Mock, Paper, Scissors

The food challenge for August is tomatoes, and once again I find this to be a challenge. You see, with that nonexistent climate change thingy, here it is–mid August–my tomatoes finally have blossoms. So while the East Coast bakes under unusual heat, here in the SF Bay Area instead of having our traditional 90° summer, we have only cracked 80° twice. Most days are in the low 70° range, without a tomato in sight.

But fortunately, we do have some excellent farmers’ markets that are supplied from the nearby central valley, so the challenge goes on!

Given that I rarely cook out of season, this challenge represents a real shift in perspective for me. I want to can something that I will use, that will remind me of the best of summer and in someway make my life easier: pretty much a complete dinner in a jar is what is called for, and so I decided to make a meatless gumbo.

This has it all: tomatoes, okra, onions, peppers, garlic… what more could you want in the dead of winter when you open the jar after a long and miserable day and a slog through the cold rain than to have a bowl of bright, sharp flavors from the summer. Serve this over a bed of fluffy white rice and you will be glad you made it now. If you are a carnivore (I am!) you can always sauté some bacon, ham, shrimp, sausage, or a combo to serve with this.

Gumbo

This is not a spicy-strong gumbo, it has really fresh, bright notes. Of course, if you want to make it spicier, knock yourselves out.

Ingredients:

• 4 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored, peeled and roughly chopped (I used red heirlooms – reserve 1 cored, peeled tomato)
• 1 + pounds of okra, sliced (yes, it’s slimy when you cut it, but oh! so good! If you have a little kid on hand who likes gross stuff, boy will he appreciate helping you out!)
• 1 pound onions diced 1/4-1/2 inch
• 2 green peppers, diced
• 1 ounce garlic minced (we’ll talk about this in the technique)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon citric acid
• 2 Bay leaves (Please use the real kind, not the California bay leaves, they are nasty. Lauris Nobiliss is the real kind. Look for it on the lable.)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/3 cup of butter, melted
• 1/6 cup of flour
• 2 Tablespoons fresh Thyme, chopped (have all the herbs ready to chop at the last moment so they keep as much of their color as possible)
• 1 oz. Fresh Basil leaves, chopped
• 1/2 oz Fresh Italian Parsley leaves chopped

Make It:

1. In a saucepan, make a tea of the Bay leaves and the water: bring to a boil and then let it steep for about 10 minutes. Discard the Bay leaves.
2. Put the reserved tomato and the herbs in a blender and set aside.
3. add all the remaining ingredients – EXCEPT the butter and flour – to a non-reactive pan, and add the Bay leaf tea. Cook over medium heat, stirring and mashing. Bring it to a simmer near a boil.
4. Make a roux of the flour and butter — we’ve talked about this before, melt the butter, add the flour and cook it. The idea is to get it as toasty and brown as you can before it has a chance to burn. Just keep moving it about the pan, stirring constantly. You can go for as little as a minute, but try to keep going until it smells nutty. Stir it into the gumbo – it will sizzle and it might look like it is making little dumplings–soldier on and stir it into the pot. It will thicken the gumbo.
5. Blend the reserved tomato and the herbs add it to the pot at the last moment before you start canning.
6. Follow the Tigress’ instructions on water-bath canning – I processed the gumbo for 15 minutes because I made 3 quart jars.

Technique and Suggestions

• When I am mincing garlic, I usually use the salt for the recipe and pour it over the garlic. This helps to abrade it, and you can make a really fine paste. Remember, the smaller the garlic is chopped, the hotter it becomes — and the opposite is true too: the larger the pieces the less heat it makes when cooked. You can control the garlic’s heat just based upon how fine you mince it.
• For food safety, the really important issue is the acidity of the dish. Do not skimp on the lemon juice or the citric acid. When you test the acidity on a pH strip or meter, it should come out to 4.3 or below. If not, add a pinch more citric acid or a (small) splash more lemon juice until you get to the right level of acidity.
• Knock yourselves out: I usually double the cayenne at least, and use almost whole head of garlic; I might use some hot peppers, too. It’s up to you how far you want to take it. You can use the recipe as is if you are a civilian, but if you are a Ragin’ Cajun, well, you know what to do.
• I think that the important ratio to keep is the tomato-okra. The okra provides some of the thickening for the gumbo, but it really works it’s magic as a component in this. You can use less, but why would you? It won’t be slimy once it is cooked, and it’s okra, man.

