Tag Archives: recipes

Recipes, Rules, and Relativism

Posted on by

It recently occurred to me how odd my recipe collection here in my posts is.
From reading here, one would get the impression that I cook mostly muffins; that is not the case. The recipes that I post are for things that I actually bother to follow a recipe Upsidedown Pineapple Piefor; most of the things I cook–the stews, pastas, potatoes & rice dishes that make up my day-to-day life aren’t necessarily planned, and certainly aren’t measured–and this is what most cooking, as well as most of my life, is like: I look at what’s available, and I make the best of it. I recently had a wonderful pineapple-coconut-upside-down-pie that long time reader and Bistro regular Rachel had made, but she couldn’t have told me the recipe–she just put in what she thought would be good (and it was).

There are people whom this drives crazy–they need to be able to measure everything, and they need to know exactly what to do and when to do it. They need hard, fast formulas that they can follow to the letter to be absolutely certain that it comes out right. Lots of recipes are a good thing when you are still just trying to find your way around a kitchen, but eventually, they just become “guidelines.” Apples, potatoes & carrots don’t come in uniform sizes, flour doesn’t come in uniform levels of moisture, even the difference in air pressure on different days can change food–you are working with food, not forcing it to do something.

Now, there are things that matter:
Proportion matters; in oatmeal or rice or other cooked grains, the amount of liquid will be twice that of the grain. The perfect biscuit has a perfect proportion of flour, leavening, shortening, and moisture. It is obviously possible to have too much salt.
For some dishes, recipes matter more; bread involves a great deal of time letting the dough rise and then bake, as do cakes, and there is really no way to alter the recipe in the middle of baking the way I constantly do with soups, stews, etc. Cooking for large groups, it is also necessary to have some recipe in mind, just because of the difficulties of scale.

But even with things that have no recipe, it is possible to say that you got it right Spatzle(Rachel’s pie, the Seitan Sauerbraten I made up), or that you got it wrong (the first attempt at the spun sugar nests). The balance, the flavors, how well, but not over-cooked things are–these are all there regardless of any recipe, regardless of even knowing what the experiment is supposed to taste like.

Some people need rules the way that other people need recipes.
They are not happy–well, generally, they just aren’t happy–but they just aren’t happy unless they have rigid rules and formulas to order their lives by. Anybody who doesn’t accept their rules is a danger, a challenge, a sinner, or–perish the thought–a relativist.

Rules are fine in certain circumstances.
Small children, like beginning cooks, need clear instructions and clear guidelines. There are also trickier situations, more complex situations where it is good to have worked out standards because the results could be so disastrous, and the long-term results are too difficult to see before it’s too late. In situations involving large groups of people, it is also good to have a clear understanding.

But virtue isn’t always dependent upon categorical imperatives or divine fiat. Sometimes we have to make decisions about how to react in an appropriate way, or how to be a good person, in the circumstances we find ourselves in. This isn’t relativism: a good cook doesn’t need a recipe to know that a dish is awful, and a good person does not need laws to understand that hurting another creature is wrong. A good cook knows that braising and slow roasting will give food more flavor, and a good person knows that patience and kindness make the world better.

1010signature rules

Eggs on the Lawn

Posted on by

trosly pigs 007This is one of my favorite recipes. In the part of Germany I spent my childhood, this was the dish that was traditionally served on Green Thursday, the Thursday of Holy Week. It was called “Eier auf die Wiese” which means “Eggs on the Lawn.” As you can see, the bed of greens looks like a lawn.

In my mind, because the German word for egg—“Ei”—sounds like the English word “Eye,” and because a cooked egg looks like an eye, I will always think of them as “Eyes on the Lawn.” I also love the combination of cheese and spinach. Another name for this dish is “Eggs Florentine with Mornay Sauce.”

Ingredients:

Sauce:

  • 4 Tbsp Butter
  • 1 Tbsp finely diced Onion
  • 4 tsp Flour
  • 1 dash Salt
  • 1 cup Milk
  • 1 Tbsp grated Gruyère Cheese
  • 1 Tbsp grated Parmesan Cheese
  • Mess of Greens (Spinach is preferable, but you can also use others; traditionally, the German greens for this dish can also include the first wild greens of spring, such as dandelions, Sauer Ampfer and even Stinging Nettles. I started with fresh spinach and added some arugula, and some fresh clover and wild onion tops from the back yard)
  • 4 eggs

 

Step 1, a roux: Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the onion and soften a bit, then whisk in the flour, stirring and letting cook a few minutes until it thickens trosly pigs 003and starts to bubble, but not so long that it browns.

