The Hungry Tiger

Crackers

Last week we were headed to our friend Mary's house, where she was worried there would not be enough food. There was cheese, but no crackers -- and I did not feel the least bit like going out to the store. What does a lazy girl do in this circumstance? Why, she makes her own crackers, of course!

It may sound like madness to suggest that it's easier to make crackers at home than it is to go out and buy them. And it may be that it is not exactly easier. But it is pretty dang easy, anyway, and you don't have to go out into the cold. The recipe is more or less the recipe for matzo that is demonstrated here, only whole-wheat-ified, because I wanted something that tasted a little more like Ak-mak, my favorite storebought cracker du jour. The resulting crackers were savory and addictively crunchy, good with cheese or soup or dip or nothing at all.
4 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 c. sesame seeds.
2 t. kosher salt or other salt of about that coarseness, plus extra for sprinkling
1 T wheat gluten (not required, but handy)
1 1/2 c. warm water


Take out one of your oven racks and move the other to the lowest setting. Put an upside-down cookie sheet on that rack. Preheat the oven as hot as it will go, short of broiling or self-clean -- usually 550°.

Make a dough and knead it plenty. Cut into twelve equal pieces. Set all but one aside and roll it out very, very thin, using plenty of flour. It should come out to be an irregular oval about the size of a letter-size piece of paper. The sesame seeds will cut the gluten threads so it's much easier to roll out than ordinary bread dough would be. When it's all rolled out, prick it all over with a fork and sprinkle with salt. Run your hands over the top of the dough, but don't press down. Some salt will stick, some will fall off. Go with it.

Now, pick the dough up by one end and get it on the cookie sheet. There's a knack to this -- the book suggests thinking of it as doing what you do when you lay down a beach towel, and that seems about right to me. Close the door right quick and wait exactly one minute. Open the door. The matzo will be bubbly and bready looking. Quickly turn it over (using your hands is easiest, but be careful) and close the door for another minute. Check on the cracker. Is it toasty and crisp? If not, flip it again and wait another thirty seconds. Check again. Give it a flip. If it's crisp, take it out. Otherwise, wait one more thirty-second interval. Remove to a cooling rack and do the next one.

When they're all done, you can keep them whole, which is quite impressive, or break them into irregular pieces. If any are less than fully crisp, or if they soften up from humidity, you can just pop them into a moderate oven for a few minutes and they'll firm right up.

My two favorite snacks lately

- Fresh pita bread from the natural foods store, toasted, spread with quark* and sprinkled with zaatar. The bread looks very doughy and unassuming in its untoasted state, just a white squashy oblong with no character to speak of. But in the toaster oven it puffs magnificently and turns a perfect golden brown. Then it's crispy and chewy and tender all at once, and so very, very good. I only wish it were cheaper. Obviously what I need to do is to learn to make my own. The key would be to catch them at the right point of underdoneness to replicate the effect, and so they don't dry out in toasting. I may make this a project for the next time I am desperately looking to avoid work.

- Ochazuke, which is rice with green tea poured over top (usually with savory seasonings, as well) to make a kind of thick rice soup. It sounds not so good, but after reading enough people's plaudits, I decided to give it a try, and it makes a very tasty soothing snack, perfect, as one site says, for late evening. The seasoning I've been using is a pretty basic sprinkle with wakame and little rice crackers. But there are many more elaborate packaged ochazuke mixes, many of which include powdered tea, so that you only need to add rice and boiling water. There's even (of course) a Hello Kitty ochazuke mix, with little kitty-face nori. I wanted to link to a picture for you, but I guess the site where I saw it has sold out, because it doesn't seem to be there anymore. OH WELL. Trust me when I tell you that it was remarkable.

*There was a nice article about quark in last week's New York Times food section, but it's no longer publicly available. I'm very frustrated with how rapidly the Times moves its articles to the pay-only archives these days. This is churlish of me, I suppose, but arrgh!

