Flour Girl

I'm on the move ...

2009-09-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

Flour Girl is proud to be the newest member of the Chicago Now family, a growing collection of blogs brought together by the Chicago Tribune.

The Chicago Now project aims to create a community among bloggers and readers. I'm tickled to be a part of it.

Readers of this site will automatically be re-directed to my new site at Chicago Now. And soon, all of my archived posts will make their way there, too. (In the meantime, though, if you're having trouble finding a recipe or something, please ask me for help.)

Don't worry -- I'm only changing addresses. I'll still be serving up the same tasty recipes and cooking-school adventures as before.

Since I don't have to bribe any of you to come over and schlep my couch or heft boxes for this move, here's what I need from you:

1. Re-direct your bookmarks, readers, brain-chip implants, etc. to the new, Chicago Now home of Flour Girl here.

2. Comment. Comment. Comment. The whole idea of this thing is to generate community, so don't be shy. I promise I'll write back, too.

3. I love my loyal readers from all over the country and the world. It warms my heart to see clicks from Malaysia and Sweden and Singapore. So, please keep reading. But under my new contract with Chicago Now, I do get a few pennies for Chicago-area eyeballs. So, if you live here or have friends or family here, please tell them to check me out so I can keep buying sacks of flour.

Fancy-hotel breakfast, at home

2009-09-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

One of the most-read stories I wrote as a reporter in Spokane, Wash. had absolutely nothing to do with corruption or a love triangle or a grisly double homicide.

But it has everything to do with a family secret.

There was (and still is) this fancy hotel in Spokane called the Davenport. Throughout the early- to mid-20th Century it was the place to be and be seen at social events. But as the 1900s wore on, the Davenport fell into disrepair. By the time I moved to town in the late '90s, it was a boarded up old eyesore in the heart of downtown.

But then real-estate magnate Walt Worthy stepped in, bought the Davenport and restored it to its original glory. Now, it's really something to see. And when Worthy bought the hotel, he insisted that his family's coffee cake, a recipe handed down through the generations, would be served there.

People line up through the lobby for a slice of this thin, light and super-moist cake.

I was grateful to the Worthy family for sharing it. And now you don't have to make a trip half-way across the country to try a slice.

Davenport Hotel Coffee Cake

From the Davenport Hotel, Spokane, Wash.

Makes two cakes, each serving 6-8

1 cup salted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 3/4 cup cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping:

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line two 9-inch round cake pans with foil.

In bowl of a standing mixer (or with a hand blender), cream together the butter and sugar for several minutes until light and fluffy. Blend in the eggs, stopping often to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Blend in the sour cream and vanilla. Add the cake flour, baking powder and salt. The batter will be quite loose.

Divide the batter evenly between the two lined cake pans.

Combine all topping ingredients in a small bowl and sprinkle on top of the two cakes.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Immediately lift cakes out of pans by pulling up the foil and let them cool completely on wire racks before carefully peeling back the foil. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Laminated dough doesn't come from Kinko's, Part 2

2009-09-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

BREAKING NEWS: Our puff pastry puffed! I repeat: Our puff pastry puffed!

All of that folding and rolling and resting and repeating paid off in the form of rich, buttery goodness.

After giving our puff pastry dough a night's rest, we got to put it to work today.

Witness Exhibit A, above: The Cheese Straw. Butter. Cheese. Flaky dough. A little cayenne. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

You just take a sheet of cold puff-pastry dough (the frozen, pre-made kind would be perfectly fine here), brush one half with a little water and sprinkle it with cheese, spices or whatever you like. Then, you fold the dough over and cut it into thin strips. Take each strip, give it a little twist and bake it at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, until nicely golden.

If only we'd had a nice, dry martini at school today with which to enjoy these. But that didn't stop me from eating a couple of them.

Then we made some fall-spiced apple compote to fill little puff-pastry squares. Before baking, we brushed them with milk and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. We forgot to cut steam vents in the top and may have over-filled them a bit, so they weren't the prettiest, but they were plenty tasty.

When we weren't stuffing ourselves silly with puff pastry, we whipped up some danish dough for tomorrow. Unlike puff pastry, danish dough has yeast, eggs and a little sugar. Wowza. And I think it will make a delightful nest for some of that leftover apple compote.

It's probably a good thing I've got a 20-mile marathon-training run this Sunday.

Laminated dough doesn't come from Kinko's, Part 1

2009-09-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Unless you're a baker, you're probably not familiar with the term "laminated dough."

But if you're an eater, you most certainly know what it is.

Think puff pastry. And croissants. And danish.

After today's puff-pastry session at culinary school, I might tell you that "laminated dough" roughly translates to "pain in the tush." But it actually describes the process of layering dough with butter to create the light, flaky and wonderfully buttery products listed above.

Think of that croissant you had for breakfast. You know all of those delightfully rich, flaky layers? Well, somebody's got to create those. And, today, that somebody was me. Sort of.

I've never worked with laminated dough before. And I was a little intimidated before we got into the kitchen today. Last spring, when I visited Washburne before registering, the class was working on croissant dough. I watched as many groups of students struggled with messy, gloppy blobs of dough that dripped butter like giant ears of corn on the cob at the fair.

I vowed to do better. But I'm not sure I succeeded.

So, we started in on puff pastry. It's the "easiest" of the three laminated doughs because it requires no yeast -- just flour, butter, salt, water and more butter. First you make a basic dough and let it chill for about 30 minutes while you make the butter layer.

We whipped softened butter with a little flour (to soak up extra moisture), spread it on plastic and left it to chill.

The trick to this whole mess is working with butter and dough that are equally chilled and pliable.

You roll out the dough, keeping it as perfectly rectangular as possible. Then, you roll out the butter layer to two-thirds the size of the dough. You put the putter layer on top of the dough and enclose it with three folds, like you're putting a letter in an envelope. Here's the chef helping me and my partner straighten out our edges and enclose our butter:

Chill again. Then you roll out this butter-filled "letter" back to the original size of your dough, taking care to keep the edges straight, avoid tearing it and keep it cold enough (but not too cold!) so butter doesn't seep out. The this dough gets folded, each side to the middle and in half again, like a book. Chill again. And repeat three more times for puff pastry.

It was toasty in the kitchen, so we had to put our dough back in the cooler several times so we could roll it out without making a total mess.

And rolling out a perfect rectangle and getting the edges to line up will take practice. Lots of practice. Our dough started to tear a bit where it had become too thin.

With so many steps and so much chilling time, we'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to see whether our pastry puffs.

I can say this with certainty after today, though. I don't think the folks from Pepperidge Farm have to worry about going out of business. I'm all for from-scratch cooking, but I think I'd stick with the puff pastry in my grocer's freezer section next time I get a hankering for a cheese straw or a Napolean.

Check back tomorrow, though. Maybe I will have changed my mind.

Why I'm running a marathon

2009-09-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

Flour Girl is taking a break from baking-related posts for the day to bring you ...

One month from today (yikes!), I'll be joining thousands of other crazy people to run 26.2 miles through the streets of Chicago.

I've been training for the marathon with long runs every Saturday at 6 a.m. with a great group and, while I don't at all feel ready, I feel loads more confident than I did during that first, 6-mile training run in June when I thought I might puke.

So, at least I've got that going for me.

The question I get asked every time I tell somebody I'm running the Chicago Marathon is the same one you're probably thinking:

Why, in the name of all that's good and holy, are you running a marathon?

I usually tell them I need to work off some of the excessive eating and drinking I did over the long Chicago winter. Or that I ran one seven years ago (pre-baby and pre-30s) and want to see if I can do it again.

But I'll tell you all the real reason I'm logging so many miles each week and waking up before dawn every Saturday to slog along the lakefront trail:

Rachel Raviv Hoffer.

That's her, up at the top.

She was my best friend and she died of cancer two years ago tomorrow.

I hate those sappy cliches about people with cancer "who fought bravely" or "who put up a valiant battle against the disease." We journalists are plenty guilty of committing those sins to print. Blech.

But Rachel, who was diagnosed with widespread cancer just 10 weeks after giving birth to a baby girl, fought like hell. She tried every treatment she could find, endured terrible side effects and procedures and even underwent a hip replacement in the last months of her life so she'd be able to tote her baby up and down the stairs.

Every time I told her how amazing I thought she was, she'd look at me as if I'd sprouted a second head. "What choice do I have?" she'd say. She had me there.

To build up her strength, Rachel walked around and around the blocks near her home. When I visited, we'd walk together, just like we did around the lakes in Minneapolis when we were in high school.

On one of those last walks together, she decided we should run a marathon once she was healthy again. Neither of us are great athletes or anything, but it seemed like a good goal. Maybe we'd do it someplace fun, she suggested, like Hawaii, and make a vacation out of it. The cross-my-fingers-and-hope-with-every-morsel-of-my-being part of my brain thought that sounded like a fabulous idea. The realistic part of my brain knew that would probably never happen.

Several weeks ago, I started out with the training group on a 14- or 15-mile long run. It was already hot. And humid. I think I made it about 10 miles, maybe less, before I started lagging behind the pack. With the sun beating down, I gave up and started walking, watching most of my pace group chug down the trail.

After walking/jogging on my own for a while, I came across another struggling straggler. I asked if she wanted to make it to the finish line with me. So, we plodded along, stopping at every available drinking fountain, walking some and running a little.

"I'm Heather," I told her.

"I'm Rachel," she said.

When we finally, finally made it to the end of that rather crappy run, I told her about my friend. Rachel. And I thanked her for running those last miles with me.

So, on October 11 and on all of the runs before that, I'll be thinking of my good friend.

That's why I'm running the Chicago Marathon.

Thanks for running it with me, Rachie.

Messes and successes

2009-09-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

You know those cheesy yet entertaining columns in some cooking magazines, labeled something like "Messes and Successes?"

They're all like, "My pot roast exploded in the oven just as I was about to serve my new in-laws." Or, "Look at me, I'm so cool, I baked my own six-tier wedding cake while hemming my own gown."

Well, allow me to present some Flour Girl "Messes and Successes" from the past couple days of culinary school:

Let's start with some messes 'cause those are more entertaining, right?

Leading the pack would be our epic baguette failure. Really, I'm not quite sure what happened here. And I would like to apologize to the entire country of France and all of its people. We sullied your National Bread today. And for that I'm sorry. Deeply sorry.

I knew we had some problems when I started looking around the room early this morning. Here are all my classmates trying to work this very sticky, very wet dough into something resembling baguettes. My partner and I? We portioned our dough and could've made super balls out of it. It had the consistency of Silly Putty and I think we could've picked up imprints of the Sunday comics with it.

Resting and proofing didn't help much either. We were still left with these wobbly, blobby dough chunks that we forced into long tube-like shapes. The Chef walked by while we formed them and I tried to throw my body over the sheet pan for cover, but she saw what was up. Baking didn't make them any prettier. (I was helping clean the kitchen when they came out of the oven, missing my photo opportunity. But I'm hoping you've got a good image of the sad, mis-shapen creations in your mind.)

Speaking of cleaning, I got up close and personal with The Pulper today. I'd put this one in the "mess" category. Not familiar with The Pulper? It's like your garbage disposal, on steroids. You can stick cardboard boxes in it, milk cartons, all manner of food waste. Basically everything but plastic and metal. It gets flushed with water and munched up in this pulverizer. And, everyday, somebody gets to put on rubber gloves and clean it out. Today, that somebody was me. Fun.

So, how 'bout some successes?

We started today with our Baking Techniques written mid-term and (bang a wooden spoon on a pot, please ...) I got an "A." The 50-question test asked things like name the three main mix methods for yeast breads, list a type of pre-ferment, describe the physical processes that happen during baking in the oven. My shaky math skills mostly saw me through the questions about conversion factors and equivalent measures (except for one bone-headed mathematical error.)

After the test we got to make Peter Reinhart's sticky buns. And we all know how wonderful those are. Total success there.

And we formed our brioche dough that we made yesterday into little Brioche a Tete (picture a cute little muffin with a small -- but very cute -- tumor growing from the top.) Took a while to get the hang of forming them, but they ended up looking OK. A relief, since my first tries looked like dog poo.

We'll still be making some rolls for the school's restaurants, but next week we'll begin focusing on pastries. First up, puff pastry -- layer upon layer upon layer of butter and dough. It'll be my first time working with a laminated dough and I'm a little nervous.

Here's hoping it's a success. And not, well, you know ...

The need to knead

2009-09-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

OK. A coupla updates and then, as it should always be, some bread.

For the first time all summer, I won't have a "Cooking Away My CSA" this week. We spent the weekend in Disney World and weren't around to pick up our latest box. The trip was great, but I'm now enduring a veggie drought. Just a few more days, though.

I returned to school after the long weekend today a couple of hours late, after dropping The Kid at his first day of kindergarten. My partner had already made our challah dough and I dove in on dough for Soft Roll Knots. In the first batch, I wasn't thinking and added active-dry yeast (which must be reconstituted in liquid) directly into the flour. (Maybe I was still dreaming of Mickey Mouse. Or pre-occupied with my little guy's first day of kindergarten.) We realized the mistake after kneading the dough and had to start over. Not sure what happened with the second batch, but it turned out much too stiff. We beat it into submission, though, and have a pan of knotted rolls and another pan of cloverleafs ready to bake tomorrow.

A smoother day tomorrow, right?

Anyway, I'm working on a newspaper piece about no-knead bread books. There are a whole bunch of them that have either come out recently or are being released this fall.

I never quite understood the whole "no-knead" phenomenon. I rather enjoy the act of kneading and have been underwhelmed by some of the no-knead breads I've tried.

But I'm loving the breads in Nancy Baggett's "Kneadlessly Simple." Sure, there's no kneading. But the real trick of these breads is the long, slow rise under cool temperature. (She even calls for super-cold ice water in every recipe.) And do you know what you get from bread that's been allowed to rise a day or more? Flavor. And lots of it. And whether you love to knead or are petrified of it, everybody likes flavor, right?

I just pulled a couple loaves of this All-Purpose Light Wheat Bread out of the oven. I'm impressed by the depth of flavor and the great rise:

And we all loved this Easy Oat Bread (pictured at the top of this post). Perfect for those kindergarten PB&Js.

Easy Oat Bread

From "Kneadlessly Simple" by Nancy Baggett

Makes 2 loaves

5 1/2 cups (27.5 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour or unbleached white bread flour, plus more as needed

1 cup old-fashioned oats or quick-cooking (not instant) oats, plus 4 tablespoons for garnish

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

Scant 2 3/4 teaspoons table salt

1 teaspoon instant, fast-rising or bread-machine yeast

1/4 cup clover honey or light molasses

1/4 cup corn oil or other flavorless vegetable oil, plus extra for coating dough top and pans

2 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons ice water, plus more as needed

In a very large bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, oats, sugar, salt and yeast. In a medium bowl or measuring cup, thoroughly whisk the honey (or molasses) and oil into the water. Thoroughly stir the water mixture into the larger bowl, scraping down the sides until the ingredients are

thoroughly blended. If the mixture is too dry to incorporate all the flour, a bit at a time, stir in just enough more water to blend in ingredients; don't over-moisten, as the dough should be stiff. Brush or spray the top with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. For best flavor, refrigerator the dough for 3 to 10 hours.

Let rise at cool room temperature for 12 to 18 hours. If possible, vigorously stir once during the rise.

For the second rise, vigorously stir the dough. If necessary, stir in enough more flour to yield a hard-to-stir dough. Generously oil two 8 1/2 X 4 1/2-inch loaf pans. Sprinkle a tablespoon of oats in each. Tip the pans back and forth to spread the oats over the bottom and sides. Use well-oiled kitchen shears or a serrated knife to cut the dough into two equal portions.

Put the portions in the pan. Brush or spray the tops with oil. Press and smooth the dough evenly into the pans with an oiled rubber spatula or fingertips. Sprinkle a tablespoon of oats over each loaf; press down to imbed. Make a 1/2-inch deep slash lengthwise down the center of each loaf using oiled kitchen shears or a serrated knife. Tightly cover the pans with nonstick spray-coated plastic wrap.

Let stand covered with plastic at warm room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, until the dough nears the plastic. Remove the plastic and let rise 1/2 inch above the pans.

Fifteen minutes before baking, place rack in lower third of oven and heat to 375 degrees.

Bake on lower rack for 50 to 60 minutes, until the tops are well browned. If necessary, cover tops with foil and bake for 10 to 15 minutes more, until a skewer inserted in the thickest part comes out with just a few crumbs. (Or until a thermometer in the center registers 208 to 210 degrees.) Bake for 5 minutes longer to be sure the centers are done. Cool in pans for 15 minutes. Turn out the loaves onto racks and cool thoroughly.

Cool well before slicing or storing. Best served toasted. Store airtight in plastic or aluminum foil.

In the weeds

2009-09-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry. Got too busy to tell you about yesterday's adventure at culinary school. But it went pretty great: Aced a quiz on the 12 steps of yeast dough production. Sailed through pretzel making (aren't those rolls cute?) and whipped up a lovely, sweet-smelling Portuguese Sweet Bread dough. (I am blessed with a great partner again, by the way. Sure, I may be old enough to be her mom but she's organized and sharp. And she has yet to refer to me as "old lady.")

Today? Well, let's just say today was not one of those days.

And I'm not quite sure why. (Could it be the obscene amount of bacon I ate at last night's Wandering Goat dinner put on by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard? Yes, that's my excuse.)

The chef had us make a second batch of pretzel dough. But this time, ours turned out a little too stiff. And it started rising much faster than yesterday, throwing me totally off schedule. So, everything started to overproof a bit and I just couldn't get caught up.

We got our Portuguese Sweet Bread in the oven, but it overbaked a few minutes and came out a tad too brown. Still tasted great, though.

It was one of those days where I couldn't pull a sheet pan out of the oven without burning myself. Couldn't even tear a piece of plastic wrap off the roll without winding up with a crumpled mess.

And we somehow got so far behind we didn't get a chance to start in on the Durum Rosemary Rolls the chef assigned. I'm still not sure where the time went. Oh, yeah, I know. I was trying to make pretzels out of stiff, unforgiving dough. And unstick a wad of plastic wrap.

And did I mention the hazardous chemicals? The pretzels and pretzel rolls get a quick dip in lye solution before baking -- to help give them that rich mahogany color. Thankfully, though, my bad luck did not extend to this step and there was no HazMat incident. (Home cooks can add 1/4 cup of baking soda and two tablespoons of sugar to a pot of boiling water to dunk the pretzels. Or just follow this great Flour Girl pretzel bread recipe.)

Even on a bad day, though, this recipe turns out some beautiful, tasty, deep-brown pretzels and pretzel rolls. Be sure to top them right after they come out of their dip in the water bath. You can sprinkle them with salt, sesame seeds, nigella seeds, poppy seeds ... Or, maybe, bacon?

Maybe not.

Soft Pretzels

Servings: 28

Make 6 traditional folded pretzels and use the rest of the dough for 2-oz pretzel buns

From "Baking and Pastry, Mastering the Art and Craft"

88 ounces (5 ½ pounds) bread flour

43 grams instant dry yeast

44 fluid ounces water

4 ½ ounces butter, soft, cubed

2 fluid ounces malt syrup

50 grams salt

Lye solution

32 fluid ounces water, 105 degrees warm

35 grams sodium hydroxide (lye) pellets

Garnish

Pretzel salt, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, as needed

Combine flour and yeast.

Add the water, butter, malt syrup and salt to the mixer and then add the flour-yeast mixture. Mix on low speed with the dough hook for 2 minutes then on medium speed for an additional 8 minutes. The dough should be stiff with strong gluten development.

Bulk ferment the dough until nearly doubled, about 50 minutes.

Divide the dough into 5.5 ounce pieces. Preshape the dough into small oblongs. Let the dough rest, covered until relaxed, about 10 minutes.

