A nice breakfast at home after a long week:
Poached eggs, spinach, nettles (good!), bacon, first peas of the season, and a dressing of olive oil, black pepper, poppy seeds, fresh horseradish, and orange juice.
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First Poached Eggs
2 Feb
The first time I’d poached an egg? Or at least the first time in a decade.
Tried the vinegar and whirlpool tricks: 3″ of water, a few tsp white vinegar, brought to a light simmer, stirred into a whirlpool, egg eased from a cup (pre-cracked) into the center of the vortex (seemed to help keep the white in the middle with it), then left alone for 3-4 minutes.
With great rye bread, chives/thyme/parsley from the window box, blood oranges, bacon.
Now back to work.
Edit: Poached another the next morning, on spinach, chick peas, sun-dried tomatoes, with olive oil / lemon juice /
cumin dressing. Excellent:
Brunch: Beets, Potato Pancakes, Adult Salad
16 DecA vaguely Eastern European-inspired brunch. At the shopping level:
Brunch is served (everyone sits in the living room):
- Mashed potato pancakes (just regular mashed potatoes made the night before with plenty of butter and milk, warmed in the oven morning-of, with fresh minced green onions mixed in before frying the patties)
- Smoked fish (trout, mackerel) on dark rye and black sesame crackers
- Pickled beets
- Bloody Mary bar a.k.a. “Adult Salad” (tomato, vodka, fresh grated horseradish root (key!), cholula, pickled beans, olives, worcestershire, and oven-baked crispy bacon sticks for dunking)
And from friends, many things, including:
- Deviled eggs (with mustard, yogurt instead of mayo, pickles, smoked paprika)
- Fresh raisin scones
Good food and better company!
(I gave my usual food-prep obsession a break– I bought all the pickles instead of making them, made mashed potato pancakes instead of latkes to cut down on the morning-of labor so I could socialize more, and didn’t track down real farm-fresh eggs… I’ll have to assuage my guilt next time with some homemade bagels and trout I grab out of a fresh mountain stream with my bare hands, Gollum-style… or something)
Baked Egg in Squash, Crab
2 Dec
Cut a delicata squash into slices (rings), brush with olive oil, oven-roast at 400F for 20 minutes on each side.
Five minutes before it’s done (on the second side), crack an egg into the hole and bake until the yolk’s just the way you like it.
If you’re feeling fancy, serve with leftover Dungeness crab you’d cooked and picked the night before, marinated for half an hour in lemon juice and a bit of salt.
This is really good.
Making bagels, again
12 DecA few photos from another round of making bagels, over Thanksgiving:
Differences between this time and the last few times I’ve made them:
- I used the “6 cups all-purpose flour + 12 tsp vital wheat gluten” method of making high-gluten flour, since I didn’t have any special flour. This worked well, producing a chewy bagel.
- 3 tsp yeast (instead of the usual 2 1/4tsp packet), and it was mixed with a little of the malt syrup and lukewarm water a few minutes before adding it into the dough, to give it a head start, since proofing suggested this particular jar of yeast was on the old and lazy side. This seemed to work– the bagels rose slightly overnight (as expected, see the different in the 1st vs. 2nd photos) and puffed up nicely in the oven.
- I minced three cloves of garlic and toasted them (medium heat, dry skillet) until browned, then used them as a topping on some of them.
- I cooked in a different oven than normal, on a pizza stone. Unclear if this made a difference.
Taco brunch, sort of
16 Oct
Brunch for a few friends, including homemade corn tortillas, scrambled eggs, black beans (made with slow-cooked onions and garlic, anaheim pepper, toasted chipotle & cumin, a little tomato), sauteed Padrón peppers with sea salt, salsa (striped heirloom tomatoes, serrano peppers, lemon, a little white vinegar), and more. Delicious!
Scones, eggs, smoked paprika
8 OctMaple-pecan scones, scrambled eggs with a little smoked paprika, fruit, and a view of the Bay.
Maple-Pecan Scones
25 JulScones are one of the only things I’ve made where I’ve tried (and kept track of) many changes to a recipe over time and gradually evolved it. Here’s my current favorite version:
Maple-Pecan Scones (makes 16)
First, preheat the oven to 425 (don’t you hate recipes that don’t tell you to preheat the oven until late in the recipe?)
You’ll need:
- 2 & 1/2 cups white flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour (I’ve tried more– this is about as much as I can fit in)
- 1 & 1/2 cups chopped pecans (for even better scones, chop half of these pecans coarsely, and grind the other half into a powder, almost a “pecan flour”, in a food processor).
- 2 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 11(!) Tbsp cold butter
- 1 cup milk
- 1/3 cup maple syrup (plus a little extra to brush on) (real maple syrup, of course)
- A cast iron skillet
The process:
- Combine the flour, pecans, baking powder, and salt.
- Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, keeping it coarse! (pea-sized bits, don’t overdo it). I usually cut sticks of butter into 1 Tbsp squares with a knife first, then cut in those squares.
- Add the milk and maple syrup.
- Mix lightly, turn out onto a floured counter, and gently knead together, just to make it stick together.
- Add a bit of milk or flour if needed to have a sticky, slightly crumbling dough.
- Divide the dough in half (you can refrigerate half if you only want to make 8 scones now).
- Squeeze each half into a ball, then roll into a thick (maybe 3/4″ thick? I’ll have to measure it next time) 7″ diameter circle, and then cut into 8 wedges
- Put these wedges into a greased cast iron skillet.
- Brush the tops with maple syrup.
- For extra credit, put a half pecan on top of each scone.
- Bake at 425 for about 18 minutes (they should start to brown, your oven may vary, mine may be a bit on the cool side).
