Shabbat Shalom! (Challah, Obviously)

 It's Friday evening here in Georgia, and the sun has tucked itself away momentarily behind a silvery cloud turned to gold at the edges (the sun may try to be inconspicuous, but, well, it's the sun). It's been a good day-- a very good day, in fact, as I just found out I've been hired!

When I got back to the States two months ago,  I took a few weeks to decompress before beginning job applications, and then, once I did, nothing worked out. I cobbled together a few little things-- a tutoring job and a Hebrew School gig-- but those were more for joy than for money (I was actually under the impression that the Hebrew School would be volunteer until I started teaching). Anyway, after a good month and a half of undesired unemployment, I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that none of the places I'd applied for nice part-time work were going to hire me, and I was ok with that. Between my two mini teaching jobs and my volunteer research for the museum, as well as participation in choir, almost daily workouts, and grad school applications, I felt mostly content.

So I was very surprised, an hour ago, when the very first restaurant I applied to called me back. I'm filling out paperwork Monday and starting training Tuesday. I'm a bit nervous, I must admit, about how this is going to affect my mostly-established-and-very-comfortable schedule. What a silly first-world, fortunate problem that is. Man, am I not in China anymore. Heck, I'm not even in unemployed America anymore, or won't be next week. I'll be getting experience as a server on a part-time basis, and I'll still get to do all the fun (and not so fun but necessary) stuff I've gotten involved with. I should be more nervous that I will drop dishes full of food on the people who will be tipping me, I suppose. Anyway, that has very little to do with this.

This is what one's hand is prone to look like after kneading challah. But it's worth it, I promise. 

Challah, for the uninitiated, is a traditional Jewish bread. It's a bit on the richer and the sweeter side than one's average loaf, but it's certainly nowhere near scones or muffins or banana bread or anything. It's a dense bread that's delicious plain, wonderful smeared with butter and honey, and stupendous turned into french toast. Challah is often eaten on shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, which falls every Friday night along with the setting sun. Today happens to mark the first shabbat of autumn and the last before Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).

My family isn't devoted to a particular recipe. I'm partial to Mollie Katzen's, while my mother prefers...the bread machine book's. I will admit that there are advantages to the bread machine book's, like using the initial mix of orange juice and water, but challah to me just seems the sort of thing that must have a recipe attributable to somebody (preferably a great-great-great grandmother), and the bread machine book doesn't make the cut. Nonetheless, it wouldn't be me if I didn't make some small modifications to the original, so here you go. Emily's challah, mostly courtesy of Mollie Katzen, in all its glory. 

Ingredients (for one braid--can be easily doubled)
-1 1/4 cups of wrist-temperature water (or a mix of water and orange juice)
-1.5 tsp. yeast
-2 TBS oil or melted butter (butter is better, I think)
-1/4 c. sugar or honey (honey is oh-so-much better, if available)

-1 egg, plus about half another egg, for glaze

-1.5 tsp. salt
-a dash of cinnamon

-1/4 cup raisins (optional)

-4-5 cups all-purpose flour (can use up to 2 cups whole wheat, if you like, but I usually use only 1 cup, if any)
-poppy or sesame seeds for sprinkling


Procedure
-Put the water into a large bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Then whisk in the oil or butter, sugar or honey, egg, cinnamon, and salt until nicely blended. If you're using raisins (and I can honestly go either way on that--I did today just because I hadn't for awhile and my sister, who hates them, is away at college), stir them on in. 
-Stir in the flour one cup at a time, moving from a whisk to a wooden spoon. When you've added 4 or 5 cups, the dough should be ever-so-slightly sticky. Knead it in the bowl for a few minutes, adding flour as necessary, until it's smooth and elastic. Then wrap it up in saran and let it double. This'll take 1-1.5 hours.

The challah looked quite happy to be in the world, and so did the green, green grass of the backyard. 

-After the dough's risen, you can stick it in a loaf pan and bake it like any other bread, but that's rather unusual for challah. Challah is nearly always braided. So, if you want to do this properly, cut the dough into thirds and roll each into a ball. You may have to redistribute the dough a bit to make the balls even. Roll each ball into a rope. If they're not approximately the same length, just pinch the end off of one and firmly stick it onto another. 