Working sequentially, starting with the first piece of dough you divided and rounded. One at a time, stretch each piece of dough into a rectangle 10 inches long. Fold the top edge of the length of the dough to the center and press to seal the edge, the repeat to the bottom edge, forming a cylinder of dough. Using the heel of your hand, seal the edges together.

Turn the dough seam side down, using your palms, roll the dough until it is 30 inches long, with a thicker portion 4 inches long in the center. You may need to rest the dough if it is pulling back.

Cross the ends over each other, leaving 3 inches of dough on each side of the crossing point. The thicker center of the dough should be closest to you. Twist the ends together once. Bring ends of the dough over and attach them to either side of the dough to form a traditional pretzel shape. Press gently to seal.

Transfer to parchment-lined sheet pans you've sprayed with pan spray.

Proof, covered until the dough gives slightly when touched, 30 minutes.

Relax the dough under refrigeration, UNCOVERED, until it forms a skin, about 25 minutes.

Make 1 large batch of lye solution for the whole class to use, in a rondeaux. Combine the water and sodium hydroxide pellets, stirring until the pellets are completely dissolved. Wear protective gloves and goggles.

Remove pretzels from the cooler and allow to stand for 10 minutes. If you dip the pretzels when they are very cold, the temp will drop in the lye solution and the sodium hydroxide will be less likely to stay in solution.

Using tongs, dip the pretzels in the solution and then place on screens to drain. Immediately sprinkle the pretzels with pretzel salt, or other topping. Discard the lye solution by pouring it down the drain. It cannot be reused.

Make an incision in the thickest part of the pretzel 1/4-inch deep.

Place pretzels on parchment lined sheet pans that have peen sprayed with pan spray. Bake at 475 degrees with the vent open until deep golden brown, 12-15 minutes.

Yield 28 5-oz pretzels

Want some focaccia with that?

2009-09-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

You may recall that we made focaccia last week during our first foray in the kitchen of this semester at culinary school. Our chef wanted us (many of whom had never baked bread before) to try her almost fool-proof recipe to build some kitchen confidence.

And it was good. And easy.

So good and easy, in fact, that I made a double batch at home the next day to take to a dinner party. This time, though, I added chopped fresh rosemary to the dough and topped it with a generous amount of dried cherries and scallions that had been soaked in wine.

So, between what I've been cooking at school and at home, I've certainly been doing plenty of baking. But I've been feeling behind in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge. (Especially since I got to interview author Peter Reinhart for an article the other day -- more on that another time.)

Anyway, guess what the next bread in the challenge is? That's right. You guessed it.

Focaccia!

So, I made another pan of focaccia tonight. But I started this one yesterday. Quick, it's not. But it is fairly easy. You just mix up the dough, put it in the pan and let it hang out in the refrigerator overnight.

I wasn't feeling super-creative, so I topped this one with Reinhart's recommended herb-infused oil with minced garlic.

As with pretty much all breads, the long, slow rise gives this one extra flavor and richness. And I really like the texture -- it's spongier and softer than the other focaccia -- all the better for soaking up all of that oil.

But I'm pretty sure this would've been out-of-this-world if I'd topped it with that dried cherry-scallion mixture.

Hmmmm. Sounds like there's another batch of focaccia in my future.

Real men will eat this

2009-08-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

It's only the start of my second week of the term at Washburne Culinary Institute. But I can already tell that Monday's are going to be loooong days.

We will never set foot in the kitchen. Instead, we'll have more than five hours of lecture. First, about the history of baking and pastry. Then, in the afternoon, it's about food safety and sanitation.

Even the chef admits that's it's not exactly scintillating stuff. Today, for example, we started in the Neolithic Period with the very early humans who figured out how to make sprouted grain porridge, dry it out near their newest invention -- FIRE! -- and make the very first "bread."

That part was actually pretty fascinating.

But then we moved on to sanitation and there was lots of talk about "bloody diarrhea" (sorry) and how our food had the potential to kill people and my eyes kind of started to glaze over. (Sorry again -- especially to the chef, if she's reading this.)

Maybe I was just hungry.

I was daydreaming about this quiche, which I made yesterday with plenty of fresh corn from Angelic Organics, along with some cute little bell peppers and jalapenos from the CSA box. Sure, it's made with heavy cream and eggs and a stick of butter ... but it's packed with veggies (bacon's a veggie, right?) so it must be healthy, right?

OK. Maybe not.

But it's sure to perk you up after a long day. Or give you plenty of energy in the morning to get ready for such a day.

Spiced-Up Roasted Corn and Bacon Quiche

Adapted from "King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking"

One quiche, serves 6-8

Crust

2/3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

3 to 5 tablespoons ice water

Filling

4 ears fresh corn, peeled and husked

4 sliced bacon

1 1/2 cups diced sweet onion

1 medium bell pepper, diced

1-2 jalapeno peppers, diced

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups half and half

1 cup sliced scallions, white and green parts

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt and pepper, to taste

To prepare the crust: Grind the oats in a food processor until fine, about 30 seconds. Add in the flour and salt. Pulse a couple of times until mixed. Add the butter and pulse until dough is unevenly crumbly. Sprinkle in (or drizzle through feed tube) one tablespoon of water at a time, until the dough is cohesive. To test, grab a handful of dough and see if it holds together easily. Dump the dough out onto plastic wrap. Form it into a 1-inch thick disk and wrap it. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or up to 3 days.

If stored longer than 30 minutes, remove disk from refrigerator 30 minutes before assembling quiche, to take off the chill.

Flour your work surface. Roll dough into a 12-inch circle. Place in a regular 9-inch pie pan. Trim and crimp the edges. Store crust in refrigerator while preparing the filling.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Heat a large, dry, nonstick skillet over high heat for several minutes. Place ears of corn in skillet and roast, turning every five minutes or so, until nicely charred in places. Remove corn from heat and cool.

Turn down skillet to medium. Put in bacon and cook, turning occasionally, until crisp. Place on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Crumble when cool.

Drain off all but a couple tablespoons of bacon fat (or leave it all in there if you're feeling frisky) and add in diced onion, bell pepper and jalapeno. Cook until soft, about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside to cool.

Using a sharp knife, cut the corn kernels off the cobs and place in a large bowl. Add the cooled onion mixture and the chopped scallions.

Whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, salt and pepper and smoked paprika. Pour over the vegetables and stir well.

Pour the filling into the prepared crust. If there's any left over, pour it into ramekins that have been treated with cooking spray.

Bake the quiche for 35-40 minutes (possibly longer), covering the crust with a pie shield or foil if it starts to burn. When the quiche is done, the center won't wobble when you jiggle the pan and a knife inserted one inch from the edge will come out wet but clean. Remove the quiche from the oven and let cool at least 30 minutes before serving.

Running around like lettuce with its head cut off

2009-08-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Holy smokes. Where has this week gone?

Oh, yeah, I returned to culinary school for the fall term. I'm still working on this cookbook, reporting and writing some freelance articles and logging a bunch of miles to train for the Chicago Marathon. Guess my new schedule has thrown me a little off around here.

I think I'm a couple of breads behind in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. And, here I am getting a new CSA box tomorrow, and I never told you what I got in last week's box or what I did with it.

Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, it was another lovely box:

Our 10th box included:

-- Loads of beautiful corn

-- Cucumbers

-- Eggplant

-- Tons of tomatoes

-- Bell peppers

-- Toscano kale

-- Anise

-- Lettuce

-- Choi

-- Celery

-- Sweet onion

And:

A watermelon. Which turned out to be yellow-fleshed and super-duper sweet.

So much of this produce was so beautiful, I've been doing very little with it. Roast some corn, grill some sausages, slice some watermelon. Make a salad. That's about it.

But I did make a nice big batch of panzanella (Italian bread salad) with several of those amazing tomatoes. The great thing about panzanella is that it's infinitely customizable. Use whatever bread you've got around. Toss in some meat, if you like (I added some cooked sausage). Add some cheese. Add whatever vegetables you have around. One thing you do need, though, is really great, ripe tomatoes.

Here's a nice, basic recipe from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" to use as a launch pad for panzanella inspiration. Even a frantic, harried cook can make it.

Trust me.

Panzanella

From "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman

Serves 4

4 medium, perfectly ripe tomatoes, cored and peeled (A certain busy cook might've skipped this peeling step and the salad might've turned out just fine. It wasn't me, of course. Just a cook I know.)

About 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more if needed

1 clove garlic, peeled

8 thick slices good bread, preferably a couple of days old

1 teaspoon fresh oregano, marjoram or thyme or 1/4 cup minced fresh basil or parsley

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic or other good vinegar

Use your fingers to remove the liquid centers and seeds from the tomatoes; place in a strainer over a bowl and add the meat of the tomatoes. Sprinkle the tomatoes with about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and set aside while you prepare the bread. Stir occasionally.

Preheat the broiler. Cut the garlic clove in half and rub the bread all over with it. Toast the bread under the broiler, taking care not to burn it. When it is nicely browned and crisp throughout, cool it for a minute, then tear it into bite-sized pieces. Place it in a bowl with the juices that drained out of the tomatoes.

Discard the tomato seeds and chop the meat into smaller pieces. When the bread has softened a bit, add the tomatoes, herb, oil, vinegar and some black pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary, serve immediately.

Fetch me my walker

2009-08-27T15:40:00.001-07:00

Culinary school, Day Four. Our first "real" day in the kitchen and it went pretty great. And by "pretty great" I mean: I didn't cut myself, burn myself, burn my bread, or cut or burn anyone or anything else.

I consider that a success.

We met our partners and set to work making our first bread -- focaccia. (I know, I know. I'm supposed to be making focaccia from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge. I'll get to that one soon ... I promise.)

So, my new partner just graduated from high school. And I'm all like, "Ha, ha, I suppose I'm old enough to be your mother."

And she's all, "How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

And I'm all, "34." (Secretly thinking, ha, you might think I'm an old lady but I'm really quite young.)

And she's all, "Yep. That's how old my mom is."

And that's when my head popped off, rolled under the deck oven and asked the chef instructor for a shot of vodka.

Sooo, any-hoo, where was I?

Ah, yes, focaccia.

After our chef's suggestion yesterday, I brought in some red grapes from home to top this lovely, spongy and very easy focaccia bread.

It's a good thing I snapped a couple of pictures when I did. Even though everybody in class made focaccia, this one got gobbled up pretty quick.

Not bad for an old lady.

(There's an infinite number of fillings and toppings for this bread -- meat, cheese, veggies, you name it. This would've been even better, I think, with caramelized onion. The dough would also make a great pizza crust.)

Focaccia with Red Grape, Onion and Basil

From Chef Laura Vaughn, Washburne Culinary Institute, adapted from Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2005

Makes 1 half sheet pan

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon active-dry yeast

12 ounces lukewarm water

17 ounces all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling on top

3 ounces onion, chopped very fine

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh basil, sliced into thin ribbons

1 cup red grapes, sliced in half

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl bowl, stir together sugar, yeast and warm water. Let sit a few minutes 'til bubbly and add the flour.

Add the salt, onion and basil. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth, about five minutes. Resist the urge to add more flour. The dough will be sticky and you may need a bench scraper to knead it.

Wipe out the large bowl and spray with cooking spray or smear with oil. Put dough in the container and swirl around so it's covered with oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Place in a warm area to rise until doubled. (This will likely take about 40 minutes to one hour, depending on the temperature of your room.)

Spray a half-sheet pan (or 13X9-inch pan) with cooking spray. Line with parchment. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of oil onto the parchment.

Gently turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Grasping the sides of the dough, fold the left, then the right side, to the center. Then fold the top and the bottom to the center. Flip the dough over. Cover and let rest 15 minutes.

Put the dough in the prepared pan and spread it so it fills the entire surface. (Let the dough rest a few minutes if it resists shaping. Let the dough rest in a warm place for about 10 minutes, until puffy.

Using oiled fingers, make indentations throughout the dough. Drizzle with a few more tablespoons of olive oil.

Press sliced grapes firmly into the dough. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and let dough rise about 8 minutes longer, or until it puffs around the grapes, holding them in place.

Bake until light golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Cool a bit before slicing.

Good things on the horizon

2009-08-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of culinary school, still no baking going on.

But at least there's the promise of baking!

We went over the syllabus for the Baking Techniques course (which meets Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and it looks awesome. Pretty much bread, bread and more bread. Every type of bread you can imagine -- lean dough, enriched dough, laminated dough (that means baguettes, brioche and puff pastry, just to name a few).

I can hardly wait to get started.

We did spend some time in the kitchen today, though. But instead of baking anything, we gave it a good scrub down. The kitchen was already pretty clean; the exercise was mostly to familiarize the class (most of whom are new to Washburne Culinary) with our work space. My few fellow returning students and I got to "delegate," aka tell the newbies what to do. So, that was fun. But I did my fair share of scrubbing, too.

I'm hoping we'll get to make some focaccia tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Speaking of that, I see that I've crossed the threshold of my 100th post here on Flour Girl. Thanks so much to all of you regular readers. Sorry for the lack of fanfare.

In lieu of fanfare, I'll give you a muffin recipe.

These are good.

Make them.

Raspberry Surprise-Inside Muffins

Adapted from Lori's Best-Ever Muffins recipe on allrecipes.com

Makes 12 muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup white sugar, plus more for fruit and sprinkling

1 egg

1 cup milk (or combination of milk and yogurt)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 cup raspberries, coarsely chopped and tossed with 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 tablespoon flour

12 teaspoons jam of your choice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Make a well in the center. In a small bowl, beat the egg with a fork. Stir in milk and oil. Pour all at once into the well in the flour mixture. Mix quickly and lightly with a fork just until moistened. DO NOT OVERBEAT. Gently fold in the raspberries.

Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with non-stick spray.

Fill each cup 1/3 of the way with batter. Top each with 1 teaspoon of jam. Top another 1/3 of the way with batter. Sprinkle with sugar (turbinado, if you've got it.)

Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden.

Cool for 5 minutes in the pan before removing to a wire rack.

Buh-bye, Tasha Granberry ...

2009-08-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

You may recall when I took my first class at Washburne Culinary Institute this spring, there wasn't time to order a chef's coat with my name on it. So, for six weeks or so, I was Tasha Granberry.

Not anymore.

After my first day of class today, I picked up my new, crisp pack of chef's coats with my very own name on them. (That's my married name, by the way.) I feel so official. And I got crisp, new black-and-white checked pants! And new aprons! It's like Christmas!

Today marks the first day of the semester, the beginning of Phase One for me and my two dozen baking and pastry classmates. We spent the day in the lecture room, going over the syllabus and the rules. (No jewelry, no perfume, scruffy beards, no long nails, no lateness, no baggy pants, no wrinkled uniforms, no cell phones, no swearing.)

Monday will be a lecture day for the rest of the semester, with introduction to baking in the morning, followed by sanitation. I'll be sure to get some extra caffeine on those mornings.

We'll spend the rest of the week in the kitchen, though, starting tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we'll be spending tomorrow cleaning our kitchen, as a kind of getting-acquainted task.

Wonder if that absolves me from cleaning the kitchen here at home?

I think it should.

And she's off ...

2009-08-24T04:13:00.000-07:00

Yep. I've got the black-and-white-checked polyester work pants back on again, folks. And I'm headed down to the South Side for the first day of the semester at Washburne Culinary Institute.

When I took a class there this spring, I was just jumping in mid-term. But now I'm starting out in the beginning of the program, one that will take me about two years to complete.

I'll be getting my sanitation certification this semester and will begin learning the basics of baking and pastry (here's hoping I already know a few of them ...). As for what else I'll learn, who knows?

But I know this: I'll be talking all of you along for the ride.

Check back later today for my first-day report.

My strange day with Rachael Ray

2009-08-22T03:28:00.000-07:00

Rachael Ray came to Chicago yesterday and threw a made-for-TV block party outside Wrigley Field.

You can read what I wrote about the craziness here at Time Out Chicago. But let me just tell you: It was a hoot.

And for all of you Rachael Ray haters out there, let me also tell you this: The woman is pretty gracious. She stopped for photos with everyone who asked. She signed books and anything else. She hugged babies. She seemed like a genuinely decent human being -- even when the cameras weren't rolling.

There was Chicago's own Jenny McCarthy, admitting that she lived here for 20 years but never rode the El.

There was Jillian Michaels, the oh-so-tough-and-buff trainer from NBC's "Biggest Loser." She got in that bouncy house with Rachael. Seriously.

And there were a couple of "Biggest Losers," too, including winner Ali Vincent. (Hint: Don't stand next to a "Biggest Loser" if you want to look skinny.)

And this "Biggest Loser" contestant whose name I can't recall.

I'm guessing you know the future contestant on the right, though.

Did I mention Cookie Monster was there?

Yep. Quite a block party.

All revved up with no place to go

2009-08-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Ah, Meatloaf.

Growing up, one of the few albums played by my oh-so-hip parents was Meatloaf's "Bat out of Hell."

I can't even tell you how many rotations that one made on the turntable. (That and the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." Oh, to grow up in the late '70s. This should help explain some things about me.)

It is, sadly, seared into my psyche and I think Meatloaf has been eating away at my brain for the past three decades.

And not in a good way.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, meatloaf. With a lower-case "m."

Maybe your parents tormented you with meatloaf the way mine tormented me with Meatloaf. Both tend to leave a bad aftertaste.

But not the one below.

If you're not a meatloaf fan, this will turn you into one. As for Meatloaf, I make no promises.

Since I like to plan ahead, I started thinking about meatloaf sandwiches. Which meant I needed some good bread. Which meant another visit to the King Arthur Flour Site. I found this great Oatmeal Bread there. The bread's sweetness is a perfect backdrop for the heat of this meatloaf. And you can use a few slices in preparing the meatloaf, too.

P.S. To make it easier on you dear readers (I'm talking about you, Mom and Baubie), I'm ditching the "blogspot" part of this blog's address. You can now get to Flour Girl at flourgrrrl.com. Best to save the finger strength for kneading bread dough, right? Please update your bookmarks.

Bacon-Stuffed Chipotle Meatloaf

Serves 8

3 slices of bread, torn into small bits (I used some of the Oatmeal Loaf, which gives this a nice sweetness)

1/2 cup milk

2 pounds ground meat (I prefer one pound of fattier meat mixed with one pound of leaner meat. I used 80/20 hamburger and 96/4 hamburger. You could use ground pork, veal or turkey.)

1/2 onion, grated

2 garlic cloves, grated

1/3 cup ketchup, plus 1/4 more for brushing on top of loaves

1 egg

3 or more canned chipotle chiles in adobo, plus 1 tablespoon or so of sauce (to taste)

3 slices of bacon, preferably maple

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small bowl, combine the torn bread and milk. Let sit, stirring occasionally, while you prepare the rest.

In a large bowl, add the ground meat, grated onion and garlic, ketchup, egg, chipotles and sauce, and salt and pepper. Add in the soaked bread.

Gently mix with your hands until everything is incorporated. Do not overmix or you'll get dense loaves.

Leave the mixture in the bowl but level it so it's flat and even. With your finger, score it into four even pieces.

On a baking sheet, or broiling rack set over a pan, form two of the section into flat loaves, about eight inches long, 4 inches wide and 1 inch thick.

Cut the three slices of bacon in half and lay three of these short halves over each of the loaves.

Take the remaining two portions of meatloaf and pat each on into the same shape as the bottom loaf. Place on top of the bacon, pressing gently to seal. (You're basically making a bacon sandwich, with meatloaf as the bread. How good/deadly does that sound?)

Place the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with reserved ketchup. Return loaves to oven and bake for another 20-25 minutes, or until the loaves reach 160 degrees inside.

Tent with foil and let rest at least 10 minutes before serving.

Even better, make these in advance and cool in the refrigerator. Just before serving, heat a dry, nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Heat thick slabs of meatloaf in the pan until nicely charred and cooked through.

The second loaf can be wrapped and frozen.

Or nibbled on for a bed-time snack.