Step 2, dairy it up: Add the milk, and stir over a medium heat until smooth. Put in a bit of salt, and pepper if you like. Add the cheese.

Step 3, prepping the greens: In another pan, sauté the greens in a little bit of Olive Oil or Butter.

Step 4, egging it on: Poach 4 eggs. To do this, you can either poach 4 eggs in a pot of boiling water with a touch of white vinegar, and then set upon the greens, or break the eggs whole into the greens and cover until they have poached.

trosly pigs 005Step 5, prep and serve: garnish to plate and add a bit of the cheese sauce.

This is a simple dish, as is fitting for the holiday. Enjoy it with family or friends, perhaps with a bit of toast and a glass of sweet white wine.

Then go wash a strangers feet. What have you got to lose?

Robert’s French Bread

Posted on by

Basic French Bread Recipe

BaggettesThis is a basic “water dough,” meaning its main ingredients are flour, yeast and water.  This makes a great, crisp bread, but the absence of oil also means it may go stale more quickly. This can be formed into the traditional long skinny bagguettes, the shorter rounder boule,  thick long italian loafs, or small petite pain or brötchen.

 

Ingredients:

3 cups warm water
a pinch of sugar (optional, oh ye of little faith)
2 Tbsp. Yeast (maybe 3 envelopes?)
1Tbsp. Salt
7 cups, give or take, of bread flour (6+ cups); Yeah, yeah, I don’t have an exact amount because there isn’t an exact amount–I live in a very humid, even damp, part of the country, if you are actually dry, you will need less flour.
Possibly a bit of olive oil, corn meal and vinegar as tools for the preparation.

A note on flour: Although I am casual about what flour you use on other breads, I strongly recommend King Arthur Bread Flour. Imitating European bread requires a flour that imitates European flour. European flour comes from a specific type of hard red wheat which is easier to grow in New England because of the similar climate and latitude.

Step 1, Proofing: Put the first 2 cups of hot water in a large bowl (or the mixer bowl if you plan on letting the bread hook to do the heavy lifting). This can actually be hot, since it will warm the bowl, and since there are several things which will go on before it comes in contact with the yeast. In a 1 1/2 or 2 cup pyrex measruing cup or a mason jar, add one cup of warm water, a pinch of sugar (the yeast actually can get its sugar from the flour, so this isn’t necessary, but I have trust issues), and whisk until the sugar is disolved. Add the 2 Tbsp. of Yeast and whisk until smooth. Set aside.

Step 2, Adding flour: Return to the other bowl and whisk the salt into the 2 cups of water. Slowly sift–yes, sift–in the first 2 cups of flour–whisking in each 1/2 cup until it is smooth. By the time this batter–and the consistency will be like a batter–is starting to get stiff, the yeast mixture should have strted foaming up, and might be about to overflow. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and whisk until smooth Sift in another cup or so of flour a little at a time, until the mixture is almost too thick for the whisk. At this point, take out the whisk and leave this in a warm place for 5 minutes and walk away. Fold laundry, have a glass of wine, play with the dog, try to figure out where you put the rest of the bread flour, dance, just leave the yeast alone.

Step 3, Kneading: Come back to Erin, Mavourneen, Mavourneen. If it is bigger, and a little poofy, the yeast is doing great. If not, either you have bad yeast or a cold spot. Continue to sift in the Bread Flour 1/4 of a cup at a time, and thoroughly mix it in; at this point, I would be using a big wooden spoon, when this is too hard, use a mixer with a bread hook or turn it our onto a floured surface.
It is important to knead the flour in 1/4 of a cup at a time, and after each bit of flour, hook or knead the bread until it becomes one thing again–not a mixture of flour and dough, but one unit. When the dough is a single round thing holding on to itself and not sticking to other things, behaving about like a deflated volley ball, it is ready. Until the sandwich laves, the doaugh should still be a little sticky, but it should be a ball that feels sticky, not doough that leaves the group , breaks apart, and sticks to your hands in large globs. The amount of the flour doesn’t matter–getting it to this proper consistency is what matters. Roll it around on the counter for good measure.

Step 4, Rising: Grease a smooth bowl 3 times as big as the dough. Roll the dough ball in the oil, and then cover with plastic wrap or a wet towel or something that will let it slip without drying out. Let this sit in in a warm place–in the oven with a heating pad on a different shelf, on the sunny side of the house, just a safe and warm place–until the dough has doubled in size. Usually, this will be about an hour.

