This is more of a teaser post than an actual writeup. I just finished making a loaf of bread and I can't believe how easy it is! I recently bought the book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois after seeing it recommended on some food blogs. They took the traditional steps of bread making and turn it on it's head - simplifying the whole process. So I gave their method a try today and here are the results!
Here's a look of the crumb. It's a 30% whole wheat loaf:
The crust was really crackly and crusty (I used the dutch oven method of introducing steam). And the texture of the bread itself was amazing.
The book contains a lot of recipes for different variants of bread. But if you're just interested in the technique, they posted their 'master recipe' on youtube. You can watch it and try it out to see how easy it is!
I will follow up this post with a step by step guide. I'm just so excited about this discovery I had to post a teaser.
One of my friends recently gave birth to a new baby and I wanted to help them out by cooking a meal for them. I thought Boeuf Bourguignon would be a great choice as the mother have been craving red wine during her pregnancy and I thought the beef would be great with giving her iron.
Boeuf Bourguignon is a classic french beef stew where the meat is stewed in Burgundy wine. Instead of using Burgundy a good substitute is a nice Pinot Noir as they're made from the same grape. Burgundy wine is just a Pinot where the grapes are grown and bottling is done at the Burgundy region of France.
For the meat I used beef shank. This is my first time using beef shank but it was recommended by the butcher at whole foods when I asked for a cut with a lot of collegen. Meat with collegen are very fibrous and tough but when you slow cook them at low heat the collegen melts into gelatin which transforms the meat into something really tender. If you ever had Osso Bucco, it's made with veal or lamb shank.
This is most of the ingredients. Not pictured here is that I ended up adding 1 more cut of beef shank, some tomato paste, some garlic cloves, and demi glace.
First remove the beef off the bone and cut up into chunks.
Then I cut up the bacon into little strips which the french calls 'Lardon'. I threw it into my dutch oven and cooked on low heat to render out the fat. After most of the fat has been rendered out and the bacon is crisp, I took it out of the dutch oven and put it aside.
I seasoned the meat with pepper and then seared the beef in the bacon fat in batches. I didn't use salt as I thought there should be a lot in the bacon fat. Make sure you don't dump the whole pile in or you won't get the searing benefits.
After the meat is seared you can saute the mirepoix. Mirepoix is a combination of onion, carrots, and celery. I then added some tomato paste (maybe a tablespoon or so) and cooked it out on the bottom of the dutch oven. I then added a few tablespoons of flour and formed a roux with the remaining fat left in the pan.
I added a little bit of the pinot here and then deglazed the bottom of the dutch oven with it. Deglazing is where you use liquid to dissolve the fond that was created by searing the beef and browning the bacon. There is a lot of flavour in that fond and you're working that flavour into your sauce by dissolving it.
I then added the beef and bacon back into the dutch oven. I also added a bouquet garni by tying together thyme leaves and parsley stems. Also in the pot is a few garlic cloves, the shank bones, and a few bay leaves.
Finally I added enough of the wine to cover the meat as well as a several cubes of demi glace. Demi glace is veal stock that has been reduced by 3/4 so it's fairly concentrated. I happen to have made some previously and I store them in my freezer after forming them into little ice cubes.
Crank the heat and bring to a simmer. Then put the whole thing into a 275 F oven. Let it braise for 3 hours. When there's 1/2 hour left I sautéed the mushrooms in garlic butter and added it in. If you like pearl onions you can also sautée a batch of pearl onions in butter and added it in at the same time as the mushrooms. 1 tip here is while the stew is braising you can also put potatoes in the oven for a mash potato accompaniment.
Here's the finished product! Actually this is an old photo from a previous time I made this dish. For this batch I packed it all up and sent it to my friend. I did taste the meat before I packed it though and the beef shank just melted in your mouth after 3 hours of braising! If you're not a fan of wine it's ok. After cooking for 3 hours any sharp wine taste gets mellowed out a lot and you're left with a very rich sauce.
For the authentic version you can always consult Julia Child's version on youtube. In her cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", she describes the dish 'sauté de boeuf à la Bourguignonne' as "certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man".
Aiya I know I know, it's been a month and a half since my last blog entry. However I'm finding that food blogging is like new year's resolutions. If you fall off the wagon, don't give up. Just find a way to get that next blog entry in and move on from there.
