Good Real Food

D spent a month in Ghana this April. He developed a taste for the common Ghanaian black eyed peas dish, Red Red, and I have been trying to replicate the color and taste for a while now. It is only recently that I found the secret ingredient that gives Red Red and fried plantains their distinctive color and taste: Red Palm Oil. It is more and more common now in local markets and can be found in small or large plastic bottles. Palm oil has a strange consistency that I had to get used to. The oil is solid here in Minnesota in December if you keep your house as cool as mine, so you need to warm it up a bit under warm water or on a warm stove to get it to pour.

I cooked the plantains, the black eyed peas, and the mustard and beet greens in palm oil and the results were as close to authentic as I think I am going to get and very good.

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I’ve been off work for almost two weeks, and at the beginning of this luxurious stretch of free time, I started a new starter, detailed in an earlier post.

So, I’ve been baking with the starter for all of. . . 6 loaves - starting with Jeffrey Hamelman’s recipe for pain au levain - also written about previously.

Well, for Christmas, my sister in law gave me a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Crust and Crumb and I’ve used his pain au levain formula for my last 4 loaves, as well as his recipe for sourdough pancakes. To say that all have been wonderful is an understatement. With this last set of loaves, I achieved far better oven spring that I’d ever thought possible and the loaves were wonderful. Not too sour though - in fact, not very sour at all. And this is where Crust and Crumb really came through for me - it isn’t that Reinhart necessarily said anything that I hadn’t read before or “knew” - in fact, without sitting down and computing dough hydration, I’m not sure that there’s a fundamental difference between his formula for pain au levain and Hamelman’s.

Instead, I think two things happened - I had time - time to tune in and pay attention to the dough, and more importantly, I think Reinhart’s writing was able to communicate more directly the things I needed to understand to produce better bread at home. So, as far as this recipe is concerned, there were two major concepts that helped - first and foremost, was Reinhart’s assertion that a firm starter doesn’t produce much in the way of sour flavor without some serious multi-stage building including some cold resting time to really build that stronger sour. Second, and most important for this bread was that during the first rise of this bread, I didn’t need to wait for it to double - I could give it three or so hours, and as long as some action was in evidence, I could go ahead and shape and start the proofing.

I suspect that for some of you, these ideas are old hat, but for me it was exactly what I needed to hear, just when I needed to hear it and these ideas have made all the difference.

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I received a cuisinart food processor for xmas this year and it is opening up all kinds of nifty-quick recipe memories. This particular dish was made for me by a Scottish mystic and microbiotic convert on the Isle of Arran in 1997 and I still remember it!

Shred one whole onion, three cloves garlic, three raw whole scrubbed and topped beets and four scrubbed topped carrots into a bowl. Add two to three tbs. oil, two to three tbsp. apple cidar vinegar, two to three tbsp apple cidar, salt and pepper and sunflower seeds.

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There is something magical about marmalade in December. Perhaps it is an extention of the treat of a sweet orange in the bottom of my stocking when I was a kid. I tried my first batch this weekend. It is just so pretty. Cooking down the oranges and lemons for two hours on the stove left the whole house smelling warm and sticky like a Minnesota summer.

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I mixed up another batch of the pain au levain.  It is still cooling or I’d have pictures of the crumb.  I used the same recipe, and did the baking in my cast iron dutch oven a la the famous no-knead bread.

As you might expect, I achieved amazing results.  By far, the highest oven spring I’ve ever achieved, and though I haven’t cut into the bread yet, the spots that opened up look full of nice big holes.

So, for 2007, I’m making note of baking in a cast iron pot as the baking lesson of the year - way way easier than pouring boiling water in the cast iron pan on the lower shelf, and pretty much foolproof.

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I tasted it.  It is good.  Really good.  Maybe the best sourdough I’ve ever made.  Just the right amount of sour flavor, good aroma.

On that score, I’m happy.  Now to start looking for a recipe that enables me to mix up a batch of this over a weekend and come out with two good loaves for the week.

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Last night - late last night - the first loaves made with my new starter came out of the oven.  I’d used the recipe for pain au levain from Jeffrey Hammelman’s “Bread” since it was written for stiff starter and is the classic sourdough.  As per the recipe, I started the final build about 12 hours before I intended to mix the dough, and followed the directions without trouble.  I remembered my previous sourdough attempts being far wetter than I’d know how to work with, but was heartened by the fact that the better part of a year spent with the wet no-knead bread would have me in good stead with this dough.

