"Tis the Season

I'm beginning to mentally plan our party for Twelfth Night, which will also be our housewarming event, but it isn't until January 8.  Until then, I have the pleasure of going to Other People's Parties.

First up this weekend was Laurie Perry's annual Solstice Party on Saturday night.  There, I learned that Laurie and her sister (and various other relatives and SOs) are writing a blog called Party Know-It-Alls.  Laurie does a beautiful spread of food every year, often Middle Eastern, but this year she decided on a taco bar.  Check out Party Know-It-Alls for the salmon taco recipe.  It is delicious.  No surprise.

Our Sunday afternoon party at my barn was canceled due to the rain we've been getting in SoCal for the past three or four days.  The text came just as I was about to go buy ingredients for a hearty, warm dish a fancy  mac and cheese recipe from Rachael Ray that is always a hit with the Sunday Super Supper Squad 

Because of the rain, we decided to stay home rather than to risk the freeways on a trip to a party in Pacific Palisades.  I was sorry to miss it, but people in L.A. drive like they have no idea what to do and any hilly area is subject to mudsides.  Ugh.

I took the opportunity to get the kitchen ready for baking.  I've been organizing my dry goods in blue-lidded Fido jars from Italy, ever since I discovered them at Ross.  Sur la Table has them in other sizes at greater cost, but it does not sell the ones with cobalt-blue lids.  I have many of the one, two, half, and three-quarter litre sizes, and a couple of 3 litre jars for sugar and flour.  I think they go as big as 5 or 6 litres, but I have yet to see these in the flesh.  My rebuilt house had a pantry with shelves just deep enough for two rows of the jars, but I lack that in the new place.  Instead, I have a cabinet pantry, with pull-out drawers on the lower part.  That's where I'm keeping the jars (they hold about 16 big ones or 20 small ones.)  I got Len to do the labels for the filled ones yesterday and he'll do the new ones as I add ingredients.

I did get a chance to make the famous mac and cheese last week for the SSSS, along with a glazed ham and some brioche.

Then I took the remainder of the brioche dough and made pecan sticky buns for breakfast (I should have made this photograph when the buns were hot, because the caramel coagulated when they cooled.  Not nearly as attractive.)

Sticky buns turned out to be pretty easy to make when the dough was already in the refrigerator.  Seems like a theme in my cooking lately.

 If you read my other blog, Out of the Darkroom, you know the reason I haven't had time to post much lately is that we moved twice in the past 6 months or so--the first move was back into our rebuilt house and the second was to a much larger house about four miles away.  The old house is not yet on the market, but I hope it will be soon.

The new house has a huge kitchen with some top of the line equipment, although it was probably installed around 1994, after the last big earthquake when the house was enlarged.  At least, that's when the GE Monogram built-in refrigerator was made. That piece of equipment has barely worked since we moved in.  The repair people have been out four times so far (and, yes, we did purchase insurance against such breakdowns) but it still isn't working right.  I see Thanksgiving looming and fear a repeat of my then year old fridge breaking down on me just in time for that holiday.

That's Len and my friend Karen in the kitchen when we did one of the walk-throughs.  There's a center-island with a prep sink and the refrigerator, range, and wall ovens are on the left side of the picture.  There's a skylight/backlit ceiling stained glass of ducks over head (a motif also found in the etched glass of the front door) that's quite cheerful.  And there is a lot of cabinet space, even if I no longer have a walk-in pantry (my favorite thing about the rebuilt old house.)

Fortunately, we brought both the big refrigerator and the one we use for cold drinks with us when we moved. The big one is in the garage where, sadly, there is no water hook up for the ice maker, and the other sits on the patio for the convenience of our guests.  And to give me some extra freezer space because I don't have a working refrigerator in the kitchen.

This has not put a stop to the Sunday Super Supper Squad, which did not miss a beat during the move.  I've been trying new recipes almost every week and the kitchen is big enough that I can extend my dining room table to comfortably seat a dozen people.  We'll have to move it to the living room for Thanksgiving and its full extension for a larger crowd, but that's no big deal.

For Halloween, I made a huge pot of chicken and dumplings (above) which was a big hit and has provided lunch at work all week. It hasn't been nearly cold enough for such comfort food this week, with temperatures in the 90s, but it was cooler on Sunday night.  I'm hoping for a bit cooler this weekend because I've got two large butternut squashes awaiting their squash destiny as butternut squash soup.

I love the Viking range that came with the house--four large burners and a grill.  When I made the lobsters (below) for my friend Gayle's birthday party, I could boil 3 large pots of water so everything was ready at the same time. I don't know why people think making lobster is hard to do when the best way to serve it is so easy.