Like sand through an hourglass

2009-08-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday's CSA box, our ninth so far, made me kind of sad.

It was so bursting with summer's bounty, it reminded me that all of this will be over soon, replaced by things like School Closures and Wind Chill Advisories.

I mean, just check this out:

-- Corn

-- Tomatoes

-- Green pepper

-- Cucumbers

-- Eggplant

-- Zucchini

-- Cilantro

-- Dill

-- Fennel

-- Sweet onion

-- Lettuce

-- Swiss chard

And even:

-- Cantaloupe

See?

It's enough to make a grown woman weep.

But I got past that. Quickly.

So, I made a big salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives and feta, dressed with just a little balsamic and olive oil.

And I put a big chunk of the cantaloupe in my green smoothie this morning.

I sliced several of those red beauties, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled them with salt and pepper and put them in a 250-degree oven for about three hours. I ended up with this "tomato candy" that's pretty hard to resist:

I piled several slices on a sandwich and ate many more right off the plate. These super-concentrated tomato jewels would be wonderful with pasta, though. Ooh, or paired with creamy goat cheese on top of a pizza. Or mixed with scrambled eggs. Or pretty much on top of anything you can imagine.

There aren't too many restaurant dishes I miss from my days in the Inland Northwest (sorry, Spokane). But I did love this great placed called Moontime in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. They made the best veggie burger I've ever had, their gumbo could knock your socks off, and pretty much everything was served with this awesome roasted corn pasta salad.

Now, I don't even usually like mayo-based salads. But this one, with its sweet, nutty corn; pungent red onions; and chipotle kick was unlike any I'd ever had.

And the good guys at Moontime are kind enough to post the recipe on their site.

I've made their version several times before and it's as good as I remember from the restaurant. This time, though, I decided to mix things up just a tiny bit. Remember that Elote, the Mexican corn, from last week?

Well, I turned it into pasta salad.

And it rocks.

A scoop of this is sure to fend off any melancholy. I'll try to remember this in January.

Mexican Corn Pasta Salad

Adapted from Moontime restaurant, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Serves 4

1 1/2 cups corn kernels, cut from about three ears of corn (or from frozen)

1/2 red onion, diced (I used sweet onion, but red's really better)

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 1/2 cups dried fusilli or elbow noodles

1 cup mayonnaise (it's easy to make your own)

2-3 canned chipotle peppers in adobo, finely chopped

juice of 1/2 lime

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place corn and onion on baking sheet. Dot with butter and drizzle with oil. Roast about 20 minutes, stirring several times, until vegetables are nicely browned. Let cool.

Cook pasta according to package directions, drain and rinse with cold water.

Combine mayonnaise with chopped chipotles.

Put pasta in a large bowl, add in roasted vegetables and the mayonnaise mixture. Stir well. Sprinkle with lime juice and top with grated Parmesan.

Cheerio! Have a muffin

2009-08-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

Before I started baking, I used to classify English muffins up there with pita bread.

There must, I thought, be some sort of unknowable magic involved in making them.

Turns out, there's not.

It's just bread. Who knew?

English muffins are next up in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge, and I was happy for a break from fruit-and-nut-studded loaves.

I made English muffins once before, using a different recipe that called for sourdough starter.

I loved those flavorful, nook-and-cranny-filled muffins and I had high hopes for Peter Reinhart's version.

So, you start out by making a pretty basic dough, enriched with a little shortening or butter. Reinhart's recipe only makes six muffins. So, I decided to do two batches: One an all-white dough for the muffins, another mixed with a few ounce of whole-wheat flour for English Muffin Bread.

After bulk fermentation, you shape the muffins into balls (or the loaf into a loaf) and let them rise again.

The muffins are then cooked on a griddle, on both sides, before being finished in the oven.

And the end result is this baby, positively crying out for a big, ol' pat of butter:

These are good, don't get me wrong. But I wasn't floored by them as I have been some of Reinhart's recipes. I didn't get those great nooks and crannies I'd hoped for. Maybe my dough should've been wetter? I also found the muffins to be a bit bland (though a smear of PB&J or a mound of fresh tomatoes made up for that.) Next time, I might try an overnight fermentation in the fridge to develop more flavor. Or, I might add some sourdough to the mix.

How 'bout you, BBA bakers: What'd you think of these muffins?

Never look a dust bunny in the eye

2009-08-13T21:09:00.001-07:00

A wonderful friend from Spokane sent me an instant message two days ago.

She had scored a last-minute flight to Chicago and would be at my house in, oh, just slightly less than 24 hours.

Visions of great neighborhoods to explore with her popped into my head. I thought of the new roof-top bar we had to check out. The Mexican place I'd been wanting to try for dinner.

And then I thought of:

The mountain of dishes in my sink.

The overflow of The Kid's toys into the guest room.

The growing battalion of dust bunnies in every nook and cranny.

So, I decided to bake some cookies. And hope that she wouldn't notice my messy house.

I think it might have worked.

This recipe, from the latest issue of Everyday Food, caught my eye. I had all of the ingredients on hand, including plenty of zucchini from the CSA box.

These are nice little no-too-sweet cookies, perfect with a cup of coffee or tea. Next time, I might drizzle them with some lemon glaze or something for a little extra oomph.

And if you drop a few crumbs on the floor, no worries. Nobody will notice.

At least that's what I'm hoping.

Lemon-Zucchini Cornmeal Cookies

Makes 25 cookies

From Everyday Food

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup fine cornmeal

1 medium zucchini, grated on small holes of a box grater (about 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar with a wooden spoon until pale and fluffy. Stir in vanilla, lemon zest and salt. Add flour and cornmeal and mix until mixture is crumbly. Add zucchini and stir until a thick dough forms.

Drop by rounded tablespoons, 2 inches apart, onto two parchment-lined baking sheets. (To truly get 25 cookies out of this recipe, you'll want to do rounded teaspoons.) Bake until cookies are light golden brown at edges, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Let cool completely on wire racks.

Bread only a mother could love?

2009-08-13T06:45:00.001-07:00

Like several other bakers doing the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, I was less-than-celebratory about making this week's Cranberry-Walnut Celebration Bread.

We've been baking an awful lot of sweet breads. My bread-eating kid doesn't like nuts. Plus, this seemed awfully similar to one of the earlier loaves, Artos: Greek Celebration Bread (a sweetened, spiced bread packed with dried fruits and nuts.) And it was just a few weeks ago that we made Cinnamon-Raisin Bread.

I can't lie.

All of those things are still true.

Plus, there's this:

This bread (at least my rendition of it) just isn't very pretty, either.

Author Peter Reinhart recommends forming this loaf into a two-tiered braid. Since I planned to give one of these loaves away, I opted to make one three-strand braid and another boule. But the braid was so lumpy from all of the fruit and nuts, I just wasn't very happy with it.

See?

But, you know what? This bread is plenty tasty. It makes a fine breakfast, smeared with a little butter or peanut butter. And anybody who hasn't been up-to-their-eyeballs in sweet, fruit-flecked doughs would probably be delighted to have a loaf. Plus, this would be stunning in a few months, on a Thanksgiving table.

It makes me all the more excited, though, for next week's challenge: English Muffins.

Allow me to be corny

2009-08-12T06:40:00.001-07:00

I think it's finally summer here in Chicago.

Wanna know how I know?

Here's what appeared in my eighth Angelic Organics CSA box:

-- Cucumbers

-- Zucchini

-- Summer squash

-- Cute little eggplant -- purple and white

-- Carrots

-- Collard greens

-- Basil

-- Thyme

-- Carrots

-- Asian Sun Jewel Melon

-- Green bell pepper

-- Lettuce

and ...

-- Tomatoes, beautiful bright-red tomatoes!

and ...

-- CORN

and ...

-- CORN

I believe we got eight ears. But I ate the first couple so quickly, there could've been more. It's hard to beat just-picked sweet corn.

As a kid, I remember my mom would boil corn to within an inch of its life (sorry, mom!). But, with corn this good, you hardly need to cook it. I stuck a couple of ears on a hot grill pan 'til charred just a bit. Delightful.

But, if you really want to get fancy with your corn on the cob, might I suggest Elote? It's simply grilled (or roasted) corn, Mexican-style.

After grilling your corn, take some mayo (about 1/4 cup for four ears) and mix it with the juice of 1/2 lime, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika or chile powder (or red pepper if you like it spicy) and salt to taste. Using a brush, smear this mixture all over the corn. Then, roll the corn in crumbed white Mexican cheese. (If you don't have cotija anejo, Parmesan works just fine.)

Serve with sliced lime.

Divine.

Speaking of that mayonnaise, I realized before making my Elote that the jar in my fridge was a bit past its prime. So, I made my own. No, really. And if you've got a food processor, it couldn't be easier.

Basic Mayonnaise

Makes 1 cup

From "How to Cook Everything"

1 egg or egg yolk

Dash cayenne

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil or canola or other neutral oil, or a combination, or more if needed

Combine the egg, cayenne, mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice and 1/4 cup of the oil in the container of a blender or food processor. Turn the machine on and, with the machine running, add the oil in a thin, steady stream.

After you've added about half of the oil, the mixture will thicken and you can start adding the oil a bit faster.

Check the seasoning and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

On Twitter yesterday, Jennifer Perillo of In Jennie's Kitchen said she had all the ingredients for ratatouille. Turns out, I did, too. I'd never made ratatouille before. Guess I thought it was something really fancy. It's got a French name, after all.

But, you know what? It's pretty much just roasted summer veggies. And it's wonderful.

I served mine over some quick Harvest Grain Blend from Trader Joe's, along with a sprinkle of feta and a dollop of leftover hummus.

Oven-Baked Ratatouille

Serves 6 to 8

From "America's Test Kitchen: Cover & Bake"

1 medium eggplant (about 1 pound), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch cubes (I had two little eggplants -- one white, one purple. Didn't bother peeling.)

1 medium red onion, halved and sliced 1/4-inch thick (Didn't have any onion -- added some green and red pepper.)

2 medium zucchini or summer squash, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained and 1/3 cup juice reserved (I used a couple of beautiful CSA tomatoes, chopped.)

5 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (I used balsamic.)

1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted in a small dry skillet over medium heat (I skipped this.)

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Combine the eggplant, onion, zucchini, tomatoes and reserved juice, garlic, olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper in a large bowl and mix well. Transfer to a 9- by 13-inch baking dish. Roast until the vegetables have softened and browned in spots, about 1 hour, stirring halfway through cooking time.

Stir vinegar into the vegetable and sprinkle pine nuts over the top. Serve hot or cooled to room temperature.

Magic carpet ride

2009-08-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

Back when I lived in Spokane, I attended many wonderful cooking-class dinner parties hosted by the Apple Charlotte Cooking Company. (In reality, they were hosted by this delightful, funny, smart, supremely talented chef and master bread baker named Char.)

Some people in the classes would dive right in, chopping and stirring and measuring. Me, I preferred to embrace the "dinner party" aspect, tasting and chatting and drinking. The one time I dove in to dice an onion or something, I instead sliced my index finger and scurried, embarrassed, to the washroom for triage.

Best to stick with the Sauvignon Blanc.

Anyway, minor injuries aside, these cooking-class dinner parties (and the friends with whom I attended them) are one of the things I miss most about Spokane.

Often the classes would focus on the cuisine of a particular country or region. We made a memorable Korean feast. We prepared a home-style Italian dinner. We did a wonderful tapas night.

I particularly loved the flavors of our Middle Eastern dinner. Who knew you could make falafel completely from scratch, not from one of those just-add-water boxes from the supermarket? And, since this was in my pre-bread-making days, I was positively stunned -- stunned! -- when Char presented a basket of her homemade pita. Some sort of magic must be involved, I reasoned, to make those little pocket breads.

And, just when I thought I couldn't fit another morsel in my belly, Char presented dessert: A warm, rich, buttery, nutty, sweet, thoroughly intoxicating pudding-cake hybrid called Basbousa -- dolloped, of course, with a cloud of sweetened whipped cream.

I didn't do much cooking at those dinner parties. But I've certainly done plenty since then.

We had a good friend over for dinner last night, so I decided to do my own version of Char's Middle Eastern feast. I made this flavor-packed Middle Eastern Cabbage Salad (since I had a head of cabbage from this week's CSA box). I made some smoked-paprika-spiked hummus. And some tangy tzatziki with part of a CSA cucumber. I fried up some falafel -- homemade! -- from Mark Bittman's "The Best Recipes in the World."

And, since I've learned since taking Char's class that there's no magic involved in pocket bread, I baked a basket of homemade whole-wheat pita, following this super-easy recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Ta-da:

And, of course, to top it all off, there was that sweet, rich, luxurious Basbousa. Whip up this easy dessert; I guarantee you'll be transported.

Thanks, Char, for the ride.

Basbousa (Semolina Pudding)

Serves 6 to 8

From Mark Bittman's "The Best Recipes in the World"

2 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 teaspoon rose water (or to taste), optional

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, plus more for the pan

1/2 cup blanched almonds, very finely chopped or ground in a food processor

1/2 cup whole-milk yogurt

1 1/4 cups semolina (coarse durum flour)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup heavy cream (preferably not ultra-pasteurized)

Put 1 1/2 cups of sugar, the lemon juice and 1/2 cup water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer until the mixture is thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes. Stir in rose water, if you're using it. Remove from the heat; when it has cooled, refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place half the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter foam subsides, add the almonds. Cook, stirring constantly, until they are lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

Beat the yogurt and 1 cup of remaining sugar together in a large bowl. Add the almonds and the butter they were cooked in, the semolina, baking powder and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and beat until thoroughly blended.

Grease a 9-inch square baking pan and add the batter. Cook for about 30 minutes, until the cake is lightly browned.

Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks, then whip 1 minute more, incorporating the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar a 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Pour the syrup over the Basbousa and cut it as you would brownies. Put it back in the oven and bake for 3 minutes more. Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons butter and pour it over the Basbousa. Let rest for a few minutes, then serve warm with the whipped cream.

Cheers!

2009-08-05T06:11:00.001-07:00

I was dashing off to Six Flags Great America last Saturday, right after picking up my latest CSA box. So I apologize for the lack of a group veggie shot from this week's box. You'll just have to trust me: It was all beautiful.

Our 7th Angelic Organics box contained:

-- Sweet onions

-- Red onions

-- Red cabbage

-- Broccoli

-- Kale (two types)

-- Dill

-- Cilantro

-- Carrots

-- Zucchini

-- Summer squash

-- Cucumbers

-- Eggplant

-- Purple peppers

-- Lettuce (two types)

-- Fennel

If you've ever spent, say, 10 hours at an amusement park, under the hot sun, surrounded by screaming children (including, on occasion, the one you birthed), you'll join me in cheering this news:

I'm happy to report the Lemon Balm Liqueur is done. And, lo, it's darn tasty.

So, I've been amassing a small stockpile of cucumbers in my refrigerator these past few weeks. I considered saving them, to use as weapons in the event of a home invasion. But I reconsidered. And I turned to Twitter for advice.

I was delightfully overwhelmed with cucumber recipes. Who knew you could do so many things with a cucumber?

I'm not much of a canner, but I was intrigued by refrigerator pickles. They don't keep as long as pickles canned under heat, of course, but they're super-easy.

So, I adapted this recipe from the July 16 Driftless Organics newsletter. Since I didn't have any pickling spice on hand, I monkeyed with this recipe a bit, making adjustments for what was in my spice cabinet. In some cases, I had to use ground spices. That's why the brine looks so cloudy. But I've already tasted a few slices (I'm not good at waiting) and they're great -- bright and sour and sweet with a nice kick from the red pepper.

Maybe some day I'll work up the courage to do some for-real canning.

But there's one domestic task I certainly do not fear: Bread-making.

Since I had that beautiful little eggplant and those cute little purple peppers and a vibrantly colored summer squash, I decided grilled veggie paninis would be a perfect dinner. But I needed some bread, of course.

I turned, once again, to King Arthur Flour. They've never let me down and didn't fail to please once again with this embarrassingly simple Easy Focaccia for Panini. For all you bakers out there afraid of kneading, this one's for you. There's no kneading. You just mix up a nice, wet dough. Let it sit for an hour, dump it into a greased 9- by 13-inch pan, let it sit another hour and bake it. About five minutes before it's done, you can top it however you like. I first brushed it with a little olive oil before sprinkling with kosher salt and grated Parmesan cheese. You could use dried herbs or chopped fresh herbs. You could use olives. Red pepper. Go wild.

Slice it horizontally and you've got a perfect bed for any sort of grilled sandwich.

Isn't it pretty?

And it made darn fine panini. But you won't see any pictures here.

I bet you can guess why.

I told you I wasn't good at waiting.

It's what it's all about

2009-08-04T04:39:00.000-07:00

If you're new to Flour Girl (thanks!) you might be a bit confused.

That banner above my head says "One newspaper reporter's gluten-filled adventures in baking school." And, yet, you haven't seen a word about baking school for months, right?

Well, I've been on summer break. But I'm headed down to Washburne Culinary Institute this morning to register for fall semester, which begins Aug. 24. So, you can expect plenty of flour-filled madness in just a few weeks. I'll be starting off with Introduction to Baking and I'll be taking you along with me.

And I have it on good authority that I'll have a chef's coat with my name on it -- no more Tasha Granberry for me. I wish her well.

OK. I hate to leave you for the day without a recipe. So here's a sneak preview of what I've been cooking with my latest CSA box. This week's bursting box featured a couple of beautiful bulbs of fennel as well as some magazine-cover-worthy carrots.

I'd never cooked much with fennel before, but I knew these two made a good team. So, I asked about on Twitter and a helpful person sent me a wonderful looking Carrot Fennel Soup from Gourmet.

You start by roasting a couple of sliced fennel bulbs with a pound of carrot chunks, a chopped onion and some garlic. Toss it all with olive oil and roast at 450 degrees for about half an hour or until brown and fragrant.

I dumped the roasted vegetables into a stock pot and added a couple of cups of chicken broth. I used the immersion blender to mix it up (I prefer my soup chunkier than the recipe suggests) and added a little water to thin it. Even after adding salt and pepper, I thought this needed a little more oomph, so I tossed in a couple of pinches of smoked paprika.

I skipped the fennel oil called for in the recipe (though it looks divine) and instead made some croutons with the ends of a couple of breads I had on the counter. Never made homemade croutons? You'll never want to buy the supermarket ones again. Just cube some bread and toss it with a little olive oil and whatever flavorings you like (I've used Parmesan, dried Italian herbs or just kosher salt). Melt some butter in a big pan and throw the bread cubes in. Keep tossing them, over medium heat, 'til they're nice and golden. Put them on a plate to cool. You can keep these well-sealed in the freezer and just take them out as needed. They'll thaw in the time it takes to make your salad.

Or soup, as the case may be.

A little bit salty, a little bit sweet

2009-07-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

Sure, I love my CSA veggies. I love salads and stir-fries and farmers' markets and fresh, local food. Sure, I love all that stuff.

But I'm human. And I have a few less-than-virtuous food love affairs.

Potato chips are one. Can't have them in the house. Seriously. I will eat the entire bag.

And, yes, I've been known to eat a few cupcakes.

But my other nutritional kryptonite is more of a flavor combination than a particular food: I can't resist the salty-sweet combo.

That Chex Mix with the teeny-tiny M&Ms? When I was pregnant, I used to eat a full bag of it in one sitting.

My legs veer uncontrollably in the direction of Garrett Popcorn shops every time I pass one in Chicago. They sell this mix of caramel corn-cheesey corn that's like crack to a sweet-salty fiend like me.

So, with that preamble, I introduce you to the latest offering in the "Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge: Cornbread.

But this ain't just any cornbread. It's sweetened with granulated sugar, brown sugar and honey and topped with salty, crumbled bacon.

You see where I'm going here?

Yum.

