Dough and cheese

I like making bread. Kneading dough is relaxing, and also nice to punch, if you want to vent some anger. If you're not breaking a sweat, you're not doing it right. Sadly, I haven't had much time to bake recently. Even worse, I also neglected to feed my starter regularly. It's still alive (yeast doesn't die that easily) but it got a bit too sour and weak, taking too long to rise. So, I decided to kill it and start over. How do you kill a starter? Well, you bake it!

So, one day I woke up real early, and made a bread dough with all of the starter (about 3 cups), salt, and whole wheat flour. I kept the starter a bit watery, so it took around 1.5kg of flour to get the right dough consistency. That was a large batch of dough (for my standards), so it was lots of fun to knead. I left it in a bowl in the sun, covered by plastic wrap, and went to work. Sun heat did wonders, so much that I contemplated saving some of the starter, because it had risen nicely. I decided against it in the end. I think the sour starter (or maybe it was the sunlight) produced more alcohol than it used to, because the dough was softer than usual.

I deflated the dough pressing it down, and kneaded it with a bit more flour to get it back to a nice consistency. I made half the dough into a loaf, and decided to experiment a bit with the rest.

I had a camembert cheese in the fridge, and decided to make a bread with it. I thought that a whole cheese was too much for a single loaf, so I sliced it in half, rolled a bit of dough, and wrapped the two halves with dough. I also made some small rolls and a croissant with some brie cheese in the center.

I still had some dough left, so I made yet another kind of cheese pita. For this one, roll the dough into a thin long stripe, around 2 inches wide. Then grate whatever cheese you have, I used what was in the fridge, parmesan, a mild goat cheese, and some brie. I guess this will be a good one for feta, but I don't like feta. Spread the cheeses on the dough stripe, in the center, and fold it lengthwise over the cheese. Then bring the roll all around, rolling it like a snake. Ideally, you can brush it with some egg wash for color and a shiny finish, but I didn't. Let everything rise for an hour, and bake in a hot oven. Unfortunately, my gas oven has a strong flame underneath, but the heat is not evenly dispersed, and bread cooks before the top crust gets brown enough. It's still tasty though.

The small pieces were done first. Unfortunately, the cheese melted very fast, and the dough was still rising, pushing the melted cheese out. There was some left inside and they tasted good. Next time I'll use a harder cheese though, camembert and brie melt very fast.

The same thing happened with the half-camembert bread. The inside was nice and melted, but some of it escaped and got burnt.

Yet again, the pita also leaked some of the brie. It was still tasty!

Dijon mustards with tapas

It's been a while since I last posted. Work is piling up, and there isn't much time to cook, sadly. I won't be in France for long, and there's a mountain of things to finish, and many places to go, before I leave.

Despoina was here a couple of weeks ago, and we took the train to Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, or Bourgogne, as they say here. It was a nice trip, albeit a bit too long for a single day, almost four hours each way.

Dijon is a nice city, with an impressive town center, full of old, stone buildings. This is a massive cathedral that looks very medieval, especially when you stand right next to it.

The town center was all pedestrian, stone-paved narrow streets, with tightly packed houses all around. The architecture looked a bit strange, the ground floor is all stone-built, and there are stone-built pillars and chimneys above, but the rest of the building (usually two extra floors) was wood and plaster. Some even had mini-gargoyles carved on the wood of the upper floors. I haven't seen houses like in the Rhône-Alpes region, but it was everywhere in Burgundy.

Here's a funny detail that we liked. The stone-paved streets were marked with triangular arrows, depicting an owl (a local good-luck symbol). The arrows mark a "scenic path" that tourists can follow to visit all the important sights. Cool!

After walking around the old town center for a few hours, we sat at an old café on a small square, for a well-deserved rest. They served an amazing capuccino ice-cream with chocolate.

Of course, when talking about Dijon the word "mustard" immediatly comes to mind. There were small tourist shops peppered all over the center, selling small jars of mustard. We bought ten kinds of mustard.

