MAY 2012
Wednesday 2012.5.30
A Milestone Coming Up
Actually, several milestones. On Sunday I'll be uploading my 100th video to YouTube — Croissants. It will only be my 96th recipe because I uploaded a few procedural videos for which there are no recipes. My 100th recipe will be published on July 1st. I like to celebrate my web site's milestones with biscotti, so the recipe that week will be Coconut Pineapple Biscotti. And in mid-August I will celebrate by web site's second anniversary with Hazelnut Cranberry Biscotti.
New ideas keep coming. Today I am making Vanilla Chai Tea Ice Cream. I've made ice cream with Nestle's Quick, and that's where I got my idea. At the warehouse store down in the city they sell some expensive chai mix. I stopped buying it when the price climbed to over $10. As I had to drive down there anyway, I decided to buy the chai (and forgot to buy the item I went there to get). If all goes well I'll publish the ice cream recipe and video in July.
This time of year is also a big time for parties here in the trailer park. On Saturday I went to the potluck I mentioned on Sunday. I really love my neighbors. We always have a good time when we get together. Next Saturday is a birthday party and later in July we'll gather to honor someone who died last year. It won't be a downer, though, because the major emphasis will be on celebrating the living. We have a lot of those.
Next week a friend and I are going to make pizzas in a neighbor's backyard. He has a grill with an attachment that converts it to a pizza oven. It will be the first time my video camera will be outside my home since I bought it more than a year ago. I ordered better windscreens for my lavalier microphone and my friend is bringing his boom mike so that we can both talk in the video. It will also let me record some ambient sounds from by neighbors. It should be fun.
Hopefully we'll arrange a gathering for July 4th. Fireworks are launched from a park nearby and we can watch them from our park without having to schlep over to the park.
So, there will be plenty of opportunities for cooking and sharing, and hopefully I can video some of those foods while making them.
And One Final Note...
The Comedy Channel did a South Park marathon on Memorial Day. I watched several episodes, including the Jersey Shore one about New Jersey expanding toward South Park, Colorado, which helped me understand that TV cooking show I blogged about on Sunday. I get it; it's a Jersey thing.
Sunday 2012.5.27
What the Hell is That???
Friday night I saw a very strange show, Sneak Peek Cooking, on the Food Channel—a siren wrapped in leopard skin and wearing stiletto heels making pizza. Can you picture me dressed like a character in my cooking videos? The Food Channel must be desperate for ratings. I stuck with the show long enough to learn it was a sneak peak of Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen. Okay. I turned off the TV.
Changing the subject (please!)...
I'm trying to think how to write about kitchen techniques. Some are good, some are bad. I'm always willing to try something new because I've learned some very useful techniques. Case in point: In one of my videos I struggled while tying a roast. Someone wrote to me to suggest a surgeon's knot. He included a link to a YouTube video. After watching the video I was impressed. It makes tying a roast so much easier. I use it all the time now. This week I was tying together some fresh herbs to display in the mise en place I use in every video. The surgeon's knot did the trick.
In one of Alton Brown's Good Eats episodes he cut off the corner of a ziplock bag and attached a piping tip to it. I have three piping bags and Alton is right—they are a nuisance to clean. I've used ziplock bags to pipe dough onto a cookie sheet for my Cat's Tongues. I simply cut off the corner and squeeze dough through the hole. Why did I never make the connection to attach piping tips to the plastic bag? Thank you Alton. I'll never go back to using piping bags again.
All this comes to mind because Friday I experimented with making a tomato sauce from oven roasted tomatoes. I had eaten something with the sauce last week and I thought I might try making the sauce myself. After a little research on the Internet I came up with a method of preparation that intrigued me. The recipe called for roasting the tomatoes, letting them cool, and then chopping in a food processor. Push through a wire sieve, straining out the skins and seeds. It was difficult. It was tedious. It made a mess. The sauce wasn't bad, but the technique was awful and there was a lot of useful pulp left behind in the strainer.
The following day (yesterday) I made the sauce again, only this time I seeded and skinned the tomatoes before roasting them. No need to strain them afterwards. The sauce turned out fantastic. So, straining roasted tomatoes: Bad idea.
