November Break

I've started a new job and have had a few actual adult responsibilities (classified as "being more serious than deciding what to wear for Halloween") for the first time in a while.  So, to counteract all the grown-up-i-ness around here, I have decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.  Starting tomorrow, I'm going to try to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November.  This is so far out of my comfort zone, I'm embarrassed to even talk about my future "novel".  Anyway, this blog (and the associated baking) will probably be on hold for the next month (or until whenever I throw in the novel writing towel.)  Please eat lots of yummy food for me!

Beet Chutney

A few weeks ago I was singing the praises of Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills, but today I'm just scratching my head and wondering which skills Allen decided to leave out of her book and why.  The best thing about the book isn't actually that it teaches you forgotten skills, but that it makes you want to learn them and inspires you with its beautiful pictures of happy livestock and its effortless-seeming recipes.  However, Allen sometimes presumes a level of kitchen knowledge that I simply don't possess.  Take tonight's adventure as an example:  The beet chutney recipe was straightforward.  The peeling and chopping was kind of laborious, but then I watched a movie and worked while the chutney cooked, so it didn't feel too time consuming.  The resulting chutney was delicious.  However, as I was looking back over the recipe to figure out what I was supposed to do with a huge vat of delicious chutney, I realized that Allen was surprisingly vague about how to preserve it.  She mentioned sterilizing the jars - which I had already done (being a seasoned canner after my one batch of tomatoes) - but very little else.  She also failed to mention in the recipe that the salt called for was pickling salt.  I only noticed later that she mentioned the pickling salt at the beginning of the section on chutneys (which I had read previously and completely forgotten, of course).  In some ways I admire Allen's laid back, anyone can do it attitude.  It's an attitude that I possess in spades, and I wish that more accomplished people would act like anyone could do what they do.  But in a cookbook, especially one marketed to idiots (i.e. people under 40 who have never cooked anything from scratch), I think that a more direct, even lecturing, tone is required.  I have no idea whether my chutney will last more than a week or two.  While I welcome the experiment, I have 3 hours of my weekend and about $15 worth of food in those jars, and I would have liked to have been able to keep them for a while, maybe even give them as Christmas presents.  As it is, my friends and I will be eating really fantastic beet chutney with fresh baked bread and the Special Reserve Vintage White Extra Sharp Tillamook Cheddar I picked up at the Tillamook Cheese Factory today on my way home from the coast.  In fact, we'll probably be eating that every day for the foreseeable future, and I guess that's okay with me.

Crazy Cooking Weekend Recap

Here's all the fun stuff I did this weekend in picture recap form:

I made bread with my friend Beth.  She's totally a natural and will now (I assume) be making her own bread all the time.  Probably.

We used her stand mixer, which was really awesome!  WAY better than expected.  More on that soon.

We also cooked up a delicious casserole dish full of golden beets, apples, shallots, and onions, with a little salt and pepper and pumpkin pie spice (no joke, I have no idea what was in it!)  I got the idea from the awesome Darina Allen, whose beet and apple chutney I plan to tackle next weekend.

I canned up some beautiful heirloom tomatoes (see previous post).

 

I made a delicious (and pretty) apple pie!

And leftover pie crust cookies to go with it!  (I ate a bunch of 'em though).

And finally, I slept, a lot.  Whoever invented three day weekends is my kind of person.  A weekend full of hanging out with friends, cooking, and napping is pure bliss for me.  I'd like to take the time to wax rhapsodic about Beth's KitchenAid Mixer, but tonight is not the night for it.  I got an awesome new job, and now I have to put in some overtime to show how much I deserve it!

Oh my god, they POPPED!

Today marks my first ever foray into canning.  I have no idea if I did it right.  I have no idea if I'm going to poison myself trying to eat the fruits of my labor (although I'm trusting that I'm still sufficiently instinctually hardwired not to eat rotten food).  I canned a bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that I bought at the farmers market on Saturday, in the hope that I would reach for these to make pasta sauce this winter rather than my old standby Ragu.

Canning wasn't as difficult as I expected, but it was time consuming, especially in the "world's tiniest test kitchen."  Its title doesn't even deserve capitals.  With about six square feet of counter space, a chopping block on a rolling cart, and a kitchen table covered in old newspapers and fresh produce, there isn't a lot of room to work in here.  Because the kitchen is small, I tend to own mostly smaller pots, pans, baking dishes, counter-top appliances, etc., which makes it hard to do anything in bulk.  There's also not a lot of elbow room - two people have to know each other pretty well (and be skinny) to work in this kitchen together.  Luckily, I was on my own today, and had the gift of time from a surprise corporate celebration of Columbus Day (which isn't typically observed on the West Coast).  All told, it took me over three hours to can six pints of tomatoes, since I could only put three jars in the steam bath at once.  I have to say, it wasn't cheaper than buying four jars of Ragu, but it was a heck of a lot more fun.  Similarly, making my own bread pays me about $2 for three hours of work, but probably saves me $300 on therapy sessions.  As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I heard, over the running tap water, a low popping noise.  I was so surprised by the first one that I wasn't quite sure what it was, but after the second one popped I identified it as the sound of the seals sucking into place (meaning I'd done something right).  I was so excited I shouted to my empty house, "Oh my god, they POPPED!"