Any recipe that starts like this, probably isn't going to be half bad:

Actually, the recipe started last night when I mixed some coarse cornmeal with some buttermilk and let it hang out.

Not too tough. This is, I believe, the only non-yeasted bread in Peter Reinhart's book. So, no kneading or stand mixer. Easy-peasy.

Reinhart recommends baking the cornbread in a 10-inch round pan. At the suggestion of other bakers, I opted to make muffins. Figured they'd be easier to freeze later. Here they are just before heading to the oven:

I plan on serving these tonight with some turkey-black bean chili. But then I got to thinking ... Hey, there's eggs in here! And bacon! And milk! And corn! That's a veggie, right? Why, it's a perfectly well-balanced breakfast.

Come to mama, you little devil ...

OK. Spill it. What's your foodie kryptonite?

Veggie deluge

2009-07-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

My super-lucky (I mean, very hard-working) husband has been hitting the pubs (I mean, toiling away at a business conference) in London for the past five days.

Which means the 5-year-old and I were a tad overwhelmed to pick this up on Saturday:

Oh, the kid likes to look at all of the pretty vegetables. He even started snapping pictures of the haul with his kiddie camera. But that doesn't mean he likes to eat any of them. That left mama with a lot of veggies for the week.

Here's what we got in our sixth box:

-- Sweet onions

-- Red onion

-- Cauliflower

-- Broccoli

-- Cabbage

-- Swiss chard

-- Parsley

-- Anise

-- Summer savory

-- Green tomatoes

-- Zucchini

-- Summer squash

-- Cucumbers

-- Carrots

-- Beets

-- Turnips

-- Lettuce

-- Celery

Yikes!

So, I packed up a big bag of goodies for some friends.

And then I decided to make some vegetable stock in the slow-cooker. Now, I've never made vegetable stock before, so I'm not really sure how it's supposed to go. But I tossed all of the carrot tops, beet greens, some celery (with the greens), chopped onion, herbs and pretty much whatever else I could find except the cat into the slow-cooker. I added water to cover, along with some salt and pepper.

I cooked it all day and strained it. And I'm pretty sure I wound up with veggie stock. Tasted good to me. I used it to cook some Trader Joe's Harvest Grains Blend and it lent wonderful flavor to the grains. It's packed up in the freezer now, but I think it'll make a great base for soups and other dishes in the future.

With my fish-hating husband out of town, I also decided to cook up a nice salmon fillet.

I drizzled some olive oil on a large sheet of foil and topped it with sliced sweet onion from the CSA box. I put the salmon on top of the onion bed and sprinkled it with chopped dill from last week's box. I topped it with a little lemon and a dash of white wine and sealed up the foil packet. I baked it at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.

While the salmon cooked, I browned up some sliced CSA cabbage in a hot skillet and served the salmon on top. Beats the bowl of Froot Loops I used to serve myself when dining solo, no?

But I still had those green tomatoes staring at me on the counter. (What? You don't think your produce is staring at you?) Fried green tomatoes are wonderful, of course. But I'm not much of a fryer. My massive amount of bread baking (and eating) already makes it tough enough to fit into my pants; I don't need to take up a frying hobby.

Thankfully, "Cooking Away My CSA" member Woman with a Whisk posted a great recipe recently for Oven-Fried Green Tomatoes. I wish I'd had panko like she suggests, but I only had matzoh meal (and I was rushing at lunch and didn't feel like breaking out the processor to grind fresh crumbs). Not quite enough crunch. But these baked buggers still made a nice lunch. I added some hot pepper and a little Parmesan cheese to the coating. And I bumped up the oven temperature. I probably should've baked them a bit longer.

I served the tomatoes with leftovers from the night before -- some simple roasted veggies mixed with that Trader Joe grain blend.

Amazingly, my refrigerator now has a manageable amount of vegetables in it. Not too shabby for my week of solo dining, if I do say so myself.

Blessed are the cheese-makers

2009-07-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Flour Girl ...

My super-cool pal Stacy Hunt is writing this blog's first-ever guest post, all about her adventures in cheese-making. Stacy lives out in the country near Missoula, Mont., with her super-cool husband and super-cool young son. They live on a beautiful chunk of land where they tend to their stunning gardens and even raise chickens. Stacy makes pretty much everything they eat from scratch. And what she doesn't make herself, she gets directly from the grower. It's like Little House on the Prairie out there -- only with high-speed Internet (and much cooler clothes).

OK. Let me turn this over to Stacy:

My name’s Stacy Hunt, and I’m obsessed with making food “from the ground up.” That sounds like an admission at the beginning of an AA meeting, and maybe it is in some sense. Since working as a chef in a long line of kitchens nearly two decades ago, I’ve been fascinated with how things are made. It’s often not enough for me to buy a good cheese, or a good bread. I want to make it with my own hands, at least once before deciding that there are some things better left to paying someone else to do (like fortune cookies). Combine the obsession with how things are made with my work in energy and environmental issues, and you have a rather manic home cook with a passion about food and agricultural sustainability.

Enough about me, let’s talk about cheese. I love cheese. I became interested in cheese making last year after having gotten annoyed at exorbitant price of organic cheese. Even cheeses you’re just going to melt in a casserole or on your kid’s grilled cheese sandwich can cost $6.00 for less than 6 ounces.

My sister-in-law gave me this book, "Home Cheese Making" and I promptly ordered a few types of starter (the bugs that make milk into cheese), rennet (the coagulant that makes whey separate from curds), some butter muslin (thick cheese cloth), and a few creepy molds (blue and white) that I’ve yet to use.

My two standby cheeses are crème fraiche, which I thin with milk, cream or yogurt to make dips, dressings and sweets, and a totally accidental “soft herb cheese.” I say totally accidental because it was my first attempt and I used about 10 times the amount of rennet called for in the recipe and it turned out to be a fantastic spreadable cheese that we mix with herbs, eat with crackers, and even use in omelets. So here’s the basic deal – but I’d highly suggest if you’re interested in making cheese that you get a book and start reading. Like making sourdough, it’s a bit of a conceptual leap to understand how it works, and then it all seems reasonably simple (except the technique, which I’m still screwing up frequently).

So you start with milk. Here we use real (raw) milk from our cow share, but you can use anything that’s not ULTRA PASTEURIZED. Ultra pasteurization, as I understand it, screws up the protein and your cheese won’t set. The milk needs to be warmed to about 86 degrees.
Add the starter. I’m making two cheeses in the photos below. The first (above) uses crème fraiche starter, the second a mesophilic – or moderate temperature – starter. Both act the same and look mostly the same at this point.

3. With crème fraiche, you’re done for a while. Put a lid on and let it sit for 6-12 hours, until the curd is set (it looks like yogurt when done). I do it in the evening and let it sit overnight.

With the soft cheese, add rennet. Here’s where my glorious mistake came in – the recipe called for a few drops of rennet dissolved in a ¼ cup of water. Then you use one teaspoon of the diluted rennet mixture in the cheese. I used one teaspoon of straight rennet. The result is a nice, firm, spreadable cheese. My only quandary now is determining whether that much rennet in a cheese is like, bad to eat. I’m not sure, so don’t take my word for it, but I sort of doubt it. The variety I use is vegetable-based and has no warning label.
Mix the rennet in using an up and down motion and stick a lid on the sucker. Let it sit overnight.
When you wake in the morning, set up two wire colanders over pots, lined with damp butter muslin. Ladle the curds into their appropriate colander. The photo below shows the soft cheese curds on the left, the crème fraiche on the right.

Tie the muslin in a little baggie over a long metal spoon or other utensil, to allow the rest of the whey to drain. Drain for about 8 hours.

To serve the crème fraiche, mix with a little cream or milk to thin to desired consistency. Add sugar if serving with a dessert, crepes, etc. For the soft cheese, I mash it with garlic, salt and herbs and form it into a roll using wax paper. Refrigerate until solid and serve with crackers or in omelets.

The picture below shows the whey once you've drained it from your cheese. The chickens love it. And you can also make ricotta with it.

But we'll have to ask Stacy to come back another day and teach us how to do that one.

Thanks, Stacy. Anybody else have any great cheese-making tips or resources?

Making a date with a BLT

2009-07-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I glad these pictures turned out OK. I ate the evidence so quickly, there would be nothing left to photograph but crumbs and my full stomach.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier that this wonderful Oatmeal & Brown Sugar Toasting Bread would make a perfect BLT. And in some fit of cosmic harmony, New York-based food/fashion journalist Cheryl Tan proposed on Twitter that we all gather (virtually) for a BLT lunch date today.

How could I pass up an invitation like that?

(I should note that Cheryl is one of the rare people I follow on Twitter whom I actually know in the real world. We went to journalism school at Northwestern together 12 lifetimes ago. OK. Maybe it was just 12 years ago. Seems longer than that.)

So, I had this wonderful bread. I had some pesto from the other day. I had some cute little grape tomatoes. And, Lord, knows I've got lettuce. Thanks to my Angelic Organics CSA box, I've got lettuce growing up through the floorboards here.

I also had a stash of bacon in the freezer. For emergencies.

Since it's just me here for lunch, I opted to nuke the bacon in the microwave. But I gussied it up a bit -- sprinkling it with some brown sugar and lots of cracked black pepper first. It came out a bit charred, but that's the way I like it.

That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. Sorry. Must be the bacon talking.

Well, you all know how this story ends. I topped my Pesto, Grape Tomato, Curly Lettuce, Brown-Sugar Bacon BLT with another slice of Brown Sugar-Oatmeal Bread. And I ate it.

Hey, I've been on worse dates.

So, hit me with your best BLT creation. How do you like to fancy-up this diner staple?

Pledging to avoid roughage rubbish

2009-07-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Please don't hate me.

Don't tell the organic-food police. Or the fine people at Angelic Organics.

Promise?

OK.

I threw out some brown, wilted lettuce last week. And a couple of very sad-looking carrots. And, oh, I felt so guilty!

I'm trying, really I am, but I just couldn't get to everything from my CSA boxes the past couple of weeks. It seems like I'm cooking and cooking and eating salads and green smoothies, but goodness, gracious, that's a lot of greens. Maybe they're multiplying in my refrigerator when I'm asleep?

So, I vowed to do better this week. But before I tell you how I'm doing, let me tell you what showed up in my latest CSA box:

-- Sweet onions

-- Uncured garlic

-- Cauliflower

-- Cabbage

-- Kale

-- Zucchini

-- Cucumber

-- Basil

-- Cilantro

-- Dill

-- Carrots

-- Beets

-- Turnips

-- Two heads of lettuce

I had a rapidly growing stash of turnips and beets in the refrigerator. And I needed a good way to use a lot of them. No more of this one-at-a-time nonsense.

My husband -- who rarely makes special food requests -- asked for borscht. Now, I don't really like beets. And I've never eaten borscht. Frankly, it scares me. So, I put out a call for recipes on Twitter. @MarshaHudnall sent me the one below.

My husband proclaimed it to be perfect, just as borscht should be. As for me, I really wanted to like it. It's not terrible; it's just not really my thing. But if you're a beet-lover, this borscht's for you.

I used up all of my turnips on the mashed turnips below. I loved them; sweet and creamy. They'd pair nicely with any herb you have around. And they made a perfect backdrop for these lightly breaded, pesto-stuffed pork chops.

As for the pesto, I planned on following this Sicilian Pesto recipe from Cooking Light. Then I realized I didn't have nearly enough basil. Nor did I have any pine nuts. But I did have walnuts! And parsley! The tomatoes are a great addition, I think. A perfect, acidic balance to the richness of the nuts, cheese and oil.

I still haven't touched my sweet onions or a giant zucchini or the cilantro (I hate cilantro; forgot to put it in the "swap box." Anybody want mine?) But I think I'm finally caught up this week and able to enjoy all of this wonderful food.

How are you all doing with cooking away your CSAs? Able to get through it all without any waste?

Cold Beet Borscht
Via @MarshaHudnall from "Mama Leah's Jewish Kitchen" (and slightly adapted to fit what was in my refrigerator)
Serves 8-10

2 quarts water
8 large beets or 12 small
1/2 cup sugar
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half (I used several cloves of uncured garlic and a bunch of roughly chopped green onions.)
1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
Juice of 4 lemons
8-10 small potatoes (I skipped this part)
Sour cream
Fresh dill, chopped

Bring water to a boil. Wash beets thoroughly, scrubbing away any sandy parts. Cut away the root and stem ends and cut beets in half. Add to water. Add sugar, onion, salt and lemon juice. Simmer for one hour or until beets are very tender.

Strain beet broth and reserve. Discard onion pieces. Let beets cool until you can handle them, then peel away the skin and discard. Grate the beets or process in a food processor and return to reserved broth. (I put them in the broth first and used my immersion blender to puree them.) Let cool and check seasonings. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

(Here's the part I didn't do ...) Half an hour before serving, peel and boil the potatoes in lightly salted water until tender. Drain and a potato in each soup bowl. Ladle cold borscht over hot potatoes and serve immediately with sour cream on the side, with a sprinkle of dill.

Mashed Turnips

Several cups of trimmed turnips, cut into 1-inch chunks

Water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

4 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons sour cream or cream cheese

Salt and pepper, to taste

Fresh, chopped herbs, optional

Put cut turnips in a pot. Add cold water to cover. Add salt and sugar. Bring to boil. Boil until the turnips are very soft. (Cooking time will vary depending on how large your turnips are.)

Drain turnips very well. Add butter and sour cream/cream cheese and mash until smooth. (I used the immersion blender.) Add salt, pepper and fresh herbs, to taste.

Tomato-Herb Pesto

1/2 cup walnuts

4 garlic cloves

2 cups of washed, dried basil leaves

2 cups of washed, dried parsley

1/4 cup olive oil (or more or less, to create desired consistency)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Ground black pepper, to taste

Crushed red pepper, to taste

1/2 cup grated Parmesan

2 cups chopped, seeded tomato (fresh, if you've got it -- I used canned)

Toast the nuts over medium heat in a small, nonstick skillet, taking care not to burn them.

Add nuts and garlic to food processor and blend until minced. Add herbs and seasonings. With motor running, drizzle in oil, scraping sides a few times, until pesto is proper consistency.

Put pesto in a bowl. Fold in cheese and tomatoes with a rubber spatula.

Makes a great stuffing for pork or chicken, a lovely topping for fish, or, of course, a wonderful pasta partner.

Want some brown sugar with your oatmeal?

2009-07-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

We've been busy here at Casa de Flour Girl, cooking our way through our CSAs and baking our way through The Bread Baker's Apprentice and generally watching summer slip by like so much sand through an hourglass.

And it occurs to me that it's been a while since I've shared with you a nice, basic loaf of sandwich bread -- one that's perfect for PB&Js or BLTs or my 5-year-old's latest obsession: The Fluffernutter.

It's been about a year, I'm guessing, since I bought a loaf of sandwich bread at the supermarket. We're kind of spoiled now, sure. But baking bread has just become one of those things I do -- like laundry or dishes or complaining about Chicago parking meters -- only much more rewarding. And tasty.

I like to make two or three loaves at a time. After they've cooled, I slice each one in half and cut each half into slices. I wrap each half in plastic, label them and toss them in the freezer. Depending on how much I give away, this usually lasts us a couple of weeks or so. Not bad for a few minutes of work and a few hours of waiting, no?

But, as with all of the cooking and baking I do, I get tired of making the same things over and over again. So, I'm always on the lookout for new sandwich loaf recipes.

I peeked in the freezer this morning and realized our bread stash had run low. So, I set about finding a new recipe. The fine folks on Twitter offered some good suggestions, as did my cookbooks. But then I went to one of my favorite sites for bread recipes, King Arthur Flour. If you can't find something to bake there, you must have your eyes closed.

I had some steel-cut oats lingering in the pantry since winter, so this Oatmeal & Brown Sugar Toasting Bread caught my eye. Rolled oats, steel-cut oats and a hefty dose of brown sugar sounded like a winning combo. I decided to sub in a little whole-wheat flour, too. And double the recipe, of course. Why make one loaf when you can have two for the same amount of effort?

I haven't actually had my Toasting bread toasted yet. But I can report that it is sweet and nutty and surprisingly tender. The Kid already enjoyed it as a Fluffernutter holder. Personally, I think this bread is better suited to a savory sandwich, since it's already quite sweet.

I think I see a BLT with my name on it.

Oatmeal & Brown Sugar Toasting Bread

From King Arthur Flour

Makes one loaf, but doubles easily

1 3/4 cups (14 ounces) boiling water

1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) rolled oats

1/2 cup (2 3/4 ounces) steel-cut oats or Irish oatmeal, uncooked

1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) lightly packed brown sugar

2 3/4 cups (11 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour (I used two-thirds bread flour to one-third whole-wheat flour.)

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces) nonfat dried milk

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast

1/4 cup (3/4 ounce) milled flaxseed or 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Combine the boiling water, oats, steel-cut oats and sugar in a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir a couple of times to combine and let sit until lukewarm. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring by hand or with a paddle attachment until the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl.

Knead for 6-8 minutes by hand, or 5-8 minutes in a mixer fitted with a dough hook. The dough should become smooth and supple. (I ended up dumping this out of my stand mixer with a few minutes' remaining to knead it by hand on the counter. Seemed to come together better that way.)

Transfer to a greased bowl and let rise 'til puffy (though not necessarily doubled), about 1 hour.

Shape the dough into a loaf and put in a lightly greased 8 1/2X4 1/2-inch bread pan. (I only have 9X5 pans, but it turned out just fine.) Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour, or until the dough has just crowned over the edge of the pan.

Bake the bread in a preheated 375-degree oven for 35 to 45 minutes. It should be golden and have an internal temperature of about 200 degrees. If it's browning too quickly, tent with foil.

Once baked, turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

This isn't a fancy loaf of bread, but it sure is satisfying. It's been a while since I've sent anything over to Yeastspotting, but I think I'll submit this one. It's a keeper.

Welcome, Cooking Light readers

2009-07-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

There's big news on the "Cooking Away My CSA" front.

Have you heard?

Cooking Light magazine is joining us. They've enlisted several staff members to start getting CSA boxes and they'll be blogging along with us.

Cooking Light is a wonderful healthy-eating resource. I've been a subscriber forever and I relied largely on Cooking Light recipes when I lost about 70 pounds many years ago. So, I'm excited to see the tasty creations the magazine's staffers and readers invent.

You can read an introduction from me and follow the Cooking Light bloggers here.

OK. Enough yammering. Start cooking!

Drunk with anticipation

2009-07-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

It's like Christmas every Saturday morning here when I pick up my Angelic Organics box. I never knew I could get so excited about vegetables -- Look, Swiss chard! Look, there's a cucumber!, Look, cute little carrots with the greens still attached! -- but, apparently, I can. And I do.

Here's what I hauled home Saturday:

And a close-up, just 'cause it's so purdy:

For the record, I got:

-- Scallions

-- Kohlrabi

-- Broccoli

-- Cucumber

-- Zucchini

-- Radishes

-- Turnips

-- Beets

-- Carrots

-- Swiss chard

-- Red Russian kale

-- Several heads of lettuce

-- A small cabbage

-- A bunch of what I thought was lemon verbena but just now realized is lemon balm

And, this guy:

It's "uncured," freshly harvest garlic. I never knew garlic was cured in the first place. You can (and I did) use the bulb just like regular garlic. The CSA says this type stands up particularly well to roasting.

So, what have I been doing with all of this wonderful stuff?

I'm still using lots of greens for my morning "green smoothies." And we've been having some wonderful salads.

I made a great stir-fry with tofu and peanut sauce. (I followed this dry-fry-and-marinate method for the tofu and was quite pleased with the results.)

