Silver Case

I have a fancy oven, but I don’t know how to bake. Or moreover, I don’t understand baking science at all.  So last night I sat down with Alton Brown’s book on baking to get up to speed.  Very well written.  I at least have a grasp of how all the parts work now. (For instance:  what’s baking powder?  cream of tartar (acid) + baking soda (base) = gas = leavening. Double-acting just means two round of gas production, from two different acids that react at different heat levels). So I worked on two recipes today. One, a recipe for wheat-thin style crackers.  The other for regular bread.  The bread dough is still rising. (It called for using a starter, which I didn’t have, so I maybe don’t have as much water as I should in the dough)   The wheat thins are cooked and largely eaten.  I used high gluten bread flour and a helping of buckwheat flour. They have a hearty taste.  The recipe includes 50g of sugar, which makes the crackers taste nicer, however, I really wish I had included some salt directly into the dough.  Salt doesn’t stick on the cracker well by itself.  The only leavening was from water in the dough steaming.  Hard things?  getting it rolled 1/16″ thick.  I tried using the pasta machine, but it could not get a grip on the butter-slippery dough.  I was stuck with using a roller pin.  I found it easier to roll directly onto some aluminum foil.   Think next time I’ll add salt to the recipe as well as some herbs de provence, and maybe a bit less sugar.  

Woke up around 0600 today. Vestiges of jet-lag put me to bed early and wake me up early. It also makes me dinner-hungry at breakfast-time.

But boy, did I have a solution today.

Diced up a 3″ stub of Claypoole Bologna, courtesy of Dear Aunt Mary, browned it in a pan, then scrambled it soft with three fresh eggs. Concurrently I prepared a latte for myself and Matilda made me wheat toast. How absolutely dignified that was. Tasted phenomenol.

If you watch one Alton Brown ever, make it the “Egg” episode where he shows how to make scrambled eggs. (a pinch of salt, a small tbsp of milk, fold the egg over itself while cooking, and take it out when it still looks wet ["eggs that look done in the pan will be overdone on the plate"]) Such simple, accurate instructions.

I have about 80% of my bologna ring left.

I was browsing the cookbook section of Borders today. I saw they had a version two copy of my Alton Brown “I’m Just Here For the Food” book. I picked through it and saw his recipe for pressure-cooker chilli again.

There’s not much to it. He just cooks really nasty, tough, sinewy pieces of meat in a pressure cooker, so that it cooks really quick. (twenty-five minutes instead of six hours or whatever). Beyond that, there isn’t much recipe, and I dispute his lack of beans or tomato (except for what is in the can of salsa).

Anyway, so I went next door to Japanese grocery store Seiyu and bought the cheapest pieces of beef and pork they had (which weren’t all that sinewy or bad, frankly) and took it home.

I made a few variations:

• I did add a can of kidney beans
• I did add a can of stewed tomatos (in addition to a jar of medium salsa)
• I made my own proto-adobo sauce — about six cloves of slivered garlic and an onion, softened to a soffrito, and deglazed with balsamic vinegar, sherry vinegar, and cider vinegar.
• I made my own chilli powder from red chili flaked fried lightly in oil along with garlic and onion powder, a lot of cumin, paprika, cocoa, cinammon, and… that’s all I guess.
• I used a small can of Kirin rather than a mexican medium ale.

The thing Alton Brown goes on about the pressure cooker is that it cooks 2/3rds faster, just because it gets so hot. Ok great, but it doesn’t magically eliminate the principle of “carbon based food at really high temp burns.” Which is exactly what happened to me. I smelt a tinge of ‘burnt’ in the steam, so I quickly took it off the heat and vented it. Sure enough there was a quarter-inch of carbonized char on the bottom of the pot. Fortunately nothing stirred the pot, so it never mixed up with the food, so actualyl the rest of the chilli tasted great. But I am not sure what to do about this, I guess it means I need to cook with more water.

The beef tasted really soft and nice. It benefitted from the cooking. I think the pork was a little lean to begin with, so it tended to be drier and less pleasant, but was still totally edible. The thing that go me was the pressure cooker…

Anyway, verdict was cheap and good. Especially with some cheddar cheese and sour cream. It takes longer to cook than he implies because the pressure cooker takes a long time to cool down on its own, but still it can all be done in less than an hour, which is not bad for a non-hamburger-based chilli.

Here is some wisdom on scorching food in pressure cookers.  I cooked my stuff too hot. As well, it was a tomato based product (hard to do, they say) and I mixed in corn chips from the beginning, according to Brown’s recipe, which adds corn starch/flour, also advised-against by this guide.  Next time I’ll try less-brutal heat.

A while ago I tried to work toward  making ideal pizza.   I didn’t get that far.  Recently I watched an Alton Brown episode on pizza.  He advocated mixing the dough for fifteen minutes and then letting it rise for 24 hours in a refrigerator.  (Well, in that recipe. Apparently he’s published some other, different, recipes for pizza too).

