The Hungry Tiger

Behold, a sandwich.

It's the fifth annual Sandwich Party! We have been eating variations on this sandwich four or five days out of seven since we moved to southern California.

The version you see before you is a little duded up, with those sprigs of cilantro. Occasionally it might instead be topped with a very few slivers of thinly sliced red onion, or slices of tomato. But the basic scheme is:

• Slice of kalamata sourdough bread
• Butter
• Avocado
• A tiny sprinkle of salt
• A drizzle of this here chile oil

That oil is really, really good. (So are these avocados, I tell you what.) I was thinking of making little bottles of it for christmas presents. Is that too weird, do you think? It depends on the recipient, I suppose, as with so many things.

Oaty pikelets

 

First I made these excellent pancakes. You start them the night ahead, with some oats and buttermilk mixed together in a bowl and put in the refrigerator to soak. (We have a fridge! At last! Hooray!) The next morning, you have some for breakfast and a few leftover, cold, later on. 

Soon I realized that though they were fine hot off the griddle, I liked the leftover ones much better. I started making them just for snacking on. And once I was doing that, I made them a bit smaller, the better for eating out of hand. And once that happened, I finally realized that what I was making, in fact, was oatmeal pikelets.

 

They are somewhere between a pancake and a crumpet, not quite as holey as the latter but made en masse for toasting (or not toasting) later, unlike the former. If you have crumpet rings, as I now do, you can make them extra pikelety and a bit taller. If you don't, leave out the extra splash of milk from the recipe below and just make small, free-form griddle cakes. The batter will be very thick, so they won't spread much, and they will work just fine. 

Then when you're done, either way, let them cool and pop them into a bag, or bags, or some covered container, and put them away in your refrigerator, so that over the next week you can eat them cold or toasted, with butter or jam, or butter and jam.

 

OAT PIKELETS
repurposed from Orangette

2 cups rolled oats
2 c. buttermilk
½ c. all-purpose flour
2 T. sugar
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 T. milk, if using crumpet rings

The night before, mix the oats and buttermilk together in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.

When you're ready to begin cooking, take out the bowl of oats and melt the butter in a small saucepan. Leave it a few minutes to cool down a bit.

In the meantime, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. 

Add the melted butter, beaten eggs, and milk (if using) to the oat mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture and mix just until it's completely incorporated. The batter will be thick.

You are going to cook these a little lower and slower than you might ordinarily cook pancakes, because of the thickness. Heat a skillet over a medium flame and brush a little butter on the pan. (I use the dregs of the melted butter that went into the batter.) If you are using crumpet rings, oil them too.

Set the crumpet rings in the pan, or not if you don't have any, and scoop the batter. A skimpy quarter cup is about right. That's about three tablespoons. When bubbles appear at the top and you can see that the edges are set, remove the rings and flip to finish. I find that the first side takes about four minutes when the temperature is right. The second side cooks a little more quickly.

Remove to a cooling rack and repeat until the batter is used up. 

For me, this makes 24 pikelets every time.

Egg salad sandwiches

Why did I think I disliked egg salad sandwiches?

We have been eating them weekly ever since I found out how much I like them freshly made from nice fresh egg salad heaped on nice freshly toasted bread with nice crisp lettuce. Nice! Fresh!

Further, they hardly take any time to put together, say on a night when I get home late after teaching an evening class. They are pretty, with their pale colors and frilly lettuce. They are both light and satisfying, which is pleasant at lunchtime or late at night. As long as you like eggs at all, what's not to like?

And then I had some at someone else's house not too long ago and was reminded of all I had disliked in the past. What is the difference between the stuff I hated and the stuff I love? Was it a failure of seasoning? Insufficient salt? Am I, in fact, a complete fascist for freshness, such that egg salad assembled more than ten minutes before the sandwich is made is as ashes in my mouth? I don't know. Maybe you have some idea.

