New Traditions

Thursday was my very first American Thanksgiving. I'm sure that if someone had peered in through the windows, the scene would have looked almost pastoral, evocative of an America that now exists only in oil on canvas--a trestle table set for at least twelve, a crackling fire, a sumptuous spread, turkey and all. But, of course, we weren't conversing about quaint, old-timey things--we were laughing over zombie movies and Thompson-isms and ornery male turkeys. It was a grand old time.

I never really got Thanksgiving back home--apart from stuffing and mashed potatoes, I always thought it was a pretty ho-hum holiday. But this, I get--cooking all afternoon with a glass of wine in hand and then eating around a table full of friends and new faces. I could get used to this.

The bread, pictured above, was a hit with the Thanksgiving crowd. Potato, cheddar, and chive torpedoes from the BBA. I think I'm starting to get the hang of hearth baking.

Sourdough!

Late last week, I connected with someone else in the department who bakes bread. I had heard that he had started making sourdough during the summer, and unless you bake really frequently, maintaining your "mother" starter involves discarding some of it when you do get around to feeding it--so I jumped on the opportunity and unabashedly offered to take some discarded starter off of his hands.

On Tuesday, he kindly passed along a tupperware container of happily bubbling starter--so happy, in fact, that it popped off the lid with a modest boom in the middle of the class we have together. Oops.

But this starter, as you can see, isn't all mischief. By early afternoon today, even with the decidedly chilly temperatures in my apartment, I was in the good company of two lovely, burnished, mildly sour loaves.

A Continuing Affair

My love affair with bread started in high school, when my biology teacher, Ms. Quinn (bless her heart!), decided that since we were studying microorganisms, yeast being among them, our homework for the next day would be to bake some sort of yeasted bread by hand--no bread machines, no stand mixers, just good old-fashioned muscle. Now, to this day, I'm not entirely clear on what the value of this experience was as far as biology went, but I was thrilled with the process, craft, and feeling of it all--I loved the way that the plush dough squished beneath my palms, the yeasty aroma of the dough after proofing, the transformation that happened in the blaze of the oven. I baked regularly through my senior year of high school, supplementing my school lunches with crusty slices of French bread and wedges of focaccia. I couldn't get over just how good fresh bread was.

And to this day, I still can't. I bake at least a loaf a week, usually two. It helps that grad-student life is very amenable to the rhythms of regular bread baking. I can start a loaf in the morning, read an article or two while it's proofing, de-gas and shape it, read some more, bake it, and then read until I can't wait any longer to cut into it. I lead a charmed life, I know. (Hah).

My favourite bread as of late is the Potato-Rosemary Bread from Peter Reinhart's BBA. While it baked, the kitchen smelled irresistibly lemony and sweet. And fresh from the oven, it was plush and herbal on the inside, crusty and golden on the outside. It makes for lovely toast in the morning, and I imagine that it would be sublime with a generous smear of lemon curd--Meyer lemon season, after all, is almost upon us. And, still thinking wistfully of summer barbecues, I'm sure that divided into smaller rounds, this bread would make great burger buns. A bread for all seasons.

Find the recipe with Deb at Smitten Kitchen.

All the wine

Last night, a couple of friends came over with an abundance of chanterelles. We sauteed them in garlic and white wine, laid them in beds of arugula, and tucked them into crepes dressed with tarragon cream. And then we drank two bottles of wine and contemplated holding a two-day-long bourbon-tasting interspersed with trips to Shedd and the Oriental Institute. Lately, things have been somewhat unreal and utterly perfect.

Sweetness never suits me

At the ripe old age of twenty-three, I find myself increasingly unable to enjoy particularly sugary things--and with seventeen and a half ounces of sugar having gone into the batch, these brownies were definitely far too much for me after the first few nibbles. Though they are certainly not your run-of-the-mill, grade-school-bake-sale brownies with their gooey pockets of bittersweet chocolatey goodness, satisfying chew, and shiny, crackly tops, for all that, they are just too sweet. Achingly sweet. (And, though the vegetable oil called for is what makes them so wonderfully chewy, no amount of Scharffen Berger disguises that slick, oily taste that only vegetable oil imparts.)

For what it's worth, Cook's Illustrated, I salute your efforts, but I'll leave these brownies to those youngsters and their bake sales from now on.

Quick and Adaptable

Having recently moved to a new city and met a whole crowd lovely people to call my friends has been exciting in a number of ways, one of them being the chance to get to know all of them better over a good meal and a few pints. I've had more dinner guests and get-togethers at my place in the past two months than than I've had all year. I can only hope that it keeps up. There's really something to feeding the people you care about.

One of the challenges of feeding this crowd in particular has been keeping things vegan (and by extension, inclusive). Though this has ruled out a lot of approaches and flavours that I really enjoy, I've relished it and taken it as an opportunity to be more creative and adventurous in the kitchen. Last week, for instance, I freely adapted one of my favourite quiche recipes into mini phyllo cups filled with tender slivers of braised leek and port-laden slices of mushroom. Though the resulting hors d'oeuvres were a little lacking (namely in butter and silky custard), I won't be discouraged. Some recipes are just eminently more adaptable than others.

Take this cornbread, for instance. Pictured here, this particular incarnation involves butter, eggs, milk, a generous helping of scallion and jalepeno, coarsely ground yellow cornmeal, and finely ground blue cornmeal. However, it also does wonderfully as originally intended, i.e. vegan--just swap out the butter for corn oil, and the eggs and milk for water. Either way, you'll end up with some very satisfying cornbread--crisp, golden edges, a tender, jalepeno-flecked crumb, and subtle, corny sweetness. And, maybe best of all, it comes together quickly--unlike, say, my other favourite cornbread, which needs a bit of head start. I can't always be expected to plan for cornbread a whole day in advance, now can I?

Skillet Cornbread
Adapted from Peter Berley's The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen

Note: for a vegan version of this cornbread, replace the two eggs and milk with 1 cup + 1 tablespoon of water and the butter with an additional 2 tablespoons of corn oil in the wet mixture; do not use whole grain coarsely ground cornmeal--for one reason or another, this stuff never quite softens up, and you will end up with very chewy nubs of cornmeal in your bread.

1 cup unbleached white bread flour
1/2 cup coarsely ground yellow cornmeal (not whole grain, see notes above)
1/2 cup finely ground blue or yellow cornmeal or masa harina
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp milk or buttermilk
2 tablespoons corn oil
2 tablespoons cold butter
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 scallions, finely chopped
1 jalepeno pepper, seeded and minced
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch cast-iron skillet, 8-inch square baking dish, or 9-inch pie pan.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeals, and baking powder. Add butter to dry mixture and rub into pea-sized flecks with fingertips.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, corn oil, maple syrup, scallion, jalepeno pepper, and salt.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Be careful not to overmix, a few lumps won't matter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the corn bread comes out clean.

Cool in the pan for 15 minutes before serving.

Serves 4 to 6.

All in a Day's Work

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the day debating over, getting to, or returning from brunch. I am not entirely sure if eating stuffed brioche french toast with roasted pumpkin and dulce de leche makes for an accomplished day, but it was a damned good one nonetheless--crisp fall air, afternoon sun, and four friends with whom to switch plates when the sugar became too much. Lula: so good and so far away.