We were famished by the time we got home, after four hours in the train. So, we made some quick snacks. We made some salad with tomato, basil, mozzarela and mushroom, served on lettuce leaves. Half of the ingredients served stuffed, and the other half finely chopped. We also made two small soufflés. Separate two eggs, and beat the whites into meringue. Beat the yolks with a touch of milk, and grate cheese in them. Then fold with the meringue and bake. I used the new serving-sized petites cocottes that Despoina bought, they're great for a personal soufflé. We grilled a couple of saucisses for each to eat the mustards with, and made a few bruschettas with sliced baguette, olive oil, mushroom, basil and mozzarela.

I remembered to take a picture only after finishing my soufflé... but you can see the mustard jars! I liked one with herbes de Provence and a spicy one with horseradish.

Chicken roll with cherry tomatoes

The main course should be the peak of the whole meal. This recipe seasons the chicken breast with a blend of strong flavors, a combination of herbs, garlic, anchovy and olives on the inside, with bacon on the outside, and cooked cherry tomatoes on the side. Its taste is not joking around, and isn't flirty nor subtle in any way. It is direct, and to the point...

Ingredients

• black olives
• an anchovy fillet
• a couple of capers
• bread crumbs
• fresh parsley, mint and basil leaves
• three cloves of garlic
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• a shallot
• three chicken breasts
• ten thin slices of bacon, or prosciutto, or parma ham
• one branch of cherry tomatoes (around 8) per person
  

For the stuffing, pit the olives, and blend them with the anchovy, garlic, capers, herbs and a bit of olive oil, to make a paste. Add some bread crumbs if it's too runny, mix and set aside.

Wash the chicken, slice each breast once or twice if it's thick, not all the way through, so it unfolds into one thin long layer. Layer the bacon stripes on the tinfoil.

Pound the chicken a bit with a frying pan to flatten it if necessary, layer it on top of the bacon, and season with pepper.

Rub the paste on the chicken, and drip a bit of olive oil on top.

Then, carefully roll it using the tinfoil, so that the chicken is wrapped all around in bacon.

Then wrap it in the tinfoil tightly. Then put it in boiling water as is, wrapped in tinfoil, for 10-15 minutes. The meat will harden and maintain the rolled shape. Let it cool a bit and remove the tinfoil. Be careful when you roll it, so that it's not too long to fit in the pot of boiling water. I hadn't thought of that at first, so I had to unwrap it once and re-roll it thicker and shorter. Then put a bit of olive oil in a frying pan over high heat, brown the roll all around a bit, and move it to an oven pan.

Add the cherry tomatoes to the hot frying pan in the same oil (vine side up) for a minute. There's no need to cook the tomatoes all around now, just soften the underside and get a bit of fat on them.

Move the tomatoes all around the roll, in the oven pan.

Last, just before I put it in the oven, I added a couple of spoons of tomato sauce on the roll, for more color. Cook in the oven for about 40-45 minutes, medium hot.

There's no need to add water or broth, the tomatoes will be full of juice, and there's also some water left in the roll from the boiling. There's going to be plenty of juice at the end. Serve a slice and a branch of tomatoes per person, and spoon some of the juice on top.

Veggie lasagna

This is a somewhat complicated dish, because you precook every ingredient, and then you layer them together and bake. The ingredients I used:

• pasta dough, rolled and cut into lasagna
• sautéed eggplant
• sautéed carrots
• sautéed onion or shallot
• marinara sauce
• fresh tomato
• fresh green pepper
  

Any other vegetable will work too. The tender ones like spinach, raw, blanched or steamed, the more "robust" like zucchini or mushrooms, sautéed in a bit of olive oil. You can use boiled, steamed or sautéed broccoli or cauliflower too, just chop the flowers to smaller pieces. Anyway, these were all I had. And now for the details.