-Pinch the ends of the ropes together. Braiding begins from the middle and stays in the middle. If you know how to braid hair, you're in great shape. Just do that. If not, stick with me here. Take the middle rope, and bring it over the left rope, as in the picture below. Then, take the right rope, and bring it under the new middle rope (the original left rope), as in the second picture below. Then, take the new left rope (the original middle rope), and bring it under the new middle rope (the original right rope). You're basically going under whatever rope happens to be the current middle rope, alternating left to right and back again. But I know that sounds confusing, so I have creating, for your viewing pleasure, my very first food blog video (which has not been at all edited in any way, shape, or form, in case that isn't plainly obvious). 

-Once the braid is finished, place it on a greased baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap and a dish towel, and let rise for another hour. Shortly before the hour's up, preheat the oven to 375°F and beat an egg with a pinch of salt (you won't need the whole egg, so plan on omelets for dinner?).
-Before putting the bread in the oven, brush it generously with the egg wash and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds. You don't have to do this, strictly speaking, just as you don't have to braid the loaf, but not doing it is kinda akin to not putting lime in a gin and tonic. It just doesn't work as well. 
-Bake for 30-45 minutes, depending on your oven, until the loaf is golden-brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool on a rack. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Bhangra Burrito

My parents both grew up with mothers who cooked. To be fair, I guess many children of the late 50s did, although not nearly so many turned into parents who cooked for their own kids. My Mom and Dad both did, and I'm grateful.


I associate my grandmothers' California kitchens with cookbooks. Lots of cookbooks. A few years ago, when I was visiting my grandma in Berkeley, The Rebar Modern Food Cookbook caught my eye. Rebar is a restaurant in Victoria that specializes in mostly-veggie, hippie cuisine, and my grandma had visited with her brother some time back.

Grandma, ever indulgent when it comes to her granddaughters, caught me pouring through the cookbook and said I could have it. It's become one of my very favorites. The recipes are imaginative but not weird, fanciful but not fancy (for the most part). A lot of what Rebar does is take staple recipes, like lasagne and cream of broccoli soup, and spin them into exciting variations. There are some awesome desserts as well, both classic and not, and there's a great section detailing methods for "basics" like peanut sauce, salsas, chile paste, and whole wheat pastry.

Rebar has two recipes for burritos. One is a more traditional take with beans and squash and corn. The other hops down to the subcontinent, producing a wrap that's essentially an easily-packaged packet of Indian curry. I made a few small changes to the original recipe to accomodate my family's pantry, but what's below is very close to what's in the book.

Ingredients
-4 garlic cloves
-1 inch piece of ginger, peeled
-1 hot pepper (jalepeno, poblano, whatever you've got)
-1 red pepper
-6 roma tomatoes (I didn't have these, so I used three small tomatoes, plus about a half cup of canned)


-3 TBS vegetable oil
-1 medium onion, diced
-1 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp ground cumin
-1 tsp ground coriander
-1 tsp sweet paprika
-1/4 tsp. tumeric
-1/2 tsp. (preferably freshly) ground pepper
-1 15-20 oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained


-1.5 lbs potatoes, diced (we used russets-- the original called for red)


-1/2 cup cilantro, stemmed and chopped
-1.5 cups spinach or baby spinach, stemmed and sliced into ribbons 
-tortillas or wraps


Procedure
1) Roughly chop garlic, ginger, hot pepper, red pepper, and tomatoes, and put in a food processor until they form a course purée.

2) Put 2 TBS oil in a large pan and heat over medium. Sauté onion with half the salt until translucent, then add the cumin, coriander, paprika, tumeric and pepper. Add the purée from above and simmer 5-10 minute. Add chickpeas and cook another 5-10 minutes.






3)Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 450°F. Toss potatoes with the last TBS of oil and the remaining salt. Spread onto a baking sheet and roast until lightly golden and soft, about 15-20 minutes. Toss potatoes with the chickpea mix. 


4) Take a tortilla and spread spinach ribbons down the center, topped with a bit of cilantro. Spoon on curry, roll up, and place in an oiled baking dish. Repeat until out of filling. We made 6 tortillas, using 6-inch wraps, and had some filling left over. Cover and bake for 20-30 minutes until heated through and a bit crispy. We served ours with a bit of yogurt. Chutney would also be nice. 

Whole-Wheat Apple Pancakes (with a Twist)

Today is a no-workout day. The weather's a little gross, I feel a lot icky (not sick, just icky), and as 8 turned to 9 turned to noon, I eventually accepted the fact that my only exercise today would come from my little stroll about the neighborhood to put up "Found Puppy" signs.