We’ve talked about this before: always truss a chicken before you roast it. It’s not just that it looks better – it cooks more evenly. There are as many ways to truss a chicken as there are stars in the heavens, but this is a pretty good fool-proof way of doing it.

Just try it – what have you got to lose?

(Ruhlman)

Completely non-political, but I’ve had a helluva afternoon and am ready to carve my ex a new watermelon-size hole, so I am relaxing by watching teh silly.

This one needs a caption. And maybe some dialogue. And title. And someone hand that cutie pie a spoon and a napkin please!

Oh, and who stole the contest category??? Back to silly videos, at least until Bluegal’s chat salon begins in exactly an hour and 23 minutes.

Update: CHAT SALON IS OPEN

Also, first prize is your choice: a cute baby or slightly less cute watermelon.

The food challenge for July is Cucurbitaceae, a plant family commonly known as melons and gourds, including crops like cucumbers, squashes (including pumpkins), loofahs, melons and watermelons…

Watermelons, you say?

My mother used to eat pickled watermelon rind that she bought at the very fancy market on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. The pickled watermelon rind from the market came in some sort of appalling green syrup in tall, narrow jars. She would buy them, hoard them, and then dole them out like emeralds — but only to herself. I remember once she caught my father eating one, and to make up for it a very expensive night out in San Francisco was the price he had to pay to restore order to the house. Such were the wages of sin.

Whenever we would ask her for a taste, she would just say that we wouldn’t like them until we were older. Older was always left undefined.

And so it took until now for me to actually eat one. And they are good. Damn good. So this one is for you, Mom, wherever you are!

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Oh, man. This is good. Now that watermelons are starting to arrive in the farmer’s market, here’s a new way to use them involving booze! (or not – it is really refreshing on it’s own. If you are in recovery, you can skip the booze and add sparkling water, it is really good that way, too.)

I served this with barbecue this weekend, and pretty much everyone liked them. They are more on the sweet side than what I normally like to serve, but in hot weather, nothing is as refreshing as watermelon.

You want a ripe melon – it should feel heavy for its size, which indicates it has a lot of liquid in it. I think that there are a lot of different opinions about how to choose a melon, so use whatever works for you. Personally, I find one farmer at the market that I trust and I then make a point of buying them from him.

Ingredients:

• Watermelon – preferably seedless
• vodka – unflavored; I’m not keen on flavored vodkas, they have a chemical taste, I think. If you do like them, then use a citrus flavored one.
• lime
• sugar syrup – optional

Make it:

1. Scoop out the pink flesh and put it in an upright blender and purée it.
2. Strain the juice and reserve; put the pulp into the compost. I got about 4 cups of juice out of half a watermelon – the other half was served as slices.
3. Taste the juice and see if it is sweet enough for you; it probably is, but check to be sure. Add sugar if you want it sweeter.
4. Mix equal parts watermelon juice and vodka, and shake over ice.
5. Pour into chilled martini glasses, and squirt a little lime juice over the top.
6. Enjoy!

Other thoughts:

• If you want, you can use Agar in place of the sugar syrup if you want some healthier choice instead of white sugar.
• I think a light rum would also work well, but be careful: you are getting into Peggy Noonan territory! I would probably use dark rum and forget the sugar entirely; it would make it more complex.
• This could also be served on the rocks like a Screwdriver, but everyone seems to like martini glasses this summer, so what the heck!
• You can add pieces of the rind to water to make a very refreshing Agua Fresca.
• Mint would be a nice garnish, or you could add in a circle of lime to the rim.
• The watermelon juice on it’s own is really good. If it is too sweet for you (and it very well could be), dilute it with water or sparkling water.

We’ve had a bit of a heat wave here in the SF Bay Area, and just about the last thing I want to do is turn on the stove. When it get’s this way (usually in August or September) for weeks on end, I make gazpacho.

The problem is, of course, that right now the tomatoes are not ripe, and in fact in my yard, the tomatoes are only flowers.

So, here’s a gazpacho recipe that doesn’t use tomatoes. Problem solved.

