Good Real Food

I thought I should post a quick update on the bread that I’d made earlier in the week, the standard no-knead recipe with about 1/4 cup of old dough added from a previous batch.

The results:

• definitely better flavor - just a hint of sourdough-ish tang.  Not quite sour enough for my tastes, but definitely better.
• Wetter dough for some reason.  One of my chief complaints about this recipe is that the measurements are given in cups, not by weight.  There’s been so much variability in moisture here lately that only once have I hit what I thought was the right hydration for this recipe.  I suppose that means that I need to break out the notebook and start taking notes and adjusting till I figure out what the correct weights are.

The actual baking continues to be a bit of a problem since I don’t have one of those fancy pots that the recipe recommends.  That will be solved shortly since I ordered a cast iron dutch oven (from Amazon, I know, I know, but it was really inexpensive) that should be arriving next week.

My present baking solution involves unglazed ceramic tiles on the top and bottom racks.  The bread goes in the bottom rack, I spray the heck of the inside of the oven, and sometimes include a cast iron pan full of water as the oven’s heating, etc.  Sometimes I hit the sweet spot and get some serious loaf height.  Other times, I get really tasty but kind of flat bread

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So this weekend I decided to experiment with collard greens and a version of a Jamaican Pattie I that I found at a Saint Paul restaurant West Indies Soul. The Collard greens I adapted from a New York Times magazine recipe and served them at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. They were such a hit that they instantly became a family tradition. Since then I have made them a few times with some variations. I cut out the timely sauce reduction for this version. You can use diffferent kinds of stock, omit the ham or meat altogether, add cut up sweet potato etc. 

 Collard Greens

• 1 pound collard greens, cleaned and stemmed
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup country ham*
• 2 tablespoons minced shallots
• 1/3 cup sherry or red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup pork stock**
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Chop greens (see photo) and blanch in salted boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain, refresh in cold water and squeeze dry.

2. Heat oil in a large pan. Saute ham and shallots. Deglaze pan with vinegar and stir in honey. Add stock and bring to a simmer.

3. Add collard greens and simmer until tender, 10-15 minutes.

*use the meat from the ham hocks if making your own pork stock or use store bought veggie, pork, or beef stock. All are good.

** To make pork stock cover two to three ham hocks with 4-6 cups of water for about two hours, or until it tastes right to you.

Jamaican Patties

You can make these with a variety of fillings. The ones in the picture above are made with ground beef spiced simply with garlic, fresh ginger, salt and pepper. Try a vegetarian option made with onion, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, red bell pepper, red chilies, sweet potatoes and corn.

 I adjusted the pastry to include yeast rather than self rising flour and used less butter than recepies I found. This makes it a bit more like a Jamaican calzone as the dough resembles pizza dough more than a pastry, but it still tastes delicious.

 For the pastry:

1 cup all pupose flour

1 tablespoon yeast

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 1/2 teaspoons tumeric

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 stick-1 stick butter chilled and diced

Chilled water as needed

1. Warm bowl with warm water, put yeast in bowl, add a bit of warm water, a spinkle of sugar and let sit for a few minutes until foamy.

2. Sift together flours, tumeric and salt into the yeast foam and stir.

3. Rub in the butter withtyour fingers until it evenly distributed.

4. Mix in enough cold water to gather the mixture into a soft, pliable dough. Shape quickly into a ball. Do not overhandle. Cover with a damp cloth and let it sit in a cool place for 30 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 375F. To make the patties, divide the chilled pastry into small portions and roll them out on a lightly floured board. Place cooled filling in the rounds as shown, moisten the edges of the pastry with water and seal them shut with the prines of a fork.

6. Lightly greese and flour a baking sheet and arrange the patties about 1 inch apart on the sheet. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown.

 These are great hot or cold. I have found the to make excellent snacks!

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Recipe: Bucatini With Raw Nut Pesto and Tomato Sauce (Bucatini alla Lipari) - New York Times

special thanks to redfox at Hungry Tiger for the pointer - I’ve long been a fan of pasta with nuts, garlic, and cheese, but this recipe brings those ingredients together in a whole new way (for me).  Definitely trying this soon.

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mixed this up this am, it rises while I’m at work so I can shape and bake when I get home.

