Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

how about breakaway cheesesteak?
  

    


hahaha. i didn't say breakaway whoopie pie specifically because i thought
maybe i'd try to make some and surprise you some time. but maybe instead of
a chocolatey one, an ultra-gingery cakey part and then some tasty creamy
stuff in the middle. (going for same satisfying squishy texture of course)

oh well. the secret is out. i am all for breakaway snyders.

(actually, the baumans fruit butters are excellent for marinades and glazes,
and available online)
  

    

slippage.
  

    
Why bother scraping off the salt? It is easy enough to make good
pretzels, and you can dust them with macha salt. Actually, that sounds
rather good.
  

    
Easy to make good pretzels?

It is easy to make the large doughy sort, but not the true treasures,
the little crunchy ones that are skinny and delicate and all salty
crunchy crust.

Or is there a secret out there that I've been missing all these years?
  

    
I assume you mean crispy ones. Make a stiff yeast dough. Once the
pretzels are formed, spray them with a hot sodium carbonate solution;
this turns the surface starch into gel. Then salt and bake it in a very
hot oven. Then do a long slow bake to dry them out. I did this years
ago, but could not find a recipe.
  

    
I'd need an army of assistants to roll them all properly thin (think
Mr. Salties here, not the big fat "old tyme" snyders sort).
  

    
I actually wish they had the "Bavarian style" pretzels here in
Germany!
  

    
I like fat soft doughy pretzels.

Just got a call from my meat dude, Mike Gale; the cow is ready! My
friend Alan usually goes and picks it up in deep Petaluma. We meet in
the bank parking lot in San Rafael (he goes home over the Richmond SR
bridge), clandestinely swap meat for $, and I come home with a trunk
full of wonderful beef, all cuts!

I can't imagine buying supermarket meat these days. The more I learn
about feedlots, the less appealing industrial beef gets. When I first
started buying from Mike, I took a drive out there to see the
conditions; if heaven exists for cows, this place is it: huge perfect
tasty pastures under big sunny skies, big oaks for shading, water
everywhere. I actually saw one cow laying on its back! These are some
very happy cows. 
  

    

Your meat purchase is making me drool, <gower>. Do you have a deep freeze to
store it all? Or are you buying relatively small quantities?
  

    
We do the same thing, buying from a rancher in Nevada County.  We bought a 
quarter last year, this year we'll buy a half.  We keep it in a freezer.  
We brought some down to SF at Yule and our friends could tell a 
difference, and said this is real meat.
  

    
Another fresh ingredient I've found makes a huge difference -- when I
can find them -- is farm fresh eggs.  They show up occasionally at one
of our local farmer's markets.  Although last year, I bailed out when
the price went north of $4/doz.  Trouble with foxes, they said.
  

    
Eric, I like your recent Yahoo blog post on burgers. It is timely for
the fine weather we're having. 
<http://food.yahoo.com/blog/breakawaycook/859/three-breakaway-burgers-you-ll-never-go-back>

You comment (somewhere or other) that you are not much into baking,
although you've included a few items. But it seems that the breakaway
approach can work well there as well. Do you have plans to make more
forays into baking? Starting on the simplest end, taking prepared
biscuit dough (and, yes, there are types which are not evil) and
rolling or sandwiching blasts into it could give great results. Or, the
above-mentioned pretzels (soft or hard).
  

    
egg quality can matter a lot, especially in things where a deep yellow
yolk can affect the appearance.

After I finish up the meat in my freezer, I'm planning to go to all
local meat providers. I can get just about everything from within a few
miles.
  

    
Yeah, I also found the taste noticeably better, although I didn't do
blind tasting or anything.  And really fresh eggs are better for
poaching -- the white holds together better. 

You can definitely get a fair amount of mileage as a cook out of using
really good ingredients.  Reading Eric's book also inspired me to make
freshly ground spices my default setting instead of a "when I have
time" thing.  I used to always use a mortar and pestle, which is nice
and low-tech and all, but yeah, a cheap coffee grinder does it almost
as well in seconds, and sure beats powdered spices.

Which reminds me, if I don't do a Penzey's order this weekend, I'm
going to start running out of stuff.
  

    
baking is definitely ready for some breakaway work.  I've had lovely fun and
delicious results taking solid base recipes and tweaking the flavorings, and
have hardly begun to scratch the surface.

