The spinach we planted in March is starting to bolt, so I took that as an opportunity to yank most of it up and do something fun with it. We loves us some spinach pie here, so I made it the center of a warm day dinner (though it does need the oven, it’s better eaten once it’s cooled off a bit.) The haul from the garden also included bolting arugula, some lettuces, and a…
Category: Baking
Yesterday would have been my Mom’s 63rd birthday, and coming as it does on the heels of Mother’s day, it makes this time of the year hard to deal with. But I’ve got her Grandson to distract me, and watching him help me dig in the garden is as fitting a tribute as I can imagine. Our lilacs are out in full force, and the wet breeze yesterday was intensely perfumed with memory-inducing smells of…
I let Milo choose dinners this weekend, since I’m tired, and tired of fancy cooking after the exertions of the past week or so. My Dad is English, and when I was growing up he was allowed to make breakfast on Sunday in the full-blown tradition of his people: bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes, potatoes, and bread, all fried in the bacon grease. When I was an impoverished grad student in Chicago I would often make…
I’ve been tending to forget to make pre-fermented pizza dough the night before, so lately I’ve been using a much simpler (if less tasty) recipe that only takes about three hours to rise- though I do make it half white- half whole wheat for better taste and nutrition. Unfortunately, our tired-ass old yeast just didn’t have what it takes to make the dough light and bubbly. The end result was more like a really big…
Christine’s favorite: onion, olive, garlic, caper, and fresh mozzarella. The other one was pesto and dried tomato. The dough only had 2 hours to rise but it came out all right- still miles better than any purchased alternative. Half white/half whole wheat seems to work pretty well.
We had a few friends over, with a total of 5 more kids, because Milo wanted to have a pizza party. I made four: potato, (our almost very last) kale pesto & dried tomato (mixed with a bit of basil pesto and the endive-umeboshi mash) zucchini (our very last) and shiitake-guanciale (sautéed in a pan with garlic and parsely until nice and caramelized.) The last two were with homemade tomato sauce and local mozzarella. I’ve…
Christine is in Turkey for a week, so it’s just Milo and me which means I get to play around with healthy and refined versions of kid food to keep us both happy. Last night was a good example; I used the leftover mashed sweet potatoes and a chicken carcass to make a shepherd’s pie with a cornucopia of garden goodies. The chicken made a simple broth, while kabocha squash, carrots, onion, leeks, scallions, radish,…
Christine got some fresh cream from Juliette’s cow, so I pulled out the stand mixer and within a few minutes it was glorious butter. Washed, salted, and rolled in wax paper, it waited patiently for me to make another loaf of bread the next day. Homemade bread and butter with homemade grape jelly for breakfast- the apotheosis of simple, local, and delicious. My brother and I ate it together and remembered our Mother, who made…
So two mornings ago I started a pre-ferment for the same whole wheat recipe I made last time, intending to bake it in the Dutch oven for a better shape and crust. Come evening, lo and behold, we were out of white flour, and low on whole wheat. So I used rye to make up the difference and kneaded in the pre-ferment and let it sit overnight to develop further and end up like the…
This is a recipe from Bread that uses a pre-ferment for those of us too lazy to get our own sourdough starter going (and keep it going; they’re like pets once you have one.) I made one freeform loaf, and threw the other half in a pan so I could put the first one on the stone with the peel and then plunk the other down next to it. They crusted up pretty well, though…