Tuesdays with Dorie: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

This month's TWD recipes were so intuitive that I made almost all of them ahead. The night of these brownies was a good night for Matt and Jill, because if left to my own devices I will rarely make one of their favorite desserts. I love brownies, but oddly for me, I make no secret of my allegiance to the Ghirardelli mix--I like it better than almost any other brownie I've ever made. And since I don't usually keep mixes on hand (unlike this week's recipe maven, Tanya of Chocolatechic, who's realistic about her needs), that means there just aren't many brownies around, unless Dorie steps in. But really, if it's good enough for Julia (Child, as it happens), it's good enough for me. These were meant to be very lush, gooey brownies. I spread them thin and overbaked them on purpose, so they were more just rich, not the lava cakes that a lot of the TWD crowd came up with. Those looked good, though, so maybe I'll re-approach this one when I make brownies next year. 


For those of you are are more frequent brownie people or just want a good recipe, here it is.

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Hopelessly Devoted

My sister and I resemble our mother in many ways. From her, we get our poor circulation, our childbearing hips, our singing voices, mild hedonism, and our slightly mocking sense of humor. There are more points of similarity, but why list? Suffice it to say that where she leads, whe usually follow, and in some things we even surpass. One of those is in our passion for all things fruit, in which we follow not only mother but grandmother (who makes killer compote) and aunts. Taught to pick berries and consume whole pineapples from an early age, washed down with about seven apples a day, we are voracious and unstoppable when there are pomes, achenes, berries, false berries, drupes, or nuts around. To prove this, Liana sent this picture of what she ate one day. And every day.

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Turkey Carnitas

I do, occasionally, cook things other than bread. Meat!

For reasons political, health-related, and financial, I've been a little more wary about buying meat lately.  We do eat it, but we really don't want to be eating factory-farmed or processed products, for all of the obvious reasons. (We're not perfect, we sometimes buy eggs across the street, or Boars Head turkey, but we are really trying not to.) I won't go deep into what should be well-known by now, nor into the obvious equation that eating more expensive meat means that we eat less of it, but one of the effects of these choices is that the meat I buy most frequently has become turkey from DiPaola Turkey Farm, makers of our favorite sausage and purveyers of affordable, delicious everything.

Actually, I don't know a whole lot about DiPaola's breeds or farming practices, I tend to trust that they're all right because they show up at the farmer's market. Writing this, that seems a little credulous, so I'll look into it and get back on that one, but at the moment, I'm making recipes for everything from chicken to beef to pork with turkey legs and thighs. The man at the market suggested I beat and bread boneless thighs, scallopine-style, but I have yet to do this. Mostly, I've been making stews and braises.

The other night, I used turkey legs to try a recipe for a dish that's been mildly obsessing me--carnitas. I got my general ingredient profile and tips on technique from Molly Stevens' book All About Braising. Stevens' careful, detailed, step by step instructions let me feel free to use what I had in the house and basically do whatever I wanted.

First, I seasoned and browned the legs, and at the same time roasted garlic, a few chiles, and canned tomatoes for a paste. I pureed the blistered vegetables, adding salt, cumin, smoked paprika, quince paste, oil, and a little water. Following Stevens' lead, I then burned some onions and added the paste in to cook with them for a while. Needing more liquid, I added some red wine and a little more water. I poured the sauce over the legs, covered the dish with parchment and foil (which felt wasteful, next time I'll use a dish with a top, and baked in a 300 degree oven for about two hours, turning once halfway through.

The legs, which were still half-frozen when they went in the oven, were fully cooked and easily sliced through with a spoon after the two hours, but to make them carnita-like, I turned up the oven to 350 and continued to cook, uncovered, for another half hour. The result was perfect texture, just slightly roasted, fall-apart moist meat. The taste was also good, though surprisingly mild. Next time I would considerably up the chile quotient, and maybe some of the other spices. Still, we've been eating it all week, over ginger scallion noodles, over potatoes, right off the bone...As you can see from the picture below, the dish also yielded a lot of turkey fat, one of my favorite cooking fats when I can get it, which will make some future risotto or kasha or pot of beans very happy. First carnitas effort a success. And I'm still obsessed with the general technique, so there will probably be more soon.