I want to get more into bread making. I tried to make my own multigrain loaf before and it was a diaster. I thought trying pizza dough would be an easier way to break into making bread. Heheh get it? Break bread.
Ingredients
1 package of active yeast
1 cup of warm water
1 teaspoon of honey
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
First thing you do is combine the yeast, the warm water, and the honey. Let it stand and it will start to bloom.
What does it mean for it to bloom? The yeast will feed off the honey and stimulated by the warm water will activate. You can see bursts of cloudy gas pop up for about 10 min. It's actually quite interesting to look at!
Dump in a cup of flour, the olive oil, and the salt. Start mixing and then add a 2nd cup of flour until it starts pulling away from the side of the bowl. Then dump out on a floured countertop.
Here you can see the dough sitting in the third cup of flour on it. Basically you just grab portions of the dough, fold it over and using your palm of your hand press it down. Rotate the dough a bit and keep going until the dough feels smooth and elastic.
Form the dough into a little ball and then place in a greased bowl. Cover with a damp dish towel and place in a warm place for 40 min. I turned on the warm setting on my oven and then turned it off just prior putting the bowl in it.
Boom 3 times it's size. Pretty amazing isn't it?
Dump the dough back onto a floured countertop and flatten it down a bit. For little individual sized portions, divide the dough into 4 parts. Then roll them each into little balls. Put it back into the warm area. Here it is after the dough balls rose again.
Take one of the little pizzas and press it and stretch it down to form the pizza dough base.
For my first pizza I tried to make the classic italian Margherita. It's a very simple: sauce, buffalo mozzarella and basil. Put it on a cornmeal dusted sheet pan.
Bake in a preheated oven at 450 F for 10 min.
For my second pizza I tried to make it into a stromboli sandwich. The sandwich is basically a pizza folded in half.
My company had a baking competition today and I had to enter. I decided to go with a marble cake as it has been a special request from one of my co-workers for a long time now!
1 cup butter
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup plain yogurt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
3 tablespoons of cocoa powder
2 tablespoons orange extract
Orange and Black food colouring
First cream together the sugar and butter. I was using special jelly like orange food colouring which should be worked in earlier.
Beat in the egg and yogurt, then carefully fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt). Usually recipes tell you to mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients in separate bowls and then fold them together. I cheat but if you're not comfortable with baking cakes yet you should follow that method.
Divide the mixture in half and add the cocoa powder and black food colouring to one side, orange extract to the other side.
Carefully add the batter into a greased mold by spooning in a spoonful of each batter from both bowls.
It's tedious but keep working until you fill the mold. Then swirl it a bit with a knife.
Bake at 350 F for 50 min. Then let cool.
Flip it out on a cooling rack and spoon on a standard glaze. (2 cups of icing sugar mixed in a couple of tablespoons of water).
It ended up pretty good! The chocolate and orange flavours was subtle but there. And I won first place at work!
Woot! Another free evening. On the way home tonight I was racking my brain on what to make for dinner. It's fall and the weather starting to turn which makes me crave comfort food. Then I remembered watching a video online of Cat Cora demonstrating her chicken stroganoff that's supposed to be warm and comforting. Let's do it!
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, more if needed
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup minced shallots
1/4 cup Marsala
3/4 cup rich chicken stock or low-sodium stock
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon, plus 6-8 sprigs for garnish
1/4 cup sour cream
noodles or rice
Instead of buying boneless chicken thighs, there was a sale on drumsticks so I decided to go with that and do the deboning myself. The 5 chicken drumsticks costs $3.28 when a package of 6 boneless chicken thighs cost over $10. Plus you get the personal satisfaction of being able to exercise your butchery skill! The only thing about the drumsticks is that there are a lot of sinuous which is annoying to remove. Cut up the chicken into bite sized chunks, season, and then set aside.
Here's the rest of the "Mise en Plas" (Fancy French cooking term for prep). I basically sliced up some mushrooms and shallots and a 1/4 onion. The mushrooms and onions is not in Cat Cora's recipe but I had a leftover 1/4 onion I wanted to get rid of - and mushrooms is traditional in Stroganoff. I rip the leaves off some fresh tarragon and gave it a rough chop.
Heat up some olive oil and soften the shallots, onions, and mushrooms.
