Bread, legitimately

I am a neglectful blogger.

I don't mean to be, and I have a good excuse - several of them, actually. My application for graduate school is going in on Thursday, and I start a new job tomorrow, so I've been somewhat distracted as of late. But while life may conspire to keep me away from my camera and computer, I'm still in the kitchen.

And the bread has been turning out awfully well, lately.

It looks pretty legitimate, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, I can't take much credit. This is the infamous No-Knead Bread of Minimalist and Jim Lahey fame, and I am just one of many bloggers to extoll the method's virtues.

Unfortunately, with a statement of intent awaiting my attentions, I am going to leave you with the recipe and return to my regularly scheduled essay-writing.

No-Knead Bread

Adapted from the New York Times, The Minimalist and Jim Lahey

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups water
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 1/2 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

I promise it won't be so long next time... and there will be doughnuts when I return. (Real, live, home-fried doughnuts - really.) For the moment, though, enjoy your bread.

Worth the extra work

Well, Portland has certainly welcomed us back in what I understand is true Northwest style: rain everyday since we returned on New Year's Day. We saw the sun for the first time since our vacation today. Not to sound ungrateful - it's lovely to be back. I missed our cats and our tiny, overheated apartment and the low, grey skies - the light in New Mexico is so terribly bright, so very clear. I've gotten used to the mellower richness of colours here, and gotten used to the greenery. I expect trees, now, and am no longer surprised by them. Albuquerque was so much flatter, and so much browner than I remembered it being.

That said, we sure managed to eat well while Matt and I were in town.

We had a host of places to visit, and even managed to fit in an extra visit to our beloved old Frontier Restaurant (and reminisce about snow days and post-concert late night sweet rolls and breakfast burritos).

But I'm not here to rub green chile in anyone's face. I'm here to talk about some of the food we managed to turn out in my parents' kitchen: specifically New Year's Eve Dinner, here rather dramatically lit:



I'm afraid that the vast majority of our photos turned out this way - I could never be bothered to turn on any lights in the dining room to take proper shots. Now I'm paying for it.

The menu was largely from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook (a most welcome Christmas present - Judy Rodgers is my new hero), with a dessert inspired by a recipe of Alice Medrich's. Remember those chocolate cookies awhile back? Same creator.

But dinner was as follows:
Mock Porchetta (or Tuscan Roast Pork) with roasted vegetables (fennel, onion, celeriac, parsnip, whathaveyou)
Savoury Apple Charlotte
Cream Puffs with Chocolate Grand Marnier Custard and Candied Violets

Altogether, the meal was three days in the making, and it was so utterly worth it. The pork and vegetables were lovely - delightful, in fact - an excellent roast. But the real scene-stealers were the Apple Charlotte and the Cream Puffs, which was in some ways quite gratifying, as they were, respectively, the most difficult and the easiest components. (Frustrating because now I know I'm going to have to make that Charlotte at least once a year, and god is it a nightmare. Such a tasty nightmare though, and so pretty on the plate.)

It begins, as many things do here at Itadakimasu, with apples.



Specifically, four pounds of braeburn apples, that my mother and I peeled, cored and sliced, draped with slivers of butter and roasted until they were tender and caramelized, and the mashed into a rough apple sauce.



The next day, we cut out templates from pieces of paper, sliced bread into half-width slices and a multitude of shapes to create bread linings in 6-ounce ramekins. Think a jigsaw puzzle, with crumbly cracked-wheat and walnut breads. I was tearing my hair by the end of it.



We then filled them with the apple sauce, buttered them further, and baked them until they were crisp and golden on the outside.

And then we ate them, which was probably a bad idea - because the combination of the crisp, buttery bread and the warm, sweet-but-not-too-sweet applesauce made the entire process seem very worthwhile, and entirely doable.

If you have the time and inclination to try this, you will not be disappointed. Honestly, these could go with a much simpler meat - they somewhat overshadowed the roast. More honestly, I would eat them on their own and be a very happy camper.

Roasted Applesauce & Savoury Apple Charlotte
from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rodgers

For about 3 cups of applesauce:

3 1/2 - 4 pounds apples (use eating apples - Braeburns were fine, I would have preferred Pippins, because they're one of my favourites, but we were working with what we could find)

Pinch of salt

Up to 2 teaspoons sugar, as needed (I didn't use any - the apples were quite sweet on their own)

About 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

A splash of cider vinegar (highly recommended!)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Peel, core and quarter the apples. Toss with a little salt and, unless they are very sweet, a bit of sugar to taste. Spread in a shallow baking dish that crowds the apples in a single layer. Drape with slivers of butter, cover tightly and bake until the apples start to soften, 15 to 30 minutes.

Uncover, raise the heat to 500 degrees, and return the pan to the oven. Leave the apples to dry out and colour slighly, about 10 minutes. (A confession - we neglected to raise the temperature, so our apples got a much longer, slower roast - and were lovely, nonetheless. They were in the oven for nearer an hour, if I remember correctly.)

