The Butter Churn

Following the Great Muffin-Top Disaster of ‘05, I’ve switched to using liners when I make muffins. Image as tough-guy baker be damned. When I upend my pan of muffins onto the counter, I expect the bottoms to join the tops.

These are Patricia Austin’s Bran Muffins. It’s her recipe, that is. They don’t belong to her. She can have a couple of mine if she wants. Anyway…I love bran muffins. I love the fact that I get better at making them with every batch. I love the little tricks you pick up. For example, the recipe calls for honey and molasses. Both very very sticky. Both very difficult to get out of whatever you use to measure them. Here’s my clever solution:

• Recipe calls for 3/4 cup of veggie oil, 1/4 cup of molasses, 2T of honey.
• Measure oil into 2 cup measuring glass.
• Measure molasses by displacement.
• Dip tablespoon into oil before measuring honey.

It’s so simple, but it’s saved me from having to scrape molasses out of a measuring cup with the side of my finger, then scraping the side of my finger against the edge of the mixing bowl, then making sure that I whisk high enough in the mixing bowl so that I can be sure I get the molasses into the mix.

So, muffins are done. They’re delicious.

Craziest thing happened yesterday: we ran out of bread. I guess I lost a little momentum after the un-blogged-about, un-mourned, aborted pita experiment. The rye bread was next on my list, but I let it mellow. Next thing I knew, I was cranky and awake at 6:30 this morning with no damn bread to eat. I had started the sponge late last night hoping that the baking elves would take over once I went to sleep. No love.

I used Rose’s recipe for “Levy’s” Real Jewish Rye in the Bible (page 324). Before I talk a little bit about the method, I would like to mention 1) How good this book is. It really deserves its name. 2) There are so many freakin’ typos and mistakes in this freakin’ book, it’s enough to drive a person batty!!!!! In step 2, adding the flour mixture to the sponge, there is no rye flour to add. It’s all in the sponge. Don’t waste time looking from the recipe to the mixing bowl to the instructions and back again. It says to add more rye, but not how much to add. Ignore it. No more flour to add.

Also, before going all geeky, I would like to say that it turned out amazing. The crust was super crunchy, the insides were moist and chewy and delicious. Next time I might use a little bit more rye flour for a little more tooth, but YUM!!! Good bread. OK, onto the baking geekery:

This recipe uses the sponge method. That is, almost half the flour, half the yeast, all the water, and all the sweet stuff are mixed together to make a super wet starter. Instead of letting the starter mature in isolation then adding the rest of the ingredients later, the remaining ingredients are just plopped on top of the starter and left to mature. I did a cold rise overnight. The book says to expect to see the sponge break through the dry ingredients on top, and they really did. I wish I had remembered to get a picture of that primordial goo.

Kneading this dough was sending my mixer into fits, so I finished it by hand. First rise took 2 hours in my cold cold kitchen. The recipe called for an intermediate rise of 45 minutes- which I did, but now feel was a bit unnecessary. By the time I shaped it, the boule was already as big as it was supposed to be once it was done proofing. I still had to wait for the oven to heat once I discovered this, so I did all the rises and ended with a finished loaf about 2 inches taller and wider than expected.

Baking time for this loaf, as I’ve come to expect with my oven, was a bit shorter than she recommends. Matter of fact, the middle of the loaf hit 190F (the recommended temp) with 10 minutes to go before the lower end of the baking time range. I let the temp get to 202F before I pulled it with about 6 minutes left on the clock. By this time, the very top of the loaf had begun to blacken a bit. And in the pictures you can see the blackened top, and the very center on the crumb shots looks the slightest bit underdone.

Last night my mother gave me an out-of-the-blue present- a Silpat. We had watched an episode of Good Eats where AB made parmesan crisps on one and she seemed really excited by them. I told her I would be happy to make her some, but it looked like the super-duper non-stickiness of the Silpat really made it a snap. I said that I would do it as soon as I got one. It wasn’t a hint or anything like that. I’ve had my eye on them for a long time, but never felt like shelling out the money for one.

Here’s what I made: Sardine and Tomato Garlic Salad on Parmesan Crisp

Salad

Handful of Cherry or Grape Tomatoes. (It was maybe a dozen or so) Sliced thin (1/16 - 1/8 in)
1 Large Clove Garlic. Sliced thin.
2 Slices of White Onion. Wafer thin, then finely chopped.
.5T Parsley. Rough Chopped.
1.5T Olive Oil.
6 Small Sardines. Freshly grilled is better, but whatever.

Kosher Salt and Black Pepper to taste

Crisp

6T freshly grated Parmesan.

Method

Pre-heat oven to 300F.

Mix salad fixings together (except for salt and sardines) in small bowl and set aside to get all flavorful.

Spoon 1T scoops of Parmesan onto Silpat-covered cookie sheet and spread out into thin discs about 4 or 5 inches across.

Place on middle rack in oven for about 5 minutes or until you begin to get lots of big bubble movement on the cheese discs.

Blast the broiler for about 90 seconds until edges of discs brown.

Remove from oven and, using a pancake turner, lift discs from sheet and drape them over the cups of an upside down muffin tin, or inverted juices glass. The discs will harden into little bowls. Let rest 5 minutes.

Scoop about 2 teaspoons of salad into crisp bowl (adding salt and/or removing garlic to taste). Lay sardine jauntily atop salad and serve.