The whitest of toasts, Welsh rabbit

The other night we were having something-or-other that really cried out for toast. But alas, there was no bread in the house, and dinner was almost ready. So S. ran out to the bodega down the block and brought home a loaf -- of Wonder Bread. It is a variety described as "buttermilk," though the effect of this buttermilk is a little difficult to discern. Maybe it's noticably different that normal, ordinary Wonder Bread, but it seems pretty plain to me. It's Wonder Bread, the Twinkie of breads, terrifying in its shelf-stability and squishy whiteness. But oh, it makes the dandiest toast.

I was perhaps unjustifiably shocked by how Platonically ideal wondertoast turns out to be. So evenly and crisply does it toast, so steamy and toasty is the smell that rises as it does, so perfectly and goldenly does it take the butter. I don't think I'm going to start buying it all the time, but I also won't have the slightest bit of trouble using it up.

And so we have been having toast aplenty. First we had it with a sort of classic British fry-up (vegetarian variation). Last night we had succotash with buttered toast fingers (delicious). And we've been having it most every morning with my new absolute favorite spread, Mackays spiced ginger preserve. It is a sort of marmelade of ginger, with lovely tender pieces scattered throughout. I am the sort of person who can eat alarming quantities of crystallized ginger at a sitting, and one of the most wonderful things I have ever eaten was a piece of stem ginger in syrup, which if you can get it is utterly divine alongside a savory breakfast, at least if you are the kind of person who likes it when the maple syrup gets among your sausages.

I own a much loved and battered copy of Jane and Michael Stern's Square Meals, which is a somewhat bewildering cross between campy food history, with deadpan recipes for things like the grape-juice infused "Kilauea Purple Passion Rice" mixed together with genuinely appealing nostalgia dishes like noodle kugel. Their section on "Toast and Cereal," which falls mainly into the latter category, suggests baking your own in a lidded pullman loaf pan (an item I have never encountered in real life) or using the classic Peppridge Farm Toasting White, which I'm sure is dandy too.

And when you've obtained your perfect toasting bread, and life is a bit much for you to bear, and you've tired of butter and jam and cinnamon sugar and even ginger preserves, you can have that most nursery of lunches, Welsh rarebit.

WELSH RAREBIT

For two people:
Four to six slices bread
Butter
8 oz. cheddar cheese
1/4 c. beer (flat is fine), or milk if you are feeling extra mild-mannered
1 t. prepared mustard
Pepper

Gently melt cheese and beer together, stirring, until smooth. Do not allow to boil. Stir in mustard and pepper. Meanwhile, toast and butter bread. Cut into triangles. Pour cheese over toast. Eat with knife and fork.

Cocktails and nibbles

Last night we had a cocktail party of sorts. It was quite a success, and now I am too feeble to do much of anything, including my French exercises. But at least the apartment is magically not a hideous mess, thanks to the magic of making it very clean beforehand and having a dishwasher. Also, I was clever enough to devise a plan where we had an impressive spread of food, but nothing was at all difficult to make (and some of it was artfully purchased). I got it all made in about three hours, and memorized Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" while I was at it. Here was the menu:

Crostini
Tuscan white bean spread
Red pepper and onions, sauteed in olive oil
Eggplant agrodulce
Salad of tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella
Deviled eggs
Focaccia
Tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole
Crackers
Cheese
Wasabi peas

A relatively well-stocked bar for cocktails, with simple syrup and lemons and limes A pitcher of Pimms Cup
Wine
Beer
Juice

CROSTINI
Buy a loaf of crusty bread. Slice it. Toast lightly, just until the bread is dry and firm and slightly golden. Let cool on a rack, not on a plate (the steam will soften it back up, which you do not want). Scrub each slice with a clove of garlic, on both sides. Then keep them around until your guests arrive. Brush with olive oil and toast to a deep gold in a toaster oven or a 400° F. oven. Encourage your guests to spoon the other antipasti on top, to make bruschetta.

TUSCAN WHITE BEAN SPREAD
Drain a can of white beans, preferably organic. Reserve the liquid. Take three or four cloves of garlic and mince with a generous pinch of kosher salt or sea salt into a puree. Heat a bit of olive oil in a skillet and sauté the garlic for a minute, along with some thyme. Add the beans and cook over gentle heat, mashing them with the side of your wooden spoon or spatula. Add the bean liquid to bring it back to a creamy, spreadable consistency.