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This month’s challenge was the ingredient that I was looking the most forward to: berries. Ripe, luscious berries, the fruit of summer, the stuff we want most during winter. And as a dedicated jam-eater (I have dedicated my life to eating strawberry jam), this was the challenge that it was all going to come together.

Instead, I have one $100 jar of homemade strawberry jam, and a lot of embarrassment.

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This month in the Tigresses’ Canning Challenge, the secret ingredient is rhubarb (or asparagus); I made things from both ingredients before I left on the trip, and brought the pickled asparagus spears with me in the hamper on the train, and it was delish.

And sadly, like the idjit I am, I did not write down the recipe before leaving.

That said, I did write down the recipe for the base of this cocktail, I did can it, and it did come out so well, it will be featured at the annual barbecue here at the Hut. I highly recommend you make this cocktail (if you are so inclined and do not have abuse issues), but you do not have to can the cordial to make the cocktail; it will probably keep for a several weeks in the ice box without processing it.

Rhubarb and Angelica Cordial from Laundry, Etc.

Anyway, as you may recall from last month’s challenge for herbs, I paired lavender with rhubarb and it was a winner. I wanted to do something similar for this month’s challenge, but not have it be jam. Last month, there was an entry for Rhubarb and Angelica cordials from one of the British food bloggers, Laundry Etc., that really intrigued me. So, in short I built my entry this month upon the success of her entry last month, and the research I did on the lavender-rhubarb jam I made last month.

The secret to working with lavender is to get the right amount of flower-power in your product without going too far. If you add too many lavender blossoms, you really do end up with something that tastes like very good soap — and I had my mouth washed out enough as a young ‘Grain to know.

So let’s get on with it, shall we?

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Thanks Gato! You know how much these scissorheads like to eat:

Blueberry Buttermilk Tart

For the shell

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
• 1 large egg yolk, beaten with 2 tablespoons ice water

(I added about a T of vodka to the ice water before pulling out 2T)

• pie weights, or dry beans for weighting the shell

For the filling

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 3 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups picked over blueberries
• powdered sugar for dusting

This crust was really great, tasted like a very good sugar cookie.

Using a food processor, add the flour, sugar, salt, and butter
to the bowl and mix it up till it looks kind of granular. Add in
the egg yolk with the ice water and mix again till the dough
comes together. Take it out, wrap it in plastic wrap and chill
for about an hour. Roll it out to about an eighth of an inch
thickness and place into a tart pan with a re-moveable bottom.
You’ll need a good bit of flour on your rolling surface for this
dough. The dough is very, very stiff when it is cold, but keep after it,
it will soften up.

Cook the tart shell for 25 minutes, remove the foil and the weights and cook the shell for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

With the food processor again, mix up the buttermilk, the egg yolks, sugar, lemon zest and juice, the butter, vanilla and flour.
Mix it well. Place the blueberries in the tart shell and pour the buttermilk mixture over the berries. Bake the tart in a 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes, till the center is just set. Let cool and serve with a dusting of powdered sugar.

You’re gonna like this!

This is not exactly a Tengrain’s Little Cooking School post, but it is not exactly not. You’ll see.

Anyway, one of the things Chicago is most known for is the deep-dish pizza, and rightfully so. It is legendary. Back in California, if you mention to anyone that you are going to Chicago they will knowingly tell you to be sure to try it, and of course you plan to anyway. When I had my ill-fated year at Northwestern before leaving snowed-in Evanston for warm and sunny Santa Barbara, I lived on the stuff. They are very deep pies, maybe three inches with straight, vertical sides, and they are filled almost to the top with sauce and cheese. Any toppings you order are usually “floated” on top.

In San Jose, there is a chain of Chicago Pizza places claiming to be Chicago-style. They are not. They feature a thick, chewy crust, but it is not deep crust; it is basically a bread. My friend Jeff, a Chicago native, hates that California Chicago pizza place and has tried, unsuccessfully for years to make a real Chicago deep-dish pizza, and has failed each time. Instead when he gets homesick, or wants to tell his kids about real pizza, he actually sends for one to be delivered from Chicago, frozen. The natives do things like that.