Make a standard pasta dough with two cups of flour, salt, two to three eggs and, if necessary, water or extra flour. Knead for around ten minutes, and refrigerate in plastic wrap or ziplock bag, for at least half an hour. It holds very nicely in the freezer for unspecified amounts of time (I've tried up to a month with no problem), so you can make more for future batches. While you're waiting, peel a few carrots and slice them finely, lengthwise (like for stir-fry). Also slice a big eggplant (or two smaller ones) in half-inch slices or thinner, sprinkle with salt, and let them sit in a strainer. Be careful, the eggplant will ooze a black, bitter liquid.

After the dough is in the fridge for at least half an hour it'll be more elastic and smooth. Separate it into two or three pieces depending on how big a rolling surface you have. Roll each thin, like for other pasta, until you can see light through it. It takes a few minutes, because it's elastic and will partly shrink back after you roll it. But, it's a nice exercise. If you have a pasta rolling machine, either electric or hand-driven, it will be easier. Cut each leaf of dough into large rectangle pieces, and sprinkle them with flour to avoid them sticking together. Bring a pot of water to boil, salt and drop them in a few at a time, for 4-5 minutes, or 3-4 minutes if you want them more al dente. Take them out and put them in cold water to avoid them sticking while the rest are cooked. Once you're done, and they're in cold water and have all cooled down, you can drain the cold water, they won't stick much from now on. Alternatively, if you have a lot of table real-estate, you can layer them on the table to cool off without touching each other, so there's no need for cold water.

The next step is a simple marinara sauce, for layering. Chop a shallot and sauté for a few minutes with a spoon of olive oil, over low heat, until it softens. Add tomato sauce or purée (diluted with water if necessary), salt, pepper, a couple of bay leaves, a pinch of sugar and if you want a pinch of oregano or thyme. If you have any leftover, you can save it in a jar in the fridge for a couple of days for spaghetti. Let it simmer for five to ten minutes and set aside.

By now the eggplants will be "de-bittered", so wash the salt off and let them dry for a couple of minutes. They'll still be salty, so if you want to add parmesan to the lasagna you might want to soak them for a few minutes to get rid of even more salt. Set a non-stick pan over medium-high flame, and place a bit of olive oil in a plate, next to it. Briefly dip each eggplant slice in the olive oil, both sides, and then put in the hot pan. One layer at a time. Don't fry them in olive oil, because they absorb too much, and then spit it out in the oven, you want the lasagna to be light, not too oily. Then fry the carrots in batches, in a spoon of olive oil like you would for stir-fry. If you are soaking the extra salt out of the eggplants, start with the carrots. I just washed them briefly, and didn't use salt on anything else, except the tomato sauce. It evened out.

OK, now all the ingredients are there, you just need to layer them. Get an oven pan (I used a pyrex glass one), start with a couple of spoons of tomato sauce at the bottom to prevent sticking, and layer lasagna and vegetables alternatively. Don't forget to spoon a bit of sauce in between every layer.

Finish with a layer of thin fresh tomato and pepper slices, sprinkle with bread crumbs and drops of olive oil. You can use parmesan on top, but a couple of my guests didn't like cheese. The bread crumbs soak the olive oil and taste good too.

Cook for 20 to 30 minutes in a medium hot oven, and serve. They taste very good the next day too. The total time for preparation took a bit over an hour, with some overlapping time between making sauce and sautéing the vegetables. It's a light, elegant, summer dish, nice for dinner because it's fulfilling and still light. The meat version would have been too heavy for a summer dinner I think, especially among other meat dishes.

Crispy, herby, breaded chicken drumsticks

I liked this one, it's easy, tasty, and looks good. I served one small-size drumstick per person, as a first course. Wash the drumsticks and cut around the bone with a knife, to remove the skin from the bottom third (where there's no meat). Chop the end of the bone away, a punch on the knife ought to do it, the bone is not that hard there. Slightly score the skin that remains with the knife a few times. Don't cut deep into the meat, just the skin, so it gets more crunchy. Salt and pepper them generously.

Put a couple of spoons of olive oil in a hot pan, over high heat, and "seal" the drumsticks all around, for a few seconds. You only need to slightly brown the outside, to keep the juices in, they don't need to cook all the way. Transfer them in an oven pan and cook in a medium hot oven for half an hour.