Sometimes something fails, and that's good. This is a weird one: I saw a recipe for "Oatmeal Brittle." The author made it by mistake, having failed somewhere, but the finished product, which was a thin sheet of crispy sweet oatmeal, was evidently so delicious he decided to publish the recipe. I was intrigued, but I thought it might benefit from the addition of peanuts in the mix. I spooned dollops of dough onto the cookie sheet and baked them. Rather than spreading out into a thin sheet of crispy oatmeal, I had wonderful cookies. So I failed at reproducing his failure, and ended up with something so good I will publish the recipe and video on this web site in coming weeks.
To make the failure even more successful, I had planned to attend a potluck (yesterday) and was wondering what to make. The double-failure oatmeal brittle gave me a plate full of delicious cookies to bring to the potluck.
And so this was a strange week for kitchen techniques. Still, no matter how I think about it, leopard skin and stiletto heels don't seem like a good idea in the kitchen.
Wednesday 2012.5.23
Cooking Demonstration
Once again I attended an annual cooking demonstration by three professional chefs. At one table a chef, John Lazarus, was demonstrating how to assemble ravioli with a filling made with ricotta cheese and arugula. He was fun to watch and we had an opportunity to "roll-your-own" participate. His assistant, who was cooking the ravioli and saucing them, should have stayed back in the kitchen. At times she was rude to those sampling the foods. The sauce was made with roasted tomatoes. I asked about the sauce was told, rather curtly, that the recipe would be on their web site. A few days later I looked. The ravioli recipe was available, but there was no recipe for the sauce. I really wanted to know how they made their sauce. I'm no fan of bitter flavors, and therefore I have no interest in the ravioli. Besides, I already know how to make them. Thankfully there are other sites on the Internet that offer recipes for roasted tomato sauce. The one on Epicurious looks the most intriguing.
At another table a returning chef from last year, Sean Studds, was dishing out strawberry farro salad and at the third table was an heirloom tomato gespacho. I always learn something useful. I had used a little water to seal the pasta when making my own ravioli. Lazarus brushed the dough with an egg wash made with egg whites. Why hadn't I ever thought of that? It makes more sense than water.
I added ravioli to my list of future projects for this web site. I prefer a meat filling. With good seasoning the filling should pair well with the roasted tomatoes. And I have an experiment in mind for the sauce, something I learned when making the Pasta with Prosciutto.
Speaking, or writing, about projects—I have been busy in my little mobile home kitchen. I've been preparing two recipes each week, putting some "in the vault" for future publishing. I have enough to cover my uploads through the beginning of July. One of these was a surprising success. I had seen on my Google fan page a mention of "oatmeal brittle." I looked up the author and he had a recipe for it, something he had discovered accidentally. I tried his recipe, only I added some peanuts. My preparation didn't melt down into a thin brittle like his. Mine turned out nicely formed cookies. And they were super easy to make. So I added Apple Oatmeal Cookies to the vault. I'm scheduled to publish the recipe PDF and YouTube video on June 24th.
And speaking of mobile home kitchens, I received a really nice comment from someone who wrote, "It's nice to watch someone create amazing dishes without a professional kitchen." For some reason that comment really touched me.
Were you able to watch the solar eclipse earlier this week? I live in a part of California that was along the viewing path. I had forgot about the eclipse. I planned to meet friends at a restaurant for dinner. The restaurant is within walking distance; so I decided to hoof it. When I stepped outside I thought things looked a little dark for the time of day this part of the year. I shrugged and kept going. Along the way I passed a home where there was a viewing apparatus in the driveway. Curious, I stared. The man said, "Do you want to see the eclipse?" Yeah! I looked into the viewer and there is was, nice and large, easy to see. Rather than using a pinhole, it used a lens for a really nice projection.
I met my friends at the restaurant and showed them how to make a pinhole with one hand to project the reverse image on the palm of the other hand. The projection is really small, but you could watch the eclipse nonetheless. A bunch of us gathered outside the restaurant for a while, talking and enjoying the event. When the best part of the eclipse passed we went inside and ordered our dinner. The evening turned out more enjoyable than I had anticipated.