While the Dacor electric double wall oven would not have been my first choice (I prefer gas and my range had a 5.3 cubic foot oven, much bigger than these), it does a fine job and can take half-sheet pans. I haven't gotten around to making bread yet, but roasted chicken and frozen pizzas made on my baking stones have come out right. I am quite inspired to do Christmas cookies this year.

I will say that I am actually looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.  In the old house, I always dreaded the task of rearranging furniture to make space for the people we would try to squeeze in every year (23 was the most, 16 was average.) We usually had to put our living room furniture outside to make room for the tables inside. Then it was really hard to work in the kitchen because there wasn't really enough room for more than two people and everyone wants to volunteer to help. This year, I fully expect to be able to set the table the night before the actual event, while different kinds of desserts are baking away in the two ovens. And I won't have to stay up all night to do it.  Heaven.

Two Days in the Kitchen

Yes, I know how to bake. So why would I sign up to take a two-day baking class at Sur la Table? It sounded like fun and my son Michael expressed an interest in learning more about baking. I signed us both up for the class since I've wanted to learn how to make the always-intimidating puff pastry and brioche and he doesn't drive, so getting to the Farmer's Market would be tricky, even if it wasn't the same weekend as AIDS Walk LA, and streets were blocked all around the Farmer's Market on Sunday.

We had a blast and learned a lot.  Michael now knows how to make pastry cream, butter cream frosting, and chocolate meringues. I can make brioche bouchees, palmiers, galettes, and sorbet. That's him piping meringues in the photo above (making meringues is not recommended on a weekend as rainy and humid as the one in October when we did this.)  He also made the butter cream frosting and the pastry cream filling for the genoise in the photo below.

The class was taught by Vanessa diStefano (photo below.)  I didn't realize she was teaching until we got there. I know Vanessa through her screenwriter beau and we first met at a dinner with Harlan Ellison three years ago.  She worked as a pastry chef at Mesa Grill after graduating from culinary school and before coming out to California.

Here are the finished desserts, starting with Apple Galettes.

Chocolate Meringues with Strawberry Sorbet followed by Ham and Cheese Bouchees, Lemon Tart with Pignoli Crust and Raspberries, and Palmiers.

  

    Vanessa will be teaching the same workshop again at the end of January at the Farmer's Market Sur la Table in Los Angeles near Fairfax and Third Street.  Here's a link to register at Sur la Table classes. I recommend it.  It is a hands-on class and you are bound to meet interesting people and have a great time.  Vanessa will be teaching a number of other classes, including other types of baking classes in the coming months.  She's knowledgeable and a good instructor.

Note: As of June 2, 2011, I've change the link to the Sur la Table classes because they've updated their website. Check the schedule for the Farmer's Market location to see when Vanessa will again offer this class.  She does it several times a year.

The Staff of Life

I'm a big fan of Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur. That subtitle is totally accurate, because baking almost all of the breads in the cookbook take 2-3 days--and that's after you've gone out to the garden, cut down a bunch of grapes, and spent two weeks developing your own, personal sourdough starter. The results are totally worth the effort, but I no longer have the time to feed Audrey Two like clockwork or the money to keep myself in enough flour to keep her healthy. It is much easier to go to Costco and buy two loaves of the wonderful rosemary and olive oil bread for less than $5 and bank the time.

A couple of months ago, I was perusing food blogs and came across references to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It sounded intriguing. I called my friend Karen, who, aging hippie as we both are, has gone back to school to study baking because she wants to open a bakery when she and her husband finally move up to their land near Sequoia National Park. (Karen was a second career trademark attorney and spends some of her spare time weaving. Her husband is a litigator who relaxes by turning wood into beautiful pieces of art.) She was familiar with the technique discussed, but hadn't heard of the book.

Len bought me a copy for my birthday, but I didn't get a chance to try it out until 2 weeks ago. That's part of the charm: you make up the dough, let it raise once, and throw it into the refrigerator. Then you can pull off parts of it and quickly make fresh bread over the course of the two weeks the dough lasts. And yes, it works.

You can find links to Jeff Hertzberg's and Zoe Francois' blogs in the list on the right side of this page. Below are the before and after baking photographs of the loaf of bread I made while doing laundry for our vacation. I got a slice, but my son gets to eat the rest while we are gone. The technique is so simple, even my husband could do it if he wanted to. Except for a baking stone--and what kitchen should be without one?--there's no specialized equipment. The basic recipe is good for four one-pound loaves. I'll be mixing up another batch as soon as I get home. It will be really good with the artisan olive oils from the Central Coast of California.

The dough after it comes out of the refrigerator and has been shaped in about 30 seconds before a 40 minute raising time:


The dough after a 30 minute bake in my 450 degree oven on a baking stone:

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I'm going to try some of the variations next, because this is just the basic white sourdough. The book has all kinds of wonderful goodies, including pecan sticky buns. Yum.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is available in hardback from Amazon.com.