While they're in the oven, put in a food processor a few leaves of basil, parsley, mint, a couple of spoons of olive oil, and a cup of breadcrumbs. I save any stale bread and break it in the food processor when it dries up, so I always have a plastic container of breadcrumbs in the fridge. Process everything until the leaves are gone, and the whole thing looks like green sand. Set aside.

After the drumsticks are cooked for half an hour, take them out of the oven, and while they're still hot, rub a spoon of mustard on each. The mustard will melt from the heat, and its flavor will be absorbed nicely by the dried skin.

Immediately, as they're still sticky from the mustard, roll them in the green breadcrumbs, and rub some on until they are coated. Return them to the oven for another five to ten minutes, for the coating to dry up and make a nice, aromatic, green crust. Take them out of the oven and serve, before the crust softens at all.

This is how it looked finally, on my plate. You can tell from the picture that I had just finished the appetizers. They taste very good, if you seal them properly at the beginning in the hot oil, they're moist and yet well-cooked, and the herby breadcrumbs and mustard make a very nice crust with a great smell. My guests liked them too.

(Citation: I got the green breadcrumb crust idea from a youtube video with G.Ramsey)

Salad appetizer

Some friends came over for dinner yesterday, and we had a lot to eat and drink. I decided a full menu post would be too long, so I'll break it apart and write about each dish separately, as I have time.

This one is a simple appetizer, following a "Greek salad" idea. As with all salads, and raw foods in general, the quality of the ingredients is what makes it taste good, so this post is only about the presentation. After all, the recipe for the best Greek salad you've ever had is trivially simple: just get the best tomatoes you've ever had, the best cucumber you've ever had, the best olive oil you've ever had, the best onion you've ever had, etc, and combine them!

This presentation gives three servings per tomato. You need a tomato, a piece of mozzarella, cucumber, and parsley or basil (or both) for garnish.

Use a peeler to cut the cucumber in thin slices, and cut the tomato in three equal pieces, each spanning a 120-degree angle. Then slice each tomato piece another three times, careful not to go all the way through.

Cut slices of mozzarella and stuff each slice in the tomato, so that at the end, each tomato third, expands to look like a half. Stick a bit of parsley or basil in the middle slice. You can also use slices of hard-boiled egg or avocado (or even of feta cheese, if that's your thing) instead of mozzarella.

Then, using two long cucumber stripes make a cross on a plate, put a piece of tomato on the cross, and turn the edges to wrap it. Keep in place with a toothpick. Salt, and dress with a spoon of olive oil, or maybe a simple vinaigrette of olive-oil and red-wine vinegar.

Here is how it looks like with a bit of crab dip on the side, my two appetizers. To make the crab sauce, blend crab meat with some crème fraîche until smooth.

Main course: Oven ragoût

Ingredients

• around half a kilogram (a pound) of lamb, no fat, no bones, chopped into bite-sized cubes. (I started with 700g of leg, and took the bone and fat out.)
• 4 potatoes, in 1-inch cubes
  
• 5 medium-sized carrots, quartered widthwise
• 3 shallots
• 1 onion
  
• pinch of salt and pepper
• 2-3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 cup of red wine
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

Cooking

First, clean the lamb from any bones and fat, and chop it into cubes. Then put it in a ziploc bag with the wine and a crashed clove of garlic, and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours. Put the shallots and carrots in a tall oven pot. Chop the onion and put in a frying pan with the olive oil, on low heat. After it softens a bit take the meat out of the marinade and add it to the pan. Brown the meat for 1 minute on each side. Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock, and pour everything from the pan to the oven pot, over the vegetables. Salt and pepper, add water to barely cover everything and put the pot in a medium-heat oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Then add the potatoes on top (don't stir) and add water if necessary to barely cover them. Return to the oven for another hour.

Came out nice and juicy, and almost with no fat at all.

Serve it with a spoon to get a lot of liquid, it's quite tasty, specially for dipping a slice of this loaf.