Crostini with ricotta, honey, and thyme

This was our late night treat on New Years Eve, inspired by similar crostini we had at Marlow and Sons a few years ago.

The combination of flavors and textures -- crisp bread, milky ricotta, sweet honey, herbaceous thyme -- is unusual enough to surprise, gentle enough to soothe, and magical enough to impress. I love these so much, and they are so easy to make in proportion to how delicious they are that I would eat them all the time if not for the fear that I would devastate their specialness through overexposure.

There's nothing fussy about the preparation; it's just a matter of assembling five ingredients and letting the good things happen.

ALCHEMICAL CROSTINI

Slices of crusty bread
Olive oil
Good, fresh ricotta
Honey
Plenty of fresh thyme

Toast the bread. Brush it lightly with the olive oil. Heap it with the ricotta, drizzle with honey, and scatter with thyme leaves. No skimping. You could certainly use more thyme than shown in the photo and not regret it in the slightest.

Though obviously any simple dish like this depends on the quality of what goes into it, there's only one ingredient that you really have to be careful about here: the ricotta. Do not use something like Sargento from the supermarket dairy case. Look for something "hand-dipped" from a decent cheese counter or a specialty cheese shop.

Pumpkin bread

Here in America, November marks the time when canned pumpkin appears in profusion in every store. I myself am extremely fond of pumpkin pie, and especially like a slice the morning after Thanksgiving, chilly from the refrigerator. But what about times other than Thanksgiving, and what about sources other than the can?

Apparently there is a shortage of the canned stuff this season, brought on by bad weather a year ago. Fortunately producing your own is a snap, provided you don't use the pumpkins sold for jack-o-lanterns, which are weak and watery. Sugar or pie pumpkins are dandy, but my favorite is the good old reliable butternut, so smooth and easy to cut in half. In fact, the "pumpkins" that fill all those Libby's cans are a varietal that's more closely related to butternut squash than it is to the usual Halloween specimen. 

Just remove the seeds and roast until soft. Then scoop out the flesh, and send it through a food mill, ricer, or a trip in the food processor. The results freeze just fine. I often turn the bulb end of a butternut into puree this way while I'm using the neck for something else, and build up a nice little stock with hardly any trouble.

Then whenever you feel the need for a slice of reliable, unpretentious, autumnal cake, you can use a cup from your reserves to make pumpkin bread. I like good old Fannie Farmer for this sort of thing (especially with a couple of adjustments penciled in the margin) and I am always impressed at just how mindless it is to put a batch together. Before you have fully registered that you're engaged in an act of baking, you have put something delicious in the oven that will go admirably with a cup of tea or coffee, or that your child might hold in her tiny fist as she runs off to jump in the neighbor's pile of leaves.

Tarte au Sucre

In Canadian French, "tarte au sucre" means a real sugar pie: flaky pie crust with a sweet filling, along the lines of shoofly pie. In France, though, it's the name of a yeasted cake with sweet topping. To make one, first you make a brioche dough and pat it into a buttered springform pan. Then you spread the top with soft butter, and sprinkle sugar over that. In the oven, the sugar and butter melt into a crunchy sweet crust over a tender but substantial base.

Despite the name, it's not excessively sweet, and it makes an excellent breakfast or teatime snack. After the first day, I like to cut a wedge, then warm it in a toaster oven. (Keep an eye on it lest you burn the topping.) This magically restores it to soft freshness and adds a little bonus toasty flavor. With toasting, the slices we ate on Thursday were as good as the ones we'd had on Sunday.

Of course yeast doughs take a little extra planning, but this one is pretty straightforward, with its long cool overnight rise. I plan it like so: Start the dough on Friday or Saturday evening, then pop it into the fridge. The next morning, take it out first thing and go about your business showering, having breakfast, and so on while it comes to room temperature, or take it out after breakfast and go run a few errands. Then you can bake it up around lunchtime and have your first taste as an afternoon snack. Instructions below assume a stand mixer.