As for today: No cooking. We're enjoying a heat wave here in Southern California. Last night after midnight it was still 74°F. The temperature is supposed to climb to 84°F today. At 10:00 this morning the heat had already surpassed that. I think we're in for a scorcher.
Sunday 2012.5.20
Miracle Medicine?
This week The New England Journal of Medicine published an interesting research study titled Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality (n engl j med 366;20 nejm.org May 17, 2012). The study examined more than 400,000 coffee drinkers, male and female, between 1995 and 2008. The ages were between 50 and 71, some of whom died in the course of the study.
If I read the conclusion correctly, coffee is actually good for you, which reverses some previous beliefs that too much coffee is detrimental to your health. Quoting: "As compared with men who did not drink coffee, men who drank 6 or more cups of coffee per day had a 10% lower risk of death, whereas women in this category of consumption had a 15% lower risk" (page 1899). Coffee has some 1,000 substances in it. If I remember correctly from an article I ready many years ago, to benefit from those substances coffee should be consumed soon after it is brewed. Many of the beneficial substances break down as the coffee pot sits on the heater. I brew my coffee one cup at a time and drink it fresh.
I love coffee, and I'm rather fussy about it. I prefer good Columbian Supremo, which is not stocked at the local warehouse store. The nearest warehouse store that stocks it is about 50 miles away. Fortunately, the coffee company occasionally sets up a demonstration booth in the local store, at which time a large selection of their coffees is available for sale. I stock up on the Columbian Supremo, buying as much as will fit in my freezer door. I currently have over 15 pounds stored in the freezer. Although some people are quite outspoken about the best way to store coffee, I ignore them because freezing works best for me.
As for my health, so far so good. I met with my doctor this week for an exam. He ordered all the usual blood chemistry panel tests. On June 1st I meet with him again to go over the numbers. They're always normal. He practically tells me, "Dennis, you have to stop being so healthy because you run the dangerous risk of never dying." Well, he doesn't quite put it that way, but he has told me I can expect to live a long time, possible to age 100.
I do have an ambitious long-term goal—to collect my pension for more years than I worked to earn it. Whether or not coffee will get me to that goal, I have no way of being sure. But knowing that it might help, that's good.
Of course, I also just read something recently that said the good cholesterol, HDL, might not be good after all. Those with a genetic risk of heart attack do not lower their risk by increasing their HDL level. Ten years from now we might read studies that found that those who increased their coffee consumption, hoping to live longer, actually die prematurely. As for me, I still love coffee; so I'll drink it for its flavor and leave the longevity to the scientists.
Wednesday 2012.5.16
Cringe Factor
Someone suggested I watch STAR on the Food Network. What season are they in now? Seventh? Eighth? I don't even know. I've never seen the show because I don't like cooking competition programs. I never knew Guy Fieri was once a STAR contestant. He is not only talented, he has a magnetic personality. You can't help but watch him enthuse about food.
I tried to watch the show. There were some pre-new-season warmup things before the latest season began—interviews with former contestants, the judges, the auditions, etc. They made me feel really uncomfortable. I enjoy a little cringe factor once in a while. I watch South Park to see how each show might make me squirm. But STAR was stressful because I felt nervous for the contestants.
In the first episodes each team had to design a restaurant. Design a restaurant? Really? Are they looking for cooks/hosts or kitchen interior decorators? Maybe Robert Irvine needs a new designer for his Restaurant Impossible show. Tom, his builder, was the designer in one recent episode. I do like Restaurant Impossible because it makes me feel good to see those failing restaurant owners get a second chance after learning from their mistakes.
As for STAR, my reaction was too intense. I could never participate. That level of competition scares me. I like things peaceful. I'm retired. I enjoy the leisure part of life now. I turned off the TV after the second commercial break.