You see, when my Dad went out to get the paper this morning, there was an itty bitty pug sleeping in one of the chairs on our front porch. For the following several hours, it continued to chill on our porch, wagging its tail, barking pitifully from time to time, and getting ever-so-very-excited whenever one of us ventured outdoors. My parents called the one family in the neighborhood we know owns a pug to make sure it wasn't their pet, but as it wasn't, and as my sister, my Mom, and my Dad all had places to get to, I ended up being left with the task of figuring out what to do with the little guy. ("Keep him" was my initial suggestion, but... vetoed.) So it was that I printed off some fliers, grabbed some thumb tacks, and went out on a stroll. The pug followed. He's a very friendly pug.

Partway through our walk I encountered another lady walking her dog. This lady knew of a neighbor who owned 2 pugs and said that she'd take our small, tail-wagging friend home with her until someone claimed him. I'd be lying if I said that my relief at no longer having a lost doggie around didn't mingle with disappointment at giving up the closest thing I'd ever had to a canine of my own.

Anyway, as I am in the midst of a lazy day, I thought I'd tell you folks about my lazy Sunday morning breakfast yesterday. My favorite recipes for really awesome bread generally come from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. (For my full love letter to this cook book, see this, which is on my old food blog.) On Saturday afternoon, I was looking for inspiration for what to do next with my sourdough starter, and I stumbled upon Brown's "Sourdough Pancakes" recipe. I ended up adding a bunch of flour, but I think the basic concept is pretty awesome. The pancakes turn out richly-flavored but still sweet and rather amazing with maple syrup. Honey would be good too, I imagine. Recipe's below. My modifications are noted.

Ingredients- Night Before Breakfast
-1/2 cup sourdough starter
-2.5 whole wheat flour
-2 cups warm water


Procedure: Measure into a large bowl and mix thoroughly


Ingredients- Morning
-1 egg, beaten

(Ain't that pretty?)

-2 TBS corn oil (I didn't have any, so I subbed canola)
-3/4 cup milk
-1 tsp. salt
-1 tsp. baking soda
-spices as desired (I used about a tsp. of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg)
-2 TBS brown sugar
- about 1 cup all-purpose flour (this wasn't in the recipe, but I found the original way too thin and a bit heavy. In the future, I might also sub out some of the whole wheat flour in the flour/water/starter mix for all-purpose or whole-wheat pastry)
-1 large apple, diced (or any other fruit, nuts, seeds, oats, chocolate chips, etc. Or make them plain)


Procedure:
-Measure out 1/2 cup of the mix from the night before and add back to the sourdough starter.
-Mix the egg, oil, and milk into the flour/water mix
-Mix the flour in. 
-Combine the salt, soda, spices, and sugar and sprinkle over the batter, then gently fold in. Same with the apples.
 -Let sit for a few minutes before frying. Brown says that small pancakes generally work better than larger. 

Sourdough-- Bittman Style

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to the chronicle of my cooking and baking adventures down here in Georgia. I could, I suppose, begin with some sort of self-introduction, but I assume that most people reading this already know me, and that those who don't are far more interested in recipes than in revealing personal tidbits. I will say that what you're most likely to find in this blog is a mix of recipes penned by my favorite chefs and recipes designed on the fly as I satisfy my culinary cravings and curiosities. I love to cook, but my deepest food passion is for baking (hence the blog title). It seems only fitting that I begin with bread. This bread, to be precise:

This bread is the sourdough loaf I learned about in Mark Bittman's The Art of Cooking Everything Vegetarian. I'm a pretty big fan of Mark Bittman's (he's a food writer for the NYT; if you haven't checked him out, you should), but I'd never read anything of his not linked to the Times until stumbling upon his cookbook at the library last week. 

Sourdough is an elusive creature, made thus by the fact that it relies on a starter. I have dreams of one day sneaking into the bustling kitchen at Boudin's, snagging a fistful of that century-old, solid-gold mass of sour goop and secreting it back to my own refrigerator. But, considering that Boudin's is in San Francisco and I am here, I've had to settle for less. Which is just as well, considering that stealing Boudin's starter would likely lead to unpleasant consequences. 

