Good Real Food

Like so many midwesterners in late August, I find myself completly overrun with monster zucchini and summer squash. I have included a recipe in this post that I made up to use up the bunnies in unique and yummy ways: Chocholate Zucchini Bread. But first, as an homage to my father, Jim Heynen, I want to share with you his short story about zucchini.

Garden Rabbits, by Jim Heynen
There were the fuzzy sharp-toothed ones that nipped tender shoots of lettuce and cabbage before they could dream of the salad bowl, the kind that multiplied as quickly as aphids and were as hard to discourage from their nibbling ways. But there was another kind of garden rabbit. These too were fruitful and multiplied in great abundance, though they did not hop. They were zucchini.
The boys did not like to eat zucchini very much. The taste was as dull as potatoes without salt or butter or sour cream, and the texture was slimy as cooked okra. But in August when the lettuce had bolted and the cabbage had died, when even most of the tomatoes had ripened and the wine-colored beets bulged from the earth ready for harvest, the zucchini caught a second breath: the yellow blossoms quickly turned into small green fingers that within a week were the size of cucumbers and in two weeks the size of small watermelons. Why couldn’t the animal garden rabbits eat these vegetable garden rabbits instead of the carrots and lettuce?
If the boys didn’t do something, they knew it would mean zucchini in eggs for breakfast, fried zucchini and onions for dinner, boiled zucchini for supper. Zucchini casseroles! Zucchini salads! Zucchini pie if there was a recipe for one hiding somewhere!
The oldest boy had a plan. Over supper, as they all swallowed the soggy chunks of zucchini, he said, We have so many zucchini, we should give some to the poor people who don’t have anything to eat.
The oldest boy had never in his life suggested giving anything to anybody, not even to his friends. And now he was thinking of poor people he didn’t even know?
The grown-ups thought it was a wonderful idea and even brought it up in their family devotions: That the abundance of the earth should be given to all, they prayed. Yea, even to the neediest of our number.
On Saturday night the boys loaded the car trunk with big zucchini before they went into town. The boys agreed that they would spend the evening giving the zucchini to poor people they met.
Look at them, said one of the grown-ups, as the boys loaded their arms with zucchini and started down the streets looking for poor people. Aren’t they wonderful?
The boys couldn’t really tell a poor person from a rich person, so they started offering zucchini to everyone they met. They figured the rich people wouldn’t take them and the poor people would. But it seemed that poor people were few and far between when it came to feeding them zucchini.
When the boys got to the big parking lot next to a WalMart that had just replaced most of the stores downtown, the oldest boy said, Let’s just put some in the back seat of everybody’s car. We might not be getting them to poor people, but at least we’re still giving them away.
This is what they did and within a half hour they were rid of all the zucchini. The grown-ups thoughts the boys’ charity had been so successful that they let the boys load up the trunk of the car with zucchini the next Saturday night too.
The boys went straight to the WalMart parking lot. But word had gotten out that if you didn’t lock your car doors somebody would fill the back seat of your car with giant zucchini.
Oh no, said the oldest boy, after they had tried all the car doors in the parking lot. We’re stuck with them. We’ll be eating zucchini until Christmas!
Then one of the boys pretended to drop one on the street as he crossed on the way back toward their car. The other boys followed suit, dropping zucchini, one after another. Whoops, whoops, whoops, as the zucchini dropped to the street.
The boys stood on the sidewalk and watched the cars pass by, some of them slowing down and swerving to miss the shattered vegetables. But in a few minutes the zucchini had been mushed up and the cars didn’t even slow doen. And that was how the last of the green garden rabbits died. Smeared out on the street like so much road kill.

Chocolate-Zucchini Bread
-1 1/2 cups brown sugar
-3/4 cup sunflower or safflower oil
-3 eggs beaten
-1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
-1 tsp vanilla
-2 cups grated zucchini
-1 1/2 cups white flour
-1 cup whole wheat flour
-2 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-2-3 tbsp good quality cocoa powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 350F
1. In a large bowl combine the sugar, oil, eggs, butter and vanilla and beat well with a whisk. Mix in the grated zucchini. 2. In a separate bowl, combine all the remaining dry ingredients and mix well. Gently stir the dry mixture into the wet. Pour the batter into a well-oiled loaf pan and bake for approximately 1 hour, until firm and a toothpick comes out of the center clean. Cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

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Last night we hosted 20 some folks for my birthday party/fundraiser for the Progressive Technology Project (which would be where I work).
Because I’d just returned from a rather taxing week away, I decided to keep the food for the shindig as easy as I could, and though I hadn’t made this recipe before, figured it was simple enough and fairly straightforward and how could you really go wrong with veggies and beans and broth anyway?

As expected the soup came out nicely, though I can certainly see why the cooks that I lifted this recipe from added some bits of meat.  I sort of thought that some stew meat/pork/lamb would be a nice addition, though you’d want to change the cooking order a bit if going that route.  In any event, here’s a soup that’s quick to make, dead simple, and is filling and warming and everything else that winter soups should be.  Enjoy.

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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 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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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 was starting to feel fed up with loaves of the no-knead bread, so when this recipe for pita arrived in my RSS reader, I jumped at the chance to make it. It went perfectly with tonight’s Spicy Sweet Potato and Pea Curry. I’ve linked the recipe, so the only other thing I should address is this:

You don’t need a baking stone! Or rather you don’t need a fancy expensive one. As you can see from this picture, I use unglazed ceramic tiles in my oven and they do a fantastic job. Give ‘em a whirl - I think I got box large enough to cover my oven a few times over for $5 at my local home improvement store. Just make sure that you get UNGLAZED ceramic tile. From what I understand, the glazed stuff is none too good for your health in a food production setting. Thanks to Sourdough Home for that tip.

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so, this was a weekend of success and failure.

First, for the hall of shame, I present to you, the hockey puck:

the bread that I had such high hopes for didn’t really turn out to be much of anything but a hockey puck. I suspect that when push came to shove, there just wasn’t enough gluten development. Probably, I should just mixed it all together at one time and gone for a more sour flavor by letting it rise in the fridge instead of doing the long rise at ~70 degrees. I haven’t cut into yet, but I suspect that the flavor is pretty good, but the texture is dense. So, it will likely be frozen and used for croutons or something similar.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about success.

After reading some recipes from the Hooked on Heat blog, I had a craving for the flavors conjured up, so I decided that I was going to have a week of pretty much entirely Indian food.

So tonight, we made aloo paratha and chili paneer:

This meal was definitely a family affair with everyone pitching in, and it turned out wonderfully.  Both recipes are from Hooked on Heat, a blog you should definitely check out if you’re interested in expanding your Indian cooking skills.

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Go here for the New York Times recipe:

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