Month: November 2015

Impulse Radish, Eventual Black Bread

slice of borodinsky bread with butter, black radish, and salt
~ mary_m ~ 6 Comments

Last Saturday, I impulse bought a black radish. (These things happen in root vegetable season.) Once I had the black radish, I started day-dreaming about Russian Black Bread, slathered with butter, and topped with thin slices of black radish and some coarse salt, which someone once told me was the right and proper way to eat a black radish. The only trouble was I didn’t have any black bread and I didn’t know how to make it. All I had was a radish (well…, and some rye flour).

After a web search or two for black bread recipes, I found myself overwhelmed by options, so I also consulted a couple awesome friends with Eastern European roots. While neither of them had a family recipe handy, one did help me narrow down my choices. I decided to try something like this Borodinsky Bread, because I was hoping for something with 100% rye.

Over the next four days, I built up a rye sourdough starter. I mixed ~25g of rye flour with ~50g of room temp. water and let it sit out on the counter in a loosely capped plastic container, adding another round of flour and water daily. It started bubbling noticeably the second day. I was getting slowly closer to actually eating my radish.

When I had >270g of sourdough starter, I mixed my dough. (After which I realized the directions I was working from had skipped the step where you simply use ~50g of starter and add equal parts flour and water to make the required 270g. Oh well. Here is the much better description of the same recipe, which I found too late.)

Here’s how it went:

  • 270g rye sourdough starter
  • 230g rye flour
  • 5g sea salt
  • 5g toasted caraway seeds, cracked
  • 20g molasses
  • 15g sorghum syrup (original recipe used barley malt, but I happened to have sorghum so I tried it)
  • 90g water
  • butter for the pan
  • 5g toasted coriander, cracked

Combined everything but the coriander and mixed throughly, but not exactly kneaded. Proofed in a cool room (the basement in November) overnight. It, uh, didn’t rise much.

The next morning I buttered a small (1lb) loaf pan and put half the cracked coriander in it, shaking to get coriander on the sides and the bottom. I shaped the very, very sticky dough into an oval, more or less, and plunked it in the pan. Then I  wet my fingers and smoothed the top, then sprinkled it with the remaining coriander. Covered with a towel and let sit in a sunny spot on the kitchen counter for about four hours. It, once again, didn’t rise much. (I either need to work on my starter’s vigor or add yeast or simply decide that 100% rye bread is meant to be really dense.)

Baked at 400ºF for 10 minutes. Reduced heat to 350ºF and baked for 40 minutes more. Immediately flipped it out of the pan and cooled on a rack.

And then I (finally) had a slice with butter, salt, and radish, and it was pretty darn good.

Good News for Sidewalk Snackers

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My family doesn’t tend to eat as much fruit and greens by the side of the road here in New England as we used to when we lived in Berkeley (blackberries and sour grass everywhere), and I haven’t yet managed to join a local forage and can society*, but I was still glad to read this piece from Civil Eats saying that urban foraged food is, basically, fine in terms of contaminants and may even have more micronutrients than some produce found in a store. Maybe next spring (and summer and fall) I’ll forage a bit more.

*This exists! Which is awesome. We also, apparently, have foraging tours by David Craft, who wrote URBAN FORAGING – Finding and eating wild plants in the city, though no more events in 2015.

This Is Not Neil Gaiman’s Porridge (Overnight Oats)

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Neil Gaiman allegedly makes the World’s Best Porridge, which I thought I remembered was pretty much the way I make it, until I went back and read the recipe. Turns out I don’t really make it the world’s best way, though both Mr. Gaiman and I use butter.  My porridge may not be the best, but it’s pretty good and makes me happy on cold mornings, particularly on cold mornings when my spouse isn’t home to feed the kids breakfast, like tomorrow will. I am not good at feeding kids breakfast before I’ve had my coffee; it helps to have a plan.

I probably started making porridge this way in one of my spates of reading about Weston A Price. I’m not totally convinced that phytic acid is all that bad for me, but soaking grains, with or without whey, sure does make them cook faster in the morning, so I still do it.