And I whipped up a wonderful marinara sauce with sausage (though you could leave out the sausage, if you prefer). I got a great basic recipe from @piccantedolce via Twitter:

Saute four cloves of garlic (I used the "uncured" variety) with a diced onion and a dash (I used more than a dash -- yowza!) of crushed red pepper in olive oil, until soft. (I browned my sausages first, removed them from the pot and then sauteed my aromatics, adding a little oil.) Add two cans of crushed tomatoes, some dried oregano, a pinch of sugar and a half-cup of red wine. I added the sausage -- chopped into big chunks -- back into the pot to finish cooking and simmered for about an hour. Shortly before serving, I tossed in some sliced fresh basil.

Wonderful with some wine, some spaghetti and some "Bread Baker's Apprentice" Ciabatta I pulled from the freezer.

As for the lemon balm that I thought was lemon verbena? It's resting comfortably right now in a vat of vodka. See? Doesn't it look relaxed?

It'll be a few weeks, but I'm hoping to have some nice, lemon-infused vodka for Lemon Drops and a host of other cocktails. I'm following this recipe for Lemon Verbena Liqueur. Hope it works with lemon balm. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anybody else do any alcohol infusions with fresh herbs or other produce?

On a bun run and a roll roll

2009-07-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

So far, I've followed each of the recipes in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge pretty much to-the-letter.

And then I got to Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread. And I went crazy. Cra-aaa-zzy, I tell you. I'm a wild woman. I don't know what came over me.

Instead of making two loaves of bread, I decided to make little cinnamon-raisin buns. (This, after my sticky-bun extravaganza. You'd think I'd be done with buns. But, no.)

I was inspired by Peter Reinhart's suggestion of topping the finished loaves with melted butter and dunking them in cinnamon-sugar. Little buns = more surface area for crunchy, buttery, cinnamon-sugar topping. It's simple math, really.

Simple, tasty math.

So, you dump some flour, sugar, salt, yeast and cinnamon in a mixing bowl.

And you add the wet ingredients and mix. I decided to knead this one by hand to make sure to get all of those raisins blended in. (I left out the nuts and also added some dried cranberries. Because I didn't have quite enough raisins. And also, I'm craa-aaa-zzzy.)

You wind up with a wonderfully soft and supple dough that smells so good and cinnamon-y -- even unbaked -- that I considered eating it raw. Considered. I said considered. I'm not that crazy.

After a couple of hours of fermentation, I shaped the dough into 3-ounce balls.

Right after pulling them from the oven, I brushed each one with milk (after those sticky buns, I was all out of butter) and dunked each one in cinnamon-sugar.

I loved the soft roll paired with the sweet, crunchy exterior. Makes a perfectly portable breakfast, spread with a little peanut butter.

I plan to take one with me on my next walk on the wild side.

Making plans for you

2009-07-10T06:03:00.001-07:00

Surely, you don't have plans this weekend.

Oh. You do?

Well, that's OK.

You need to cancel them. Or at least carve out a four-hour window for an important project.

And by "important project" I mean "sticky buns."

Now, I was not really in the market for a new cinnamon-roll recipe. Remember when I called this one the best cinnamon roll ever?

But cinnamon buns/sticky buns were the next chapter in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge" and, while I may be many things, I am not a quitter.

Again, the hardships I endure for you people. You can thank me later.

So, you start out by making a pretty standard enriched dough.

But author Peter Reinhart, in his infinite wisdom, tells us to add a little lemon extract or lemon zest to the mix. You wouldn't believe the wonders a teaspoon of lemon flavor does for this very sweet, very rich dough. In fact, I'd say whatever cinnamon-roll recipe you use, you should add some lemon to it.

Trust me.

So you make your dough and you let it rise a couple of hours. Then you roll it out and top it with cinnamon sugar:

Then, you roll the whole thing up, jelly-roll-style. And cut it into equal pieces.

But first, there's an important decision? Are you making cinnamon buns or sticky buns?

I decided to go for sticky buns. Because I like saying "sticky buns." Go on. Say it.

For the sticky buns, Reinhart has you take about eight pounds of butter and six pounds of sugar (OK. A half-pound of butter and a cup of sugar and a half-cup of corn syrup) and cream it all together before slathering it on the bottom of your baking pan. (I read the instructions twice. He does not, in fact, suggest slathering it directly on one's bottom, though that is surely where it will wind up.)

You put your little rolls on the lovely bed of sugar and fat (Reinhart suggests adding nuts and raisins, too, but I left them out) where they'll plump up a bit before going into the oven.

After baking, you flip these guys out of the pan and the sugary glaze on the bottom becomes the lick-it-off-the-countertops glaze on the top. And then you wind up with the delightful morsel on the plate above. And then you put the rest of them in the freezer quickly, very quickly, so you don't eat them all in one sitting.

So, how do these stack up against the Best. Cinnamon. Rolls. Ever? Well, it's not entirely a fair competition since I made these into sticky buns. I loved the addition of lemon in this dough, but the other recipe calls for an overnight rise which gives them a certain depth of flavor. And that sticky-bun topping can't be beat, but who doesn't love cream cheese-powdered sugar icing?

My advice to you?

Make 'em both.

Just be sure to make some room in the freezer.

Cooking and cooking and Cooking Away My CSA

2009-07-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

I got a stunning amount of beautiful vegetables in my third Angelic Organics box, which I picked up on the 4th of July. Plenty of old favorites in there and some new goodies I'd never even seen before.

I'm talking about you, Mr. Kohlrabi:

In addition to that strange creature, my box included:

-- two heads of lettuce

-- green onions

-- garlic scapes

-- basil

-- parsley

-- radishes

-- turnips

-- beets

-- broccoli

-- cauliflower

-- cabbage

-- kale

-- Helvetican spinach (a.k.a young Swiss chard -- like peppery spinach)

-- zucchini

With such lovely produce, I decided I'd better kick my CSA cooking up a notch.

I've still been making "green" smoothies most mornings (though I've found that Helvetican spinach to be a bit too peppery for my taste in the smoothies). And I used up all of my kale making wonderfully crispy and addictive kale chips (see recipe below).

But I also made a great mixed-veggie hash (which was so pink from the beets, my husband was expecting corned beef). I also threw together a super-tasty pasta salad that I ate for lunch nearly all week. And I'm particularly proud of my "unstuffed" skillet cabbage rolls.

You can find all of the recipes below.

So, how are you "Cooking Away My CSA?" Join the group and let us know.

Kohlrabi-Beet Hash

Loosely adapted from "Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables"

Serves 2

1-2 medium kohlrabi bulbs, trimmed and grated

2 small beets, trimmed and grated

1 scallion, chopped (or 1/2 onion, chopped)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon bread crumbs (I used matzoh meal 'cause it was in the pantry)

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

(Serve with eggs or a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream)

Grate the kohlrabi and wrap in a clean dish towel to squeeze out excess moisture. Put in a medium bowl, along with grated beets, chopped onion, beaten egg, bread crumbs, and salt and pepper. Using your fingers, mix gently until the mixture comes together.

Heat oil and butter in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Press the mixture into the pan, forming a thin layer. Cook until browned on one side, about 5 minutes. (Watch this closely; mine got a little charred.) Try to flip without breaking and cook another 5 minutes or so on the other side.

Cut in two pieces and serve.

Kale Chips

Pre-heat oven to 350. Pull bite-sized pieces of kale leaves off of the thick stem. Wash and dry well. Place in a single layer on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp.

Clean-Out-the-CSA-Box Pasta Salad

Serves 4

Cook several servings of your favorite pasta.

Chop whatever veggies you've got around. I used radishes, turnips, zucchini, garlic scape. You could add wilted greens or anything else. You could roast your vegetables; I left mine raw.

Great dressing from Elle of Elle's New England Kitchen:

Combine 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, 3 tablespoons canola oil, 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil, and salt and pepper to taste. Shake or mix well.

Combine pasta and vegetables, drizzle with dressing (you'll likely have some left over). Sprinkle with grated Parmesan, if you like.

I topped my bowl of pasta salad with a few kale chips, for extra crunch.

"Unstuffed" Skillet Cabbage Rolls

From Flour Girl

Serves 4-6

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 head of cabbage, sliced into 1/2-inch ribbons

1 pound ground turkey

3 garlic scapes, chopped (or diced onion or green onion)

1 zucchini, shredded

16 ounces tomato sauce

1 can low-sodium chicken broth

Palmful of brown sugar

Juice of one lemon

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 cups brown rice, cooked

Palmful of chopped parsley

Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oil in a very large skillet over medium-high heat. Add cabbage. Spread in single layer and cook, undisturbed, for several minutes until well-browned. Turn and brown other side. Remove cooked cabbage to a bowl.

Turn down heat to medium. Add ground turkey and scapes (or onions). Cook, stirring, to break up meat. Add shredded zucchini and cook until turkey is done.

Pour in tomato sauce, chicken broth, lemon juice and vinegar. Add brown sugar. Stir well. Increase heat and boil for about five minutes, until liquid thickens and reduces. Add rice, simmer about 10 minutes. Mix in parsley just before serving. Season to taste.

Not a loser; just a non-winner

2009-07-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's difficult, if not impossible, to spend the better part of an evening sampling delicious cupcakes and consider oneself a loser.

Sure, my Rice 'n' Beans Cupcakes (horchata and coffee) didn't earn the top spot at tonight's Iron Cupcake Chicago competition. But there were plenty of moist, beautiful and pretty darn creative tropical-themed cupcakes to enjoy.

And, the handsome young sous chef you see above scored a cute single-serve cupcake carrier in the raffle, so at least there was one winner in the family.

Instead of a panel of judges, this challenge called on us all to critique the 10 or so entrants. Tough work, to be sure. I sampled a wonderfully tasty jerk cupcake from last month's Iron Cupcake winner. It had a spicy kick and creamy goat-cheese-laden icing. I also loved the Mai Tai cupcake with its zippy lime filling and moist rum cake. Oh, and the luscious mango cupcakes. And the lovely coco nib-coconut numbers that took first prize for flavor.

(The pink swirly chocolate-mango cupcakes below won first place for appearance -- for good reason. Aren't they gorgeous?)

Regardless of what the voters think, I'm still plenty proud of my Rice 'n' Bean Cupcakes.

Wanna make some at home? Here's how:

First, make some horchata. There are tons of recipes out there, but I adapted this one from All Recipes. I added a cup of uncooked white rice, two cups of water, about a half cup of slivered almonds, a palmful of cinnamon and a splash of vanilla to the food processor. And then I processed the heck out of it, letting it go for about 5 minutes. You want to grind the rice as finely as possible to get the most flavor out of it. Then, I let the mixture sit for about an hour (it could certainly sit for longer, even overnight, if you've got the time.) I added about a half cup of sugar and about a half cup of cream (you could use milk as well) and continued to process it for several more minutes. Let the mixture sit as long as you like before straining it through cheesecloth. Refrigerate the horchata if not using right away. (I wanted this very concentrated for the cupcakes. If you wanted to drink this, be sure to strain it extra-well, and thin it with some more milk or water.)

Find your favorite moist yellow cupcake recipe. I used this great one from Bakerella, subbing in a cup of my fresh horchata for the whole milk she calls for. After baking, I poked the cupcakes with a toothpick and brushed some more horchata over the tops.

For the frosting, I made a double batch of this Kahlua Cream-Cheese Frosting, spiked with the remains of the homemade coffee liqueur I made over the holidays. (Next time, I'd add a few more tablespoons of it for more flavor.)

And, well, we all know how I topped these babies with sprinkles.

Excuse me now while I curl up in a cupcake-induced food coma. And lick my frosting-covered wounds. Next time, Iron Cupcake Chicago. Next time ...

Sifting through the sprinkles

2009-07-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

When I heard tonight's Iron Cupcake Chicago challenge would focus on tropical flavors, I considered skipping it.

I mean, last month's showdown forced us to use citrus. I feared tropical-fruit cupcakes would just be too similar.

But then I mentioned my predicament to my brilliant, creative, witty (and faithful Flour Girl-reading friend) Cynthia. And she came up with an elegant solution.

Presenting ... drum roll, please ... The Rice 'n' Beans Cupcake:

Over a plate of tacos, no less, at a little Mexican join in Andersonville, Cynthia said, How 'bout creating an horchata cupcake with coffee frosting? Put some white sprinkles on top and pop on a chocolate-covered coffee bean?

And I said, That's brilliant!

Not familiar with horchata? It's a creamy, cinnamon-spiked drink made by blending uncooked rice, almonds (most of the time), water and sometimes a little milk. It's popular in Mexico and in Mexican restaurants in this country -- a blast of sweet, refreshing creaminess to balance out those hot peppers.

I found one horchata cupcake recipe online and tested it. But it just didn't do it for me.

So, I decided to find the moistest yellow cake recipe around and sub in homemade horchata for the liquid. Bingo.

I made a cream-cheese frosting and splashed in some Kahlua that I'd made over the holidays. Yum.

I cheated and bought some chocolate-covered coffee beans from Intelligentsia.

All I needed were some big white sprinkles for the top, to look like rice. Easy.

Guess again.

No white sprinkles at the grocery stores. No white sprinkles at the hobby shop in Evanston. No white sprinkles at two different Michaels craft shops outside Chicago.

So, I did what any sane, reasonable person in search of sprinkles that look like rice would do:

I bought two packs of rainbow sprinkles. And I separated out the white ones.

This cupcake's for you, Cynthia. Next time, though, you're coming to my house to help me sort sprinkles.

Wanna try Flour Girl's soon-to-be-famous Rice 'n' Beans Cupcakes? Come to Iron Cupcake Chicago and cheer me on at 6 p.m. tonight at Veranda, 5700 W. Irving Park Road. I'll post recipes and an Iron Cupcake update tomorrow.

On my way to dirty hippiedom

2009-07-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that this whole "Cooking Away My CSA" thing is having its desired (albeit slightly selfish) outcome:

Giving me new recipe ideas.

But when I read this particular idea a couple of weeks ago, my initial reaction was "yuck," not "yum." Yet several of the 140+ members of the "Cooking Away My CSA" Google Group raved about it, so I decided to give it a try.

Friends, let me introduce you to the "green smoothie."

Yep. It's exactly as it sounds. You toss some greens into a traditional fruit smoothie. And then you drink it. And, you know what? Besides being a great way to use up more CSA greens, besides the fact that it's super-healthy, it actually tastes really good. Sure, there's that earthy hit of greenness, but I'm finding it quite refreshing. Really. (And, no, I have no plans to move to a commune or stop shaving my legs.)

For the past few days, I've been throwing a handful of torn chard leaves or spinach into the blender along with a banana and whatever frozen fruit's around. I add a splash of milk and a tiny splash of juice and blend well. I'm a green smoothie convert.

I first heard the idea from group member Amy Martell. She sent out a couple links packed with green smoothie ideas.

The trick is to find the right balance of greens-to-fruit that works for you. Start out slow on the greens and work your way up, if you like.

I tried another new thing this week, thanks to my Angelic Organics CSA box: Garlic scapes. They're the curly green shoots that burst from the top of the garlic plant. They're not as intensely garlicky as garlic, but they still pack quite a punch.

You can chop them up and add them to stir-fries or egg dishes. But several folks recommended making pesto out of them. I loosely followed this recipe from Dorie Greenspan, adding a few green onions to the scapes and subbing in walnuts for the almonds. I packed the leftover pesto into an ice-cube tray and put it in the freezer for easy dinners to come.

Just make sure your date eats this dish, too, so you cancel out each others' garlickyness.

Holier than thou

2009-06-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

So, I'll 'fess up and tell you I wasn't exactly in a big rush to make this latest bread from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge. In fact, I was kind of dreading it.

I love ciabatta, don't get me wrong. That coldness on the tongue at the first bite; those big, airy holes; that toothsome crust. It's just that my previous attempts at ciabatta had yielded, well, white bread. I never got that beautiful texture and never felt quite confident that my dough was properly hydrated or that my shaping technique was right.

But it's just flour and water, right? So I opted to give ciabatta another go.

As Peter Reinhart explains in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," ciabatta takes its name from its characteristic "slipper" shape. Reinhart offers two ways to start this bread, either with a biga or a poolish. Both are just flour and water mixed with a tiny bit of instant yeast, left to sit a few hours before resting in the fridge overnight. The poolish calls for about twice as much water as the biga. Reinhart says both options turn out equally wonderful ciabatta.

I opted for the poolish starter. (Don't ask me why. Maybe 'cause it looks like "foolish?")

Here's my poolish after resting in the fridge overnight:

You still awake?

OK then.

So, you take that gloopy pre-ferment and mix it with the other ingredients. Reinhart says you can use all water, or all or part milk or buttermilk, or up to 1/4 cup olive oil. I wanted that slight tang of buttermilk, so I mixed some skim milk with a little white vinegar and Macgyver-ed some up.

You want this dough to be as wet as possible, so I kept dribbling in a bit more water 'til it seemed right. It is then stretched and folded a couple of times before taking a rest in a couche -- a piece of linen misted with oil and covered with flour. The couche provides a little support so the super-wet dough doesn't ooze all over the place.

Here are my little swadled babies:

Before baking, you stretch the loaves a bit and place on a baking stone or sheet. I think I stretched mine out a bit too much before the final proof.

Nevertheless, I was pretty pleased with the result. Great flavor and fairly good texture. Though there's still room for improvement. I'm hoping to become even holier next time.

"Cooking Away My CSA" Week 2

2009-06-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

Welcome to week 2 of "Cooking Away My CSA," in which my salad spinner begins grousing to the other kitchen gadgets about its overtime duties.

Still a lot of greens in Angelic Organics box #2, but I'm not complaining (though my spinner might be).

We got:

-- Two lettuces

-- Summer savory

-- Zucchini and summer squash

-- Radishes

-- Turnips

-- Spinach

-- Choi

-- Swiss chard

-- Broccoli

-- Scallions

-- Garlic scapes

But first, a flashback. I've succeeded in using nearly all of the goodies in my first CSA box. Had a little lettuce that I just couldn't get to, but I think I did pretty well for the first time. Here's one of many wonderful salads I crafted, a combo of several types of greens, radishes, chopped apple, walnuts and a little cubed gruyere.

Last week was a little crazy, so I didn't follow any fancy recipes with my CSA produce. I was pretty proud of myself for getting dinner on the table every night.

I made a clean-out-the-fridge fried rice, which used zucchini, choi and radishes, among other things (one of those other things being a fair amount of bacon, which always makes everything better.)

I also doctored up a carton of Trader Joe's Black Bean Soup, adding loads of veggies, some spices and, yes, a piece or two of chopped bacon. Served with some homemade Farmhouse White bread, it made for quite a fine dinner.

Tonight, I simply wilted a big bowl of spinach and tatsoi and tossed it with a little balsamic vinaigrette. The slightly bitter greens made a perfect bed for these stellar empanadas.

I'm hoping to find a little more time for cooking this week. I've got Garlic Scape Pesto on the menu for tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes. Never cooked with garlic scapes before.

We currently have 135 wonderful, creative locavores around the world "Cooking Away My CSA." Want to share tips and recipes with us? Join our Google Group here and get busy.

Here are just a few recent posts from "Cooking Away My CSA" bloggers:

Virtual Farmgirl's Parsley & Garlic Scape Chimichurri

Passion4Eating's Asian Stir-Fried Greens

Woman with a Whisk's Carrot-Ginger Soup

Cracking up

2009-06-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

The good news: I spent precious little time working on red-velvet cupcakes at today's Taste of Chicago dessert-making session at Washburne Culinary. (And, in even better news, OxyClean got all of those blood-red splotches off my apron and uniform.)

In other news, I spent what seemed like hours -- hours I'll never get back -- cracking eggs. I mise en placed a chocolate pudding recipe that called for six-and-a-half quarts of egg yolks. Just the yolks, boys and girls. You know how many eggs that takes? A lot.

The chef taught me a nifty trick, though, should you ever find yourself separating a few hundred eggs. Crack a couple dozen -- gently -- into a bowl. Then, use your hands to carefully fish out the yolks and plop them in another container. It's a little messy and goopy but much quicker than doing the old separate-with-the-shell thing.

