Soup | More Cheese More Chocolate

Jan 28 2013

2013 Weekends – Week 4

Bagel + avocado + fried egg + hot sauce and grapefruit

Kiwi + spinach + banana + yogurt + flax + chia + water (based on this)

About to get an arm workout by grinding mustard seeds to make the Dijon mustard from Super Natural Every Day

Dijon mustard after 24 hours. Spicy! Delicious! I only added about a third of the honey that the recipe called for because there are few things I dislike more than sweet mustard. The extra honey might have toned down a bit of the spice, but I didn’t want to gamble and end up with something too sweet.

Inspired by my brother’s DIY ways, we recently added Wild Fermentation to our cookbook collection and procured a 2-gallon ceramic crock so we could make our own sauerkraut. Matt started the process on Saturday night, and we’re already looking forward to eating brats and reubens when it’s ready. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that homemade sauerkraut isn’t the gateway drug to tanning deer hides and building a cob castle, but I suppose there are worse things in life.

I made a batch of the middle-class brioche from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (similar recipe here), and used about 1/3 of the recipe to make four hamburger buns. The recipe calls for 4+ hours of chilling the dough in the refrigerator followed by shaping and an hour and a half to two hours of proofing at room temperature prior to baking. I didn’t have that kind of time if we wanted to eat dinner at a reasonable hour, so I reduced the refrigerator time to about two hours, divided and shaped the dough into slightly flattened balls, and then let them rise at room temperature for about two hours. The buns didn’t grow much during the rising time, but in the oven they probably doubled in size, making them the perfect vessels for burgers. I wasn’t aware of any ill effects from the abbreviated chilling time, and these turned out to be the best burger buns I’ve ever made.

Matt made burgers with sautéed onions and mushrooms to fill the buns, and I made waffle fries from a bag – a guilty pleasure that’s pretty much all pleasure.

I love getting up (relatively) early on weekends to bake bread or make something good for brunch. I spent the majority of yesterday in the kitchen doing both of those things and more, and it was wonderful. If only I could do that every day…

The real reason I made brioche hamburger buns: so I could fry the rest of the dough and dip it in chocolate ganache. Any doubts that I had about the amazingness of brioche have disappeared.

Top: Tartine whole wheat bread

Bottom: Tartine whole wheat bread with raisins, coriander, and orange peel

Cauliflower soup with mustard (brioche) croutons from Super Natural Every Day and ham and cheddar toasts. The croutons are a must! Heat a little butter and olive oil in a skillet, whisk in a spoonful of Dijon mustard and a pinch of salt, add cubes of bread and stir to coat, cook until toasted or transfer to a 350-degree oven and bake until toasted.

Jan 04 2012

January 4

Chili and peanut butter sandwich

Based on this recipe

Changes made: started with a big spoonful of bacon fat instead of strips of bacon, added a large can of diced tomatoes and a large can of kidney beans, added extra spices, and used half turkey and half beef

May 12 2011

Chili Con Carne

It takes some patience to post a chili recipe in the spring. I was originally going to publish this post three weeks ago when Mother Nature served us up a cold spell, but then my nephew was born and I decided to talk about that instead. Then I thought about posting it early last week when the high was in the upper-30s, but I couldn’t wait to tell you about Banana Chocolate Chip Cake. The last couple of days have been steamy and in the 80s – definitely not chili weather. Now it’s around 50-degrees and rainy, and the stars have finally aligned. Maybe tonight will be the night to pull the leftovers from the freezer to enjoy with my second batch of Tartine bread (assuming I want to eat anything beyond warm slices of bread for dinner, which I probably will not).

When the urge to make chili struck during that cold spell, I wanted something pretty standard and referenced a recent issue of Bon Appetit that contained several chili recipes ranging from black bean to pork chili verde to chili con carne. I chose the chili con carne because sounded like the most traditional recipe, but it turned out to be anything but traditional, i.e. it tasted nothing like Wendy’s chili or the school lunch chili that I inexplicably loved in elementary school. It was darker, richer, and had far more depth than what I consider “traditional” chili, likely due to the entire head of garlic, all of the warm spices, and the overnight rest* to develop flavor.

I adjusted the spice mixture based on what was in my kitchen (I didn’t have 1/2 cup of ground ancho chiles or ground cloves, but I did have 1/4 cup of ground guajillo chiles, 2 tbsp cocoa mole powder, and 2 tbsp of hot chile powder), and I ended up with a pot of warm, spicy chili. The highlight was the incredibly tender cubes of beef, which, coming from someone who prefers ground beef to cubed (probably because most cubed beef I’ve experienced in chili has been tough and unappetizing), is saying a lot. Finally, although this is supposed to be a Texas chili, I couldn’t resist some de-Texification by adding kidney beans. Sue me.

*Do not fear the two-day process. The amount of actual work involved is not any more than other chili recipes. The most laborious part of the process was trimming and cutting the meat, which probably took me twenty minutes, and aside from chopping onions and garlic, the rest of the work is just measuring and stirring.

Recipe: Chili Con Carne

Browned meat, chopped garlic, and spices

Softened onions and spices

Spiced onions, beer, and beef

Plus tomatoes, water, oregano, and salt

Chili con carne with a side of cornbread (cornbread recipe from Lottie + Doof)

Jul 31 2010

3 Comments

Soup, Vegetarian

Spicy Gazpacho

“Guess who’s back in the cheese ‘n chocolate house, with a bowl of gazpacho for your blog readin’ mouth.” – Snoop Dogg (edited version)

Hi, friends. After a month spent losing my tan and memorizing elements of crimes that we were never tested on, I am back to cooking! Following day one of the bar exam, I spent about on hour on the phone with my friend Lindsey talking about dudes, dogs, Duke, and Durham. I had just started complaining about how awful it was that it was 90+ degrees in Minneapolis when I remembered that she just moved to Durham where it’s 90-degrees on a good day. Some good did come from my whining, though, when our conversation turned to solutions for keeping cool. Lindsey’s solution is gazpacho, and after she was talking about the delicious batch she made I knew it would be the first thing I made post-bar. Even though the temperatures had dropped to the low 80s by the time Thursday rolled around, I was well overdue for a large dose of vegetables so I stuck to my plan and made a batch. I’ve always been a little skeptical of gazpacho, but now I know that my skepticism was unfounded. This is good stuff. Thanks for the suggestion, Linds!