I needn’t have worried.  This dough mixes up much like a more traditional loaf - soft, supple, moist, but not nearly the insane wetness and nearly batter-like consistency of the no-kead or ciabatta.   So once it was mixed and set to rising, I waited the directed amount of time for the first folding.  At which point I noticed that there just wasn’t a whole lot of action going on.

I was concerned and decided to hold off on the second folding until I saw something going on.  Hours later, I decided that if I had a less active culture, it likely wouldn’t have the juice to sustain a fold, rise, punch, shape, proof - just too much rising in there for it to manage.  So, I decided to jump to the shape and proof phase.  After which I waited.  And waited.

Around 11:00pm, more than 12 hours after starting the dough, I decided that I was going to go for it, even though I wasn’t sure about the results.  And after pulling the loaves out of the oven, I was pleasantly surprised.  I haven’t tasted to taken pictures yet, but the loaves sprung up very nicely, and have a lovely sour aroma to them.  I’ll update with more info once I get my camera and do some tasting.

After that experience, I did a bit more research and found this recipe which tells a bit more about how this dough behaves and why I was expecting the wrong thing to happen.

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Persimmons (shown in the photos below are the japanese kaki) are one of the most beautiful and succulent fruit I’ve ever had.

Picking fruit is actually a skill and so be careful of how you select your first kaki. The key to a great kaki is an even bright color and that the pulp is at a deep transluscent ripeness that when you press it gently it gives. You can wait a while before eating it, even if it’s already ripe. The longer you wait, the sweeter it will taste. When you are ready to eat it, it is extremely juicy and almost melts in your hands while peeling it.

I also learned from my chinese medicine nutrition book (Healing with Whole Foods, by Paul Pitchford) that it’s good to eat when it’s dry out as it moistens the lungs and resolves phlegm. Pitchford says, “When a person has a dry condition, it usually is related to the lungs, and could have been caused by imbalances in diet, excessive activity, adverse climate, and/or organ malfunction. The major symptoms of dryness in the body are thirst, dryness of sky, nose, lips, and throat, and itchiness.”

The loveliest part of it is it’s swollen seed, almost like a sac. I have to say, it’s a very sensual experience.

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after a long hiatus, I’m starting up a sourdough starter again.  I had a really nice one once upon a time when my daughter was young.  Alas, the poor thing only lasted a while - the baby (person) got sick, the starter was neglected for too long, and when the baby was better, the starter had gone off - badly badly off.

I’ve made a few feeble attempts since then, but none have really panned out.  On Sunday, I started anew using the starter recipe from Maggie Glezer via the Underground Baker.  Actually, now that I google “starter maggie glezer” I see that there are some different interpretations of her starter recipe.  Ah well, I’m committed to the subterranean baker’s guidance so we’ll see how things turn out.

So far, it looks and smells like there’s fermentation going on, and when I pull the starter apart, there’s lots of little bubbles.  This morning, instead of pitching the leftover “starter” I added 1/4 cup in to a batch of the no-knead that I was mixing up.  The bread recently came out of the oven, and while the dough had a pleasant sour tang to it, the bread itself doesn’t have much sour flavor, but does have that faintly sour aroma that you get from sourdough.

All of which is to say that I think things are heading in the right direction, and that I will be baking pretty much every day or every other day for the next two weeks.  Luckily, I’m on vacation from the 14th to the 2nd, so I can let my dough guide my schedule

So, wish me luck.  And if you’re in the Twin Cities and want to try some of the experiments, leave a note in the comments.

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I snared a waffle iron at Savers yesterday - I love 50% off purple tag days.

I rushed home to scour the interwebs for waffle recipes and after reading a bunch of stuff, decided on a thinner version of what I already use for pancakes, thinking that if the waffle iron didn’t work, I could punt and make pancakes pretty quickly.

So, the good: the waffles were great, the iron worked perfectly, and my family was very happy.

The bad: as is the case when I’m making anything that is best fresh, I had the pleasure of hovering over the waffle iron while my family chowed down.  I suppose it is a small price to pay for happy bellies.

The ugly: whoever designed this thing did so with almost no regard for cleaning it.  I now understand why it was so cheap at Savers.  To say that it is ugly is an understatement, but I suspect that a little quality time with a toothbrush and some baking soda will take care of matters.  Still, it does sort of make me long for some cast iron goodness.

For what its worth, my pancake recipe is here and these are the changes I made: no yogurt, more milk, and canola oil instead of butter, along with an additional teaspoon of baking powder.  Enjoy

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