I cracked dozens of eggs for the next recipe, too. Zeppole. They're eggy little Italian doughnuts made out of a basic cream-puff batter. You pipe 'em out and deep-fry them. For the Taste of Chicago, these will be filled with pastry cream, and topped with more cream and a cherry.

Taste of Chicago kicks off tomorrow, but I'll be back in the kitchen working on more desserts. Stop by the Washburne booth and have a zeppola for me, won't you?

Now starring in Sweeney Todd ...

2009-06-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

I can think of few things messier to make than red-velvet cupcakes.

Hey! Guess what I've been doing for the past two days?

Making red-velvet cupcakes!

And since then, I've found red splotches on my elbow. On my shoe. On my glasses. My poor apron looks as if I've been butchering chickens. There could very well be red-velvet splatters in places I can't find without aid of a mirror and a good friend. But that's another story for another day.

You see, I'm not just making a few red-velvet cupcakes. I've been making these splattery little devils in a 60-quart Hobart mixer, following a recipe that calls for 19 pounds of flour, 18 pounds of sugar, 9 quarts of oil and, among other things, 24 ounces of red food coloring.

Good times.

I'm back at Washburne Culinary Institute. But this time, I'm an employee. I'm making $8 an hour to help prepare just a small portion of the some 10,000 desserts the school will serve at Taste of Chicago (which starts this weekend in Grant Park and continues through July 5).

We're preparing goodies from 10 Chicago restaurants -- from chocolate torte to Australian lamingtons to coconut macaroons to panna cotta to those red-velvet cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting.

It's a mammoth undertaking. And a great learning experience for me -- just figuring out the logistics of whipping up 300 cupcakes, for example, at a time.

Or how best to scoop a giant tub of macaroon batter.

It's something I've never done before.

I'm only working six-hour shifts, but I can tell you, I'm plenty pooped at the end of each one.

Be nice to those bakers at your corner bakery, the next time you stop in. They're working their sticky buns off.

And, if you're in Chicago, stop by The Taste and have a red-velvet cupcake from the Washburne Culinary booth. Say a special prayer for my stain remover when you do.

Hip-hooray for CSA!

2009-06-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Sure, it's Monday. And I'm back to reality after a week's vacation. But, still, there's cause for celebration.

I got my first CSA box from Angelic Organics Saturday. And it's jam-packed with local goodness.

Better than that, though, we now have more than 100 creative, talented, local-loving foodies around the globe "Cooking Away My CSA."

When I floated this idea just 11 days ago on Flour Girl and on Twitter, I had no idea the response would be so overwhelming. So far, we've traded hundreds of recipes and tips on the Google Group and members have filled their blogs with beautiful photos and even-more recipes. I couldn't be happier with this group's organic growth. (Get it? Bad pun. Sorry. Need more coffee.)

So, I spent a week drooling over everybody's creative concoctions before getting my first CSA box. But now, I'm in the game, too.

Here's the bounty from Week #1. (Sorry it's so dark; I didn't get the box 'til late in the day.)

We received:

-- green two-star lettuce

-- red magenta lettuce

-- green butterhead lettuce

-- thyme, with flowers attached

-- zucchini

-- summer squash

-- dried corn on the cob, for popping

-- radishes, with green tops

-- broccoli

-- spinach

-- bok choi

-- totsoi

-- scallions, both purple and white

-- And, thankfully, a copy of "Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables."

I know. Wow, right? Pretty good for the first week's harvest.

I was familiar with everything else in the box, but I'd never even heard of totsoi. Turns out, it's a leafy green. We got a bag of tender, young leaves that are quite mild. I sauteed up a handful with some cheese-y scrambled eggs for yesterday's breakfast:

I'll probably toss some more totsoi into stir-fry later this week and will also mix it with our salad greens.

The box also included a small head of broccoli, which I prepared my absolute favorite way for yesterday's lunch: Roasted. If you've never tried roasted broccoli, stop what you're doing and make some now. You just chop it into small florets, toss with a little olive oil and kosher salt and roast at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until the broccoli gets nice and brown and crispy.

I like to serve it sprinkled with a little Parmesan. Sometimes, I dip 'em in ketchup and pretend I'm eating yummy, virtuous French fries.

I used our entire giant bag of spinach last night for Father's Day dinner. I served this rich, creamy Spinach Gratin from Ina Garten alongside our bacon-wrapped fillets. Not exactly health food, but hey, there's spinach so I call it good. (I halved the recipe after seeing how much all that fresh spinach wilted down in the pan, which is probably a good thing for my arteries.)

And, no, I didn't snap a picture of the gratin. We were too excited to eat it and I forgot!

I love that our box includes corn for popping. Never made popcorn straight from the cob before. I'll let you know how that goes and also how I end up using the rest of this wonderful CSA box.

Sound like fun? We'd love to have you join us.

And, if you're already "Cooking Away My CSA," feel free to post a link to your latest creative creations below.

Happy Challah-days ahead?

2009-06-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

So, I was feeling pretty cocky about challah -- the latest bread in the "Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge.

I'd made it a few times before -- to great result. And I figured Peter Reinhart's recipe would set the bar even higher.

Let me remember this the next time I'm feeling cocky.

I'm visiting my parents in Minneapolis this week and decided to make this one with my mom, a total bread newbie, a woman who has never even opened a package of instant yeast before. I figured this would be a perfect way to school her in the wonders of bread making.

Since she doesn't do any baking, she also doesn't have a kitchen scale. Our first problem, I think.

So, we scooped and leveled our flour and dumped the rest of the ingredients in the bowl. Here's mom mixing. (I promised I wouldn't shoot her face since we were challah-ing at 6 a.m. and she didn't have a chance to get ready yet. She gave birth to me; it's the least I could do.)

Right away, though, I could tell the dough seemed too stiff. So, we added a bit more water, plopped it on the counter and started kneading. Here's mom, below, kneading dough for the very first time. A first-time kneader! Pretty exciting, no? And she did a fine job with this crazy-stiff dough, to which I kept adding a little bit more water.

I took over kneading, but I still wasn't very happy with this dough -- even after about 12 minutes. Maybe I should've kneaded longer? Maybe I should've kept adding more water? What would you have done?

After bulk fermenting for a couple of hours, I formed the less-than-workable dough into balls. (Mom had to go to work so I finished the rest of the steps solo.)

Even with the unruly dough, I felt like my braids turned out pretty nicely. I thought my fears about the stiff dough were for nothing. Well, that's what I thought, at least.

I stuck the braids in the fridge to retard while we went out for the day. After I took them out to rise on the counter before baking, I noticed the problem.

The dough was so inelastic that the strands of the braids started to rip as the dough rose. Once baked, our poor Pippi Longstocking braids looked even more disheveled.

I was underwhelmed by the taste as well. Other challahs I've eaten and made (including this outstanding Joan Nathan one posted on SmittenKitchen) have been richer, eggier and more moist. Ours tasted much leaner, almost like French bread. Whether that was my fault or a function of the recipe, I'm not sure.

Everyone else in the house, though, has raved about the challah. And my grandparents were delighted to get a hot-from-the-oven challah delivery last night.

Which just goes to show, even "bad" homemade bread is pretty darn impressive.

Can I get a "challah?"

Taking the show on the road

2009-06-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the light posting this week. The Kid and I are visiting my parents' house in Minneapolis, and I'll be very busy watching him be spoiled rotten for the next few days. That's hard work, you know.

I will be back later this week, though, with a post about making Challah, the next bread in the "Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge." I'll be making this one with my mom. She's never baked bread before. Never even, she says, opened a packet of yeast. We'll see if I can turn her into a bread-baking convert. Or if we wind up stuck in half-braided dough.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out "Cooking Away My CSA." The group, which I dreamed up just a few days ago, is already nearly 70 creative, local-food-loving members strong. They're posting wonderful uses for kale and green garlic, tips on storing fresh produce and cookbook recommendations, among many other topics. (You can also follow us on Twitter at #CAMC.)

I am absolutely blown away by their creativity, generosity and sheer number. (But there's always room for more!)

I can't wait to get my first CSA box when we get back to Chicago Saturday so I can try out some of the recipes.

Check out just a few posts from "Cooking Away My CSA" members:

Summer Salad Rolls with Vietnamese Dipping Sauce from Passion4Eating

Swiss Chard Batons from Chef Mark Tafoya

Zucchini Pickles from Edible Cville

Chive and Green Garlic Salad from Todd Clausen

Grown-Up Rhubarb Soda from Cooking, CSA-Style

Oh, and a HUGE thank-you to Tild of Tildology who designed and created our wonderful "Cooking Away My CSA" badge. Isn't it the coolest?

Allow me to toot my own pretzel horn

2009-06-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

You ever start a recipe, dump all the ingredients in a bowl, and then actually read the recipe and go, "Hey, this recipe's for crap!"? (No? That's just me? You all mise en place everything and read each recipe thoroughly before beginning? Well, jolly good for you.)

Me, I prefer to live on the edge. And since I'm too petrified to hang-glide, half-reading recipes is as edgy as I get.

So, I'd never had a pretzel roll 'til I moved back to Chicago and picked up a bag at the incredibly super-awesome Paulina Meat Market.

Imagine one of those big soft pretzels you get at the mall -- only fresher and more flavorful -- but turned into a bun and stuffed with a sausage. Sounds pretty tasty, no? Yes. Yes it is.

I was reminded of pretzel rolls again last weekend, at a kiddie birthday party, where the hostess served the preschool guests little PB&Js and cheese sandwiches on soft, slightly salty pretzel buns.

And I thought, "I gotta make me some of those."

So, I started looking up recipes. And wound up a little underwhelmed. Nothing seemed quite right. Either the dough didn't sound very flavorful or the instructions didn't make sense. But then I found one that looked pretty good. I liked that it called for a little fat and some sugar. 'Cause I pretty much like anything with a little fat and sugar.

So, I dumped everything into the mixer. And then I realized the original recipe I was following was -- how to put this nicely? -- bad. Lame-o. Half-cocked.

'Cause, after dumping all this stuff in the mixer, it basically told me to stir it all up for 1 minute, shape it, boil it and bake it.

Um. Hello? Let me introduce you to a little something called "gluten." You need it to make bread and you ain't gonna get it after one minute of mixing and no fermentation.

So, I basically stuck with the dough recipe (adding some rye to make it a little more interesting) and then adapted the rest of the instructions from Epicurious, following fairly standard mixing, fermenting, shaping and proofing practices for yeasted breads.

And the results, if you allow me to toot my own pretzel horn, were splendid. Here's last night's dinner, a Trader Joe's chicken sausage, smothered in onions and peppers, cooked in a little beer, and lovingly cradled on a fresh-baked pretzel roll.

See? Sometimes it pays to live on the edge.

(P.S. There's still plenty of time to join the "Cooking Away My CSA" Challenge. Read the post below and drop me a note or leave a comment here to sign up. We'd love to have you!)

Pretzel Rolls

Adapted from multiple sources, including Recipezaar and Epicurious

Makes 8, 4.25-ounce rolls

4 cups bread flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 to 1/2 cup rye flour, if you've got it (or extra bread flour, as needed)

1 1/3 cups warm water

2 tablespoons warm milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/3 cup light brown sugar

Big pot full of water

1/4 cup baking soda

2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg white, beaten

coarse salt

Combine bread flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl or a stand mixer. Mix to combine.

Put butter and milk in a small, microwave-safe container. Heat about 30 seconds, 'til butter melts. Add warm water and brown sugar to container. Stir until brown sugar dissolves.

Add milk mixture into flour mixture and mix until dough ball forms. Continue kneading, by hand or with dough hook, for about eight minutes, gradually adding rye flour or bread flour so dough is tacky -- not sticky, quite firm and clears sides of mixing bowl. (The dough shouldn't be as stiff as bagel dough, but it should be more firm than typical bread dough. It needs to hold up to boiling before baking.)

Put dough in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic or a towel until doubled, about an hour.

Divide dough into eight equal pieces. (Use your scale, if you've got one.) Shape into boules for hamburger buns or small logs for hot dog buns.

Slash down the center with a lame or sharp knife. Spritz with oil and allow to rest, covered, until nearly doubled -- about 20 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, set a big pot of water on the stove over high heat. Bring to a boil. Preheat oven to 375. Sprinkle a baking sheet (or two if they're small) with cornmeal.

Once water boils and rolls have proofed, add baking soda and sugar to the pot. (Do this slowly or you'll get a boiled-over mess.)

Carefully add two buns (more, if your pot will allow) to the boiling water. Boil 30 seconds, flip, and boil another 30 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon to cornmeal-lined baking sheet. Bake with egg wash and top with light sprinkle of Kosher salt. Continue boiling and topping rest of the rolls.

Put boiled and topped rolls in 375-degree oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes until deep, nutty brown -- like a pretzel.

Cool before serving. Store these lightly covered with paper, or in the freezer. Don't store in plastic as they tend to "sweat."

'COOKING AWAY MY CSA' CHALLENGE

2009-06-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

When I signed up nearly a year ago to receive a box of fresh produce each week this summer from a local farm, I didn't really think through the ramifications.

Sure, I'd be supporting a local grower through my CSA share (Community-Supported Agriculture) and we'd be getting a wonderful jolt of organic veggies in our diets.

Plus, it's a great fit since I'm spending so much time talking to local growers for the "Chicago Homegrown Cookbook."

But I didn't really consider how I would actually incorporate all of these wonderful vegetables into our diets.

Now that I'll be getting my first box from Angelic Organics in about a week and a half, reality has set in.

And I've decided to enlist some professional help.

So, I'm calling on my fellow CSA-buying food bloggers to join me in the "Cooking Away My CSA" Challenge.

Once a week, starting the week of June 22, we'll post our favorite CSA-based creations on our blogs. Sharing recipes and photos should (hopefully!) inspire all of us to break out of our veggie ruts. I've created a "Cooking Away My CSA" Google Group to serve as a clearinghouse for our links each week.

I floated this idea on Twitter yesterday and so far about a dozen local-food lovers from around the country have signed on to join me.

And I suspect our numbers will soon grow.

I just got off the phone with Lisa Gosselin, editorial director of EatingWell Magazine. She saw the CSA Challenge idea on Twitter and wants to get involved. We're still working on the details, but she'd like to post CSA recipes on the magazine's site regularly. And there might be some EatingWell prizes for the best ones.

So, who's with me?

(And if anybody out there is Web-crafty and wants to design a badge for our little challenge, I'd repay you in kale. Or chard. Or something.)

Wanted: Bread box w/ titanium padlock

2009-06-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

That's what I'm in the market for after baking this deliciously evil bread, the fourth in the ongoing "Bread Baker's Apprentice" Challenge.

The object of my dangerous love affair is named Casatiello. And, while I'm no expert, I'm fairly certain this is Italian for "I'm so bloated." Not only is this a rich dough (with about 30 percent butter to flour and a couple of whole eggs), it's then loaded with cured meat and nice, melty cheese. And, even after enjoying a reasonable slice for dinner, I had to stop myself from going back to the loaf several times "just to even it out." (Come on. You know you've done that, too. Stop looking at me like that.)

It's a dessert topping! It's a floor wax! It's the bread that makes its own sandwich! It makes its own sandwich, people!

We've made several breads now in the challenge (including bagels, which rocked!). And I've been baking breads, at least weekly, for more than a year. But I can say without reservation that this is one of the tastiest breads I've ever made. It's rich and complex and moist and you could serve it with breakfast, lunch or dinner. (Or, be like me, and go for the trifecta!)

The best part? Unlike some of Peter Reinhart's recipes in the book, this one is very straight-forward. Easy even. And you can do the whole thing in an afternoon -- no overnight rest required.

You start out by making a sponge with a little flour, yeast and milk or buttermilk. (I wanted that buttermilk tang but didn't have any. So I opted for plain yogurt thinned with a little cream.) Here's the sponge acting all sponge-y:

Then you mix the sponge with the rest of the flour, a bunch of softened butter and a couple of eggs. Here's an action shot. Wheeee:

Reinhart recommends dry-cured Italian salami and provolone for this one, but says you can add whatever meats and cheeses you like, or even keep it vegetarian. I went to the butcher and grabbed some nice smoky Hungarian salami and some provolone. But it'd be fun to try this with bacon and Swiss. Or ham and cheddar. Or sausage and gouda. Or. Or. Or ...

And, since imitation is the sincerest form of, um, copyright infringement?, I decided to steal the wonderful idea from Big Black Dog and put my fresh-baked Casatiello to good use for dinner last night.

It's Eggs in a Nest! Take good bread, use a cutter to make a hole in the center, drop in an egg and fry it up. Be sure to toast up the little bread holes, too.

Simple but divine, no?

Good. Got it? Now go bake this bread. Just be sure to get yourself a bread box with a sturdy lock.

(Since we're baking our way through the entire "Bread Baker's Apprentice," we're not posting recipes. But the information is out there. If you love bread, though, I recommend picking up a copy of this wonderful book.)

How'd she do it?

2009-06-08T05:51:00.001-07:00

I know. I know. It's OK. I know you've spent the whole weekend thinking, "When will Flour Girl tell us how she made that amazing cake that looks exactly like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?" "Why must she torture us like this?"

I'm sorry to leave you in suspense, my cake-eating friends. But no more.

Now you, too, can go forth and create your very own Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly Sandwich Cake.

First, as with all good things in life, you must start with cake. I wanted one that would look like sandwich bread, so I first considered white cakes. But I also wanted it to be moist and firm and not-too-fluffy, so it wouldn't crumble. So I settled on a super-tasty and easy Yellow Butter Cake from Joy of Baking. Perfect color and texture; this cake's a keeper -- even for uses other than creating crazy sandwich cakes.

I made two 8X8-inch layers, but they came out a tad thick for bread. So, I just sliced each one in half before filling. Hey, what's better than one cake? Two cakes!

Then, of course, I needed the filling. Since I love all things that come out of the Smitten Kitchen, I figured I couldn't go wrong with Deb's Peanut Butter Frosting. Another keeper. I mixed in some white chocolate chunks to make it seem like chunky PB.

For the J layer, I simply stirred a jar of mixed-berry jelly to make it easier to spread.

I wanted to see a little peanut butter peeking out from the "bread." So I spread it on thick and left it a little messy around the edges.

I frosted the top of the cake with Marshmallow Creme Frosting (love the Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme!) And, here's one time when you don't have to worry about a few crumbs mixing in your frosting. Makes it look more like real bread.

I added a teaspoon of cocoa powder to about a third of the Marshmallow Creme Frosting and spread that around the cake's edge for the "crust." A Twitter friend later suggested patting crushed graham crackers around the edge for a more-realistic look -- a great idea, I think.

Congratulations! Now you've got a giant Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly Sandwich Cake. Use a nice, big serrated knife to cut it in quarters, serve with a giant glass of milk and be sure to share with a friend or 16.

PB&J Day!

2009-06-06T08:47:00.001-07:00

You guys, it seems, can't get enough peanut butter and jelly.

Without a doubt, Flour Girl's most looked-at and searched-for post was this one, how to make your own PB&J swirl bread, a la Uncrustables.

So, when I got asked to make a cake for the today's Blue Sky Inn cakewalk and someone on Twitter suggested peanut butter-and-jelly flavored, I had one of those lightbulb moments.

Why not make a cake that looks like a PB&J sandwich?

I'm headed out to the cakewalk now, so recipes will have to wait 'til later. But, here, enjoy a slice. Just be sure to pour yourself a big glass of milk first.

And the winner is ...

2009-06-04T06:07:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everybody who played along on Flour Girl's first-ever giveaway yesterday.

Nice to see some new readers here; I hope you'll stick around. (And not just for the free goodies!)

So, as every entrant guessed correctly, the reference to Truffula Trees comes from Dr. Seuss' fantastic eco-friendly book "The Lorax."

On the matter of truffles, you guys offered up so many great topping and flavor ideas, I just might need to make another batch. (Though I'm not sure my hips could handle it!)

