Yep, I’m already late! I have just been floored busy this week and have had no time. I will make time this evening to get at least some sort of daily photo up. The below pic was taken of one of the best pizzas I have ever made. I’m very happy with the way my pizza recipe is evolving. This one was a bit thicker crust than most that I make, but ended up only taking 7 minutes in the VERY hot oven to complete and tasted AWESOME.
Alton Brown’s ‘Good Eats’ has been around for a while, and sometimes I find an episode on YouTube that could really help the beginner / seasoned home cook. This particular is a quick intro to knife skills and has some very basic info about knives, and shows quickly how to prep some veggies.
Part 1:
Part 2:
It’s very simple, actually. I have no idea why I didn’t figure this out years ago. To make great home fries, simply boil the potatoes whole for fifteen minutes then cool them down in the fridge before chopping up and frying. Otherwise you over-fry them to get them cooked all the way through or you under-cook them and they taste like, well, uncooked potato with a horrible texture. This step ensures a good outcome.
My home fries today were great. I did the above boiling (boiled water, then put in potatoes for 15min, then refrigerated for about a half hour), the chopped them up evenly, then put into my cast iron skillet that I’d made bacon in earlier today (complete with the grease). Added some diced onion, pepper, a pinch of salt, then some Sriracha hot sauce. They came out perfect.
(FYI I used standard russet potatoes, regular fresh ground pepper, Morton’s table salt, and just a normal white onion…)
For more information on Sriracha Sauce, check out this article in the NY Times from earlier this year. The stuff goes great with a lot of foods. Hot, tasty stuff.
Going to try this: http://pinchmysalt.com/2009/07/07/bread-bakers-apprentice-challenge-ciabatta/#more-3201
Made the poolish on Sunday night, then the bread on Monday night. I used my new Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and did an okay job of it. Obviously I can’t post the whole recipe as it would do a disservice to the author of my favorite new book: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.
The bread did not come out as airy as I would have liked, and I think that was due to me accidentally forgetting to fold up the sides a second time, and maybe that I used regular KA unbleached white flour rather than bread flour. I just did not get the rise that I wanted. Also, I think my dough was too dry – could have been wetter. Here are a few pics of how it came out.
My new mixer
Poolish, refrigerated overnight. It was bubbling.
Next day, mixing the dough
Loaves fermenting
Proofing in a makeshift couche
Me and the messy kitchen
Final loaves from outside
Final product – as you can see it did not set up the crust with the airy holes that I thought it would. It’s a shame. The crust ended up really nice. For one of my first baking endavors, I was happy. Learned how to steam the oven for the first time, too. Next time I’ll do better.
Yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to getting the stuff together to make mozzarella. I have been researching on the Internet, and had made a very basic cheese a few weeks ago. Now I was ready to tackle fresh mozzarella. We buy it a couple times a week for food, so I figured why not try. It looked pretty easy.
After work yesterday, I drove over to the Modern Homebrew Emporium, which is just up Mass. Ave. from Porters Square. They sold me the basic mozzarella cheesemaking kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. The kit cost about $25, and it had all the supplies to make 30 batches of cheese. In hindsight, I should have just purchased the rennet and citrix acid, and spent less than half of what I did. I have all the other supplies. I drove home, and was so excited that I tore open the kit probably before I had set my keys down. Gwen and I started making the cheese immediately.
You can find the steps to do this in many places on the Internet. Additionally, the kit came with the basic instructions. Here’s a link to someone else’s instructions that show basically what I did: http://www.instructables.com/id/Great-Mozzarella-Cheese/.
Basically it involves:
– heat up a gallon of whole milk in a thick bottomed pot until it hits 90 degrees
– stir the whole time while heating
– take it off the heat
– add the Citric Acid, which has been dissolved in 1/4 cup of non tap water (chlorine in tap water is bad for it)
– let sit for five minutes until a ‘clean break’ forms
– cut the clean break with a knife, then put it back on the heat
– heat to 105 degrees (Fahrenheit) while still stirring
– remove from heat again, let sit for 5 minutes
– strain out the whey
– heat in microwave for 1 minute
– add salt
– strain out the whey again
– heat in microwave for 30sec, or until it reaches 135 degrees
– stretch out the cheese until it’s stringy and shiny
– chill in ice water
That is more or less how easy it is. Again, instructions can be found in many places, and there are many ways to do this.
The one thing I messed up was storage. We stored it in water and the water sorta killed the cheese in the fridge overnight. I think we were supposed to use some sort of brine solution. I’ll work on this. The first batch last night (before the storage step) came out GREAT! Tasted exactly like the fresh mozzarella that you would buy in the store. I was very proud of us. The subequent ones that we stored overnight did not fare well due to the above mentioned mistakes. I’ll work on this.
We have all the supplies (save for the milk – need more of that an would love to get my hands on some buffalo milk), so we will try again and keep working on the recipe and process until we find one that works perfect for us. It felt good to succeed at something that I thought would be damn near impossible.
The picture doesn’t do it justice, and we will post some how-to pics later on, but THIS is what good fresh mozarella looks like. Tasted great, too!
I just stopped there for lunch and remembered that it was time I wrote a review. Here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/subway-somerville-2#hrid:25Fq9Lihd6vuay0Ttt_Idw
Ordered delivery last night. Was not pleased. They got my order correct, but deemed me too stupid to realize that they were substutiting ‘boneless wings’ for actual chicken wings. When I called they told me that the substitution was due to the fact that they had ran out of chicken wings. At PizzaWings. I was none too pleased. What was great was how they offered to fix the situation: by saying ‘I’m sorry’ twice and doing absolutely nothing else. This annoys me, as I paid money for something I did not get.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/pizzawings-allston#hrid:famda3-IsBBB1WrFCsE-Dw
And don’t even THINK of telling me that ‘boneless wings’ are even close to a substutite to actual chicken wings. Oh well. It wasn’t the end of the world, and it was the end of a very worky weekend, which will be blogged about in another post soon.
Nice little place over in W. Newton. Check it out!
I’ve been trying to bake a simple bread on and off for months. I’m new to baking, and I have a broken oven. (Long story, and I’m sure the subject of another post, but more or less the temperature needs to be manually controlled.)
That said, I FINALLY found a simple enough, well explained recipe for basic bread that actually worked. I managed to not kill the yeast yet somehow come up with a bread that costs very little but tastes great. I’ll try another loaf tonight and take pics. I brought it into work today and a couple co-workers complimented me, and not just in a ‘well, you tried’ kind of way.
Here’s a link to the recipe: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/11/04/homemade-bread-cheap-delicious-healthy-and-easier-than-you-think/. I actually really like this blog and will add it to my blogroll. Rock.