of a bread loaf. The razor blade in the lame works better and faster than a serrated-edge knife, which is the next best thing. The purpose of those slashes is not primarily decorative — the bread will crack open somewhere, and by using the lame you can control where that occurs. Especially when using a stone, the loaf can develop cracks near the bottom edge, which can cause the bottom of the loaf to become too dry.
A lame.
Edit: A friend writes that commercial bakers probably use a starch glaze to get the sourdough shine. Make a very thin glaze of 1 tsp. cornstarch and 1/4 c water, and brush on the loaves for the last 10 minutes of baking.
- Derrick Snyder
A mayonnaise cure is essentially a marinade. Seafood or other foods are coated with a mixture of mayonnaise and other seasonings, and then baked or grilled. Mayonnaise is basically oil emulsified with raw egg yolk, a powerful binding agent. This emulsified fat mixture transforms during cooking into a sort of glaze, and it helps to keep moisture in the fish as it cooks. Used as a thin coating, it is almost invisible on the finished product, or used thickly, becomes a kind of sauce.
A simple mayonnaise cure involves mixing mayonnaise with fresh herbs, crushed garlic, dijon mustard, and/or lemon juice and zest. All those things together actually works out quite well.
Simple Mayonnaise Cure
This makes enough for 4 8-oz. fillets. Rub the mixture onto deboned fillets and bake or grill.
Depending on the type of cuisine you are cooking, you can easily whip up a compatible mayonnaise cure. For Asian cuisines, a mixture of 2 parts mayonnaise with 1 part soy sauce is a real winner. Or like this:
Oyster Sauce Mayonnaise Cure
.
A decent southwestern chipotle marinade:
Chipotle Mayonnaise Cure
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The mayonnaise cure is the basis for a family of rather rich baked fish recipes involving bread crumbs and/or parmesan cheese in or on top of a mayonnaise coating. Sometimes mayonnaise is mixed 50/50 with sour cream, sometimes it is mixed with parmesan and/or sliced green onions. Often this mixture is layered thickly on fish fillets, and then topped with bread crumbs before baking. The queen of such recipes is Halibut Olympia, of which many versions exist, but here’s a good basic one.
Halibut Olympia
Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut halibut into entree size portions – approximately 3×4 inches. Place halibut filets in single layer in buttered baking pan. Combine sour cream, mayonnaise, green onions, bacon, garlic powder, salt, pepper, basil and thyme. Cover halibut with sauce and top with bread crumbs. Bake at 400°F for 18 minutes. Remove from oven and top with Parmesan and return to oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. It should be white and moist. Serve hot with rice pilaf and a green vegetable.
Some Halibut Olympia recipes are much simpler than this. An older Alaskan recipe, which appears to predate Halibut Olympia, comes from Pelican, a small fishing community near Juneau. This is Halibut Caddy Ganty, named after its creator, Caddy Ganty. This recipe is unique in that it calls for first marinating the halibut in white wine, before rolling in bread crumbs, and then topping with the mayonnaise mixture.
Halibut Caddy Ganty
Take two pounds of filleted halibut cut into pieces approximately 1″ thick and 3″ x 3″, and put into a bowl, lightly salting and pouring wine over each layer until the fish is all in. Cover the fillets, and set in a cool place to marinate for two hours.
Drain the fillets and pat dry with paper towel or cloth, then roll in dry bread crumbs. Place the crumbed fillets in a single layer in a lightly buttered baking dish which can be brought to the table, and cover with the following topping:
Mix sour cream, mayonnaise and chopped onions and spread thickly on top of the fillets in the baking dish, smoothing it out to the edges so the fish is covered completely. Sprinkle the top with paprika and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until light brown and bubbly and an instant reading thermometer reads 125 degrees in the thickest part. Serve at once.
I think the soaking in wine part comes from an effective practice for refreshing previously-frozen halibut (or other seafood). Fish which is just past its prime of freshness naturally begins to acquire a fishy odor, and when the odor is still slight, it can be removed by washing the fish in a slight acid solution, such as with lemon juice and wine. Fish which has been frozen has an additional problem, in that the fats may have started to degrade and become slightly rancid. Also, both the fat and the flesh can become freezer-burned. The best way to combat this is to skin the fish, and carefully cut away all the slighty brown parts, which are fat, and also any parts that have been exposed and which are freezer-burned….and then soak the fish for an hour or two in white wine, then wash with lemon.
Now, you should never accept fish from a fishmonger if it smells fishy, and never accept it if served to you in a restaurant. But interestingly, fish that smells a bit fishy is perfectly safe to eat. The initial fishy smell is caused by natural enzymes in the fish breaking down the flesh, not by bacterial decomposition. Bacterial decomposition occurs later, and smells different, like rotting fish, hmm, what a coincidence. Fish degrades much faster than the meat of land animals because the enzymes in fish flesh are designed to operate at very cold temperatures. When the fish warms up even temporarily to above 40°F or so, the enzymes become super-active, and start denaturing proteins like mad. That’s why fish should be cold held at as close to 32°F as possible, such as when packed in ice, and why it seems to spoil so quickly, even when refrigerated at 40°F.