Besides, I'm not one to think quickly under pressure. When I cook for this website, everything is almost scripted. I don't write down every word I plan to say. But like a director who works with storyboards to visualize the film being made, I have a shot-by-shot chart taped to the wall of my kitchen. The chart gives me the basics for each step in the recipe so that I know what will go into each video clip, along with where I will need to stop along the way to take the still photographs for the PDFs I publish on this web site.
I also take a long time to get a recipe right. How many times did I make the Gâteau Paris-Brest before I got it perfect? 14 times? Something like that.
Just before I started watching STAR I prepared my kitchen for doing a video of späetzle on Monday morning. It was a request by one of the fans of my YouTube videos. After turning off the TV I went back to prepping my kitchen for the next day's video. Last night prepared my kitchen to do a video of cooked stuffed pasta shells—another request.
I know STAR must be a very successful show if it has survived through multiple seasons. Some successful Food Network show hosts were discovered on STAR. But I like the quiet simplicity of doing my own cooking videos and contributing to my own little website. That's enough for me.
Sunday 2012.5.13
Looking for the Silver Lining
A good friend of mine gave me a recipe for some brownies his girlfriend made for him. They were, well, strange—Bacon Bourbon Brownies. As the name says, they are made with bacon and bourbon. I was intrigued because I had never cooked with bourbon before and I had seen it used in TV cooking shows. As for the bacon, let's just say that I was a little curious.
The orginal recipe called for brownies made from a box mix. If I were to feature the recipe on this web site, assuming the finished brownies were good enough to tell others about (bacon? really?), a box mix simply wouldn't suffice. I did a little research on the Internet and found a simple recipe for homemade brownies.
My recent experience with the Quadruple Rum Cake made me want to experiment with a syrup to pour over the top. I made a similar caramel sauce, but I used bourbon in the syrup rather than rum. It was fairly good.
As for the finished brownies…let's just say they were "interesting." The flavor was similar to brownies, except there were these chewy bits that tasted a lot like fried bacon. The caramel bourbon sauce was an excellent idea; however, the recipe for the brownies didn't yield enough mix to make thick brownies. They were thin and flat. I wondered at the small amount of baking powder—only ¼ teaspoon. After pouring the syrup on top, there simply wasn't a lot of brownie into which the syrup could soak. They looked strange and they were wet. To cover them up, I tried dusting the brownies well with powdered sugar. It helped, but not enough.
I ran into a similar problem with the Toffee Date Cake I made. The picture showed a thick slice of cake. Mine was half the height, even though I used the proper size baking pan. Doubling the recipe yielded far better results.
Where is the silver lining?
I would definitely make these brownies again, but without the bacon. Italian sausage? No. Really. I'm just kidding. Meat and brownies do not seem to belong on the same plate, no matter how intriguing. It was worth the experiment because some combinations do work. Last year I saw a chef prepare a dessert with fresh strawberries garnished with fresh basil. Speaking of fresh strawberries, we are in strawberry season here in Southern California. One combination I have wanted to try, seen in the art film Caravaggio, is fresh strawberries garnished with fresh ground black pepper. I tried it today. It makes for better movie magic than dessert. It also made me sneeze—a lot!
I will search my baking textbooks for a better formula for brownies and I will use the bourbon caramel sauce. I really think there are good prospects there.
As a final note: In a past blog I mentioned having read the book Plate to Pixel by Hélène Dujardin. She uses props in her food photography. I've been reluctant to use them, having read a while back that it is best to avoid props. In the picture of this week's feature recipe, Spaghetti alla Carbonara, I used props alla Dujardin. I think it works for this dish. There is pancetta, eggs, and cheese in the back, all of which went into the recipe.
Wednesday 2012.5.9
Tasting Success
To those who have seen my videos, it probably comes as no surprise that my favorite clip is the one at the end in which I taste the food I prepared in front of the camera. That's when I get to make my O-face. This week was no different.
As planned, I made the Perfect Gâteau Paris-Brest this week. For the large pastry ring I shaped two rings, using a star tip attached to a ziplock bag as a piping bag. Rather than simply piping two parallel beads of dough, I laid down a flat bead first, to give a bit of rise to the center, and then I piped a braided pattern on top. The dough was so stiff it was almost too thick to push out of the piping bag. The rings baked perfectly. I then trimmed the rings and assembled the cake with the praline pastry cream I had made the day before.