Anyway, I think we figured it out after one slice (I could only eat one slice – too much food!): the crust is not a yeast dough, it is a biscuit dough. I could even taste a little bit of the baking powder. I’m pretty sure that the biscuit dough is blind baked in a New York-style cheesecake pan, and then filled about 2/3 or 3/4 to the top and baked a second time. This gives you a very sturdy and moisture-proof wall that can support a ton of sauce.

My sense of it is that the sauce and mozzarella are layered to try to give some structural integrity to the thing, other wise when you slice it open, the tomato sauce would just gush out. Either that or they add some egg to it to make it thicker, but I doubt this.

Because I don’t have access to a kitchen, I cannot test my theory, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. So you see, it was not exactly like a normal cooking school post, but it was pretty close. If you are at all inclined, give the biscuit dough a try and see what you think.

Oh, and I’m pleased to report that Giordano’s Pizza is very good. It is a chain, but it doesn’t taste like chain pizza. I’m sure some of you in the area will tell me where to find the real pizza.

Scissorheads -

The travelogue continues… they say that when in Rome do as the Romans do, and so when in Chicago, you do as the Chicagoans do, which it seems is to live large. These are people to whom the word moderation is met with a derisive laugh. The buildings are taller, the streets are broader, the wind is colder. Oh, and the drinks are huge. They serve you a double whether you ask for one or not. Beware!

And today it is as cold as a December day back home, and rainy. I kind of liked it, but I fall into that moody Raymond Chandler atmospheric thing all too easily.

Anyway, for those of you playing along at home, I forgot to mention that last night’s dinner (in which I think I spotted Soylent Blonde was at a joint called The Purple Pig. It is a pseudo Tapas Bar on Michigan Ave, and I wanted to go there because I heard that they did their own charcuterie. Some of you know that I have been curing meats, and so I was curious to see what they were doing, and the short answer was that it was pretty good. But under intense interrogation, the waiter confided to me that much of what they were serving on the charcuterie board was not in-house cured, so I changed the order to be strictly house-made, and it was all very good:

• “Pork-fried” almonds - These are basically like Maracona almonds, but freshly made; the almonds were definitely domestic, probably from California. The almonds were fried with fresh rosemary and had some deep roasted garlic cloves in the bowl. They were lightly salted (under-seasoned in my opinion, but that was quickly dealt with using some fine sea salt). Frying in pork does not make that much of a distinction, I don’t even think that they need to be fried – you could bake them and have the same results, just coat them with olive oil. This was a winner and would be easy to reproduce.
• Charred ramps and scallions with Romesco sauce - Absolutely amazing. Ramps are a wild cousin of leeks, very small and not terribly onion-y; we do not get them in California. I first had ramps, pickled, in a martini in NYC, and I have been enamored of them ever since. They were coated with olive oil and quickly charred over coals (the smokey flavor tells me that it was not just a gas jet). What was interesting about this was that the Romesco sauce was more acidic that the classic recipe calls for; I’m guessing that there was lemon juice in it. At any rate, what happened is that the charred scallions and the ramps sort of completed the Romesco. Tasting the Romesco on its own, it didn’t work; you could not use it in the usual way, typically with seafood. Anyway, for me it was an eye opener to deconstruct a sauce and then use it with an ingredient that makes it come full circle. I’m going to have to think this one through.
• Pork Rillettes - This was a classic dish done classically. They used the neck of the pig (a slightly unusual choice, but it would work). Rilletes are basically a tough cut of meat that is then cooked in the fat of the animal. You pound the cooked mean with some of the fat to make a paste and season it with appropriate herbs, and you usually leave it for a while to ripen under a layer of fat. Americans do not like the ripened version much, and so was a surprise to find someplace that let it age. It was served with sea salt (again, the fear of seasoning food is making us a nation of bland cooks) and a very interesting chutney of sweet cherry peppers and (I think preserved) cherries.
• Fried Pig Ears - OK I admit I ordered this as a tribute to my late hound, Thurber, who never met a pig ear he didn’t like. These ears were cut into a chiffonade and deep fried. They were mixed with some finely shredded pickle and served with a poached egg on top. The whole thing, when sort of mixed up made a sauce that was rich and tart (from the pickles). This is something that would be fun to work through, even though I do not fry food.
• Soft ice cream with olive oil served on brioche – An unusual combination, but it totally works. The ice cream really was that sort of soft self-serve stuff, like at a Foster’s Freeze. The Olive oil was definitely southern France, it had that rough bite at the end that make you cough; I don’t know why it works so well together, but it did. I think if you used a richer ice cream it would be a disaster. The brioche only justified a buck more in the cost; it didn’t add anything (except that the presentation made it look like a gigantic profiterole, so it was kinda cute).