An excellent avocado sandwich

Inspired by this Ask Metafilter thread and the sandwich combining avocado with honey mustard that was described therein, tonight I made some avocado sandwiches of my own. We ate them standing up in the kitchen, making adjustments as we went: open-faced, because when you use as much avocado as we wanted to, closed-face versions just slide around; an extra sprinkle of salt; slivered red onions to gild the lily.

Like salads, most sandwiches don't really call for recipes, just descriptions. To make these, take a baguette and split it lengthwise, parallel to the table. Cut the resulting halves into pieces of whatever size suits you. Next, generously butter the cut sides of the bread with nice, soft salted butter. Now apply a good helping of avocado, mashing it slightly into the bread. Because the base of your sandwich is all crust, it will stand up to the pressure with no trouble. Sprinkle a little salt over the avocado and then add a generous (a theme with this sandwich) coating of honey mustard, which you have made by mixing equalish quanities of dijon mustard and honey.

This is very good as it is. But after we'd tried it, Snark said, "Is there any one ingredient that would make this even better?" That is how we wound up adding red onions, and also how I wound up eating quite a bit more than I had planned. In fact, if we hadn't used up all of our ripe avocado I would be eating even more right this minute.

Quick dhokla

I like fluffy, chewy steamed breads very much, though I don't usually think of making them at home. Do you know the kind of thing I'm talking about? Bright white mantou, for example -- those Chinese steamed buns with no filling. They're great, but something I buy at Chinatown bakeries rather than something I make myself.

These kinds of steamed breads, the dense, sweet kind filled with dates and walnuts and that kind of thing, well, I don't honestly think of them as breads. I like a nice plum pudding, but not this time of year!

 

The light, savory Indian steamed bread called dhokla, though, is so appealing that now I've realized that I can make it in the comfort of my own home, it's threatening to become a new staple recipe. I first had dhokla at the amazing Vik's in Berkeley. It's golden and springy, dressed with fried mustard seeds and fresh cilantro, and I love it. It's supposed to be more of a snack food, really, than something you're supposed to have with dinner, but so far dinner has been when we've had it, and leftovers the next morning with our coffee.

Since we're just a couple of dorky white heathens, anyhow, it works for us. The more traditional way of making dhokla includes a step in which you ferment it overnight, like a sourdough -- first making a batter of gram (chickpea) flour and/or rice flour and spices, or even soaking chana dal (that is, split hulled chickpeas) overnight, then grinding them together with the spices, and then letting that ferment for some hours. Only then do you add the baking soda.

I daresay that is even more delicious, but honestly this quick version tastes very nice too. It's also easy to make, despite the length of my instructions below. I adapted this recipe very slightly from the version at Saffron Trail, and added some tips based on what have struck me as potential pitfalls along the way. It makes enough for S. and me to have plenty for dinner and breakfast the next day; it should serve four as a lunch or hearty snack.

Savory lunchtime m***ins

I'm afraid the word "muffins" is always going to seem kind of dirty to me, in a sniggering playground sort of way. It's very hard for me to bring myself to say something like "Let me tell you all about my delicious savory muffins!" even though I really do, in fact, want to tell you about my delicious savory muffins.

Then there's also the difficulty that I suspect that even if you don't have my (perhaps? probably?) somewhat idiosyncratic associations with the word, "vegetable muffins" sounds more improving than appetizing. Is there some other word I could use to describe these items that would be equally accurate? Help me, please.

In any case, these were an excellent addition to our lunch boxes this week. They have a pleasant, moist but unsticky texture, slightly reminiscent of popovers because of the high proportion of eggs. They're full of vegetables, which makes them pretty healthy, and are not sweet.

The internet has many suggestions for ways to sneak vegetables into your picky children by way of baked goods and smoothies, and it seems like all of the veggie muffin recipes that result are sweet, not savory. I wanted something easy to pack in my lunch and eat out of hand, and veggie muffins (aggh, that word!) sounded like they might be a nice idea--but the apple-carrot or honey-zucchini-pumpkin route didn't really appeal.