Pretty Good Overnight Oats

  • 1/4 steel cut oats (or blend of steel cut and rolled or maybe even rolled something else like triticale) per person
  • some butter (~1 tsp per 1/4 cup oats)
  • some salt (a good pinch per 1/4 cup oats)
  • some optional whey or yogurt (~1.5 tsp per 1/4 cup oats)
  • 3/4 cup water per 1/4 cup oats
  • chopped fruit, nuts, maple syrup, brown sugar, cream, etc. for serving

The night before: In a saucepan that will happily hold the amount of oats you’re making, melt the butter over medium heat, then toast the oats in the butter until your kitchen smells like delicious oatmeal cookies. Turn off heat and add the salt, optional whey, and water. Cover.

The morning of: Bring to a simmer and cook until done, which shouldn’t take long (5 to 10 minutes), stirring occasionally. Serve with your favorite add-ins.

Tapas (or The Dangers of Telling Kids Things, Though Sometimes I Get Lucky)

~ mary_m ~ 2 Comments

Ever since my older kid found out about High Tea, he’s been (even more) intrigued about the different ways people eat. The other day we told him that people in Spain eat snacks around 5pm (aka after school time) and dinner really late. So, of course, he wanted to try it.

Tonight we had “appetizers” around 6pm and are planning on dinner at 8:30pm. (NB: there’s no school tomorrow.) Because we’ve stretched out the evening*, and because we shook up our routine, we were all much more relaxed and I found myself eating bluefish paté**, drinking a martini***, and listening to my spouse explain hexadecimal to two actually interested kids. Magic.

Now the problem is explaining why we can’t do this every night. (Or maybe figuring out how we can do it every night, though I suspect it would require siestas.)

*generally dinner is at 6:30, then there’s arguing about clearing the table, then one brief thing like a game, then arguing about getting ready for bed, then…

**apps menu: smoked salmon and bluefish paté from the farmers’ market, crackers, teeny pumpernickel toasts, cornichons, and blue corn chips (because kid the younger did not trust me to make the pumpernickel toasts the right degree of crunchy and wanted a back-up)

***because I’m extra lucky

Root Vegetable Pancakes (Which Are Kinda Latkes & Kinda Not)

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Ah, November, when New England thoroughly enters the long, dark time of root vegetable season. We’ve still got Brussels Sprouts at the market, but we’re also seeing more & more radishes, beets, potatoes, parsnips, and turnips and less & less of anything else. (No one except me, in my family, will eat a beet. Parsnips are only slightly more popular.)

So… what’s a a nice person who tries to eat local & seasonal (at least some of the time) to do? Enter the root vegetable pancake, aka these-are-not-really-latkes. They’re tasty! They can count as an entree for Meatless Mondays! Best of all, you can slather them with apple sauce and sour cream.

Basic formula:

~2 lbs shredded root vegetables, such as potatoes, turnips, parsnips, or even beets if you’re not in my house. I generally include some onion, maybe one small onion for every two lbs. of total veg. People who don’t like turnips will be happier if you use at least 1 lb potato and save the weird stuff for the other 1 lb.

1 egg

1/4 cup flour

salt and pepper

chopped herbs if you feel like it

oil for frying

Basic method:

Shred the veggies, then place them in a flour sack dishtowel or piece of cheesecloth and sprinkle with some salt (~1 tsp). Let sit for a minute or two, then squeeze out any possible liquid by twisting the veg. in the towel over the sink or a bowl. Squeeze hard.

Mix the now drier veg. with the egg and flour. Add pepper and chopped herbs to taste.

Fry (in ~1/4 cup rounds) in olive oil (or bacon fat if you’re really not going to call them latkes) over medium heat until both sides are medium brown and crisp. Keep warm in a low oven while frying the rest.

Serve with sour cream and apple sauce. Celebrate that you actually remembered to use your turnips.

For much more thorough directions of almost exactly this same thing, check out Food52’s How to Make Latkes Without a Recipe.

A Life Should Have Secret Plans*

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Surprise! I started a food blog.