The result was magnificent! Not only did it look better than any other Paris-Brest I had seen in cookbooks or on the Internet, the flavor was fantastic. I invited a friend over to taste it and together we watched the tasting clip on my video camera's LCD screen. It looked like I was getting the giggles as I tasted the pastry. I explained that it was my moment of catharsis. After three weeks of struggling with this pastry, wasting more than 60 eggs and I don't know how much butter and flour, my mind in a knot most of the time as I tried to discern where I might be going wrong, it simply felt so good to experience this success. My friend said, "This is the hardest you have worked to get any recipe perfect." I agree.
Two thirds of the cake went to the information technology department that serviced our computers where I used to work. It was a bribe. I will be showing up at the staff-appreciation luncheon on Friday, even though I am no longer a member of the staff. I'm hoping they won't rat me out. More than a thousand will attend; so I doubt I'll be noticed among the masses.
Lessons learned: Did you know that corn starch has twice the thickening power of flour? I didn't. Substituting an equal amount of corn starch for the flour was a mistake. I had to shoot some pick-up clips to cover that error. I did know that boiling a liquid thickened with corn starch will cause the starch to break down, losing it's thickening strength. Cooking the custard in a double-boiler works perfectly. No breakdown. I had also ordered a large piping tip coupler to use my largest piping tip. The coupler is a huge bulky thing that is difficult to control. I went back to attaching the tip to the ziplock bag with a bit of tape. The coupler was a waste of money, but thankfully it cost me less than a dollar.
The Gâteau Paris-Brest video will be edited into two parts. There is simply too much material to cover in under 25 minutes. The raw clips take up 17.5GB of disk space. This will be my first Part 1/Part 2 video. I'm not sure who might want to attempt the Perfect Gâteau Paris-Brest, but for me the success in the end was well worth all the effort.
Sunday 2012.5.6
Gladiatorial Combat Continued
On Thursday I decided once again to confront the enemy—pâte à choux. Locked in battle formation, I made two more pastry rings that would be used for a Gâteau Paris-Brest, if I were to get that far. (I think this makes a dozen pastry rings.)
For the first ring I decreased the water. It made no difference. For the second ring I decreased the water even more and I brushed it generously with an egg wash, thinking it might give me a stronger exoskeleton that would hold up the pastry. It made only a slight difference. It looked great, nicely browned with an appealing shine, but it still didn't rise as much as I wanted. The height was about the thickness of two wooden spoon handles.
I continued my research and one recipe said the water-butter-flour mixture needs to be dried by cooking it for at least 4 minutes, 5 is better, over medium heat, not low. This would increase the density and, sure enough, some recipes said to add the eggs, one at a time, only until the batter reaches a "stiff peaks" stage. (Another recipe said to mix to a "shiny ribbons" stage, which makes no sense at all.)
Along the way I had an epiphany. In all cases in which I piped to concentric rings against each other, the underside of the pastry ring had a depression running around the full circle of the ring. I was concerned that slicing the ring into upper and lower halves would give me three rings, the two bottom rings divided by the depression between them. So in another experiment I piped a shallow ring first, to fill the groove where the two concentric rings joined. And this gave me another idea. What if I were to pipe this wide stripe first, then leave a little space between the two concentric rings before piping the third ring on top, effectively trapping some air inside the ring? Tomorrow would be another day.
And so on Friday I started the day with another choux pastry batter, this time with an increased amount of flour and just enough egg to bring the dough together to form stiff peaks. I piped it with an air pocket and I gave the ring an egg wash. It baked at 400°F (204°C) for 30 minutes and then I reduced the oven to 325°F (163°C) and baked it for another 30 minutes to really dry out the shell. I measured the ring when it came out of the oven. It was 3cm high, a little more than an inch. I should be able to get at least 1½ inches, if not two.
