"sandwiches that you will like!"

I wasn't sure what to get on my tripe sandwich, so I followed suit of the woman in front of me: onions and a big hot pepper!

Mnnn.

Cheesesteak & Phở

We're in Philadelphia for the weekend. Last night I had a cheesesteak down the street that was pretty good; today I had some really good phở with flank steak, eye round steak and tripe (phở tái, nạm, sách). They warned me of the tripe, but it had a really great texture, although not much flavor (it tasted like the soup broth, mostly). No photos, just some good food.

sour

Meanwhile, I've stared Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes and been working on my sourdough. I've been experimenting with oven moisture, among other thing. More moisture and steaming for the first few minutes really helps it rise more and get a better crust. It's a process. This one needed deeper cuts, I think. It split lower down, as you can see.

octoberish

It's been a busy few weeks with a handful of highlights foodwise. I'm making mead: it just went into a carboy today. My sauerkraut came out wonderfully -- it's really quite good. I also made sauerrüben -- fermented turnips, usually, but I used rutabaga since it's a cross between cabbage and turnips. To the right is sorrel soup: sorrel, potatoes, leeks and a duck stock from that roasted duck last month. It was real good.

Then LD wanted fried eggplant. Fried eggplant reminds me of soggy eggplant and other parmaseans -- all of which trigger my gag reflex. So I salted and drained the slices and tossed them in this batter (a departure from the fish batter I made with rice flour): two egg whites beaten until stiff into which two yolks, salt and half a cup of brown rice flour are folded. I battered the slices and fried them in grapeseed and sesame oil. They were really wonderful.

I also discovered this incredible Italian rabe at the farmer's market: I have no photo of it, but to the right is a tortilla of rabe and potatoes.

And this is beautiful purple cauliflower with lentils (it really does taste better than the white stuff, it's got more depth and nuttiness. It's just roasted on a bed of lentils cooked with celeriac and carrots and leeks) :

"...until the spatula becomes your third hand"

I've started baking two shifts at a local bakery -- first shift pastry, so baking muffins, cookies, scones and danish and preparing all but the latter for the next day. (2nd shift has the skills - and degree - for danish).

It can be a little grueling, but it feels really good. (My first two shifts took eleven hours, starting at 4 a.m.; they'll be more reasonable with time).

And they make some damn fine bread. So maybe I'll get some pointers on mine.

tomato season

It's that time of the year when there's so much food that's fresh and local that it's overwhelming. Part of this is that you know that in a month it could be snowing.

Between this week and last I've bought and used forty pounds of plum tomatoes, twelve pounds of cabbage and all sorts of other wonderful things. The tomatoes ended up as a tomato tarte tatin (no photo! and it was the best I've made!), twenty-two pints of canned tomatoes and probably twelve or thirteen pints of sauce (we had a housewarming that involved the tatin and lots of sauce with fresh pasta and olives). Best of all, forty pounds of fresh local tomatoes for a total of $25.

Sauerkraut is fermenting in the back room in what was the best birthday present ever: a two gallon "bluebird" crock. All twelve pounds of cabbage made it in there and it's now covered in it's own brine. (I only added salt, juniper berries and caraway seeds). It doesn't taste like it's there yet, but it's only been a week.

And that delicious savoy cabbage in the photo made it into a great Deborah Madison creation: savoy cabbage sautéed with lacinato kale and white beans. Very very satisfying.

sour

I started with some water and flour and some grapes from a neighbor's yard (no yeast added!):

And now I have this:

Using a Wild Fermentation recipe, I made a starter (actually, two: I doubted the first but it has since come into its own). The first starter got foamy and yeasty so I strained the grapes (the white on grapes being naturally-occurring yeasts) and then it went dormant. I started another. I waited. I almost wondered if they had gone off as they taste(d) sour. I'm guessing that's the sour in sourdough. Then I transferred both to an open window on those warm days of last week -- and voilà! -- now I have two active starters. Sour and yeasty like a sponge for a dough. Hopefully tomorrow I'll see how they stand up to dough, rising and baking.

roast duck

Sunday I made myself a full-on Sunday dinner. I roast a duck (simply, with just sage, thyme, onion salt & pepper as seasoning -- the herbs being part of my garden-in-pots, all that's left as we just moved) and some vegetables (leeks, potatoes and rutabagas). The duck was very very good -- I roasted it following Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol. 1. -- and I had it with a pinot noir-based gravy (easier than her stock-port reduction, frankly). The vegetables I basted with some duck fat, instead of the usual oil, and they were nicely caramelized (and the rutabaga wonderfully sweet.)

beautiful.

The kimchi that I started at the beginning of the week is done. It's out of the crock and into the jar; it's beautiful, and delicious, and better in many ways than the bok choy version that I made (which was good and I did finish 1+ quarts in a week and a half). This is just one napa cabbage, one fresh daikon and five stout, short carrots and a handful of scallions, all from local farmer's markets. The cabbage is coarsely chopped, the daikon and carrot cut into bâtonnets (large julienne), and then there's salt, lots of ginger and garlic, anchovies and Korean dried chillis -- the latter making a huge difference, a vast improvement on fresh Thai peppers that weren't strong enough (and didn't make the kimchi that rosy red color).

kimchi or pickle?

So I started with this:

And ended up with this:

Part pickle, part kimchi: I had some daikon left over from the last batch of kimchi, and a handful of Japanese cucumbers, so I thought to do a summery kimchi. Opps -- the cucumbers had gone off, and I was all prepared. I gathered a half dozen ripe lemon cukes from the garden. And there you have it. It's very tangy, I think from the sweetness of the cucumbers, and it has a nice bite. It does have pepper, a good handful of Thai peppers, but those won't turn it red. (I got some Korean pepper at Kim's Market in Hadley for a more traditional batch of kimchi with napa cabbage).


And then a few days ago I made spaghetti squash with parsley and kale from the garden and kale. That with some vegetarian bratwurst that weren't too bad. It was quite good, but even better the next next mixed with ricotta. Mnnnn.


Lastly, I've decided that natto and brown rice is even more satisfying than off-brand Cheerio's and raw milk for breakfast.

natto for breakfast...

...is actually very delicious.


I had some natto the other day and found it a little bland; I think it was because it hadn't come to room temperature, as others have also noted. It was nutty and a little pungent and very crunchy and the neba-neba (the strings that connect the crunchy soy beans once they've been stirred) was sticky and coated the rice nicely. Mmnn. Towards the end I added more rice and an umeboshi for some saltiness. It worked.

Natto was originally the byproduct of fermenting soybeans in hay, which contains Bacillus subtilis, or Bacillus natto. The stuff ferments and makes this sticky mess. They so sell B. suntilis, if I ever had the ambition to make my own...

squash blossoms, steak frites

I bought ten squash blossoms yesterday morning at the market -- and then stuffed them with a mixture of sorrel, ricotta and pine nuts. I beat an egg white with a pinch of salt until airy but still soft, beat in the yolk and then beat in some brown rice flour. I coated them in that and fried them until light brown. They were very very good.


Since we had the oil (grapeseed), and hadn't really had dinner (it was probably nine by this point), we wanted something fried for dinner. And I thought "steak frites" -- given, I've never cooked steak, in fact I hadn't eaten it in a very long time. But it sounded really good. We made small-cut fries, sautéed spinach and seared four portions of steak cooked from medium-rare to well-done. It felt really decadent and was really delicious. It also turned into a heated discussion of meat ethics, which seems appropriate for four one-time vegetarians eating steak.

And I finished that with my first tarte tatin of the season. Today felt like a day in September, and that was nice.