I tried to follow his recipe today and it sucked.  His proportions made really really sticky dough. It needed way more flour than he called for.  Unfortunately I never got it floured enough and so I eventually just tossed it out as shit.

I was irritated by this because I had already prepared a nice tomato red sauce for it.  Following his cue, I made a standard soffrito of onion and celery and carrot, but then broiled it with the tomatoes, while I reduced the canned juice with some sherry, sugar, and spices into a thick syrup.   It makes a really nice sauce, I must admit.  Next time I’ll play with a roasting pan to try to make more carmelization.  Today’s preperation was too wet for much.

Anyway, I was pissed by this failure and brooding that I’d have to wait another round or more of twenty-four hours before I could try some more.  Then I stumbled onto a site I’ve seen before, The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza.  He talks about making a crust in approximately forty minutes.  I felt like giving this a shot.

I blended his recipe and alton brown’s.  I was low on flour, so i used the rest of the bread flour I had, and topped it off with mostly wheat flour (which should have some decent gluten content).   I used the alton brown technique of mixing it for 15 minutes to encourage gluten formation.  Once again the recipe made a too-wet dough, so i had to supplement with more flour.  The recipe said this would make enough dough for “two big pizzas” so I divided the dough into four.

Rather than a tedious blow-by-blow, what did I learn?

• Seems like lots and lots of rest for the dough makes a huge difference. The dough becomes much more plastic and elastic.  It turns out to be a painfully long time from start to finish to make the pizza.
• I need to work more on getting a thinner edge, I tied up too much dough around the edges, consequently the center could tend to thin.
• Keep the oven on max heat to cook the pizzas.  I forgot that last time I proved the metal pizza tray makes a crisper crust than the pizza stone.
• Maximize the gluten. Next time I will use “bread machine” flour, as it has the highest gluten content.  I’ll also mix it plenty long, and schedule nice long rests for it.  This ought to enable me to get closer to being able to toss the things so that they’re nicer and more uniform.

The sauce tasted very good, as did the mix of jack/mozarella/cheddar.   I cut thin slices of real pepperoni I bought in Sydney. It was nice.

The “humor” has never been a reason to enjoy Alton Brown episodes. It’s more been a reason to use the fast-forward button.  Tonight was an exception, however, and I found myself snorting in laughter at least a half-dozen times.

How was the food?  The chili recipe was interesting.

• Notable absence:  beans.
• Notable presence: a can of salsa instead of bothering to chop up lots of onions and peppers and tomatoes.
• Notably enviable ingredient:  having a variety of dried pepper species that he could heat with cumin seeds and blend grind into his own fresh chili powder.
• Notably odd ingredient:  crushed tortilla chips to serve a binder to the chili (rather than some Mexican variety of corn flour)
• Notable quick cooking time:  used a pressure cooker to cook the chili in 25 minutes rather than stewing the tough stew meat for “six to twenty-four hours in a dutch oven.”

I would like to make this, but the big problem is I simply can’t get all these beautiful peppers (ancho, cascabel, and arbol) to make the chili powder. (unless I find some in Sydney next week)

Watched an Alton Brown episode on Cheese while I ate a Cuban sandwich. The bread, very fresh Batard, was the best thing about the sandwich. I’m afraid I overcooked the pork so it was dry and doesn’t have much flavor.  Oh well, will try again. I bought “I’m Just Here For the Food,” so I think I will learn more about the right way to cook succulent pork loin.

This cheese episode was pretty lame.  It was a terribly superficial coverage of all the major cheese families.  Superficial at a useless level really.  Cheese is so deep a subject that I think it would be better covered in a series in they style of Floyd Uncorked.

Not a bad episode. Did enough to make me hungry even though I had my dinner already.  Cooked several different sandwiches and also gave some sandwich wisdom:

1. Soft fillings are best served on soft bread  This is true for things like egg salad sandwiches, which merely squirt out of a hard roll.
2. When using wet ingredients apply a moisture barrier to the bread (mayonnaise,  butter, cream cheese, or oil)  [butter? yuk. only in Britain]  I do hate wet bread (do you hear me, Subway?!?!), but the only “moisture barrier” listed there I could tolerate would be mayo, and in only small proportions.
3. Avoid placing slippery ingredients next to each other
4. Never use bread you wouldn’t eat on its own. Yeah, I think 40% of the sandwich is getting nice hard rolls that are soft on the inside. Easy to come by in the USA, not so easy in Singapore.  There is a lot of bad bread here.

I did not like  the French sandwich he made, a Pan-Bagnat.  The best description of it would be a Salad Nicoise packed into a hollowed-out French loaf.  It seemed like way too much filling (especially tuna and, urk, green peppers) and not enough bread.  I did like the vinagrette (add the oil slowly as you whisk so that it emulsifies) idea — reminds me of hoagies from The Pizza Pub.
The sandwich I am most intrigued by is called a ‘Cuban’ and it hails from Miami.  It’s a mix of slow-roasted pork from a citrus marinade with a dill pickle slice, provolone or swiss, mustard, and ham.  They heat it up in a sandwich press till it’s something of an ingot.   I may make myself a pork roast this weekend and try out this recipe.   Maybe I’ll have some decent pack lunches the following week.