Suggestions included: peanut butter, mint, mocha, raspberry, amaretto and "anything but coconut."

Some other blogs you may read are all fancy-schmancy with their "random-number generators" and "computer algorithms" when picking contest winners. Here at Flour Girl, though, we're a bit more bare bones, a mom-and-pop operation, if you will.

My random-number generator is my (slightly-surly-because-I-put-him-to-work-before-breakfast) assistant, some scraps of paper and a Cubs hat:

And the winner is ... Can you read that? (Yeah, you try taking a picture of a tiny scrap of paper before you've had any coffee.)

It's Kristin, a.k.a Gourmet with Me. Congratulations, Kristin. Please e-mail me your address at heatherlalley@gmail.com. I'll send you a copy of Martha Stewart's brand-new book, "Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat." I hope you put it to good use!

We'll be back to regularly scheduled programming soon, as I try to figure out a way to make a cake that looks like a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich for this Saturday's Picnics & Pies fundraiser for Blue Sky Inn.

Truffula Trees, they're what everyone needs!

2009-06-03T06:20:00.000-07:00

Remember those cupcakes from the other day? And how could you not? I feel like every third word out of my mouth for the last 72 hours has been "cupcake."

OK. So, I topped those cupcakes with this embarrassingly easy but insanely good chocolate ganache. Ganache, like brioche of course, is French for "yummy." And it's also a fancy way of describing chocolate melted in hot cream. (The other cool thing about it is that you can add whatever flavoring you like -- liqueurs, extracts, you name it.)

So, when you make the ganache it's all melty and sinful and ready to serve as a little cupcake hot tub. But, when you stick the ganache in the refrigerator, something magical happens.

Something divine.

Something mystical.

It turns into truffles.

Yes, it's just that easy.

You take your little tub (or giant vat) of ganache and you get a spoon or a melon-baller and you start making little truffle-sized balls. I like to get 'em all roughly scooped before rolling each one into more of a ball -- keeps things slightly less messy.

Look! You've made a tray of naked little truffles. Just take a quick peek, though -- they get so embarrassed when they're naked.

Now, stick your naked little friends in the refrigerator while you consult Twitter for topping options. Sure, you could use your own brain, but what's the fun of that? My Twitter pals came up with some great ideas -- toasted hazelnuts, sea salt, crushed cookies, cocoa powder with cayenne, and, of course, bacon. You can also dunk your ganache balls in tempered chocolate.

I looked in the fridge and pantry and settled on toasted walnuts, sea salt and sugar, cocoa powder, coconut, and (not pictured below 'cause I thought of it after I'd taken this picture) chopped up candied orange peel left over from my cupcakes.

Then, all you have to do is dress up those balls of ganache in whatever toppings you choose. Roll them around to make sure they stick. But don't roll too hard or you'll flatten your truffles. And I can think of few things worse than flat truffles. If they start getting too soft, pop them in the fridge again.

Aren't they cute? All dressed up and ready to par-tay.

OK. Time for Flour Girl's first-ever contest. Tell me what I'm referencing in the title of this post in a comment below. And also tell me your favorite truffle flavor. All of the correct answers will go into a hat and the random winner will receive ...

Drumroll, please ...

Your very own copy of Martha Stewart's brand-new book, "Cupcakes: 175 Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat."

No entries past midnight tonight, Chicago time. Winner will be announced tomorrow morning.

(Flour Girl loves readers from faraway lands, but she is also a poor student. Only U.S. residents are eligible to win this one. Sorry.)

Taking home the Bronze Cupcake

2009-06-02T08:41:00.001-07:00

I wasn't quite sure what to expect as we pulled into the parking lot for last night's first-ever Iron Cupcake Chicago competition.

Maybe I'd be the only entrant and look like a big dork with my tray of cupcakes?

Maybe there'd be dozens of entrants and I'd look like a big dork because all of their cupcakes would be way cooler than mine?

Maybe I'd trip walking in and drop my two dozen Cream-Filled Dark Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes that I'd spent three days preparing, making me look like a dork?

Thankfully, none of those things happened. Though, I did opt to wear my favorite apron so the jury's still out on my dorkiness.

Here's what did happen:

I met some great bakers.

The Kid and I sampled some wonderful, over-the-top, citrus-infused cupcakes.

And, I took third place out of 13 entries, thanks to the lovely judges from Chicago Bites. There was some stiff competition there last night, so I was tickled to have placed "in the money." (In this case, my prize was a Beautiful Cakes T-shirt and some cute cupcake iron-ons.)

The ladies at Chicago Bites have details on all the winners, along with some stunning cupcake porn from the event.

I'm told the owners of Beautiful Cakes plan to host an Iron Cupcake competition, with a different theme, each month. I'll post details on the next showdown as soon as I get them. I hope you'll join me next time, if not as a competitor, then as a taste-tester.

Did I mention that my young sous chef thoroughly enjoyed himself? Here he is, showing off our wares:

Hello, cupcake!

2009-05-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

Up 'til, oh, about four days ago, I'd never even heard of Iron Cupcake.

If you'd mentioned those two words, I would've pictured a kiddie death-metal band. Or maybe a rock-hard baked good.

Thanks to Twitter, though, I learned that Iron Cupcake is a vaguely Iron Chef-esque cupcake-baking challenge. It started as an online baking contest about a year ago, but has now morphed into a real, live, in-person bake-off in cities around the country.

And it's coming to Chicago. Tonight.

The debut edition of Iron Cupcake Chicago kicks off at 6 p.m. tonight at Veranda, 5700 W. Irving Park Road. Tonight's challenge:

Citrus.

Now, I'm not much of a cupcake baker. In fact -- here's my confession -- I don't know that I've ever baked a from-scratch cupcake. There. I said it. If I'm baking cupcakes, it's usually for The Kid, and he's cool with boxed cake mix. (Heck, who am I kidding? I'm pretty cool with boxed cake mix, too.)

But I decided to throw my whisk into the ring for this inaugural Iron Cupcake Chicago and I knew the old box of Funfetti wasn't gonna cut it.

So, I did some thinking on citrus. What would I want in a citrus cupcake?

Lemon-basil might be nice, I thought. For a while, I was sold on orange creamsicle, another fab flavor combo. But then I remembered my absolute favorite citrus-y flavor pairing: Orange and dark chocolate.

And Flour Girl's Dark Chocolate-Orange Nostess Cupcakes were born.

I found a super-fudgy chocolate cupcake recipe and oranged it up a tad. Then, I made some orange-cream filling and injected it into the cupcakes with a pastry bag. (How fun is that?)

This morning, I dipped each one in bittersweet-chocolate ganache and topped them with a candied orange peel. I gave the extra peel a dip, too. (The stuff's so good, I was about to dip the cat. But I used restraint.)

Are Flour Girl's Dark Chocolate-Orange Nostess Cupcakes worthy of the Iron Cupcake crown? Come cheer me on tonight at the challenge and find out. I'll save you a cupcake.

And if you can't make it, here's how to whip up a batch at home:

Dark Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes
Adapted ever-so-slightly from "The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook"
The original recipe makes 24, but I bumped it up to make 36
24 tablespoons (3 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 24 pieces
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used Ghirardelli morsels)
1 1/2 cups Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon instant-coffee granules (I used one Starbucks Via packet)
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
6 large eggs, at room temperature
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
Zest of 1 orange2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups sour cream

Microwave the butter, chocolate, cocoa and coffee together, whisking often, until melted and smooth, 1 to 3 minutes. Set aside to cool until just warm to the touch.

Meanwhile, adjust the oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin pans with cupcake liners. (Wanting these to look more like Hostess Cupcakes, I opted to spray my pans with that cooking spray with flour stuff instead of using liners; worked like a charm.)
Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl and set aside.

Whisk the eggs, vanilla and orange zest together in a large bowl. Slowly whisk in the sugar until combined. Whisk in the cooled chocolate mixture.

Sift one third of the flour mixture over the batter, then whisk it in. Whisk in the sour cream. Sift the remaining flour mixture over the batter and whisk until completely incorporated. The batter will be thick. (They're not kidding here -- this was pretty much the thickest cake batter I've ever seen; I've worked with bread doughs that weren't this stiff.)
Fill the cupcake pans about two-thirds full. (I used a little, spring-loaded ice cream scoop to portion these out.) Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out with a few crumbs, about 18-22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking.

Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing. Cool at least an hour before filling or frosting.

Orange Cream Filling for Cupcakes
Adapted from Kelly at evilshenanigans .com
Enough to fill 24 cupcakes (I was able to fill 36)
2 teaspoons orange juice (The original recipe calls for very hot water, which you could use, of course, if you want this to be plain cream filling.)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow cream
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Heat the orange juice and salt in the microwave for about 20 seconds, until the salt dissolves.

Whip all of the remaining ingredients until fluffy. Add the orange-juice mixture and whip well.
There are two ways to fill your cupcakes. You can either, load up a piping bag with the filling, put a small star tip on the bag and plunge it into the center of the cupcake. Squirt in filling until you start the see the cupcake bulge just the tiniest little bit.

Or you can use a paring knife to cut a small compartment through the top of the cupcake. Spoon in some filling and replace the cut-out piece.

Ganache Frosting
From Alton Brown
Makes about 3 1/2 cups

16 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (I used Ghirardelli morsels)
16 ounces heavy cream
Place the chocolate into the bowl of a food processor. Heat the cream in a quart-sized, microwavable container and microwave for 3 to 4o minutes on high, or until it just begins to simmer. Be careful not to let the cream boil over. Pour the cream over the chocolate and let stand for 2 minutes. Process by pulsing several times until the mixture is smooth.

Use as is for glazing. For lighter frosting, allow it to come to room temperature, about 2 hours. Then place in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on high for 2 to 3 minutes.

Candied Orange Peel
From "Baking and Pastry, Mastering the Art and Craft" by The Culinary Institute of America
Makes about 3 ounces (I quartered the original recipe, so feel free to increase this if you just can't get enough candied orange peel.) These need to dry overnight, so make sure you plan accordingly.

2 ounces orange peels, white pith removed, cut into 1/4-inch strips
3 ounces water
1 ounce corn syrup
4 ounces sugar

Place the sliced orange peels in a pan of cold water to cover. Bring to a boil; drain. Repeat three times, using fresh cold water each time to remove bitterness.

Combine water, corn syrup and sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce to a very low simmer, add the peels, and poach until translucent, about 1 hour.

Drain the peels (Refrigerate the leftover orange syrup -- it's great in cocktails.) Toss the peels in bowl of granulated sugar. Spread them on a wire rack above parchment and allow to dry overnight. Store in a tightly covered container.

Have a tasty make-ahead pancake, Mandrake.

2009-05-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

I know this will come as a shock to you all, but here goes:

I love breakfast.

Shocking, I know. But when else can you eat a fresh-baked goodie and call it a meal?

Pancakes, waffles, muffins, cinnamon rolls, stratas -- they're all big hits at Chez Flour Girl.

The obvious problem, though, is that it can be tough to get fresh-baked goodies on the table on busy weekday work-school mornings.

Thankfully, many things made on the weekend can be frozen or kept in the fridge a few days. You can do that with waffles and pancakes -- just pop 'em in the toaster before serving. And muffins freeze beautifully.

But what if you want some hot-off-the-griddle-goodness on a weekday morning?

Impossible, you say?

Oh, not only is it possible, my friends, it's easy and yummy, too.

When The Kid mentioned the other night that he'd really like pancakes for breakfast the next morning -- a school day -- I did a little sleuthing. And I found this great make-ahead batter recipe. Fast, easy and cheap. What more do you need?

And, while we're at it, what are your favorite make-ahead breakfast secrets?

Make-Ahead Buttermilk Pancake Batter
From The Washington Times, April 2008
Makes 10-12 large pancakes
You can store this batter for up to three days, in the refrigerator. If you see little black dots on the surface, don't worry. It's just oxygenation so give it a stir.

1 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons lukewarm water
2 cups flour (I used white whole-wheat flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups buttermilk (I was out, so I mixed regular milk with a little white vinegar.)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons honey
Butter, as needed

Dissolve yeast in water.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a medium bowl, combine buttermilk, eggs, oil and honey. Add the yeast and buttermilk mixtures into the flour mixture and whisk to combine (the batter will not be completely smooth). Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. (I mixed this all in a great, big Pyrex measuring cup. Ready to pour on the griddle.)

The next morning, heat a griddle or nonstick skillet over medium heat. Lightly butter the griddle. Stir batter and pour 1/4-cup portions onto hot griddle. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface, about two minutes.

Flip and cook until bottom is lightly golden. Keep warm in a low oven.

If I were a rich, um, Flour Girl ...

2009-05-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Big, big decisions are being made here at Flour Girl Headquarters. Big decisions, folks. Life-changing decisions.

Such as: Just how much butter can I stand to add to my brioche dough? (What? You didn't think I was trying to decide how best to split the atom here, did you?)

Feat No. 4 of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is brioche, that super-rich, yet super-versatile dough that's pretty much impossible not to like. Now, I minored in French in college, so you can take this from me with good authority. "Brioche" is French for "yummy." It's true.

Thankfully, Peter Reinhart, in all his "Bread Baker's Apprentice" infinite wisdom, gives us several brioche options. (Since we're baking Reinhart's entire book, we BBA Challengers aren't posting many recipes. But you can find his Brioche via Google.)

There's Rich Man's Brioche, which, Reinhart notes, has the same flour-fat-sugar ratio as pie dough. It calls for a full pound of butter to a little more than a pound of flour.

Then there's Middle-Class Brioche, which uses a formula of half as much butter to flour (8 ounces of butter in this recipe).

And finally, there's the oh-so diet friendly (yet sadly named) Poor Man's Brioche, calling for just 4 ounces of butter.

The cool thing about brioche, beside the fact that it's so good you might as well just rub it on your thighs right now and get it over with, is that it's so versatile. Use it for rolls, buns or loaves. Make knock-you-socks-off French toast with it. Stuff it with sweet or savory fillings. Shape it any way you like.

I couldn't quite bring myself to use a full pound of butter in my dough (though I did just whip up a batch of PB&J ice cream; I'm no prude when it comes to fat in the kitchen) so I went the Middle-Class Brioche route.

Still, working with this dough was like molding a stick of butter. After chilling in the refrigerator overnight, the dough seemed so stiff and heavy with fat, I was dubious it would ever rise.

But it did, and quite nicely.

Not wanting to invest in brioche molds, I opted to make a simple one-pound loaf:

I formed the rest of the dough into a half dozen hamburger buns:

The Kid ate a bun slathered with strawberry cream cheese, followed by a PB&J from the loaf. And we thoroughly enjoyed our turkey burgers nestled in brioche buns.

I'm telling you, brioche is French for "yummy." Trot that one out at your next cocktail party.

I promised details about preparing thousands of desserts for Taste of Chicago. But production got pushed back a bit; I'll keep you posted. Instead, I spent a chilly-but-happy morning strolling Chicago's Green City Market, chatting with farmers and chefs. I met lots of wonderful sources for the Chicago Homegrown Cookbook. Headed to another market tomorrow.

How cool is it that I can consider hanging out at farmers' markets "work?"

Beer's a wheat product, right?

2009-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

I spent a dreamy long weekend at The American Club in Kohler, Wisc. (Yes, that Kohler. The one where they make the faucets.) My husband, Frank Sennett, is the editor of Time Out Chicago and it took him about twoseconds to click "yes" when offered media passes and lodging for the Kohler Festival of Beer.

Neither of us are particularly into beer. But I was eager to learn. (I'm telling you, the back-breaking research I do for you people. It's exhausting ...) And I was excited to go back to The American Club since it's where we went on our first "road trip" as a couple about a dozen years ago.

After driving a couple of hours from Chicago, we walked right into the Cheers to Beers tasting event at the Kohler Design Center. The above photo was snapped on a toilet. I think that's a first. For me, anyway.

And check this out. A wall of potties:

I never witnessed any beer drinkers stumble into the filled bathtubs on display. But I saw plenty of couples perched on toilets, munching appetizers and sipping beer.

With about two dozen brewers on hand, each sampling several beers, there was an overflowing bounty of tasting options. Not wanting to take an unplanned dip, I paced myself. But I tried a couple of winners.

My hands-down favorite was Little Sumpin' Sumpin' from Petaluma, Calif.-based Lagunitas Brewing Co. Nice and light with a little grapefruit-y bitterness. I had to resist going back for another sample, but I'll be on the lookout for that one here. (And don't you just love the name?)

We also sampled one that's already a favorite, the wonderfully complex Matilda from Chicago's own Goose Island. Yum.

The Pail Ale from Milwaukee Ale House's Pull Chain brewery, below, was quite tasty, too.

I was hoping for a session or two for beer novices like me. Maybe something to school us on the different styles, or what to look for when tasting.

I forgot about that pretty quickly, though, lounging in the super-duper crazy-space-age jetted tub in our "spa immersion suite." Complete with flashing, color-changing lights. Seriously.

And I stuffed myself silly with a couple of amazing meals -- seafood stew and asparagus salad at the resort's Immigrant Restaurant and a cheese-crusted walleye at the members-only River Wildlife log-cabin restaurant.

OK. Back to reality.

I've got a big, buttery hunk of brioche dough chilling in the fridge, ready to bake later today. It's the next recipe in the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge. I'll fill you in on that one shortly.

Oh, and thanks to Janet Keeler of the St. Petersburg Times for featuring Flour Girl in her fun story about foodies on Twitter.

Tomorrow, I'm headed back to Washburne Culinary Institute -- this time as an employee, not a student. We're going to start prep work on those thousands and thousands of desserts for the upcoming Taste of Chicago. That's a lot of desserts. Happy baking!

Bagels, bagels, oh baby!

2009-05-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

This bread-baking stuff never ceases to amaze me.

Get this: Bagels aren't born in those plastic bags you find at the supermarket.

You can actually -- gasp! -- make them at home. And they will blow your mind -- even if you can find good, bakery bagels in your 'hood.

And if you're used to eating those dried-up, doughy, plastic-wrapped bagels, you just might shake your fists to the heavens, enraged that you've been calling that spongy crud "bagels" all this time.

These, my friends, are bagels.

So, this is recipe No. 3 of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge,

I'd never made bagels before, but I've always loved them. So I had high hopes for this recipe. I'm glad to say it didn't disappoint.

You start out making a very stiff dough. Very stiff. We learned at school that bagel dough is referred to as "bucky," meaning it's pretty tough and not very elastic. Some of my fellow bread-baking Twitter-ers (follow us #BBA) had warned that stand mixers can't handle this dough. But not my shiny, new Kitchenaid pro. I'm so proud of her muscles.

Here are some of the little guys, after shaping. (Reinhart offers two shaping methods for bagels. Either poke your thumb in the middle of a dough ball and stretch. Or, form a long snake and attach the ends. I chose the thumb-poking technique. Easy-peasy.)

Did you know bagels are boiled before baking? You probably did. That's what gives them that wonderfully chewy exterior. About a minute on each side and they're ready for a hot oven.

First, though, comes the most-important decision of all: How to top your precious creations. I turned to Twitter for advice and decided to make a few of each suggestion. These are topped with sesame seeds mixed with a little Kosher salt. (Go easy on the salt. I went a little crazy on some.)

I also topped a few with plain Kosher salt. I baked the rest without any toppings. But when they came out of the oven, I brushed them with melted butter and dunked half in Parmesan and the other half in cinnamon-sugar. I stuck the Parmesan ones back in the hot oven for a minute to brown up.

And, then, I realized it was breakfast time. I had a pile of fresh, hot, homemade bagels. And I was out of cream cheese.

But I did have leftover melted butter. And a pastry brush. It was already dirty, after all. And I may have stood at the counter brushing my fresh sesame bagel with melted butter while dunking it in leftover cinnamon sugar. I may have done that. Or I may have had fat-free cottage cheese and dashed out for a 10-mile run. Yes, I may have done that, too. Choose to believe whatever you like.