Step 4, Second Rising:  Turn the dough out onto a clean surface, and punch it down (forcefully knead it), which should reduce it to close to its original size. Separate this into 3 portions ( or 4 or… you figure it out) and shape these into loaves; make sure that there are not seams or spots the loaf might separate, maybe pinching loose edges and rolling it about a bit–each should be smooth and coherent–it’s own little self.

Step 5, Second Rising: Prepare baking sheets for the loaves you have just formed. If the sheets have a good non-stick surface like my bagguette pans, just spray with a little bit of oil, or, on a baking sheet, you can spray a little bit of oil the size of each loaf and sprinkle a bit of corn meal. Put each loaf onto a baking sheet, cut crossways slits along the top with a sharp knife (this lets bubbles out) and set these into a warm place until they have grown–usually less that the first rise. about half way through this rise (20? 25 minutes?) pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.

Step 6, Baking: Just before putting them in the oven, I usually spary a light misting of vinegar on the outside of each loaf. This adds to the crunchiness of the crust. You can also add a little pan of water to the bottom of the oven, since the steam will also make the crust crustier. Put the loaves in the oven for 15 minutes, rotate them, putting bread from the lower racks onto the top, turning the backs to the front, etc.until the top crust is a nice dark brown. figure out your oven, and see if you need to turn them or rotate them to get them to cook evenly. When they are done, get them out, take them out of the pans, and put them on a cooling rack.
If everything has gone well, they should smell as golden as all that is right about the material world, and about a minute later you shoulod be able to hear la chanson du pain, the song of the bread, that tinkling little cracking noise as the bread cools.

Last Step, Sharing: This one should be shared quickly. You should share one loaf with baggettes2a warm loved one and some cold butter before it even cools. Another loaf will be perfect with some olive oil and pasta and salads and a rich Chianti for supper. a little loaf will be perfect with some sharp cheddar, a hard boiled egg, a whole tomato, a dill pickle and some branston pickle for a plow-man’s lunch at work. Most importantly, if you have extra bread, you will have to give it away, but–with this bread–quickly. It is perfect with a bottle of wine as a house warming gift or in lieu of a condolence card for seomone who has lost a loved one, or to hang on a door knob for a friend to find when they get home from work, or for the host for the evenings vespers, or to share with a college student or wandering monk.

Pumpkin Carrot Beet Muffins

Posted on by

PCB muffins 3Like many recipes, this one has a bunch of dry ingredients, and a bunch of wet ingredients which eventually come together.

 

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups flour (Whole wheat, white, both, as you wish)
  • ¾ cup of sugar
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tsp mace (this gives it a little bite, but can be left out or replaced with ginger)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ cup brown sugar (it will clog the sifter).
  • ½ pound shredded carrots (or carrot  & beets mixed) I have a scale, but you can also sort of figure out half of a 1 lb. bag of carrots.
  • ½ cup raisins (Golden raisins are better; sometimes, if the raising are really dry, I soak them in rum or coffee or warm water)
  • ½ cup walnuts
  • (optional, ½ cup pumpkin seeds)
  • 2 cup pumpkin
  • 3 eggs
  • ½ cup oil (it might work without this, I liked making it with coconut oil.)
  • 2 tsp. vanilla

Step 1, Prepare Ye the way: Preheat the oven to 350°, shred or grate the carrots and/or beets, either grease the muffin tins or put in the cupcake liners (I usually spray a little canola oil in the bottom of these to make things come out easier). I get 2 dozen medium sized muffins out of this mix.

Step 2, sifting the dry ingredients: In one bowl crumble up the brown sugar, then sift (mix if you don’t have a sifter) in the flour, white sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, mace, and salt. Mix thoroughly.

Step 3, mixing the wet ingredients: In another bowl, mix the shredded root vegetables, raisins, walnuts, pumpkin, eggs, oil and vanilla.

 Step 4, combining the big mess: Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix well. You want to make sure the individual bits of carrot & beet are each coated to keep them from getting too clumpy. The consistency should be much firmer than batter, but a little more liquid than cookie dough. I used pumpkin from a vegetable my daughter had slaughtered, but canned pumpkin is a but less wet, so you might have to add a little liquid, like 1/4 cup of orange juice.

Step 5, baking: Fill two dozen or so muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I never wrote the time down, but it is at least 20 minutes and probably less than 35. See how they look. Stick a toothpick in one and see if it comes out battery.

PCB muffins 1Enjoy! These are perfect breakfast, for leaving at the back door of good friends, for sneaking across the counter to gorgeous barristas, for setting on the desks of helpful librarians, for sending to Brooklyn with couch-surfing college girls; you name it.