Makes 6 appetizers. Click here for one more picture of my delicious creation.

Earlier this month I mentioned that I should have taken the StarbucksChallenge (details here). Renegade that I am, I figured that I didn’t need anybody telling me when I can challenge a giant coffee purveyor. I went at it alone. Solo, as it were.

Tuesday, January 17, 4PM. Starbucks at Farmer’s Market- 3rd & Fairfax, Los Angeles, CA.

It wasn’t terribly busy for a change. There were 3 people in line ahead of me when I walked in, and there were 4 behind me when I started the challenge. I walked up to the barrista and said, “I would like a cup of fair trade coffee, please.” Without even blinking, the barrista replied that they didn’t have any brewed at the moment, but if I would be willing to wait about 5 minutes, he would be happy to press a cup for me. I smiled and said, “Thank you, that would be great.”

The friendly barrista fetched one of his colleagues and a trainee and asked them to press me a cup of coffee. I went over and watched the two of them work, the trainee answering quiz-like questions from her partner all the while: “How long do we let it steep for?” “4 minutes.” “Right. How many tablespoons of beans per 6oz of water?” “2.” And so on. During a break in the Q&A, I asked them if they were brewing me the Estima Blend. No, they said, it was the Organic Shade Grown Mexican, which is also fair trade. Was that OK with me? I assured them that it was.

Once the coffee started steeping I went wandering around the store, looking at all the Starbucksy merchandise. At some point the barrista in training approached me and asked me if I had a coffee maker and grinder at home. I said yes. Then she handed me a half-pound bag of the coffee she was brewing for me. “We’d like you to have these. There’s no way we are going to be able to use these beans up within a week, and it’s really nice to see someone who knows about and appreciates coffee.” I accepted it with much thanks, and added two bucks to the tip jar.

Challenge results: Passed with flying colors. FAILED ***EDIT*** GreenLAGirl provides the sad information in comments to this post that the Mexican Organic Shade Grown is not fair trade.

Well, apparently the secret of my new neighborhood wine and tapas bar is not so much a secret. They were featured in the food section yesterday. When I went in for a drink or three last night, Kenny (the owner) mentioned that in addition to yesterday’s write-up there was as a review in Critic’s Notebook on December 8 last year. So why isn’t it standing room only? Granted, it was a Wednesday night and it wasn’t empty- but it wasn’t hopping either. Not that I necessarily want my quiet neighborhood wine bar to turn into Dublin’s or Red Rocks. I’m conflicted. I want him to do well enough to hang around for a long time, but not so well that I have trouble finding a place to sidle up to the bar.

For the record, I started off with Finca Antigua (Syrah 03).  Flavorful and very smooth.  Hardly a bite at all.

The bartender was killing a bottle of Onix (Priorat 04), and poured me about half a glass to taste.  Very tasty:  fruity, earthy.  Probably my favorite so far.

Last was a glass of Wrongo Dongo (Jumilla 04).   Great wine for the price.  I believe it’s $5.50 a glass at the Bodega, and I have seen it online for $7 a bottle.  A bit heavy tasting, but very fruity and flavorful.  A close second to the Onix, at about half the price — both are very reasonably priced to begin with.

Success! The bialy affiar has been settled. The bialy objective has been achieved. I tried the variation that Rose suggests in the Bible along with some of the more successful recipe tweaks that I had come up with on my own. The results were fantastic: flat, chewy, perfectly browned bialys. Here’s how it went down:

After the initial ferment, I totally degassed the dough pieces before shaping them into rounds. Once proofed, I used scissors to cut the craters. Making craters just by smooshing the dough never worked out for me. Rose suggests that this is because I don’t allow it to proof long enough, but I just don’t have the patience for more than 2 hours. Once the craters were cut, I finished shaping the rounds into standard bialy shape and scooped the filling in. So far, this is exactly what I have been doing for the last several batches I’ve made.

Ordinarily I would just pop the bialys in the oven at this point and be disappointed with how poofy they got. This time I flattened the little buggers with the back of a sheet pan until they had spread out another 2 inches or so and had flattened to about half an inch high. Then I took the fat end of a wooden chopstick and went psycho on them. I put about a dozen deep holes into each bialy.

Baking time was about the same for this batch. I had the oven pre-heated to 500F, slid the bialys directly onto the stone, and steamed the oven. I rotated them front-to-back-left-to-right after 8 minutes and let them bake for another 2 minutes. Click below to see some more pics and more baking geekery. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, I went back to my new favorite place.  I almost don’t want to tell anyone about it for fear of it getting too crowded, but it’s too nice a place to keep secret.  Bodega DeCordova (on Fairfax just south of 3rd- directly across the street from Sav-On) is a little wine and tapas bar with a very rustic feel and a super-knowledgeable owner.

The wine-list changes frequently, but always features about 15 Spanish wines.  We started off with a bottle of Altos de la Hoya Monastrell that went through at least 3 distinct changes between the time we openned it and the time we killed it.  It started off very robust and tannic and, as it breathed (and we drank), mellowed into a gentle cabernet-like wine.

We each struck out on our own after that.  A and I went for a couple of Rioja wines.  Solid cabernets that were perfectly fine, but unremarkable.  M had a wonderful red that I truly regret not remembering.  I’m headed back there this week and will ask about it.

I highly recommend this place, just don’t bring too many people or there won’t be enough room for me at the bar.