And then yet another brilliant idea come to me. The way to sell a cheat is to give it the right name. (I've been reading a book about, in part, the many wiles of Wall Street and how they hired lawyers to either find a way to make their practices look legal or, at the very least, done in a way for which they could not be prosecuted). You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig, unless you call it "gourmet pork", in which case you can charge extra for it. It's all in the name. And thus I came up with the name "The Perfect Gâteau Paris-Brest," for which I made two rings and baked them as above. I won't need to split one ring to get two. I can just trim away a little, and then proceed from there. The result was better than satisfactory.
Next week I'll do it all again to make the video and shoot the photography. If I haven't already said so, I really love cooking for this web site.
One thing I did learn: I like the plain cooked pastry with honey on it. The pastry, even though sweetened with a little sugar, tastes unpleasant (at least, to me). I threw all the previous attempts in the trash. I gave one away to a friend who wanted to experiment with it. He used brie cheese and fresh raspberries to make a filling.
Wednesday 2012.5.2
Gladiatorial Combat
Me and pâte à choux. For the past two weeks we have been locked in fierce battle. I want a highly-raised pastry ring, for Paris-Brest, to come out of the oven. The choux pastry wants to lie low, barely rising a few millimeters above the parchment paper. Who will win?
For the first of my two attempts on Sunday (mentioned in Sunday's blog entry) I tried using a higher volume of flour. The thinking was that it would give strength to the outside wall of the pastry, the part I referred to as the exoskeleton. Rather than mixing the batter to soft peaks, I thought I might want stiffer, hard peaks that would stand up like the Eiffel Tower. I followed Alton Brown's method of preparation, heating the oven to 375°F and then raising the temperature to 425°F when the pastry went into the oven. After 10 minutes I lowered the oven down to 325°F again. When the pastry was nicely browned, I pierced it around the sides with a long knife, effectively adding steam vents, while the cooked pastry was still in the hot oven. I turned off the heat, propped the door open a tiny amount with a wooden spoon, and left the pastry in the oven for an hour to dry out as the oven cooled. The ring showed a little height, but it was nonetheless flat and useless. Eiffel Tower peaks are out.
I should point out that the smaller ring, made by piping only one stream in a circle on the baking sheet, came out perfect each time. There was usually some batter in the piping bag after shaping the larger ring (two concentric circles, against each other, and a third circle on top, over the middle seam). I used the extra batter to pipe two oblong pastries, typical for éclairs, and two round blobs, suitable for creme puffs, in the far corners of the baking sheet. Those came out perfect every time, no matter which formula I used.
For my second attempt on Sunday I chose to work against instinct. I went back to my 2:1:1:2 ratio (8 oz. water : 4 oz. butter : 4 oz. flour : 8 oz. eggs) and this time I forced all the eggs into the batter (working in stages, waiting until the previous egg mixture was fully incorporated before adding more). The texture might best be described as droopy, limp peaks, softer than soft. Stiffer than the ribbon stage, but somewhat fluid. I baked the larger ring at 425°F, never lowering the temperature, until well browned.
After the first 20 minutes I checked the oven and the entire ring had kind of melded into itself, forming one smooth round shape rather than looking like one ring piped onto two. Again, I used a long knife to pierce the side of the ring in four places while the baking sheet remained in the oven and I propped the door open with the handle of a wooden spoon. The finished pastry dried in the oven for one hour with the flame turned off, after which it was as flat as all my previous attempts.
I'm thinking of abandoning the field. Dennis: 0, Paris-Brest: 8. I've been considering ways of cheating by baking two large rings, one to be stacked on the other in the final assembly. Pitch the video to the public as a Fool-Proof Paris-Brest. Maybe even show one of my previous failures. I haven't yet found the wording that will help me successfully sell this idea.
Chef Jacques Peppin brushed his pastry ring with lots of egg wash. Maybe this stiffens the exoskeleton... I really wish I had a professional pastry chef among my friends. Later this month I will be attending a cooking demonstration by three professional chefs. I'll ask them. Tyler Florence used to do a cooking show in which he would go to people's home and solve their kitchen problems for them. Hey, Tyler! Are you out there?!?