I decided a few weeks ago, since I’m currently between paying gigs and November was approaching, that I should do something akin to NaNoWriMo. I even pondered doing the traditional challenge and pounding out a novel. Truth is, however, that all my novel ideas thus far haven’t because actual novels for a reason (or maybe multiple reasons). My spouse suggested a poem a day, but, while I actually do write poetry at times, a poem a day seemed a challenge that I was sure to fail at. Poetry is fickle, at least for me. I finalized my November goal as “Publish something every day in November. Twitter doesn’t count.” Then, I didn’t tell anyone, at least not at first. I wanted to have started the project before I announced it.

So here we are. My goal is one post per day in November, weekly posts thereafter. Anything related to food is fair game. If you’re reading this (and now someone might be, because I’ve started to admit this blog exists), please let me know what topics might interest you! Let’s see where this goes.

*Title stolen, with love, from A Softer World

Market Mornings, Roaming Kid

picture of pastries, turnips, salmon and mushroom growing kit
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My 7 year old and I have a new routine. For the past few weeks, we’ve gone to the local Farmers’ Market together, then to the café, every Saturday morning.

I’ve been trying to get my kids to enjoy going to the market with me for years. In California, land of grandmothers*, free samples, and pozole, they go happily. In Massachusetts, where it’s just Mom buying vegetables and occasionally relenting on chocolate or popsicles, it’s not as appealing. I finally discovered the secret formula, however – I get market tokens (which work as cash, but only at the market), hand some over to my kid, and let him roam independently. He finally loves it.

There’s one rule**: no sweets. It is amazing to me how well this works. He has happily come back to our rendezvous point with carrots, mushrooms, eggs, a decorative gourd, discount apples, and more. This week’s haul was a croissant, a ciabatta roll, a mushroom growing kit (specially budgeted for after he found out its price last week), smoked salmon, and two turnips. NB: He won’t actually eat the turnips; those he picked out for me. I am still charmed.

This is, for the record, a kid who is pretty darn choosy and restrictive about what he eats, a kid who has marked reticence regarding talking with strangers and trying new things. He politely waits in line, inquires about prices, and delights in his finds. He also ate smoked salmon for lunch. It’s great.

It may not last long, but I’m appreciating the heck out of it while it works, and tomorrow he said he’d help make potato/turnip pancakes, even if he doesn’t want to actually eat them.

*Two of their grandmothers that is. They also have grandmothers in Indiana and Oregon.

**One rule re: buying things that is, general rules such as do not run people over with your scooter and ask before petting someone’s dog also apply.

Chocolate Chip Cookies & Why I <3 Twitter

~ mary_m ~ 1 Comment

I love the Internet. Sure it’s distracting, bubble-prone, priority mangling, full of vitriol, etc., but it also facilitates conversations in ways that make my life richer, better informed, more connected, and more fun.

Yesterday, I was reading food articles on the bus, like ya do, and came across Food52’s article on Ovenly’s chocolate chip cookies – chocolate chip cookies that just happen to be vegan. I sent a link to my twitter account with one word “Skeptical”. Almost immediately, a couple friends replied that they were going to try it (for science!). Because sometimes peer pressure is great, I decided to try it too. (I even almost followed the recipe! I added 1 tsp of vanilla though. Couldn’t help myself. Oh, and I scooped them smaller so the recipe yield was 25 rather than 18.)

Results:

Friend the First concluded that while these are definitely chocolate chip cookies, they are not chewy enough for her (probably due to the lack of egg). (I haven’t yet heard from Friend the Second.)

I baked the first dozen of my 25. They are… OK. I miss the depth of flavor they’d get from butter and I don’t love how crumbly the dough is (probably due to lack of egg). They also didn’t spread as much as I’d like, so for future batches I think I’ll squash them a bit before baking. I’d definitely make these for office parties, so vegan compatriots could have a tasty dessert that just happened to be vegan. For myself, though, I’ll stick with Toll House, letting the batter rest overnight whenever I manage to plan that far ahead.