I made, among other things (mostly cookies), panforte for the holidays. The recipe was from Tartine.
Cranberry-Walnut Bread — Pumpkin Pie — Parsnip — Apple Pie
d allspice berries. It was great. Cranberry-orange relish and cooked cranberries with ginger. The parsnip pie was a new creation: half roasted, half steamed parsnip puréed with a hint of nutmeg, eggs and milk baked in an herbes de provence-laced crust. It was quite good. Almost cheesecakelike in consistency. The potatoes were one-third celeriac, and that went quite well. The dressings were of chestnuts, sourdough bread, corn muffins recycled from breakfast, apples, turkey liver, celery, onions and lots of butter. One also had sweet Italian sausage. Both were very good. The sausage was nice, but I'd say ultimately not necessary.
d sugar pumpkin-half kabocha. Otherwise it's a Tartine recipe. The apple pie was yellow delicious apples from Outlook Farm and straightforward.
I've been thinking about parsnip pie — I'd like to make one (or some) for Thanksgiving — so I gave it a go last night. Two medium parsnips were roasted with salt and olive oil and then puréed with a clove of garlic, two eggs, milk and pepper. I baked them in small tart shells made with a sage-thyme crust.
I made a braised beef of sorts in the crock pot, a sort of pot-au-feu with wine, chuck roast, parnsips and carrots. It started out like this at eight o'clock, just before work. I seared the roast and topped it with the aforementioned vegetables, onions, garlic, thyme and rosemary.
This one has a small percent of whole wheat. My sourdough culture has been particularly healthy (I've figured some things out, like cutting down on old starter that I save), so this one rose wonderfully and in a decent amount of time (the kitchen was also very warm: we were roasting pumpkin seeds). It was a relatively wet dough, so I used the food processor for kneading (I had to do it in half-batches to not kill the motor), and both things helped the crumb out a lot. It's quite good.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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).
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).
After a week, the the bok choy kimchi is done. it started filling a 5-quart bowl to the brim: a head of bok choy (the kind with light green stalks), carrots, half a huge daikon, garlic, ginger and thai chilis. After brining, I barely packed it into a 2.5 quart crock. It's now about six cups, and tastes incredible. It's more gingery than hot and crunchy and has a real nice kick to it. It could be one of the most delicious things that I've made in a while.
(the partially transparent triangle is daikon,)
And tonight I made potato gnocchi with pesto tonight. It was really great: the pesto was relatively coarse, which was nice: bits of parmesan melted just right, chunks of pine nuts. All that with roasted purple cauliflower: just olive oil and salt was all it needed. It's nuttier than regular cauliflower. Crunchy, warm goodness.
Tonight was a particularly Massachusetts meal. I bought wild-caught Massachusetts bluefish and cooked it following
