The Pourfect Bowl Scraper

Feb 02, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Announcements

I just received my sample of the final "Scrape-A-Bowl and I need to go on record immediately to state that I did not approve this final product though a quote from me is on the box which says "This new beater is a work of art."

The concept is a good one but in my testing of a prior model before the final I found that the pressure of the blades against the inside of the bowl locked the bowl in place making it necessary to dislodge it with a rubber coated hammer. Also the jiggling of the head of the mixer caused the pin holding it in place to work its way out and the heavy head of the mixer fell onto my marble counter top which would have cracked it had I not caught it just in time.

I see that the new model is slightly shorter which may have solved this problem but until I try it again I can't swear to it!

Also as of yet I haven't seen approval from any of the major manufacturers using this attachment for their machines. I have heard that there is concern as to whether the friction against the bowl will gradually wear the motor.

The concept is excellent but I reserve judgement until I have the chance to test it further.

The Best French Onion Soup

Feb 03, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Savory Cooking

I’m not sure if I’ll ever make onion soup again, at least not as long as I live a 5 minute walk from Blue Ribbon Bakery and they still make their glorious version.

For starters, chef and baker Sefton Stallard makes some of the best bread I’ve ever tasted and believe me I’ve tasted many a bread around the world! When creating the kitchen for Blue Ribbon Bakery he excavated an ancient wood fired brick oven in the cellar and called in an expert from Europe to restore it to working order.

Seton studied in Paris at the Cordon Bleu and apprenticed in Paris and in Switzerland for several years. He created this onion soup based on his taste memory and, I suspect, improved on it as it’s better than any I tasted even in France.

When cold weather sets in there is little more pleasing than this hot soup filled with caramelized onion and topped with a slice of bread soft and comforting with the juices of the stock, also serving to float an ample island of stretchy/stringy strands of melted gruyère with crunchy golden bits adhering to the edges of the bowl. It satisfies every possible longing--at least while eating it.

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Bread in Under Two Minutes

Feb 09, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Bread

After the presentation demo in January we invited Woody to come with us to Hope for the weekend. We spent the whole weekend cooking and baking. I made him roast duck (he only had it once before in his life), wild Concord grape pie with grapes stored in the freezer since Summer of 1994 (you do the math!) that tasted as fresh as the day they were picked by me, blueberry pancakes with Seville orange curd, and beer bread for his ham sandwich to take on the plane.

I’ve decided that the time has come to label the sugar and salt antique glass canisters which are so close to identical that I ended up putting sugar in the bread instead of salt. I knew for sure I had put in what I thought to be salt but was puzzled why it rose faster than usual and also had a flat taste. It took several days for it to come to me—it was sugar not salt! This was not a total disaster as the ham was salty and it also led me to reinvestigate the recipe that is in The Bread Bible. It is for a free-form loaf made in the food processor. I thought it would make a great sandwich bread baked in a loaf pan but needed to have a softer crust so I added oil and also my beloved stiff starter for extra moistness and flavor.

This is my personal contribution to the “no knead bread” category. It is both faster and easier to handle and has more depth of flavor from the beer and the starter. If you prefer the same technique can be used replacing the beer with water. I’m not a beer drinker but I enjoy the slight bitterness of the stout. Elliott does not.

It is a fabulous bread with ham, cheddar cheese, and even orange marmalade which I made last week. Call it fighting bitter with bitter!

Edit: A correction has been made to the ingredients for this recipe because oil was missing from the original list.

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Sweet Heart of Sprouted Wheat Bread

Feb 16, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Bread

I'm posting this recipe at the request of one of the members of this blog.

Sprouting wheat berries is easy and fun but does take several days of pre-thought. It is a fantastic "science" project for kids as they get to see one of the most simple and basic forms of life that sustains our life--the grain of wheat and how water wakes it up out of dormancy (sleep) to sprout into the potential of a stalk of wheat or as in this case a loaf of bread with delightful crunch. Maybe we should rename it Sleeping Beauty Bread!

The sprouted wheat berries that rise to the top of the dough become very hard during baking so try to avoid having to many on the surface.

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Orange Curd Revisit

Feb 20, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Announcements

For Matthew and anyone else who has tried or will try the Seville orange curd I posted a few weeks back: blood orange zest makes a beautiful addition. I was just at Whole Foods in SoHo, looking to see if they had the Seville oranges. They didn't but to my surprise they had another batch of blood oranges. Tip: choose the ones that have purplish peel rather than orange as that is a sure indication of the color of the fruit within. If the oranges are mostly orange in color the interior will be mostly orange with maybe a few tinges of red.
Blood orange zest disappointingly loses its color on heating and becomes just orange but when subjected to minimal heat from the orange curd poured over it, it keeps its vibrant hue. Of course the orange inside is great to eat and blood oranges are exceptionally easy to peel. But don't wait too many days to do so as the inner peel hardens after the outside is zested.

Copper Topper Cascade Mountain Cake

Feb 20, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose

Hector made the loveliest cake, here's what he wrote..

Dear Rose, the cake survived the 5 hour plane and the 5 hour car rides . . .

Based on your Copper Topper Cascade Mountain Cake, and as I expected, the best part was eating the cake! Rose, this cake is just e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y-d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. The vanilla bean taste on Creme Anglaise is florally heavenly and enhanced with light caramel flavors on your Silk Meringue Buttercream. The Biscuit de Savoie moistened with amaretto gives your body the same effects of tiramisu sans the caffeine! And, everyone gets a piece of candy, too!

I hope the bloggers ask all kinds of questions, as this cake went thru a lot, including a near disaster of trying to cut the cake while still cold!

Bubka Bliss

Feb 23, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Bread

I first met fellow author and baking sister Marcy Goldman in Montreal during the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) annual conference. She had invited me out to her home for a visit along with two other bakers and it was an enchanting experience to be in her kitchen tasting the cakes she made for us as we all talked baking. She also presented me with a beautiful rolling pin of her design which I used yesterday to roll out the bubka from her new book A Passion for Baking. I am sitting here (having already eaten a piece for breakfast and I don't usually eat breakfast, trying to fight off the impulse to defrost a slice I stashed in the freezer to make just such a temptation less convenient.

One of our fellow bloggers asked me what I thought of Marcy's bubka compared to the babka I had described in a previous posting. So of course I had to find out first hand even though I knew it was going to be wonderful--all the more so!

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Alchemy

Feb 24, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose in Special Stories

Those of you who attended my presentation at NYU Experimental Cuisine Collaborative may remember that I began with a discussion of science vs. alchemy and the following definitions:

1) an early, unscientific form of chemistry that sought to change base metals into gold and discover a life-prolonging elixir, a universal cure for disease, and a universal solvent alkahest

2) a power supposedly like alchemy, especially of enchantment or transformation (don’t you adore this definition!)

I also mentioned that ‘some people’ think that baking is alchemy. The ‘some people’ I had in mind included my husband Elliott. But I couldn’t say this because he was in the audience!

Afterwards I told him that I was referring to him and he said “yes—I knew that—but you always misunderstood. I didn’t mean it as a bad thing but as a good thing. I have little respect for scientific theories alone—it is the people who actually perform the experiments, i.e. the alchemists who understand…”

Thirty two years of marriage and it took this presentation to understand an important issue between the two of us. All these years I had been assuming that he was putting me down on some level and it was quite the contrary. I’m telling you, dear bloggers, communication is surely the source of most of the world’s problems. Anyway, let us all continue to be alchemists and “enchant and transform” our world.