Doesn't it rest your eyes to see something other than bread and cake pictured? I promise, vegetables abound, and I'll let you see one soon. For now, just go back through all those CSA roundups if you can't wait. continue...

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Basic Sourdough

I make sourdough nearly weekly at home, and ten to fifteen loaves of it at the bakery, so you'd think I could do a good job with it. And usually I do, but this time around my starter seems to have been a bit sluggish, or I didn't wait for it long enough. This little pot-loaf looks lovely and crusty on the outside, but it was dense and wet, with a few large tunnels but a largely sticky crumb. 

 

In fact, it looks a lot like some of the early loaves I made at the bakery, which didn't rise or spring properly for whatever reason. In this case, I'd put the blame on sluggish sourdough, and possibly too short a proof. It's edible, but could have been much better.

This one was baked for about 20 minutes at 450 in the pot, and then another 10 minutes with lid off. Probably would have benefited from a slightly longer bake, but it wouldn't have done much for the crumb. Amazing how the baker can make even lame bread look so good, though, isn't it? This one had flaxseeds and sesame seeds in it as well. Hopefully now that I've woken up the home starter a little bit things will get back on track. I have a 25-lb bag of wholesale flour to get on with.

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Bread Baker's Apprentice: Poolish Baguettes and Pugliese

I'm jumping a little in and out of order here, but humor me. It's a challenge, not a contest...
Last week's contributions to the challenge were pane Pugliese, a ciabatta-like wet dough with semolina, and poolish baguettes, made with a long, wet, sponge. I did a terrible job of shaping both breads, and they split all over the place, and they were very good, the baguettes with goat cheese and the Pugliese with everything, including bread pudding. Jill tells me they're a vast improvement over two or three years ago's bread.

The poolish baguettes are so called because they are made with a poolish, which is a wet pre-fermented sponge of flour, water and yeast, made the day before and ripened overnight. This is then added to the final dough and helps with taste, keeping time, and gluten development. Almost all of the breads I make have some form of pre-ferment, whether it is a poolish (loose, wet), a biga (stiff, Italian), pate fermentee (old dough, French, somewhere between the last two), or a sourdough starter. I use most of these methods interchangeably.

The Pugiliese were part of my clay baker experiment, one in the pot and one out. This time, the open oven won, but the pot had a severe handicap in the form of a large piece of parchment stuck to the loaf, which had to be baked with it and took a long time to release. I didn't knead the wet dough at all, just mixed it hard and then gave it several folds over the next few hours.

Sourdough up next, although there are more straight-dough breads in the future as well. I'm thinking of adding Reinhart's Pane Siciliano to the lineup at Lily & Fig, which last week was a grand production of Oatmeal Sunflower, Brooklyn Sourdough, Challah, Teddy Bears, and lumpy Genzanese all in one wild morning. I don't have semolina, but I think even with AP flour, the fun shape and the sesame garnish would please people.

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Tuesdays with Dorie: Milk Chocolate Bundt Mess

Ladies and gentlemen, it was messy. Very messy. A recipe was made, poured into a bundt pan, and baked. And stuck. In a big way. It was, as I said, messy. It was also pretty good. Not great, but buttery and good. Matt's take was that the chocolate flavor was subtle, more like cocoa than actual chocolate. Pictures soon, but I'll warn you, it's a bit of a mess.

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Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Nana Bread

This one went quickly--I didn't take a picture. In short, it was a banana pound cake made with cocoa. Overbaked, and a bit dry, but we dipped it in milk and ate it and enjoyed it. I didn't put in the extra chocolate chips that Dorie's recipe called for--it was good but not particularly noteworthy, I'd rather do plain banana bread with chocolate chips. If it's your kind of thing, though, the recipe is here.

As Matt put it, Dorie is taking care of him this [coming] month. Upcoming recipes include chocolate chip cookies, brownies, chocolate bundt cake, and honey wheat cookies. Expect to see them all here if we don't eat them first. continue...