Cooking

I had dried fava beans, so for an afternoon snack made ful medames: soak the beans overnight, then boil them in a fresh set of water for about three hours until soft, adding enough water to keep them covered, they boiling it down and mashing them into a paste, with lemon juice, olive oil, fresh garlic, and a bit of salt. Like hummus, but earthier. Served with crumbled feta, fresh parsley, some sliced crabapples, and toasted pita bread. This was good– I’d make it again. ...

Continuing to work through my first CSA box (which was kale, three artichokes, an acorn squash, a butternut squash, romano beans, sunchokes, and good eggs):

I just joined a weekly CSA: an excuse to start up a rotating few-friends Tuesday dinner party to use some of it while it’s especially fresh: Top: a bit of good ribeye steak. Bottom: a kale, sunchoke, romano bean, onion, and quinoa hash loosely inspired by this online recipe. This turned out quite well– better than usual for messing around in the kitchen. Basically, each ingredient got cooked/boiled separately until just-barely-done, the boiled sunchokes got sliced thin and fried in some butter, then everything else got added to them. Salt and pepper were the only seasonings. ...

Quite a day at work, so treating myself to: steak ( Five Dot Ranch ribeye w/ salt and pepper, seared on each side in a cast iron skillet on the stovetop, then cooked in the oven in the same skillet at 500F to the hairy edge of medium-rare), padrone peppers fried in olive oil, kale and spinach (lightly steamed), some good tomatoes ( Happy Boy dry-farmed, sweet), and a special Russian River Damnation-Ale-aged-with-oak-chips. Yes. ...

After so many frites, I needed a salad break, so: Kale shallow-blanched (a few inches of salted water for about 7 minutes), with green zebra tomatoes, radishes, feta, and roasted tomatillo salsa (purple tomatillos broiled in the oven about 10 minutes, then blended with the juice of a lemon, salt, pepper, a minced shallot, and a pinch of cayenne powder– I would have used a fresh or roasted green chili of some sort if I’d had one). ...

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!

I just made the bottom dish: “garbanzos, spinach, bread crumbs, spices” from Moro via Smitten Kitchen, and with clarified butter instead of olive oil. It was quite good, though maybe I’d use even more spices next time.

Basically this Smitten Kitchen recipe, with a few changes based on what the store was out of: Preheated oven to 425. Diced a butternut squash into 1" cubes, tossed with 3 cloves crushed garlic, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and 1/2 tsp of a " Kashmir curry powder" blend I had around. Roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes. Made a tahini dressing (3 Tbsp tahini, juice of two lemons, 2 Tbsp olive oil, 1 crushed clove garlic, a splash of water). Let the squash cool about 5 minutes, then tossed with a can of cannellini beans. Drizzled with the tahini dressing, minced parsley, and pepper. [ edit: It tasted great, but the texture was a bit boring– I think it would have been better with garbanzos as originally intended, or next to some crunchy fresh vegetables ] ...

Maple-pecan scones, scrambled eggs with a little smoked paprika, fruit, and a view of the Bay.

Basically this recipe, but with chipotle flakes instead of red pepper, with slices of baguette and irish cheddar broiled on top, and with a little fresh basil.

A brief article from Slate earlier this summer suggests that if you’re making your own bagels, the water (New York or otherwise) doesn’t really matter– it’s the combination of gluten, slow rising, and boiling before baking. Similarly, an article in The Food Lab at Slice / Serious Eats suggests the mineral level in water has no significant effect on the quality of pizza dough.

I’ve probably made bagels 25-30 times at this point, and have reached a point where they turn out surprisingly well– not the best I’ve had in New York, but better then any bagel I can buy locally. Here’s my standard recipe, based on trying a few variants (I’ve even made two different recipes and done blind taste tests with friends). It’s very similar to the one in The New Best Recipe. ...

Some typical flours and their protein percentages: Cake or pastry flour: 8-9% Generic all-purpose flour: 10.3%? King Arthur all-purpose flour: 11.7% Generic bread flour: 11.7%? King Arthur bread flour: 12.7% King Arthur whole wheat flour: 14% <-- though I believe the protein / gluten relationship in whole wheat is different, because some of this protein is in the bran yet not available to promote gluten formation. King Arthur Sir Lancelot high-gluten flour: 14.2% Bob’s Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten: 75% Why am I posting this? Mainly because I’m about to post a bagel recipe, and having a high-protein flour really does matter for them. ...

I’ve made bagels 7 or 8 times at this point, and thought I’d settled on a recipe I liked… but cooking in a new kitchen always throws a few wrenches in the works. In this case, the oven in a vacation home rented with friends didn’t seem to want to go above 350F, while I wanted 450F… so I baked some bagels in the oven, but cooked most of them on a gas BBQ grill on the outside deck. To my surprise, that worked pretty well. ...

Here’s a quick post-bike-ride dinner I assembled in 30 minutes from getting home to sitting down to eat (I say “assembled” because I picked up major premade components from Rainbow on the ride home– go ahead, think less of me). 1. Boiled water (slowly on my sad electric stove) and also heated milk on medium high with a few pinches of salt, stirring frequently to avoid scorching. 2. Shelled some fresh cranberry beans (they caught my eye after a recent conversation and a dinner at Camino). ...