As mentioned earlier, we're not posting recipes since we're baking everything in Reinhart's book. But the lovely and talented Deb at SmittenKitchen wrote a lengthy post about those bagels, with recipe, nearly two years ago.

I'm submitting this one to Yeastspotting. If you like to look at bread porn, check it out!

Stttrrreeetttching those food $$

2009-05-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

You know what I really like about baking bread?

It's relaxing.

It's satisfying.

The end result is super-tasty.

But guess what else I like:

It's cheap.

I can get about 10 or 12 loaves of sandwich bread out of a 5-pound bag of flour that runs roughly $4. I can't even guess how many loaves I can make with my 1-pound package of instant yeast that cost $3. (Dozens and dozens.) Add in a few cents for salt and some good old Chicago tap water (free!) and you've got what I'd wager is one of the cheapest delicacies you can create in your own kitchen. (And, no, I don't count ramen as a delicacy.)

I figure I can make most homemade breads for about 50 cents a loaf. What are you paying at the store for bread? $3 or $4? Pretty good savings, no?

You can also take that bread dough, roll it out flat, top it with some sauce and some cheese and, bingo, you just saved $20 on pizza delivery.

So, I'm veering a bit from my usual cooking school-recipe posts to talk economics. I'll be part of a roundtable discussion on WBEW (89.5 FM in Chicago or vocalo.org ) at 4:30 this afternoon. They've asked for culinary students to discuss the relative "merits" of fast-food dollar-menu items.

There's not much value I can find on those menus, either from a taste or nutrition standpoint. (Though, I will name a couple of lesser-evil options if the drive-through is your only choice.) But I realize that lots of folks believe that's the only food they can afford, both in terms of money and time.

I'm no crunchy-granola-all-organic-free-range-all-the-time cook. I'm your average mom who works and goes to school. My kid has his share of Happy Meal toys. I've got some Uncrustables in the freezer and marshmallow-y cereals in the pantry.

But I also know how to create my own "value meals" at home with simple, fresh ingredients.

Baking bread -- or cooking anything at home -- takes time. It takes a little bit of knowledge. And it takes the desire to do so.

Do that more often than not, though, and you'll start seeing some real value for your food dollars.

Help! This radio show's later today. I'd love to hear some of your favorite, homemade, "dollar menu" meals.

And, don't fear, I'll be off my soapbox and on to bagels tomorrow.

Getting to know you ...

2009-05-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

(Cue the syrupy music from "The King and I.")

OK. That's enough of that.

Bread geeks, a group of which I'm proud to consider myself a member, are buzzing over the fact that Trader Joe's is no longer carrying King Arthur's fine flours. Instead, the store is stocking its own line of "Baker's Pantry" flours.

It seems the jury's still out on how TJ stacks up against KA. And I'm not here to settle that wrestling match. (Though I would pay good money to see Trader Joe battle King Arthur, but that's another story for another day.)

Anyway, I picked up a bag of Trader Joe's white whole-wheat flour the other day. I'd never baked with this variety before, so I can't compare it to King Arthur's version.

New to white whole-wheat like I am? Here's what I know: It shares the same nutritional profile of regular whole-wheat flour, but it's milled from white wheat rather than red. It has a much less wheat-y flavor and bakes up creamy yellow rather than light brown.

I used it in this sandwich loaf recipe yesterday and I have nothing but rave reviews. It's the softest, most-tender loaf of nearly 100-percent whole-wheat bread I've made.

I have a bunch of leftover barm in the fridge from the BBA Challenge, so I added some of it to this dough. I'm not sure if it was the barm, or the fact that this white whole-wheat demands less rising time, but this dough doubled for me in about half the time the recipe states.

Keep a close eye on it.

And if you have more experience with white whole-wheat flour I'd love to hear some of your favorite recipes.

Honey Whole-Wheat Bread

Makes two loaves

From Floyd at The Fresh Loaf

1 pound whole-wheat flour (or white whole-wheat flour)

(I added about a quarter cup of leftover barm 'cause I had it hanging around -- you could use poolish or old dough, if you have it around. Add it to the whole-wheat flour so that it totals one pound.)

12 ounces hot water

8 ounces bread or all-purpose flour

1 5 ounce can evaporated milk (or regular milk, or more water)

1/3 cup honey

2 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons instant yeast

additional 1/2- to 1-cup flour, as necessary

Mix the hot water and whole-wheat flour together in a bowl. Cover with plastic and let it sit at room temperature, at least 1 hour.

(Floyd says soaking the flour helps soften the bran and release some of the natural sugars.)

Add the milk, honey, salt, yeast and bread flour to the original mixture and mix until well-combined. Add additional flour and knead by hand or in a stand mixer until a tacky but not completely sticky dough forms. (This took me about 7 minutes in the mixer, adding at least a half cup of extra flour gradually along the way.)

Let the dough rise, covered, in a well-oiled bowl until doubled. About 60 to 90 minutes. (This took me less than an hour. Maybe because of that barm? Or the white whole-wheat flour?)

Divide the dough in two and shape into loaves. Put the loaves in greased bread pans. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise again. (Floyd says this should take about 90 minutes, but mine were nearly over-proofed after about an hour. Keep a close eye on these guys.)

During the last 30 minutes of rising, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put the pans in the oven and reduce temperature to 375 degrees. Bake for about 45 to 55 minutes, rotating pans once during baking so they brown evenly. When done, the internal temperature should register 190 degrees and the bottom should sound hollow when tapped.

Cool completely before slicing.

Opa!

2009-05-15T06:14:00.001-07:00

Hey! Notice anything different? How do you like what we've done with the place?

I've gushed before about how cool all of these bakers and food bloggers out in cyberspace are.

Not to sound like a broken record or anything, but can I tell you just how cool all of these bakers and food bloggers out in cyberspace are?

So, I was Twittering away yesterday when I made the acquaintance of Susan of the oh-so-cute She's Becoming DoughMesstic food-life-mommy blog.

She said, Flour Girl, I don't want to hurt your blog's feelings or anything. Your content is lovely but the design could use a bit of a makeover.

I said, I know, I know, but to me, HTML code might as well be Sanskrit. Know any good designers?

She said, sure I do, but in the meantime, want me to play around a little bit with your site? Maybe cook up a masthead for you?

And she did! Isn't it cute?

So, please send some good vibes Susan's way. And maybe do something nice for a total stranger today, OK?

In Doughmesstic's honor, I present the second bread -- a Greek Celebration loaf, fittingly -- of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. (Don't know about the challenge? Here's some background from Pinch My Salt.)

As I mentioned, since we're baking all of the loaves from Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice," I'll only be posting a couple of recipes. But if you're at all interested in bread-making, you should grab a copy of this incredible book.

I started this big, beautiful fruit-and-nut studded loaf called Christopsomos the night before baking, by mixing some of Sammy the Sourdough Starter with some flour and water to form a "barm."

Here it is, well-fed and happy:

Then I mixed some of the barm with some more flour, salt, yeast, aromatic spices, fruit, nuts and other goodies, before letting it bulk ferment 'til doubled. Have I mentioned that I'm having an affair with my new stand mixer?

Then, I shaped the risen dough into a boule. Forgot to take a picture, but then I formed two snakelike strands of dough and crossed them over the top to make it all pretty. I brushed the whole thing with egg wash before baking. The recipe calls for glazing the bread after it comes out of the oven, but I skipped that. I'm sure it would've been yummy, though.

And here's breakfast. I wish I could send you the smell of a slice of this bread hot from the toaster. Sorry. (An aside to my old pals from The Spokesman-Review. Yes, that is a coffee mug from the Idaho S-R. It goes from night to day when you pour the coffee in!)

Headed off to meet with the super-talented photographer who has agreed to work on the Chicago cookbook with me. Now, there's a reason to celebrate. Opa! Think I'll have another slice ...

Rising to the challenge

2009-05-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

Last day of my first class at Washburne Culinary Institute today. The final was harder than I expected. Should've studied my notes on eggs a bit better.

And, to top it off, I left the test to find a happy little orange envelope on my car from the City of Chicago Department of Revenue. My lack of a city sticker has finally caught up with me, in the form of a $120 fine. Whee!

But that's OK. Even that nastygram can't get me down. I'm in the mood to celebrate. Wanna know why? OK. Come closer. Closer. A little closer. Good.

Let me whisper something in your ear:

I JUST SIGNED THE CONTRACT FOR MY FIRST BOOK!

Sorry. Didn't mean to shout. I'm just a little excited.

Anyway, the book is for a small press in Minnesota and it's about Chicago chefs who are working directly with growers to put local, sustainable foods on their menus. It'll be a compilation of about 30 profiles, along with photos and recipes. It's not due out 'til the spring of 2011, but I'm sure I'll have a few updates along the way.

(So, if you know of some wonderful Chicago chefs who fit that description, please feel free to send some names my way.)

OK. Deep breaths.

Besides hanging out with chefs and at farmers' markets, I'll be spending some of my summer at school -- although I won't be in class.

Washburne is making thousands and thousands of desserts for the Taste of Chicago and I've signed on to help. They're paying us a little bit for our labor, but I'm looking at it less as a job and more like tuition-free school. What a great learning experience to have to crank out that many desserts, no?

And in August, I'll return to school full-time for introduction to baking and pastry.

Yikes! I guess I'd better get to work.

With a cherry on top

2009-05-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different ...

When my class made that sour-cream ice cream the other day for the Showcase Dinner, I was reminded how much I love homemade ice cream. And how neglectful I've been of my cute little Cuisinart ice-cream maker, sitting all un-used and un-loved in my cabinet.

I know, I know, there's no flour in ice cream. Or yeast for that matter. But everybody likes it and it's surprisingly easy to make at home -- if you have an ice-cream maker, that is.

Plus, I feel that by making strawberry ice cream, I am willing Mother Nature to give herself over to summer. You can thank me for that later.

We'll get back to our regularly scheduled flour-and-yeast creations later this week. There's just two days left of this session at culinary school. I'll be turning in a paper and giving a presentation tomorrow -- all about my time with the super-awesome bread bakers at Fox & Obel. And Wednesday's our final exam.

Stay tuned, though, for more info about what I'll be up to this summer. And a Big Flour Girl Announcement (TM) later this week.

In the meantime, grab a bowl and a spoon and curl up with some ice cream.

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream

From "The Perfect Scoop" by David Lebovitz

(If you have even the slimmest notion that you might want to make ice cream at home, you need this book. It's got every kind of ice cream recipe you could want and each one is more awesome than the next. And many, like this one, are super-easy to boot. You don't even have to cook anything!)

1 pound strawberries

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vodka or kirsch

1 cup heavy cream (I used whole milk, health nut that I am -- ha!)

1 cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Hull the strawberries and roughly chop them. Put in a medium bowl with the sugar and alcohol. Stir for about 30 seconds, until sugar dissolves. Cover and leave on the counter for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Pour mixture into the blender or food processor (or use a hand blender, if you've got one). Add the cream -- or milk --, the sour cream and the lemon juice. Blend until mostly smooth but with some small chunks. Refrigerate one hour before freezing according to your ice-cream maker's directions.

Sour Cream Ice Cream

From Chef Laura Vaughn

Makes about 1 quart

9 fl oz heavy cream
3 fl oz whole milk
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups sour cream**
pinch salt

Use the creme Anglais technique:
Whip sugar, salt and yolks until light and fluffy, about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, scald cream and milk. Temper the hot liquid into the yolks a little at a time until the liquid has warmed the yolk mixture gradually, then pour everything back into the pot and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-low heat until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon without running immediately off. Whisk in the sour cream, pour through a strainer into a bowl set in an ice bath, and place the whole thing in the cooler. Stir periodically until ice cold, then process in an ice cream machine, no longer than 25 minutes. Pack into a container you'd set in the freezer an hour before, and press a piece of parchment paper on the surface... let it cure for at least a few hours, then eat with heaps of fresh berries, or your favorite Indian Kamasutra Cake.

**Variations: This recipe is fabulous because you can substitute an equal amount of the following for the sour cream with deliciously different results:
Yogurt (Greek yogurt would be fabu), buttermilk, cream cheese, goat cheese, mascarpone or any soft cheese, creme fraiche, heavy cream (but then add some vanilla). I've even made blue cheese ice cream with a great Gorgonzola Dolce (cut with a bit of cream cheese, though) for a red-wine poached-pear and roasted-walnut sable dessert.

Take it for a swirl

2009-05-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Before I signed up for the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, I committed to a fun group bake with the Artisan Bread Bakers group on Facebook.

With all of the other baking I've been doing, I barely got this one made by today's deadline. But I didn't want to miss out on this tasty-looking Cinnamon-Swirl Raisin Bread.(Yes, I know I could've made this bread next week or next month or next year, but I like to play by the rules, see?)

And I was itching for an excuse to give my shiny new mixer a test run on bread dough. Get this. There are these things called "stand mixers" and they knead dough for you. Can you believe it? It's the craziest thing.

Not that you need a mixer for this easy, but tasty, bread. I forgot to add raisins in with the dough and layered them on with the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Still turned out great.

But I suspect this bread has an even higher calling. I have some waiting on the counter to be turned into French toast ASAP.

Cinnamon-Swirl Raisin Bread

From Phyl Divine

Makes 2 loaves

1 cup raisins(optional)

4 3/4 to 5 1/4 cups all-purpose or bread flour

1 package active dry yeast

1 1/3 cups milk

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

If using raisins, place in a small bowl and add boiling water to almost cover. Allow to plump.

Combine 2 cups of flour and the yeast.

In a saucepan heat and stir milk, 3 tablespoons sugar, butter and salt until warm (120 to 130 degrees).

Drain raisins well.

Add milk mixture and eggs to bowl with flour and yeast. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl frequently. Beat on high speed for 3 minutes. Using a spoon, stir in raisins and as much remaining flour as you can.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is smooth and elastic (6 to 8 minutes, or about 4 minutes on speed 2 of a stand mixer).

Shape into a ball, place in a lightly greased bowl,turning once to coat surface. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double (about an hour).

Punch down dough.Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide in half. Cover and let rest 10 minutes.

Lightly grease two 8- or 9-inch loaf pans.

On a lightly floured surface, roll one dough half into a 12X7-inch rectangle. Brush lightly with water or beaten egg (don't use butter; the dough won't stick). Combine 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle half of the mixture on the dough. Roll up from one of the short sides,sealing as you go.

Seal edge and ends and place, seam side down, in a greased loaf pan. Repeat with other half of dough.

Preheat oven to 375. Cover pans and let rise in a warm place until almost double (about 30 minutes).

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. If tops of loaves darken too quickly, cover with foil.

Remove from pans and cool on racks.

SHOWTIME!

2009-05-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

First of all, aren't those beautiful desserts? I'd be pretty pleased to see that in front of me at a restaurant, wouldn't you?

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, last night was that great-big, muckity-muck, $150-a-plate showcase dinner at Washburne Culinary. Students worked for weeks re-creating some of the dishes from a lovely Indian restaurant in Chicago. My class focused on naan and that oh-so-pretty plated dessert you see above.

We baked pan after pan of flourless chocolate cakes, made vats of sour cream ice cream, whipped up pomegranate coulis and -- let's not forget -- made hundreds of fragile tuile cookies.

But when you're serving a dessert to paying guests, there's so much more that goes into it than just the cooking and baking. Seriously. I had no idea.

For someone like me, a total newbie who has spent about five minutes in a professional kitchen, last night was a wonderful learning experience.

I arrived at the kitchen at about 1:30 p.m. and set to work right away on those tuiles. My first pans were a mess; I thought I would never get the batter-smearing technique down. But, after say, 100 of those damn things, I got into a rhythm. We ended up having to make a quadruple batch of the batter to make sure we had enough.

A couple of hours and several hundred tuiles later, I put away my stencil and off-set spatula. The tuiles were cooled, counted and placed on sheet pans.

Then, on to those flourless chocolate cakes. These Indian-spiced cakes are tasty, but very difficult to work with. They're fudgy and crumbly and generally messy. So, after unmolding and slicing each cake, we needed to gently run a spatula over the tops and sides to smooth any bumps or divots. Once smooth, each cake got an even dusting of cocoa powder. Then back in the cooler 'til serving time.

At home, you'd just plop a scoop of ice cream on your cake and pass it along. Not so in a restaurant. All of our sour-cream ice cream had to be pre-scooped and kept frozen so we could quickly serve hundreds of diners.

Even the serving plates need extra attention. Before putting anything on the dessert plates, students went over each one with vinegar-soaked rags to remove any finger prints or smudges.

Then, we used squeeze bottles to put a dot-DOT-line adornment of sauce on each plate. Any dot that got too dotty or line that got too blobby was fixed with one of those vinegar rags.

Finally, after waiting for the guests to finish their main course, we used gloved hands to carefully set a rectangle of cake on each plate.

As the servers came in, we topped each piece with a ball of ice cream and a tuile before rushing them out the door.

From now on, I will spend more time admiring every plated dessert I receive in a restaurant. Before attacking it with my fork, I'll think about all of the many hours of work that go into it.

A great learning experience for me, to be sure. But here's the rub. Our guests ate so much of the earlier courses, and the evening dragged on for so long, that a majority of them were either too full or ended up leaving before dessert.

We had dozens and dozens of plated desserts that went untouched. (Minus the one below, of course, which went into my stomach. For research purposes. The things I do for you people.)

Tuile of fortune

2009-05-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

OK. So, tuiles: Beautiful, paper-thin cookie or evil baked good spawned from the devil's loins?

Talk amongst yourselves.

After today's experience, I'm trending toward the latter.

So, to recap, Washburne is hosting this big Showcase Dinner tomorrow night, a $150-a-plate affair for donors and other supporters of the school. Students are re-creating dishes from an Indian restaurant in Chicago and my class is tasked with dessert and naan (flatbread).

We're making a flourless chocolate cake, topped with sour-cream ice cream garnished with an Indian-spiced cookie (the tuile) and a splash of pomegranate coulis.

Tuiles, if you're not familiar, are French for "tile," since they resemble curved roof tiles. They are made by smoothing batter over a stencil (kind of like spackling) with an offset spatula. Hot out of the oven, the super-thin cookies can be curled or molded into a variety of shapes. Once cool, they harden into whatever shape they've been formed.

We're using them to add height, visual interest and, of course, something tasty, to our plated desserts.

I mixed up a batch of orange-flecked, Indian-spiced tuile batter yesterday and we baked off a few. Turned out great.

I came in today, spread some batter in some triangle-shaped stencils and baked them.

Ta-da! Blobby triangle-esque shapes that spread all over the Silpat.

What is up with that?

We tried them in the convection oven. Blobs.

We tried them in the regular oven at 325 degrees. Blobs.

We tried them in the regular oven at 350 degrees. Blobs.

We added some more flour. Slightly-less-blobby-blobs.

We added even more flour and tried them in the hearth oven at 400 degrees. Extra-crispy blobs.

Did I mention this dinner is tomorrow and we need like 400 of these lovely cookies?

So, the chef suggested a different recipe.

We never could quite diagnose what was up with the original. But I worked through lunch to make a new batch and got a few in the oven.

Guess what?

They held their shape.

Yes. I actually did a little dance. I'm not ashamed.

I predict an afternoon of tuile-baking in my future tomorrow.

Honey Tuile

From Chef Laura Vaughn, Washburne Culinary Institute

6 ounces butter, at room temperature

105 g honey

190 g powdered sugar

185 g all-purpose flour

102 g egg whites

Indian spices, such as garam masala, cardamom, cayenne pepper, to taste (optional)

Cream butter and honey with mixer. Add remaining ingredients and mix first on low, then on high speed, for five minutes.

Use off-set spatula to spread in stencils on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or parchment. Bake at 350 degrees until golden-brown. If desired, mold into shapes while still warm.