Sourdough starter isn't very difficult to make, but it does require time and patience and luck. In fact, making a loaf of sourdough bread start to finish is a several-day process, because the starter itself needs a few days prior to mixing the bread dough, and then there's typically a long rising period. And then, even after all the hard work and the waiting and waiting, there's no knowing how sour your bread will taste. Starters certainly do age well, as long as they're fed, but it might take a few weeks, or even longer, before breads baked with it have the traditional sour taste I associate with so many wonderful California bakeries. Even then, it might not match up ( Northern California yeast is just really quite excellent), but that shouldn't stop you from trying! Sourdough is exciting! Each starter, and thus each loaf resulting from it, is a unique concoction of taste and texture dependent not just on the commercial yeast you begin with but on the natural yeasts hanging around your environment. This is most certainly a locally-powdered bread. So, have at! At the least, you'll get a beautiful , deeply-flavored loaf lovely for sandwiches and smears of butter. 

We begin with the starter:

Ingredients

-1.5 cups bread flour

-1/8 tsp. yeast (yes, that's all)

-1 cup wrist-temperature water

Procedure: Combine flour, yeast, and water in a large bowl, mix with a wooden spoon, cover loosely (so natural yeasts can join what's already inside), and tuck into an out-of-the-way spot. Stir every 8-12 hours and wait patiently for it to get bubbly and develop a bit of a sour smell. In most climates, this'll likely take 2-3 days. In Georgia summer, it took one. 

Once the starter's mature, you can begin the bread. But, if you aren't going to be baking right away, stick the starter in the fridge. When the time to bake comes, you're ready for step two: Bread Baking Eve.

Ingredients

-starter

-2 cups of bread flour (I sometimes use part all-purpose whole-wheat)

-1.5 cups wrist-temperature water

Procedure: If you've made the starter according to Bittman's directions, you use all of it during this step (don't worry-- you'll get a lot of it back later). Dump the starter into a large bowl and mix in the flour and water until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for at least 6 hours or overnight. It will get bubbly and foam a bit. And do make sure you use a large bowl--I didn't the first time and ended up with the blob all over my counter. Whoops. 

Sleep well, and dream of good bread. When morning comes, your bowl should look something like this. (do excuse the quality of my photographs. I have a very temperamental camera that I hope to replace soon.) 

Ingredients

-1 cup bread flour

-1 cup rye flour (if you don't have it, all-purpose, bread, or whole wheat will be fine. Again, it'll affect texture and flavor to some extent, but I've baked with and without rye flour and it's good both ways)

-1/2 tsp. yeast

-2 tsp. salt

Procedure: 

1) Transfer half of the starter/flour mix to a covered container and stick it back into the fridge until the next time you bake bread. 

2) Dump the other half...into a food processor. Yeah, I know. For some people this probably sounds like a heavenly prospect, while for others (myself included) it seems simply unthinkable. Machine-kneaded bread? What is this, the 1950s? I love the hands-on element of bread baking. But, for sourdough at least, this really works. 

3) Add the bread flour, rye flour, yeast, and salt to the food processor and turn it on for about a minute. The ingredients should meld into a moist and well-defined ball. If it's too sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. If it's too dry, add a little water.  Process for 5-10 seconds after each addition. 

4) Put the dough into a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave at room temperature for at least an hour.

5) Lightly flour a countertop, and shape the dough into a boule or a baguette or whatever you like, really. (To make a boule, form the dough into a ball and then stretch it by lightly pulling the dough from the center out to the sides and tucking it under. Make a "seam" on the bottom of the loaf by tightly pinching the tucked-under bits together.) Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let it rest and rise while you pre-heat the oven to 400°F. 

6) When the oven is pre-heated, transfer the loaf to a greased baking sheet and score it a couple times with a sharp knife. Turn the oven down to 375°F and put the bread in. Make sure there's not a baking rack too close above the one the bread is on, because these loaves PUFF, I tell you. 

7) Unlike most bread recipes, which specify a baking time, Mark Bittman recommends an internal thermometer.  He says that the internal temperature of the loaf should be at least 210°F, which for me meant baking the bread past its initial "golden brown and hollow sounding" stage. What looked and felt like a done loaf was, according to Mark Bittman, 20 degrees shy of where it needed to be. So, if you have a thermometer, use it; if not, bake the bread longer than you think you need to--probably at least 40-50 minutes, although each oven is different. 

8) When the bread has reached the desired temperature, stick it on a rack to cool, slice in, and smile. You've just made sourdough.