When the shallots, onion, and mushrooms are soft (around 5 min) create a well in the middle and throw in the chicken. The middle of the pan is the hottest so it's where you want the chicken to be. Your instinct is to start stirring it around but leave it to sear for a couple of minutes, then flip the chicken and sear the other side, and then you can start stirring it all together.
After you cook the chicken set aside.
In your pan, pour in the Marsala wine. Use your spoon to deglaze the fond on the bottom of the pan. Then pour in your chicken stock and reduce for a few minutes.
Stir in the dijon mustard and tarragon. After the mustard is disolved, throw back in the reserved chicken / shallots / onions. Then stir in the sour cream.
After you let it simmer for a few minutes (don't let it boil or the sour cream may split), you're done! Serve on some plain noodles. It was pretty yummy! The fresh tarragon was interesting. The herb gave it a bit of a different element that I'm not used to - but kinda acts as a counterpoint to the richness of the dish.
My church had a summer picnic this past Sunday and I struggled a lot with what I wanted to bring. So I decided to bring drinks! But it's not my style to just bring some store bought pop. I have to put my culinary spin into it. So I made strawberry syrup, home made unsweetened lemonade, home made unsweetened iced tea, home made simple syrup along with store bought club soda. The idea is that people can make strawberry soda by combining strawberry syrup and club soda, or strawberry freckled lemonade, or strawberry iced tea. For the non-strawberry people the simple syrup was for them.
Strawberry syrup is actually really easy. I saw it on a youtube video by Food Wishes' Chef John.
Take 2 lbs of fresh strawberries.
Then using a pairing knife cut out the green stems and quarter the strawberries.
In a pot with 2.5 cups of water dump in the strawberries and bring to a boil. Then simmer on low for about 15-20 min. Afterwards strain the strawberries out of the water. You'll see most of the colour gone from the strawberries. Dump in 2 cups of sugar, bring to a boil again, then simmer at medium for 5 min.
I then put the pot in a sink full of cold water to cool.
Then bottle up the syrup - yay you're done!
To make strawberry soda, fill a cup with about 1/3 of the way with the syrup and then fill the rest with club soda. It's refreshing and delicious!
This week on Masterchef we saw 'Ryan' the big villan get kicked off. I'm sure the show edited Ryan to be twice the jerk then he actually is but I got bought into the story they were selling and was happy to see him go. The pressure test that sent Ryan home packing was the 'Chocolate Lava Cake'. A Chocolate Lava cake is basically an undercooked brownie. Nice and chocolate cakey on the outside, warm chocolate pudding in the middle.
I did this for the first time at a friends place so it was kinda like a pressure test. I never got a chance to rehearse so it better come out great or I'll look bad!
Ingredients
4 Large Eggs
4 Large egg yolks
2.5 sticks of butter
6 tbs of sugar
7 ounces of dark chocolate
6 tbs of flour
8 tsp of cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp of vanilla
In a bowl prepare the 4 eggs and add the 4 egg yolks
Add the sugar. I have a little assistant to help me this time!
Beat the egg and sugar mixture until it becomes pale yellow in colour.
In another bowl, melt the chocolate and butter together. You can use a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter but I just stick it in the microwave at a low (defrost) setting. Mix together until smooth.
Mix together the melted butter/chocolate with the eggs. If the chocolate is really hot then you'll might need to temper it. But in my case the microwave only heated the chocolate just enough to melt and it wasn't too hot so I just dump it in.
Mix.
Sift in the flour and coca powder.
The sifting is to help prevent lumps in the batter.
Fold it all together gently. Don't overmix.
Ladle the batter into buttered ramekin
Clean the edges of the ramekins if any batter got spilled on it. Tap the ramekins on a hard surface to knock out any air bubbles and then place on a cookie sheet.
Cook in a preheated oven at 425 F for 13 min.
After letting it cool for 10 min run a knife around the edge.
Pop it out on a plate.
Dust with icing sugar and serve! I don't know if the picture shows it well, but you should be able to see the 'lava' ooze out. Maybe if I cooked it for 1 less minute it would be a little bit more runny.
My friends found the lava cake to be pretty rich tasting. One thing I figured out while looking at the recipe again is that I put in 8 tablespoons of coca powder when the recipe called for 8 teaspoons. That might have made the chocolate flavour too intense. I would definitely recommend serving it with vanilla ice cream to help cut the richness.