- Derrick Snyder
All nuts are pretty good plain, roasted and salted, but if you want to add more seasonings to them, it becomes a bit problematic. You don’t get good adherence; seasoning ingredients tend to fall or drip off the nuts onto the roasting sheet and burn. That’s not too much of a problem in some cases, for instance in Nigella Lawson’s recipe for roasted nuts:
Union Square Bar Nuts
1.Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas mark 4.
2.Toss the nuts in a large bowl to combine and spread them out on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven till they become light golden brown, about 10 minutes.
3.In a large bowl, combine the rosemary, cayenne, muscavado sugar, salt and melted butter.
4.Thoroughly toss the toasted nuts with the spiced butter and serve warm. And once you eat these, you will never want to stop.
This is a great recipe, and a great method for sticking the ingredients to the nuts, but it can be a bit greasy. Also, for all its goodness, this recipe only provides a light seasoning.
If you want to go bigger and bolder, you need a glue, and that glue is beaten egg white. If you use just enough egg white to hold the seasoning ingredients together, it will fuse them in a crisp coating to the surface of the nuts. Too much egg white, and the seasonings will drip off the nuts, and just burn on the pan.
An excellent example of this method is the recipe for Savory Roasted Almonds at Sprouted Kitchen. This recipe uses fresh thyme and parmesan, and makes the kitchen smell wonderful.
Savory Roasted Almonds
The spice measurements here are pretty moderate, if you like it spicier or love lemon for example, adjust as you desire. I know the sugar seems a bit out of place here, but it helps with the crust. Also, because ovens are all a bit different, test them after the recommended time. Note that they will dry out and crisp up even more once they cool out of the oven.
Oven to 275′
1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil. In a bowl, or pestle and mortar, add the thyme, red pepper, oregano, garlic powder, black pepper, lemon zest and sugar together. If you have a pestle and mortar, grind all of the spices together to break them up a bit. You won’t get much of a paste, but the thyme should break down a bit and the red peppers will get smaller. Otherwise, the back of a heavy spoon will suffice as well.
2. Whisk the egg whites until frothy (about 2 minutes). Add the almonds, and fold them over to coat. Add the spices mixture and mix again until they seem evenly distributed.
3. Spread the nuts out on the baking sheet and give them all a very generous grind of sea salt. Sprinkle half of the parmesan evenly, and toss to coat. Make sure the nuts are spread in a single layer, and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the nuts. At this point, I added a fresh grind of black pepper all over, but that is your choice.
4. Bake in the middle rack for 25 minutes. Remove to cool completely before serving. And a final little dusting of parmesan when they are hot out of the oven never hurt anyone either.
Note that you’re using a low temperature here, 275°F. The longer cooking time helps dry out the egg white. Also, as noted above, nuts roasted this way need to cool completely to become crisp. When warm out of the oven, they are a bit chewy.
Recipes such as the above two should work well with most kinds of nut, or a mix of nuts. Obviously pine nuts are much smaller, and would need to be watched very carefully.
If using walnuts, it’s best to soak them for several hours or overnight. This will leach away a lot of their bitterness. Start in a batch of very warm water, then let it cool gradually. Before using in a recipe, drain, pat dry, then dry at low temperature in a 200ºF oven with the oven door cracked open.
Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in northern Italy. The word comes from the Latin pesta, meaning to pound or crush, the same root for the English words pestle and paste.
Pesto alla Genovese is made with 5 ingredients: fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, grated hard cheese and olive oil. The cheese is parmigiano reggiano or sometimes pecorino romano. Sometimes parsley is added. Pesto is best used raw, or tossed with hot pasta yet not cooked itself. Cooking (or drying) destroys much of the aromatic quality of basil. Although basil is widely used in cooked dishes, when used raw, the flavor and aroma are much brighter, almost anise-like. Pesto is used as a sauce in lasagne, on pizza, and in other cooked dishes, but it’s best at room temperature.
Pesto alla Genovese
2 c packed basil leaves
5 large garlic cloves
1/2 c pine nuts, toasted
1 c grated parmesan
3/8 c olive oil
You can use a mortar and pestle or a food processor. A blender won’t work well with this thick of a paste. A mortar and pestle will yield a pesto with a crushed, more interesting texture, as you can see in the picture above, rather than a smoother consistency. Anyway, employing either method, you start with the basil and garlic, then after those are pretty mashed up, add the pine nuts, mash, then the cheese, mash, and finally the oil. Obviously, you don’t want to put the oil in first if using the mortar and pestle, because it will just slop around. But even with a processor, it’s best to add it last; if it goes in with the basil and garlic, it will emulsify quickly, then by the time you add the cheese and nuts, the paste will be thicker and more glue-like. Instead, start without the oil, and keep stopping the processor frequently to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. When the oil is added at the end, the sauce should be almost creamy.