Remember: small plates. No one of these things is a full-sized portion, even for a non-Chicagoan, and da Bears and da Cubs fans would eat a plate of these in a single bite.

This month’s challenge was to incorporate herbs in a canning project, and of course I know that herbs play a huge role in developing flavor for any food product. Used correctly, an herb can build a subtle foundation for the rest of the item – it can lift the ordinary to make it extraordinary; used incorrectly, an herb can overpower, wrestle the food to the ground, and rip out its still-beating heart and… oh, wait. that was a movie. Or Liz Cheney. I forget which.

I went out to the yard to see what was in season and all I had was rosemary and lavender. Rosemary is a terrific herb, and it is often used in Italian desserts, and it is especially well-matched for apricots and other stone fruits. The problem, of course is that stone fruits will not be in season for another couple of months (if at all – the late rains this spring are knocking all the blossoms off the trees before the bees have a chance to do their thing). Lavender, on the other hand, is a very tricky herb to use well. Too little and no one notices it and if you use too much, it is like having a mouthful of soap.

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Yes, another bread post, and this one might be especially for Scissorhead GRS, who is becoming something of a baker. He has a toddler who likes bread, but it must be soft bread, and so like good daddies of good daughters everywhere, he makes soft bread for his little darlin’. What is it about daddies and their daughters?

This bread, ciabatta, is so soft, and luxurious, the little GRSette will love it, and her lucky parents will love it too. The great breads of Italy differ from most others because of their use of a starter or bigga. This adds a toothsome quality to the bread, with lots of bubbles and character and yet the bread is so soft you can use it for sandwiches even for little kids who only will eat Wonderbread. It is a win-win for the bread maker in the family

The bigga is made the night before you plan to bake the bread. You let it rest overnight to develop character. It is dense and hard and you will doubt that it can possibly be part of a soft bread. Have faith!

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Scissorheads -

It occurred to me yesterday that we have really accomplished a lot in these little food posts. I thought I should summarize it now in a way that you can see the relationship between all the different things we’ve been doing:

Yes, I’ve been focusing on technique rather than on recipes, but you can see that it all does come together. Learn how to make a roux, and the world suddenly opens up, doesn’t it?

So next time you think that you have nothing in the house to make dinner, start with a little flour and butter – you’ll come up with something.

(And now that it is spring, we will move into different areas of technique.)

Regular readers may recall that I wanted to learn more about preserving food, and got myself involved in the Tigress’ Can Jam Challenge to learn more about the art and science of canning (or as they say in the south, putting up). As most of the rest of the country is still buried under snow, the challenge this month is onions.

I thought about making the famous Zuni pickled onions, but the last two months I’ve made pickled food, and as the Red Queen says to Alice, “Jam yesterday and Jam tomorrow, but no jam today,” well, it has made me cranky.

I WANT JAM!

And so without further ado, here is my recipe for Onion Jam with Pomegranate and Blueberries.

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So what, you ask, does this have to do with the usual beginnings of a cooking school post? Has ol’ ‘Grain finally slipped off his onion?

Well, yes. Today’s lesson is about how to properly dice an onion! It is probably the most basic thing you do in the kitchen, you probably will dice one sometime this weekend, if not indeed tonight, and so why not learn to do it right?

No tears, Scissorheads, today we win the battle of the onion!

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The horror, the horror…

Well, it’s finally come to this: I have succumbed to serving food in a bread bowl, something so cliché and truly ’70s awful that I should probably walk the hall of shame, head low, all the way to the last remaining Victoria Station and commit ritual sepuku.

But you know what? It was good. It was better than good, it was excellent. And my guests ate their bowls. And it made a great presentation for a Caussolet, which is about as far removed from that god-awful Lipton’s frozen spinach and sour cream dip in a hallowed out loaf of bread as you can get.