Spelt Bread and Fall Cooking

It always pleases me to see this . . .

. . . turn into this . . .

 . . . even though there's usually a lot of hard work in between.  Besides the fact that this spelt version of the River Cottage Break Handbook's basic loaf was wetter and absorbed a ridiculous amount of extra spelt flour during kneading, it behaved pretty much as expected.  I added a little bit of applesauce in place of some of the water, and the bread has a little bit of sweetness that goes really well with the nutty spelt flavor.  My only major miscalculation is that spelt isn't gluten free - of course it isn't!  You can't make bread rise without gluten!  So I guess I can't bring this lovely bread to work (where I would feel guilty parading the fresh baked bread in front of a gluten-intolerant co-worker).  Oh well, more for me!

Today was also a day for using the apples and pumpkins I picked in Hood River yesterday.  I ran out of time/energy after cooking and pureeing two pumpkins, making pumpkin butter, dehydrating some apples, making the spelt bread, and cleaning my house.  I feel about as worn out and used up as these:

I really thought I'd find the energy to make an apple pie tonight, but I'm thinking that maybe finding the energy to watch a movie is a more realistic expectation!

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

This ciabatta was good in practice, even though it was bad in theory - a welcome departure from my usual experiments.  I decided to try to make "healthy" ciabatta by changing the recipe from all white bread flour to 1/3 whole wheat bread flour.  In theory, because ciabatta is supposed to be very light and airy, the whole wheat flour should have dragged it down and made it less ciabatta-y.  In addition, part of the wonderful flavor of ciabatta comes from the semolina flour, which wouldn't come through if the semolina flavor had to compete with the whole wheat flavor.  In practice, this bread tastes excellent, retaining more than a hint of the sun-baked, homey flavor of traditional ciabatta.  It is a little denser than my last ciabatta effort and the dough wasn't quite as easy to work with.  It definitely tastes more earthy and whole grain-y than regular ciabatta, but the semolina flavor still comes through strongly.  I'm going to rate this effort a B+ for introducing healthy grains into a recipe without killing what was best about the original.

The Perfect Oregon Day

Today I started the perfect weekend.  Some friends and I drove over to Hood River - the home of Full Sail Brewery and many, many fruit farms - and stocked up for fall.  I bought at least 15 pounds of apples - about 2lbs for eating and the rest for baking apple pies, making applesauce, making apple butter, and drying for snacks this winter.  I can only imagine that this is just a dent in the amount of apples I'll really need to get me through the winter, but I was trying to be realistic (and also not freak out my friends by buying $30 worth of apples . . .)

I also picked up these lovely baking pumpkins, which I plan to puree and freeze for my future pumpkin needs.  I may have to make a little pumpkin butter, too, and I'll continue to buy more pumpkins throughout the season to make pumpkin pies and other treats.

Finally, because I can't resist anything jam or marmalade related, and because I've bought these marmalades before and they are completely addictive, I picked up some local Hood River pear marmalade and raspberry habenero pepper jelly, as well as Walla Walla onion mustard.

I'm tired, my feet are dirty, and my house is full of fruit and vegetables.  I have a ciabatta experiment rising in my kitchen right now, and I feel very content indeed.

Happy (Subway) Graduation!

My awesome friend Holly threw a graduation party for her boyfriend Cam, who not only was an amazing son and helped his mom buy a Subway franchise, but also attended Subway university with her.  Since I was pretty sure that 2 1/2 weeks of Subway college was more work than 4 years of liberal arts college, I decided to make a cake for him.  I tried to follow the spirit of my super cool and talented friend (from back in middle school) Treacy Silverstein, who writes the most decadent blog on the internet - http://treacycakes.wordpress.com/.  But, I also ended up following the method of Meggie - don't do anything too difficult or frustrating, because I don't want to show up at someone else's party in a huff.

I wanted to create a cake that looked like a Subway logo.  I started with two eight inch lemon cakes - made from a box mix on Wednesday night after work, no time this week to make vegan cake or bake from scratch.  On Friday night after work, I mixed up a big bowl of buttercream frosting.  I dyed most of it dark green and reserved two small bowls for decorating.  By the time I got the frosting green enough (it took almost an entire bottle of food coloring), it was nearly seven, and the party started at 7:30.  I made the executive decision that even with all the time in the world I would have a hard time drawing the subway logo in any medium, especially frosting.  So, I sort of hinted at the logo, and it was enough.  People liked the cake, Cam felt celebrated, and everyone ended up with green tongues.  Success!