As you might guess, this is another mix of the no-knead bread that’s been working its way through many kitchens around the country?  world? via those wonderful tubes on the Inkernets.

Variations for this loaf: added about a 1/4 cup of old dough saved from the last batch - kept it in the fridge and it smelled nice and ripe when I dumped it in this AM.

Theoretically, old dough could be all the leavening this loaf needs, but I didn’t take that chance and added the measly 1/4 tsp of yeast the recipe calls for.  Mostly, the old dough went in to see how/if the flavor is improved.

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Mushroom Alchemy from Toast looks fabulous and if I read the recipe correctly, vegan too.

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read this

and not just the first paragraph or anything, read the whole thing, then consider a gut check about your food choices, okay?

And to be clear here, I’m not making any value judgments, I’m just saying that avoiding a deep look at what you eat and where it comes from is deeply dishonest.  Eat what you want, just make sure you’ve got a really good idea of the full cost of what you ingest.

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not as strange as you’d think - if you like kimchi, give it a try

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wisegeek.com has a very interesting page showing what 200 calories worth of a variety of foods actually looks like - each of the foods has been photographed using the same setup:  same camera, on the same plate, etc.  You get a really clear picture of how different foods relate to each other while also getting some insight into how meals add up to differing calorie totals.

I’m not suggesting that you use the photos to decide what to eat, but if you’re trying to make good food choices and reduce unneeded calories, this kind of visualization really helps.

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Lunch for two carnivores and one (mostly) vegetarian:

If you follow the link, flickr will show you that, clockwise from top left, my family is eating pepper and parmesan pasta with sausage and kale; brown rice, sausage and kale; and kimchi, brown rice, and kale.

So, why do I post this? Well, for one, a blog just isn’t all that bloggy without something written on it. Mostly though, I was putting away dinner and making lunch for tomorrow and saw that things had worked out as I’d hoped and planned - we’d eaten what I thought we’d eat, so had adequate leftovers which got remixed with some items from last night and became lunch for tomorrow.

And a good lunch at that - looking at it, I felt pretty good about what my family was going to be eating tomorrow afternoon - my wife has the carbs to keep her going through the afternoon with some veggies and protein thrown in to fight off late afternoon hunger pangs, my daughter has the brown rice and kale that she requested (and how cool is it that she likes brown rice and kale?), along with some more of the sausage that she wolfed down tonight, and I get a nice healthy vegetarian meal with a bit of kick added by the kimchi.

Anyway, I promised recipes, so here’s how we generally do kale around here - from start to finish, about 20 minutes.

What you need:

• one or two bunches of kale (with my daughter’s growing appetite, I now do two for the three of us)
• a few garlic cloves, chopped
• salt and pepper
• optional: red wine vinegar/veg or chicken stock

What you do:

1. using your hands, tear up the kale into roughly bite sized pieces. Discard any stems that feel woody and/or larger than you want to try to deal with. Depending on the kale, I sometimes just strip the leaves from the stems and think long and hard about saving the stems for veg. stock before tossing them since to be honest, I don’t know when I’m actually going to have time to make my own vegetable stock.
2. Wash and dry the kale, and set aside.
3. Chop your garlic.
4. Take a large pot with a lid and heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.
5. Once the oil is hot, add in your garlic and saute till the garlic just starts to color - maybe 2 minutes.
6. Add in all of the kale and cover the pot.
7. Wait a minute or two.
8. Open the pot, stir the kale round rotating the wilted kale at the bottom up to the top of the stack. Cover again.
9. Wait another minute, and when you open it this time, think about whether you want to add some water or stock to the point to give it a bit more liquid to cook the kale with. If you decide that you do want some more liquid, add a few tablespoons. Also make sure to salt and pepper the kale at this point to your liking. Also, check and see if the kale is cooked enough for you. If it is, you’re done. If not:
10. Cover and wait another minute or two. Check and see if the kale is done to your liking. If it is, you’re done, if not repeat step 10 till its cooked the way you like it.
11. Optional - add a teaspoon or two of red wine vinegar at the end and give it a stir.

There you have it - an easy and healthy side dish/main course that you can cook while your rice finishes on the back burner.

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new blog, new group of writers, new digs on the ‘net - give us a few as we get going here

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