So, with my head held high, here is how to make the bowl. I’ll leave you to your own devices about what to put in it. If you do make spinach dip, don’t tell anyone!

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My goal with this food-blog challenge – as regular readers already know – is to learn about how to preserve food. This is a skill that is rapidly leaving most American households and as we enter the second (third?) year of the Great Recession, it strikes me that preserving food might indeed be a useful skill. As a dedicated localvore and seasonal eater, this also makes sense to me: preserve the bounty while it is at its peak and enjoy it year ’round.

So come learn with me while I take the can challenge.

If you want to play along at home, you must read the Tigress’ instructions on canning before you begin.

Everyone loves carrots: from your first taste of stewed carrots as a tiny tot to a surly teenager, carrots are probably the only vegetable that you never rejected; everyone loves carrots. I love the crispness of a carrot, the sweetness. It is one of the perfect foods, giving you texture, flavor, and sound. There’s so much there to love in a carrot. Carrots travel the range from savory stews, to crunchy salads, and to sweet (and usually cream-cheese enhanced) carrot cake. Is there anything carrots cannot do?

Recently, I posted the pickled carrots’ recipe for the Super Bowl Bloody Mary, which featured my favorite refrigerator pickled carrots. What I wanted to do was try to get the same sort of flavor and texture in a properly canned pickled carrot. I think it turned out pretty well.

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I’ve been buying the expensive organic milk lately — it comes in glass bottles! — and If I don’t drink it before it expires, it seems like a real shame, and I’m out $4 or more. I noticed this morning that the sell-by date on the milk was two days ago (the milk is still perfectly fine, but who knows about tomorrow), so… it’s time to make cheese!

When you think about it, cheese is preserved milk, there is not a lot that is magic about it, just some simple science, a little bit of elbow grease (a very little bit), and in about 30 minutes you have some fresh ricotta cheese, and you’ve made something from the milk that you might have to throw out in a day.

I probably don’t have to tell Scissorheads this (they being amongst the best and brightest on the innernets), but you can use ricotta cheese to make a terrific cannoli, if you want to do such a thing for St. Valentine’s Day.

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It comes to my attention that there is some sort of televised sporting event this weekend, and I thought Scissorheads might like to know how to make the world’s best Bloody Mary to enjoy while watching the game — and if that swine Graves’ booze and drug addled hints are anything to believe, well, this game will be the sort where having a snort of good booze will be well appreciated. This is much more a recipe post than a technique post, though there is always technique at the end.

The Bloody Mary is a very ingenious drink – with the exception of the booze, the thing is practically health food. If you have an addiction issue, you can enjoy the drink without the vodka, and it will still be delicious.

Every good barkeep will tell you that the secret to the Bloody Mary is to keep the base drink spicy because the hootch and the ice will quickly dilute the flavor. The other secret is to have an excellent garnish. Let’s start with the garnish.

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OK, I can see your eyes rolling already.

“Another French thing that I will never make, eh ‘Grain?” you say plaintively, with just a soupçon of scorn in your voice.

Yes another French thing, and you will make this, and you will like it. A lot. After one taste, your friends and family will be stopped dead in their tracks, bow down on their knees and say, “I am not worthy.”

Here’s the thing about Pâte à choux, it is extremely easy to make, it is very versatile (appetizers – Gougères, main course – gnocchi, and dessert – éclairs and profiteroles all are made from it), and it costs next to nothing.

You generally find gnocchi only in better restaurants, and hardly anyone ever makes it at home, and that’s a shame. It really is one of the great foods of the world, and it is easy to make. Gnocchi is one of those foods that can warm you and comfort you when times are rough. You can nap it with any sort of sauce you want, whatever suits your mood. You can serve it as an early course in a multi-course dinner, or it can be the main deal — so you see, it can be as elaborate or as simple as you want.

My plan for tonight is to saute some fresh chopped chard with a little onion and garlic, and to saute these gnocchi in some butter with a little sage and then mix them together. I’m thinking that the chard will act as a sauce of some sort, maybe I’ll blend it with some stock…

So let’s get started.

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As some of you have probably noticed from the top of the blog, I entered the Tigress’ in a Jam canning challenge. I know absolutely nothing about canning, and so for me this will be a real learning experience.

The thing with challenges is to learn something new, to do new things. To push yourself. In culinary schools, you will probably have some work on preserving food in the Garde Manger station work: charcuterie, confit, rillettes, sausages, and so forth. You will absolutely learn about brines, and you may even make some refrigerator pickles. Will you make jam? Probably not. Will you actually can it? Absolutely not.

So come learn with me while I take the can challenge.

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It is time to open up TENGRAIN’S LITTLE COOKING SCHOOL, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a SCISSORHEAD had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked. These posts are not about recipes, though there are almost always some; these posts are about technique. You can find recipes anywhere, but once you have mastered a technique, your cooking, your food, your creativity will improve.

Earlier this week, I received an email from one of the Scissorheads asking if I could write something about making bread. He is a newish father, and everything he reads on the internet about making bread begins with a bread machine, and he wants to be in touch with his food. So this post is for you, GRS.

Bread is elemental, but not elementary. All traditional bread is made with four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. That’s it. And yet with these simple ingredients, pretty much every country in the world has a rich bread tradition. France even has laws about bread to ensure that no one gets snookered when they buy a baguette: it must meet certain standards. When I was learning about bread in cooking school, we were told that in France, the medieval Popes put unscrupulous bakers in the stocks, naked, in the village square, and encouraged the villagers to poke them with a stick. Let them eat cake, indeed.

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Custards are the dead-simple, go-to dessert for many fine dining establishments and excellent home chefs need to embrace them more. From the Spanish flan, to the British bread pudding and with the French crème brulée, there is a custard for every occasion and for every cook. Ice cream is a custard that is frozen. Custards rule.

And as always, I want to demystify it for you.

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As we are at the start of the holiday cooking season, it is time to open up Tengrain’s Little Cooking School, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a Scissorhead had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked.

Today’s topic is a fun one: cakes. Since everyone is broke this year, I am guessing that there will be a lot of baking going on, and probably a lot of cakes will be made. From the box. Terrible, horrible and expensive stuff. Ditch the box this year. Just once. Try it.

Cakes are really pretty simple, and they represent a great lesson in technique.

Here’s the great thing about pound cakes: all the ingredients weigh the same.

Here’s the great thing about sponge cakes: all the ingredients weigh the same.

So, whether you want to make a pound cake or a sponge cake, it’s all in the technique!

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As we are at the start of the holiday cooking season, it is time to open up Tengrain’s Little Cooking School, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a Scissorhead had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked.

Not to panic you further, but if you are planning on brining your bird, you better start today. (And as always, it is far better to roast two small turkeys than it is to roast Birdzilla. Trust me on this.)

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As we are at the start of the holiday cooking season, it is time to open up Tengrain’s Little Cooking School, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a Scissorhead had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked.

And speaking of panic, I know of few things in the kitchen that panic people more than making the holiday pies, and usually the panic all comes down to one word: dough. There are only three ingredients in pie dough, so how hard can this be? Well, plenty. Even gourmand Scissorhead LiberalDemDave tells me that he always buys the pre-made pie crust in the grocery store.

Besides being outrageously expensive, the quality of the ingredients in the pre-made kind are shameful, and there is no point in spending a fortune when in way under 10 minutes you can have a high-quality dough pulled together for a fraction of the cost.
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It seems we are at the start of the holiday cooking season, and so once again, it is time to open up Tengrain’s Little Cooking School, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a Scissorhead had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked.

The School is not about recipes – you can find recipes just about anywhere on the web, and many of them are good. No, these posts are about technique, my theory being that if you know how to do something, then you can be creative on your own.. When you master a technique, no recipe will ever cause panic.
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Our good friend and scissorhead Elspeth Ravenwind knows how to make fireworks that are environmentally friendly and yummy to boot! These are lemon on the inside and fondant frosting. Thanks Elspeth!

OK, I heard the silence. No one misses the cooking posts. They started out as a way to try to rescue my good blogging friend Spartacus when he was suddenly left to his own devices to feed his three kids (and sick wife) on his own. I think I failed him because I am all about technique, and not recipe. My theory is that if you have certain techniques under your belt, you can do just about anything.

And yet, these cooking posts go unnoticed, uncommented. What is a ‘Grain to do?

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