EGGPLANT AGRODULCE
Take two medium-small eggplants. Peel and slice into 1/2" half-circles. Toss these with olive oil and salt and pile in a baking dish. Scatter a few garlic cloves among them and cover. Bake at 400° F. for about 20 minutes. Uncover and stir. Continue baking until utterly collapsing, about 20 minutes more, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Remove from oven and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and a bit of lemon juice. Add about a tablespoon of capers. Mix thoroughly and let cool.

FOCACCIA
1 teaspoon yeast, 1 1/4 c. warm water, 3 1/2 c. flour, 1 T. olive oil (plus extra for oiling the bowl while it rises and for brushing on top before baking), 1 T. salt, crispy fried onions folded in between first and second rise. First rise: one and a half hours; second rise: half an hour; third rise, after shaping and dimpling all over: forty-five minutes. Bake at 425° F until it's done.

DEVILED EGGS, TOMATO SALAD, PEPPERS AND ONIONS
Oh, I don't really need to tell you how to make any of that, do I?

PIMMS CUP
Fill pitcher one third of the way up with ice. Add sliced orange and cucumber (with peel on, please). One part Pimms No. 1 to a little over one part ginger ale. Several drops of Angustura bitters. When you pour a glass full, garnish with a slice of orange and a slice of cucumber from the pitcher.

Pancakes in the Indian Style

The other night, I made some curry. This is not particularly unusual, but ordinarily I make basmati rice on curry nights, and this time I felt very much that I would like some tasty breadstuff instead. So I rooted around in Madhur Jaffrey's World of Vegetarian Cooking and found a recipe for -- not uttapam, which requires soaking and grinding and fermenting rice overnight, but a kind of mock uttapam, which I then modified some more to accommodate the contents of my own pantry. The results were pretty much everything I wanted: chewy, flavorful, plentiful, and excellent for transporting curry from plate to mouth. They would make a nice snack on their own, too, and I think they would even do well made ahead of time and reheated, so don't be afraid of leftovers.

The proportions below make about 10 pancakes if you make the batter on the thin side and the pancakes about the size of a saucer.

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt
pinch sugar
a teaspoon powdered buttermilk (optional)
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
generous pinch ground fenugreek


Mix the yeast, warm water and sugar in a large mixing bowl and let rest for five minutes. Stir in the flour, salt, and buttermilk powder (if you have some around -- or you could substitute buttermilk for some of the water) until just mixed. Let rest 1 1/2 hours.

Heat the mustard seeds and fenugreek in the oil until the seeds begin to pop. I find it convenient to use a metal ladle for this purpose. The oil and spices go in the bowl of the ladle, and then I swirl them gently as they heat, holding them about two inches above the surface of my gas burner. Dump the hot oil and seeds into the batter, and stir in, being sure to stir up from the bottom of the bowl.

Let the batter sit another 15 minutes. Turn the oven to some low temperature, just enough to keep things warm, and put a plate inside. Heat a nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron griddle over medium-high heat, and then make the pancakes: Drop about 1/4 cup of batter onto the griddle (which you can brush with oil first, if you like, and if you want crisper pancakes) and use the bottom of your ladle to spread it out thin, in a quick spiraling motion. You can thin the batter with more water if you want the pancakes to be more cakelike. When the entire top of the pancake has lost its wet sheen, turn it over. Cook, turning a couple of times, until both sides are speckled reddish brown. Transfer to the plate in the oven, and repeat until the batter is all gone.

Crusty walnut bread

This is the recipe for the walnut bread I made yesterday. It's time-consuming and maybe excessively artisan-y, but the results are awfully good. Tragically enough, this is the short version. I've put in a little bit of explanation of some of the odder steps, most of which I learned from a book called Artisan Baking Across America, though this isn't a recipe from that book -- more a cobbling together of things. Total time: A little more than seven hours.

First, make the pre-ferment. This sponge develops flavor and natural yeasts, and improves the texture of the final dough. It will give the bread some added acidity, though not as much as a sourdough has.

1/2 cup water
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt


Mix until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let ferment for 2 1/2 hours. Add 1 1/3 c warm water and stir a bit. Then mix in 3 cups (16 oz) flour and 1/2 tsp yeast. When the batter is smooth, let sit 15 minutes. This resting period helps the gluten develop and smooth out.

After the rest, add 2 1/2 teaspoons salt. Mix with dough hook for 10 minutes at medium speed. Sprinkle in 6 ounces of coarsely chopped walnuts and mix about 30 seconds more. The dough will still be quite wet. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 3 hours. At 20, 40, and 60 minutes into this period, dump the dough onto a well floured surface (it helps to have a dough scraper to assist in this task), dust it with flour, and spread into a rough rectangle. Fold the left and right edges in toward the middle. Fold the bottom up just past the center and bring the top down to overlap the bottom, as if it were an envelope.

This is called turning the dough, and it will firm it up considerably while leaving the moisture content quite high. It also develops the gluten for a nice chewy crumb. The first time you do this (20 minutes after the final mixing), clean and dry the bowl while the dough sits on the counter. For the final 2 hours rising, leave the dough to its own devices.

Divide the dough into three equal portions and shape into rounds or torpedos on a cookie sheet covered with either parchment or cornmeal. Cover with a towel and let relax for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 450° F. Slash the loaves with a sharp knife just before you put them in the oven. I like to throw a few ice cubes onto the floor of the oven right after I put the bread in; the blast of steam makes for a nice crust. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 400. Bake another 30 minutes.

About pizza

Tonight I made pizza with an assortment of mushrooms from the farmer's market. The crust came out very well indeed. Part of that is that I am getting better at shaping the pizza quickly -- I've been doing a thing where I make a disk by draping the dough over my fists and stretching, but then rapidly transferring it to the pan and shaping it by making my hands into C shapes and moving over and around the dough with the sides of my hands, stretching just by moving them outward. Somehow this works well for me as a way of getting the dough evenly stretched out with a minimum of fuss and bother, while leaving a nice even thicker edge all around. The other thing that I think helped is that I moved the rack up to the very top of the oven, a strategy recommended by John Thorne for getting the hottest possible temperatures out of a home oven. The result was wonderfully crisp of crust but chewy and tender inside, even in the thinnest parts of the circle.

You will be able to tell from all this that I possess neither a pizza peel nor a stone -- I just shape the pizza right on a big steel baking sheet, well coated with olive oil. Clearly this strategy is utterly inauthentic, and I do sometimes feel like I ought to get a peel and some unglazed tiles and do it right. But then my shaping strategy would be hard to adapt to a peel, and my new top-of-the-oven technique would not work well with leaving the tiles permanently in the oven. Nor, come to think of it, would I have much confidence in my ability to transfer pizza from peel to stones in such a tight space. So goodbye, dull care, and also authenticity, I say.

The pizza dough recipe I have here is attributed in my notebook to Carol Field's The Italian Baker. But now I have my own copy of the book, and I don't see any recipe there that quite corresponds. So either it is from another book of hers, or it has been already poked and prodded and adjusted into shape by others who have gone before. It is very good. The quantities below make two sizeable thin pizzas, or one thickish one. For the two of us, or for us and one guest, I halve them.

GOOD PIZZA

1 1/2 c. warm water
2 t. dry yeast
1 1/2 t. sugar


Let these sit for 5-10 minutes.

Add 2 T. olive oil, 4 c. flour, and 1 1/2 t. salt. Mix well and knead very thoroughly. Clean your bowl and oil it lightly. Return dough to bowl, cover with a tea towel, and set in a warm, still place.

First rise: 1 hour or until doubled. Punch down.

Second rise: 20 minutes maximum.

Heat oven to 450° F. While it warms up, shape the pizza (or the first of your two pizzas, if that's what you're up to). Apply your sauce and other treats, but not cheese. Bake 10 minutes. Then add the cheese and any delicate toppings, like basil or other fresh leafy things. Return to oven and bake just until the cheese is bubbly.

Little bensone (bensini?)

Our current breakfast phase. These mid-sized golden pastries somehow come out with an almost cornbread-like crumb, though not as dry as a lot of cornbread seems to be. I don't really know what makes them turn out so pretty and yellow, but it is a nice bonus feature. They are nicest warm, can be heated up in your oven or toaster oven, and freeze well. They are an evolution of a recipe from Carol Fields' Celebrating Italy, but the recipe there is for great big cakes that you cut into slices. I like the individual ones better myself.

3 scant cups flour, plus extra for kneading
3/4 t. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 c. sugar
pinch salt
grated zest of one lemon or lime
7 T. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 eggs
6 T milk
1 t vanilla
milk and turbinado sugar (or ordinary sugar, if that's all you have) for dusting

Preheat oven to 350° F. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar in a large bowl. Stir in lemon zest and salt. Add butter and rub it into the dry ingredients until you get a sandy consistency.

In another container, mix the eggs, milk and vanilla. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients. Mix and knead lightly until the dough is smooth and soft, adding flour only if absolutely necessary.

Divide dough into 6 portions. Roll out into coils about 6" long and form into tight S shapes. Arrange on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Don't overbake!

Cucumber sandwiches on Boxing Day

We have returned from the wilds of Pittsburgh, where we ate many fine foods prepared by other people. My mother always throws a big party on Boxing Day, with eight million tasty treats she's prepared over the last week or two up through the day itself: three kinds of cookies and a Linzer torte and deviled eggs and marinated olives and white bean dip and cream cheese with pickapeppa sauce and little sandwiches and homemade bread and savory palmiers and and and. My contribution was some very tasty little cucumber sandwiches.

Normally cucumber sandwiches are pretty blah, I think, but if you make 'em right, they can be really great. They are delicate and ladylike, yet filling. They taste good and have a terrific textural thing going on. They are easy to make in great quantity, and cheap, too. There are 3 secrets to making good cucumber sandwiches:

(1) Slice the cucumbers very, very thin. If you have a mandolin, now would be a good time to use it, though a sharp knife will do the job just as well. A dull knife is hopeless. The object is to have translucently thin and flexible slices, not opaque disks.

(2) Spread the bread with tasty herb butter--on both slices, please.

(3) Wrap the plate of sandwiches in a damp but well-wrung-out tea towel for at least an hour before serving, right up until the moment when you serve them. This makes the bread nice and moist, gives the cucumbers time to give up a little moisture (the salt in the butter will effectively salt your cucumbers for you), and helps the sandwiches to meld properly.

It goes without saying that you should use a thinly pre-sliced white sandwich loaf, and trim those crusts off. Crusts have no place on a tea sandwich. If you like, you can use cookie cutters or a biscuit cutter to cut the bread into pretty shapes. Triangles are also nice. If you are feeling really fussy, you can butter the edges of your sandwiches and roll them in chopped parsley. English cucumbers are nice, because you don't have to peel them--if you wind up with a thick-skinned, waxy customer, though, you'll have to peel it. One decent-sized cucumber will go a long way, because you will be cutting it so thin.

For the herb butter, you will want a stick of nice soft salted butter, or unsalted butter plus a generous pinch of salt, and about 2 tablespoons of very finely minced fresh herbs. I think it is best to include one oniony herb, either chives or garlic scapes. Other nice herbs to include are thyme, italian parsley, and marjoram. Be careful not to let any woody stem bits in. Mash your butter and herbs together thoroughly, and spread every slice of bread with a nice thin (but not skimpy) coat right out to the edge. Overlap the cucumbers about one layer deep (that is, two slices deep where they overlap, one deep elsewhere, no blank spots) in each sandwich, stack the sandwiches in a nice pile on a pretty plate, and then wrap with the aforementioned big damp tea towel. Refrigerate.

Not all dinners are so fascinating

(1) Leek, potato, and sorrel soup. Used up the last of some extraordinarily boring potatoes. You might not think that it is possible for potatoes to be extraordinarily boring, but I assure you, it is.

(2) Toasted bread rubbed with garlic. Despite what this may sound like, it was not remotely bruschetta. It was toast, and nothing else. Interestingly, the feeble, bendy-crusted bakery loaf that was turned into this toast had itself been labeled, quite, quite unconvincingly, "BRUSCHETTA." Whatever it was meant to be, it was vastly improved by toasting and garlicifying, and the soup was improved by its presence. So that was all right.

(3) Hot chocolate with knockoff Bailey's Irish Cream.

Sunday brioche

This morning, we had almond brioche, as a special Sunday treat, made by tucking a lump of some nice organic Sicilian almond paste in the center of each when I formed the loaves. These were slightly larger than our usual têtes, made from a skimpy eighth of a batch each, instead of one more generous eighth divided in two. It would have been too much food for a usual breakfast, but since we get a much later start on Sundays, it was just right. And of course larger loaves have a higher insides-to-crust ratio, which it turns out is what I want. Torn in half and melty almond paste spread all over, so delicious.

Brioche in the morning

The refrigerator has decided to work like gangbusters; maybe it had some gripe with the previous tenents and finally noticed they were gone. It's being replaced on Friday anyway, and I feel sorry for it, now that it's trying so hard. Poor fridge.

Yesterday I worked at home all day and found that, even in the middle of a pile of unshelved books and cardboard boxes, it is really not so unpleasant when there are not also several people stomping around your apartment banging on the walls and installing molding with a huge nail gun. While I wrote in blessed quietude, I also made an enormous batch of brioche dough. Brioche isn't difficult, it just takes a lot of time (though very little attention for most of that time) and a stand mixer, making it the perfect occupation for a hungry graduate student in possession of a Kitchenaid and some eggs, butter, and flour.

The recipe in Baking With Julia, courtesy of Nancy Silverton, makes enough for three big loaves. This is a lot of dough, enough to keep us in luxurious fresh morning brioche for over a week. Here's how it works: I divided the dough into eight parts after the second, long rise. Each is wrapped in plastic and frozen. Then in the morning, I put a piece in the refrigerator to thaw. Before bed, I take it out, divide it in two, form it into little round loaves, and tuck them into buttered ramekins. They go back into the refrigerator, covered, while we sleep. In the morning, I take them out and set them on the counter while the oven preheats to 375° F. While all that sorts itself out, I shower. By the time that's done, they're ready to go into the oven. They bake for fifteen to twenty minutes, only a little longer than the time it takes to get the coffee ready and roust Snark from his golden slumber. And then -- unspeakably glorious! -- we sit at a table with hot coffee and hot brioche, maybe with a little butter and jam, and know that there isn't even anything unpleasant to wash up.

Roasting

Tonight's dinner: green salad, pizza with olive oil and rosemary, sweet potatoes. Snark bought the world's biggest sweet potato while I was out of town. I don't have a kitchen scale, but it certainly weighs at least 2 pounds all in itself. It seemed crucial to use it up before we went out of town, so tonight I made the simple and extremely tasty Cuban sweet potatoes with cilantro and garlic as described on Nobody's Fool. The only flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan was that between baking the bread and roasting the sweet potatoes, it got awfully hot in my little kitchen. By the time dinner was ready to go on the table, I had been transformed into a snarling, sweating monster. Fortunately, the tastiness of the food combined with the calming, cooling properties of a Yuengling Black and Tan to revive me considerably, and I was returned to my normal, only moderately unpleasant self.

A recipe for the bread will follow shortly.

Planning ahead

As I had the day off and will be trying to meet with a lot of people tomorrow and after, today involved a lot of making ahead, both a batch of stock and a batch of sweet dough from Artisan Baking Across America. The dough involves an extended chilling period, from eight up to thirty-six hours, so I thought it would work well for making just a few items to have fresh each morning. I divided the dough into three pieces before putting it in the fridge: first in half, and then one of the halves into quarters. The half batch will go to cinnamon-currant bread (also from the book) that I will take to my mother's house this weekend, and the two quarters will go to making breakfast pastries filled with marmalade. I will write these up in more detail if they come out well.