I think this recipe should be pretty versatile, accommodating most any variety of vegetables, and you could mix it up quite a bit with your cheese/seasoning combinations. For example, broccoli, cheddar, and maybe a bit of mustard would go well together; or spinach, feta, and oregano or dill; or cauliflower, lemon zest, cumin, perhaps, and parmesan. Anyway, you get the idea. See what you think.

The versatile avocado

What an appealing idea: avocado chapatis. Often I have a spare avocado left from my bag of four or five, after a batch of guacamole and one or more other meals garnished with avocado all in the same week, and this seems like an excellent scheme for using up those loners (though I have also recently been reminded of how good avocados can been in salads, too, so there may be some competition for the green buttery goodness). The prospect of chapatis that stay nice long enough to pack in a lunchbox is very appealing, too!

A friendly aquaintance of mine in high school had a book on healthy eating for dancers that contained the memorable paired admonitions that cheese was the enemy, and one should never eat more than one avocado per day.

Good cold: open faced sandwiches and two vegetable mezze

We are entering the time of year when I frequently think it would be extremely unpleasant to stand near a hot stove at the end of a working day, but not yet the time of year when we can eat tomatoes every night. So the plan is to have a number of items that can be mixed and matched chilled or at room temperature, maybe alongside something very very quick to cook at the time, like scrambled eggs. Ideally they would also serve as nice components of smørrebrød, the existence of which I have only recently discovered.

Smørrebrød is an open-faced Danish sandwich constructed on that dense European bread that comes in remarkable dark brown bricks, sliced thin -- "health" bread, or that specially bricklike pumpernickel, or whateverelsebrot in that vein. I picked some up from World Market this morning. It is always covered completely by its toppings and always, or almost always, has a sauce of some sort on top (which makes sense when you experience how very dense indeed the bread can be). I found thinned Greek yogurt, a bit of salt, and lemon juice was easy and nice for the purpose.

You always eat these with knife and fork and always butter the bread thickly or spread it with goose schmaltz, to seal it against the toppings. (You will note that the smørrebrød concept is very closely related to the simple, down-home habit of Piling Tasty Things on Top of Toast.) I like this concept and think I will pursue it often, while I also intend to pursue often my more tried-and-true habit of the eclectic mezze. Today's cooking was therefore directed towards suitability for both, with some hardboiled eggs, sauteed mushrooms from the farmer's market, asparagus roasted in the toaster oven, etc. Two other dishes were new for me, and the recipes appear below.

Pizza pizza

I am afraid that work has largely eaten my head lately, but I will say that I just made a pizza using the recipes and techniques of Todd English and damn if it isn't incredibly good. I am a big fan of pizza with a very thin crust and sparingly applied toppings, and this dough does the job more admirably than any recipe I have found before.

Minced garlic and olive oil brushed on before the application of the not-too-much tomato sauce is a good idea, too. I was inspired to give this scheme a try by this entry at the always-delightful Grub Report. Keckler/Stephanie also is the source of excellent cocktail recipes in her recent recaps of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart at the official website of When We're Slacking here in the Hungry Tiger house, Television Without Pity. The hot toddy is a particular hit. (Tonight we're having wine, though.)

Abba's Market and Grill

Yesterday S. and I had doctor's appointments, the initial consultations to get us set up with our new family practice. Along with the transportation logistics and everything else, there was a gap between the appointments just brief enough that it didn't seem worthwhile to go back to work, so we scouted around the area for lunch. It's not the most attractive part of the world -- shopping centers and strip malls predominate, and we figured we would be settling for Chipotle. But lo and behold, we found Abba's Market instead. It's a Glatt kosher restaurant serving traditional European Jewish foods like matzo ball soup and plenty of Israeli dishes, too. It has an attached deli and an adjunct Chinese (!) food kitchen that serves the same dining area, and the Orthodox community nearby clearly knows and appreciates it.