I know Aunt She-She is dying to read my next review of an Alton Brown episode, so tonight while I ate a big plate of grilled asparagus, onion, and enoki mushroom, I watched an early season one Alton Brown episode, “The Egg Files.”

Nothing special… how to cook an egg over-easy, scrambled eggs, and an egg “curd” (lemon and egg custard). Fair enough, I guess I like at least the first two things. I’m not a huge fan of the fried egg recipe though. It requires flipping the pan. That might work if I got to practice on fifty eggs one afternoon, but I’m not so much of an ovophile(?) to bother. Anyway, I like omelettes, and I used Mastering the Art of French Cooking to learn that already.

Think I might skip ahead to a later episode and watch the chilli episode. Check back soon, She-She!

Watched Alton Brown’s episode on coffee, True Brew. The only reason it didn’t do much for me was that I am quite fond of coffee and have spent lots of time studying it already, so there was nothing new to me. But he did break it down into a process for making dependably decent coffee that would benefit most people.

I suppose he chose a manual drip over a french press because a french press is a bit of a mess which leaves (charming heh) silt in the brew. Most master roasters will say that french press is the best method. However, his drip looked pretty good, and he emphasized a trick seldom discussed: get your freshly-brewed coffee into a thermos FAST. Then is stays warm and doesn’t spoil.

I agreed with his brew time (4 minutes) and his rough ratio of coffee:water, an emphasis on lots of coffee:water. It will be LESS bitter because each grain of coffee suffers less extraction. The good stuff in coffee comes out first, and the bitter nasty shit comes out later. Extract as little from each grain as you can get away with.

Of course he kept his beans in an airtight container. Speaking of airtight containers, my mom bought me a small coffee bean bin that seals up and, unbelievably, manages to run small vacuum pump from four AA batteries for around two to three weeks. It really does make a difference. I would estimate it adds 20%+ to the bean’s shelf life. This is not immaterial with the expensive beans I pull from Tokyo or Sydney. I like this gadget much more than I might have expected.

My kitchen shelf has all the Jamie Oliver cookbooks. They’re dog-eared, stained, and used.   Jamie Oliver makes me hungry.  Every recipe has an attractive photo and alluring descriptions of its clean, simple ingredients.   There are few Jamie Oliver recipes that require too much technical ability. The few things that do (making risotto, raw pasta, pastries) he manages to describe well enough and describe a just-dumb-enough recipe that generally works.  His real magic is demonstrating time after time that simple, high-quality, fresh ingredients in a simple recipe is just as fast and tastes better than regular fare. He also repeatedly shows how simple, quality ingredients (olive oil, fresh herbs, real parmesan, etc) turn a routine dish into a memorable dish.

Nigel Slater has a similar approach.  He makes up for fewer sexy food photos by writing great prose. I enjoy reading his long recipe descriptions that tend to be more like essays or journal entries than a conventional recipe.  He emphasizes simple, fast recipes made from fresh, simple, pure ingredients.

The Reference is undoubtedly Mastering The Art of French Cooking.  This is The Seminal. Have a question? It is answered in beyond-amazing detai.  Have any western European dish in mind?  It has that recipe plus six variations.  Does it make me hungry? Never. It’s like a textbook. There isn’t a photo to be found, it’s all hand-sketched diagrams of butchering spatchcock chicken or rolling poulet bread.  This is very much a reference book to consult when you know what you want to cook.  It’s absolutely essential, but not inspiring. For instance, reading its sections on meat gravies was critical to me finally making a decent turkey gravy.  Learning how to cook beautiful crepes also came from its recipes and techniques. No one else comes close in explaining these things.

The latest food writer I’ve discovered [hat tip to RogerWarez] is Alton Brown, who is principally a TV host.  I downloaded all eight seasons of his “Alton Brown’s Good Eats” tv show from the Food Network.  He created a very unique niche in food programming.  He generally takes one dish or cooking problem, breaks it down into the technical theory behind it,  and then explains a very well-tested and effective solution for it.  It’s wrapped in vaguely loopy, tacky entertainment, but the core of his show is really good.  I really appreciate the level of technical accuracy he introduces to the cooking concepts.  Some of my best technical successes have come from him recently, including a deep fried turkey, barbequeued ribs, and king crab.   His cooking is very US-centric. These are foods we’ve generally all eaten but maybe have never prepared (for example corn dogs).

I have all his episodes but have only watched a small fraction. I’ve used them more like reference works when I need something in particular and if I am free I’ll watch others for inspiriation. (The episode about chili is beckoning me next).

I am sure my mom is wondering why I haven’t mentioned our perennial Everyone’s Friendly Uncle, Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet.