Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum

there'll be two postings between now and then. please do continue to answer each other's questions. speak to you soon!

best baking,
rose

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.28.07 at 10:00 PM in Announcements
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Well actually THREE! The first one is Harrington’s—the one I fell in love with when I went to the University of Vermont many years ago. My boyfriend at the time brought me there and explained how they smoked the bacon over corn cobs. Since I grew up relatively bacon-deprived (my grandmother who lived with us kept kosher—though my parents didn’t)—this deliciously smoky bacon reminiscent of wood cabins in the mountains utterly seduced me.

I have continued to mail-order Harrington’s for all these years since bit have now added another bacon to my love list:

Arkansas Bacon with Balinese Long Pepper. I discovered it at the July Fancy Food Show in NY where there are what seems like millions of products so it’s a miracle this one caught my attention. It could have been the aroma that stood out against all the others. The flavor was slightly peppery from this special variety of pepper, and slightly smokey-sweet from being smoked with a light coating brown sugar. Determined to experience it again, I discovered that it was created by my long-time admired colleague Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s in Michigan. www.zingermans.com Ari told me that the tasting/recipe work on the bacon was done by him with lead work by Gauri Thergaonkar, one of the managers at the Deli, who has a great palate (For a full description of the special peppercorn and bacon from Ari see below.)

Since the bacon needs to be shipped next day air the shipping was more expensive than one pound of bacon so I ordered 2 pounds and froze most of it in individual packages of 3 ounces each.

The third bacon I adore is not actually marketed as bacon but it should be as it is a no compromise “kosher” variety. It is marketed as smoked goose breast! www.roastgoose.com Cut into thin strips it metamorphoses into ‘bacon’ so delicious it could serve as component to my bacon and eggs breakfast with absolutely no feelings of prior deprivation!

From Ari Zingerman (on his Balinese Long Pepper Bacon)
If you aren't already familiar with it, long pepper has been fairly hard to
find in the Western world for the last few hundred years. In the Middle
Ages it pretty much passed out of use in Europe, likely because it's
slightly moister than black pepper and hence didn't have the latter's
keeping qualities. But back in its day long pepper was actually more
popular with Roman cooks than the now standard black pepper, and it sold for
about three times the price (and black pepper itself often was priced higher
than gold). In North America it still shows up with surprising regularity
in recipes for sauces, vinegars, pickles and the like in Colonial era
cookbooks. So bringing it into use with the bacon here actually has roots
in early American cooking.

The bacon is made at the foothills of Mt. Petit Jean in Arkansas by the same
folks who make the regular peppered bacon that we¹ve been using in such good
quantities for so many years now. In fact, if you didn¹t know it, the
original black pepper bacon recipe has been in use there for over sixty
years now. The pork slabs are cured in a wet brine of salt, sugar and
spices for four or five days, the exact nature of which is a family secret.
After a bit of time to dry, the slabs are smoked over hickory for just under
24 hours. They¹re then rolled in brown sugar and finally hand rubbed with
cracked black peppercorns, or now, in this case, the coarsely crushed
Balinese long pepper.

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.25.07 at 12:50 PM in Announcements
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i've lost track of just how many years we've lived here (part time) but one of the many things i've enjoyed has been how little things changed. recently this has changed.

the charming village cafe in town, where we enjoyed many lunches and dinners, has closed and is up for auction. and the lovely inn across the way where we went for special dinners has changed hands. it has been owned for many years by our friends cordie and charlie puttkammer who now plan to retire to their home on the beautiful mackinac island in michigan, and tour the u.s. via trailer. i met cordie when another mutual friend, food writer joan nathan, learned that we lived here and insisted that i go over and meet cordie. i found her playing tennis on their court up the hill and we've been friends ever since.

often, cordie would happen by to watch us hit and on occasion appeared with her racket and a partner and we played doubles. i will miss her very much and hope to visit in michigan.

here is our current tennis audience on cordie's court:

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.18.07 at 10:19 AM in Special Stories
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that’s what elliott calls it after my having called attention to the fact that i have foamed the milk for my cappuccino to a new height resembling the matter horn. i’ve written before on this blog about my preference for foamed milk made with a foamer without the injection of steam produced by the foamers on some espresso machines. but i now have some new information that i think will be of use.

first of all, i found that not all foamers are created equal. if using a hand-held battery operated foamer, aeorlatte is the one that produces the finest, most stable foam. if suddenly the foam seems less impressive it’s time for two new batteries. for ease in use, and a finer foam still, i use the nespresso aerocino which plugs in and makes the process mostly and blissfully automatic.

fellow blogger hector made the important discovery that when chilling the aerocino the foam is still more voluminous. i now keep the aerocino in the frig always at the ready!

but there’s another vital factor to the production of ideal foam and that is the milk. you can have the best apparati and still achieve inferior foam if the milk isn’t right.

non-fat milk probably foams the best but has no flavor. next best is 1% so when i use that, i add a little heavy cream to the espresso. whole milk will also foam well but you have to experiment to find the best brand. i’m sure it has to do with something in the milk production and/ or ingredients added. in my area, cream o’ land whole milk and tuscan 1%, work the best.

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.11.07 at 10:10 AM in Drinks
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I may not be able to answer questions until then but there will be a new posting on the 11th!

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.05.07 at 3:54 PM in Announcements
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my father, robert maxwell levy, has just turned 93 and he is finally living his dream. he regrets not having the energy to do all he was planning such as setting up a blacksmith shop (he has the anvil but not the forge—yet), or producing bird houses for sale on the internet, but how many people get to complain about anything at 93 years of age!

as a boy growing up in the bronx he dreamt about living off the land—i think this is now called sustainable agriculture. about 20 years ago he came closer to this vision when he bought a huge hip-roof barn and several acres of land in upstate new york and persuaded my mother to leave new york city. they lived in an airstream trailer while he reroofed the barn using affordable batches of mixed shingles he bought at an auction, placed randomly, and was photographed by the troy times record atop his roof, and described as a local artist who had created a patchwork quilt roof. it has become a scenic destination.

but then my mother grew ill and died and his younger sister ruth also became ill. so my father spent close to 10 years in pompano beach florida caring for her—his heart still in grafton. and when she died two years ago he informed us of his will to return. to keep him from driving up himself (and believe me he would have) my brother flew in from california, and rented a Penske truck. our father is the ultimate packrat and insisted on taking everything including my aunt’s medications that were long expired and other equally useless things, but it never paid to argue with him so there they now sit in the barn along with boxes of other collectibles.

our dad lived with his friend bucky until bucky became ill. dad finally purchased a mobile home and with my brother’s long distant help got it installed far off the main road. his dream was to put it further into the woods, which would have afforded a magnificent view of the distant berkshires but he realized it would make it too inaccessible, especially during snow season which is long up there. he also had wanted to build his own home, but the mobile home was his compromise position and with admiration and trepidation we helped him make it happen.

my brother also found a wonderful part time caretaker, shelly, who three years running is the top female winner arm wrestler of grafton (the top male is number one in the country).

Shelly certainly has the strength to support my dad when he needs it and the cheerful, energetic disposition to keep him going as left to his own device he will sleep 90% of the time. my mother long suspected he had narcolepsy and i’ve teased him about only being 20 years old because the rest of his years have passed in slumber.

all this will partially serve to explain why i dedicated 10 days end of june/beginning of july to bring my father to hope and cook and bake myself silly for him, as i haven’t had the opportunity to do this for many years other than occasional visits to pompano. we drove up to grafton from hope to fetch him, staying overnight at the lovely grafton inn run my elsie and ken—my dad’s friends.

mostly it was a pleasure to have the luxury of this time alone with my father, hemming his trousers, sharing stories, and sometimes being extremely irritated at the slowness of his pace. this sounds unsympathetic but you have to realize that my father has always moved at a snail’s pace as if he had an endless eternity in which to accomplish his goals and it looks like he was close to right. but watching him eat peas in the pod, one pea at a time, almost drove me over the edge. i suppose it was perfect medicine for me—always behind—always running, sometimes tripping in the street—never able to waste a second in relaxation. now i was forced to slow down a little. actually a lot.

dad gained at least a pound a day which is fine. he has low cholesterol and will lose the weight quickly as he complains bitterly about the quality of the senior citizen meals and asked me for tips on cooking which he does do on occasion. it was hard to make our favorite things and not eat myself but the effort balanced the weight gain so i was behind only 2 pounds which i have since lost.

we drove him back to grafton the day after the fourth of july with a whole challah sliced and ready to pop into his freezer.

grafton was about to celebrate its 200th anniversary so i knew dad would be busy enjoying all the events and not be too home sick. before leaving we had lunch in troy at his favorite chinese restaurant “plum blossom.” a local retarded man did all the lovely wood carvings.

on the way back to grafton we stopped to photograph the fantastic eagle wood carving which stands in front of the grafton town hall.

before leaving, we made a visit to the beautiful and impressive peace pagoda. Dad rested in the garden while we visited the chapel and peace pagoda itself.

and on the way back to hope we talked about retiring to grafton. i just wish it were a little closer right now so i wouldn’t have to pack so many daddy meals into such a short time! i’m already planning for next june.

HERE IS A LIST OF THE FOOD HIGHLIGHTS:

Cocktails and wine
gin and tonic with loads of lime
several excellent pinots including an 05 Taz from santa barbara (my dad still prefers manichevitz—i should have gotten some—though i don’t)
a fabulous 2002 whitehall lane reserve cabernet
a sinksy 06 rose

Dinners
lamb chops from the local farm, beets, with currant bulgur and garlic scapes

goose butts on the grill with candied red cabbage and wheat berries

aged ribeye steak and yorkshire popovers, grilled vidalia onion halves
roast duck on the grill with bing cherry sauce and kasha varnishka
pork belly on the grill with bean soup made with veal bones (i told dad it’s a winter dish but he just HAD to taste it—and then pronounced it the perfect meal for men working all day in the fields!)
grilled lamb ribs, grilled string beans, and potatoes lyonnaise

Lunch
french ham for sandwiches on the beer and multigrain breads

grilled pepperoni pizza

Bread
beer bread

multi grain

bagels & challah

Breakfast
bagels
pancakes
goose breast bacon & basted country eggs

Dessert
banana cake with caramel ice cream and fresh peaches

cherry pie with pâte sucrée crust (his request)

golden almond cake

white velvet cupcakes with strawberry mousseline
cherry vanilla ice cream cones at the “bistrot” down the road. (did you know that bistrot in russian means quick, as in fast food?) a french neighbor in ny told me that after WWII, when the russians came to paris, and ate at the small restaurants they were always saying “bistrot bistrot” and that is how the bistrot got its name! i bet i’m in the only one in hope/belvedere going to the stand that knows what the new russian owners really meant by naming it as they did! (no longer!)

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.04.07 at 10:10 AM in Special Stories
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Posting from Elicia

Hi Rose, I just want to report my recent endeavour with the Perfect Pound
Cake and the Butter Cream Cake.

I've always gotten away with not weighing eggs with it comes to baking
cakes (I wld weigh them for buttercream, pastry cream, curd etc only).
Usually, I wld weigh all my eggs in their shells and store them according
to weight category, eg 60 - 65g, 66 - 70g etc. However, when I made the
above 2 cakes recently, for the first time - I experienced some pasty spots
in the crumb (not detectable by pricking - the tester comes out clean) - it
is baked and not hard but quite unsightly! I initially was a bit stubborn,
blaming the flour - but today - I decided to weigh my eggs and milk (I
usually just measure the liquid with tsp/tbsp or cup measure) - the pound
cake was just perfect!!

I now can conclude that weighing EVERYTHING is very important for cakes
with high content of butter or using a formula close to the classic 4
quart/pound cake! Also, I noticed that the batter didn't curdle slightly as
before (I was also very precise with the butter temp). Ironically, I've
never faced this problem with genoises, biscuits and the layer cakes
requiring less butter. Eg I've made the Golden Luxury Butter Cake about 6
times already (in different shapes and sizes) and it's perfect every time!
But I also believe the white choc has a role in stabilising the emulsion of
the batter, which I now believe is the cause of those pasty spots.

I will value my electronic scale even more now!

Rose Response
Now that eggs vary so very much and even with the proper size eggs the yolk ratio to white--it is essential to check the weight or volume for consistent and optimal results.

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.03.07 at 10:53 AM in Announcements
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here are the pictures you've all been waiting for from the amazing Hector!

From the kitchen of Rose on 08.01.07 at 8:37 PM in Photos
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