I don't know why I can't find any fuller profiles of it online -- is it actually that obscure? I can't imagine that it would be, especially because of what took our breath away: the pita bread. They bake their own, and it is fluffy, slightly tangy, and hands down the best I have ever had. In the middle of the day, it seems that the baker just bakes and bakes and bakes and bakes them, tossing them onto the counter until they are three deep all the way along. You can buy them by the sack, I believe. Alas, no camera and so no picture this time; I'll try to take one when I go back for my full physical in May. (I'm afraid I might be too shy, though, to do it until I've been there a few more times.)
Abba's Market & Grill
13937 Cedar Rd
(That is, in Cedar Center)
South Euclid, OH

My parathoids

Parathas are a flaky Indian bread. Often they're stuffed with potatoes or onions or other things (you may have encountered them in this form in Indian restaurants). These are unstuffed, and also not quite really parathas because they're made with olive oil rather than ghee. The proportions and technique are partially from Indian Home Cooking and partially from my observations of my friend A.'s mother Tara.

The flour we use for almost everything is half King Arthur all-purpose flour (which has more protein than most all-purpose flours) and half King Arthur "white wheat" flour, a mild-tasting whole wheat. The large flour jar on our counter is just always filled with a 50/50 blend of these, so I scoop out 1 1/2 cups of that. In this case, the mixture is quite authentic. If you have to pick one or the other -- white vs. whole wheat -- I'd choose whole wheat. You're going for both flakiness and heartiness, and the gluten in pure white flour makes that tricky to achieve.

Bread bread wheat bread

I used to bake bread all the time -- and you do have to bake quite often if you want to do a really good job with so-called "artisinal" loaves. The sensitivity to various aspects of what's going on, like how much water your flour is absorbing, or how the ambient temperature is affecting your proofing, is much better if you practice all the time. Shaping, too, is easy to get rusty at. But all the bread I made was one hundred percent white flour, and that's pretty much verboten in S.'s diet, so I stopped.

Today I decided to get my toes wet with wholemeal baking, after feeling encouraged by Fortune Elkins' comments on the virtues of white wheat flour. I don't do sourdough, because I've never had the knack for it, and because maintaining a chef is assuredly something that calls for very frequent bread-baking. But I do like a fair amount of tang in my loaves, so I usually go in for some kind of pre-ferment. A pre-ferment involves making up some percentange of your dough (often in different proportions of flour to water than your final dough) ahead of time and giving it a period in which to devolop tasty fatty acids. Mm, fatty acids. I recently learned that temperatures between about 50 and 60 degrees Farenheit are optimal for acid production; if you're already working with sourdough, that can be overkill, but for me, it turns out to be nice to give the pre-ferments a chance at that golden temperature. Refrigeration will bring your pre-ferment down through this temperature range handily.

I also like to make quite a wet dough and knead it only so much, so as not to overwork and oxidize the flour, which makes bread more insipid. You can firm up a slack dough without working it too much or adding much extra flour by a few rounds of "turning" the dough in the first hour or so of rising. Turning consists of tipping your dough onto a lightly floured workspace, spreading it out gently, folding it up like an envelope, and popping it back in the bowl.

Finally, salt is important in a loaf of bread -- it counters insipidness and also retards yeast growth so you can have a longer fermentation period. But if you put it in too early, it can interfere with your dough's developing the best extensibility. So it should go in a bit late in the process, and pre-ferments containing it should, too.

For these loaves, I made the pre-ferments with white flour (King Arthur all-purpose) and used white wheat for the rest. The resulting proportion was something like 40:60. Turned out dang good, too, with the desirable chewy glutenous crumb. I'm going to try a higher proportion of wheat flour next time. I'm hoping I can gradually up the percentage and learn to work with it as I go.