The boldest I've gotten has been adding peppers to things--whether black
pepper, long pepper, pink pepper, even habaneros, the surprising kick is
often a winner.

I'm still trying to figure out how to best combine basil and chocolate.
  

    
I just have a small chest freezer--I think it's about 3 cubic feet,
max -- in addition to the little one above the fridge. A quarter-cow is
only a little over a hundred pounds of meat; it really doesn't take up
that much room. It fills an empty typical above-the-fridge freezer,
that's it. Well, possibly a tad more.
  

    
Breakaway baking is actually a great idea if I can figure out how to
do it quickly and without a lot of hassle, two really important
features of breakaway cooking. What prepared biscuit dough do you like,
Scott? Love the idea of "sandwiching blasts into it." I automatically
skip the frozen aisle, so I haven't bothered to check. Frozen phyllo
has all kinds of interesting possibilities, too. 

Eggs quality is HUGE. Industrial eggs are just ... gross. I'm trying
to figure out how to keep a few chickens in SF, but this little
backyard would be  a real challenge for them, to put it mildly. In the
meantime we get Lucelle's eggs, plus farmers' market eggs, which are
pricey but worth it. 

Mcdee, don't have a heart attack, but one rather audacious farmer at
the Ferry Plaza is now charging -- and this has to be a world record,
I'm betting -- $8 a dozen! Granted, they're green and blue and VERY
pretty.
  

    
The one HUGE problem with baking is that it normally requires pretty
exact measuring, something I seem incapable of doing. Peppercorns and
spices --and salt -- in baked goods really turn on me on though, so I
'd like to figure out some EZ ways of pulling it off. 
  

    
It does take a bit of practice to get comfortable with baking--after
watching my cousin dump all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies
at once into the bowl and mix directly, I realized not everyone was
born knowing how to do it--but it certainly is not that hard if you
have good measuring spoons and cups, and a little patience.
  

    
I guess what bugs me about baking is that the result when you screw up
even slightly can be total disaster.  It's really not all that hard to
learn to cook well enough so that total disaster is a truly remote
possibility.  

I also just like the inexact, seat-of-the-pants nature of cooking. 
You polish techniques, and with time your command of technique grows,
but each recipe is a bit of an improvisation, even if you've made it
dozens of times.

But this is truly one of those "different strokes" issues.  I'll never
be a baker, but I'm sure glad people like to bake!
  

    

I think that, as Diane says, a little familiarity with baking can help one
learn where liberties can be taken and where not. I throw in substitutions
and change proportions all over the place, but I think it's because I know
what to expect.
  

    
Exactly.  The cookies I made two days ago involved deliberately
swapping some molasses for part of the sugar, completely changing the
spices, and increasing and changing the nuts, and accidentally
substituting egg whites for whole eggs, when I discovered I was out of
them.

Nothing radical, but severa
  

    
Chickens don't need much space.

$8 a dozen? That's nuts. I had a guy hassle me for charging $2 a dozen
for my green eggs ($1.50 a dozen normal) because the chickens ate the
same.
  

    
If you're the "Breakaway Cook," then I'm the "Chaos Cook."

I was in another topic, describing my magical doodlings, and someone
(was it (hex)?) termed it "chaos magic." After investigating the term,
I had to agree. Basically, I make up the magic as I go.

The same goes for my food preparation. We never step in the same river
twice, and, for better or worse, I don't keep records of my successes
or failures. I create (or try) anew every day. Nothing fancy, mind you.
But, because I have a small garden with many fresh greens and herbs, I
can afford to be creative.

(Thanks for the maccha salt. Today was the last day of school.
Tomorrow I shall gather together my ingredients for this great-sounding
seasoning.)

I will share one recipe (not written down, but burned into my memory
because those I've served have raved). This is a breakfast meal.

At the bottom of a bowl, place fresh blueberries.
Cook some grits (with the correct amount of salt) with the addition of
a whole habernero pepper.
Spoon the habernero grits over the blueberries. Plop a large scoop of
ricotta cheese on top, then drizzle pure maple syrup on top of that.
Like a hot fudge sundae.

Everyone I've served this to has commented on the heat generated by
the pepper, moderated by the ricotta cheese, and sweetened by the
syrup.

I guess hot/sweet describes it. it's the only recipe I've created that
I know by heart.