The salty, hard cheese will probably provide enough salt, especially if paired with pasta cooked in heavily-salted water. But you can add a little salt to taste. Also, a little fresh cracked, toasted pepper is nice. Chile-heads might want to add some hot chiles, even though that would be entirely not traditional; if you must add chiles, I’d recommend using fresh green, hot chiles, such as serranos, rather than dried red chiles or red prepared sauces.
It’s important to toast the pine nuts. This gives them a deeper, more intense flavor. As a rule, I think nuts should always be toasted, even if they are going to be used in a cooked item, such as chocolate chip cookies. Walnuts are a good variation, or pine nuts and walnuts ½ & ½. Other common variations are walnuts, almonds or cashews. All toasted.
Fresh lemon slices are a nice garnish for pesto pasta. Some people add a little lemon juice to the pesto, instead. You could add the juice of a whole lemon to the above standard recipe. You might then need to add a little more salt to balance. This is not a good variation if you plan on storing the pesto, as the acid will discolor the basil (1 day) and eventually change its flavor as it pickles(2-3 days).
Anchovies are an excellent addition. The best pesto I’ve ever had was made with anchovies, and had been allowed to mature at room temperature for several hours before serving. Three or four fillets should be enough for the above recipe.
Parsley is a traditional addition. Italian flatleaf is much preferred, because the flavor is different; flatleaf has a flavor slightly similar to orange zest.
Pesto rosso, red pesto, is Sicilian, and is made with sun-dried tomatoes, only a small amount of basil, almonds instead of pine nuts, plus hard cheese and olive oil. Here’s a fantastic version of pesto rosso that also includes oil-cured black olives, fresh rosemary, and a bit of balsamic vinegar. This pesto can change your life, and it improves everything it is spread upon.
Pesto Rosso
10 whole sundried tomatoes, packed in oil
5 cloves garlic
about 20 oil-cured black olives, pitted
1/2 c almonds, toasted
1/4 c chopped, packed fresh rosemary
2 tsp sugar or honey
1/2 tsp dried red chile flakes
1 tsp freshly toasted, crushed black pepper
1/2 c olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar, or sherry vinegar
Puree all, add oil and vinegar last. Although this pesto rosso includes vinegar, it stores better than basil pesto, and even cooks up better. A nice variation here is to substitute part or all of the sun-dried tomatoes for roasted red peppers.
An amazing quick sauce for pasta (or for dipping bread) can be made by first caramelizing a mess of onions, deglazing with wine, then adding some pesto rosso, and finishing with a couple pats of cold butter.
Nowadays, there are a thousand new, trendy pesto recipes to be found. It’s easy to make your own. You can follow a basic template, and then branch out from there. Start with five ingredients. You’ll want:
1) A fresh herb: basil, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, mint, cilantro, dill, thyme, etc., etc.
2) A member of the Allium (onion) family: garlic, shallots, leeks, scallions, red onions, sweet onions, elephant garlic, smoked onions, smoked garlic, roasted onions, roasted garlic, etc.
3) Nuts: pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamias, peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame, etc.
4) Cheese: parmesan, romano, dry jack, sap sago, asiago, myzithra, cotija, Jarlsberg, fontina, Gorgonzola, chevre, cream cheese, etc.
5) Oil: I would recommend olive oil for most combinations. However, if working with Asian flavors, olive oil may seem cloying, so I’d recommend peanut, soybean, canola or sesame (and maybe leave the cheese out).
- Derrick Snyder
One more link to Luxirare, this time a very original take on parfaits. Luxirare is a weekly web magazine of cooking and fashion, and has great photography.
There’s a new subfield of cuisine called molecular gastronomy, that deals with creating dishes employing the latest advances in food chemistry. Much of the innovation is textural, such as the creation of stable foams or ketchup chocolate. The test kitchen chef at Luxirare is obviously a fan.
The cool thing here is that the chef has come up with a way to make ‘caviar’ liquid-filled balls out of any liquid. The process involves adding sodium alginate (a thickening agent) to the liquid of choice, and then dripping the liquid into a calcium chloride solution. The liquid forms pearls as it drops. The calcium salt solution reacts with the alginate, forming a thin but stable shell around the ball of liquid. When you eat these, they go pop-pop-pop like fish eggs. What’s even cooler, this process seems doable at home, given some time, practice, and those two special ingredients.
The parfaits are assembled using various flavors of liquid caviars layered with complementary flavors of yogurt and granola. The blue liquid used here is Hpnotiq, a trendy liqueur made with vodka, cognac and tropical fruit juices. A real show-stopper, with endless possibilities, both sweet and savory. Pull this off at a picnic or catered event, and people will think you are some sort of wizard!
Here’s a very impressive take on a crab salad at Luxirare. The salad is carefully enclosed in avocado, and then coated with a mixture of crushed seeds. P.S., if you try this, you might want to season your salad with a bit of your favorite dressing before wrapping.
Actually, I was just as impressed by that seed mixture as by the composition itself. The seed mixture is a combination of pink peppercorns, dried edamame, wasabe sesami seeds, black sesame seeds and sunflower seeds all ground together with a mortar and pestle. Cool!
- Derrick Snyder