When the tips of the apples have become golden and the fruit is tender, scrape them into a bowl and stir into a chunky mash. Season with salt and sugar to taste, then consider a splash of apple cider vinegar to brighten the taste. (Yes!)

For the Charlotte, 4 servings:

4 six-ounce ramekins or custard cups

A chunk of day-old, chewy, peasant-style bread (make sure you have plenty of extra to get the right shapes!)

About 2-3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (err on the side of 3-4 tablespoons)

About 1 1/3 cups Roasted Applesauce (again, err on the side of more)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the bread 1/8 inch thick. Avoiding the crust, cut 8 circles sized to fit the bottom of your ramekins, then cut 4 long rectangles to line the sides.(Judy Rodgers suggested partially freezing it, and I second this! Also, don't worry if you can't get whole pieces to create the shell of the charlotte - they piece together quite nicely.)

Brush the bread evenly, on one side only, with the melted butter. Line the ramekins with the bread, pressing the buttered  faces against the dishes. Set the 4 extra circles aside. Fill each ramekin with the roasted applesauce. Set the remaining bread circles, buttered side up, on top and press down lightly.

Bake until golden brown on top, about 30 minutes. To serve, slide a knife around the edge of each charlotte, then turn out onto warm plates. If the bottom circles stick to the dish, retrieve them by sliding a fork under the edges. (This wasn't an issue at all - yay for butter!)

Eat, and savour, knowing that you probably won't have these again for quite awhile, because you have to forget all about the paper templates and the partially-frozen bread before you could possibly convince yourself to go through it all again.

And don't worry, I won't make you wait too long for those cream puffs.

Not-so-lazy-weekends

Matt and I haven't really had time for one of our lazy Sunday mornings, recently. I work full time, so my "weekend" is comprised of the two days I go to class, and Matt goes to school full time, so his "weekend" is comprised of the two days he spends at work. But the last time we had a day off together, I made us a breakfast (probably sometime around two pm) of what I now call French Toast with Amaretto Apples.



The basic idea behind it is your preferred French Toast with a variation of carmalized apples with brandy - not having any brandy on hand, I used amaretto, and it worked to my advantage. I'm afraid I don't have a terribly specific recipe for this. As Matt can tell you, cooking with me can be an occasionally frustrating experience, as I don't usually measure things unless I'm either cooking from a new recipe for the first time, or baking. I cook the way my parents do. How much do I add? Enough - the right amount. Until it tastes/looks/smells/feels right. So, the following is an appoximation of how I make my French Toast.

Serves twoish - may vary according to appetite.

For the toast:
2 thick slices of whatever leftover bread you have around (I used sourdough boule from a couple days previous, a whole wheat pain would be lovely - walnut bread, if that's your thing)
2 eggs
2 large splashes milk
1 capful vanilla extract (about 1/2 a teaspoon, maybe?)
a few generous shakes of ground cinnamon (anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 tsp - I like cinnamon)
butter for the pan

In a large baking dish or shallow bowl (I use a 9x13x2 inch Pyrex), whisk the eggs with the milk, vanilla and cinnamon, and then add the bread and let sit, turning occasionally, until most of the egg mixture has been soaked up. In a cast iron pan over medium-high heat, melt enough butter to coat the bottom of the pan. When the butter is just sizzling, add the bread. You want it to start cooking on contact, so that it forms a nice crust. Let it fry without disturbing it until a nice goldeny brown crust forms, and then flip it and let the other side develop that same kind of crust and the bread cooks through.

When the bread is done, cover to keep warm.

For the apples:
1 large apple of your choice - something that cooks/bakes well. I used a Honeycrisp for this recipe - I love Honeycrisp. I would steer clear of Golden Delicious - they tend to go mushy. The amount of apple is negotiable - use more if you're an apple fan. I only had one apple left, otherwise I might have used two.
2 capfuls amaretto (3 tablespoonsish)
a sprinkling of sugar
a few more generous shakes of cinnamon
butter for the pan

Note: you should have the apples ready to go into the pan before you start the toast. If you have the kind of stove that can handle it (i.e. more than one large burner) you can start the apples after you flip the toast to its second side.

Core the apple, and then slice thinly. It should look like this when you're done:



Try not to eat too much of it before it goes into the pan.

Again, melt enough butter to generously coat the bottom of a cast iron pan over medium-high heat. Saute the apples until they are warm and wilting, then sprinkle with sugar to taste (depending on how sweet you like your fruit - keep in mind that the amaretto will sweeten it further), cinnamon to taste, and then add a couple of capfuls of amaretto. (Like I said, for me a couple of capfuls is approximately 3 tablespoons. Again, this is very however-much-you-want-at-the-time).

Turn the heat down if the apples are getting too soft, and let the amaretto reduce slightly, until it gets a little syrupy.



Put a slice of French Toast on each plate, and top with apples.



Good luck with your version.

Oh, and gratuitous kitty photo, because they were being cute while I was cooking: