Sunday Salad

This Sunday, the salad of choice was Food and Wine’s Chicken, Mango and Rice Salad, which, as the article says, makes a fairly hearty meal all by itself, especially for lunch. Not to mention the convenience factor: grill the chicken, cook the rice, chop the mango and the avocado, and assemble.

Ingredients

1. 1 1/2 cups rice, preferably short grain
2. 1 1/3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 4)
3. 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cooking oil
4. 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
5. 3/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
6. 3/4 cup chopped red onion
7. 1 mango, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
8. 1 avocado, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
9. 3 1/2 tablespoons lime juice (from about 2 limes)
10. 3/4 cup chopped cilantro

Directions

1. In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the rice until just done, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain. Rinse with cold water. Drain thoroughly.
2. Coat the chicken with the 1 tablespoon oil. Season with 1/4 teaspoon each of the salt and pepper. Heat a grill pan over moderate heat. Cook the breasts until just done, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Alternatively, heat the tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan and season and cook the chicken as directed above. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, cut it into 1/2-inch dice.
3. Toss the rice with the chicken, onion, mango, avocado, the 1/3 cup oil, the remaining 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper, the lime juice, and cilantro.

Monday Muffins

I’d been planning on making these muffins for a week, and finally got round to it on Monday evening. Being the citrus junkie that I am (orange marmalade, lemon loaf etc.), I decided they needed more lemon-ness than the recipe called for, and so put in the zest of 2 lemons, and the juice of 1 1/2 lemons. The only difference was that I had to cook them for an extra couple of minutes (possibly because the batter was a bit on the moist side). The original recipe suggests icing them, but I left mine uniced, since they tend to keep better that way.

Ingredients

2/3 Cup Sugar
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
3/4 Cup Sour Cream
2 Large Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Stick (8 Tbsp) Unsalted Butter, melted and cooled
2 Tbsp Poppy Seeds

For The Icing
1 Cup Confectioners’ Sugar, sifted
2 -3 Tbsp Fresh Lemon Juice

Method

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400˚F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of lemon strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough-a few lumps are better than over mixing the batter. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Its not impossible to find good bread here, but when it comes to bread, I’ve been totally spoiled (mostly by Le Fromentier). Le Fromentier tops my list for two reasons. First they have the technical aspects of bread-baking nailed (things like crumb, texture, moisture etc). I have never bought a loaf there crumbled when I cut it, or was too dry, or had a hard, leathery crust, or suffered from any other unforgivable bread flaw, which is a good start. But what really puts them over the top is their creativity. Nuts, grains I had never heard of (or at least, didn’t know the French translation of), vegetables, spices, cheese, olives, herbs…you name it, Le Fromentier has made a (flawless) loaf with it. If you don’t believe me, check out this blog for a (somewhat complete) list.

Now, in Seattle, it is not impossible to find a decent baguette, rye, sourdough or even whole wheat loaf, you have to know where to look, but they’re out there. Beyond the standard selection though, things are experimental at best. It was the insatiable desire for a good rustic grainy loaf on which to debut the marmalade experiment that drove me to bread-making.

Well, that and the desire to try out the infamous no knead breadmaking method. The idea behind the no-knead bread making method is just as it sounds: instead of kneading the dough, you assemble all the ingredients, stir until it forms a “shaggy ball” and leave the whole lot to rise for 12-24 hrs. Then, you punch it down, give it a quick fold (only once or twice), let it sit for 15 min, shape it into a ball, and let it rise for another 1.5-3 hrs. Finally, you pop the whole lot in the oven, in a pre-heated, approximation of a bread cloche. This could be a dutch oven, clay pot, etc. Any oven safe vessel which is approx. 5-7 qts in size and holds the heat well should work (the purpose of this is to shape the loaf, and give it a nice crust). I made one loaf in an enamel cast iron dutch oven, and one in a clay pot. The clay pot loaf was more successful, but I wasn’t very scientific about the whole process.

You’d think I’d have learned after my marmalade escapades to keep things simple the first time round, and just made a simple, whole wheat loaf…no such luck. I dove in, head-first and decided to make Four Seed No Knead Bread. Probably not the optimal choice for a first loaf, and the fact that I bought the wrong yeast (active-dry instead of quick/instant rise…oops) probably didn’t help. I ended up with a very flat (1.5″ high), grainy, dense loaf…oh well. It tasted good, and if sliced sufficiently thinly, made an excellent venue for a good strong blue cheese.

But, flat grainy loaves do not lend themselves to toast, and even less so to marmalade. So, it was back to the cutting board. This time I did my homework. I learned that yeast labels (instant? quick? active?) are *almost* as poorly standardized as cream labels are (half-and-half? light? table? old-fashioned? numbers please people!). I watched the videos on Breadtopia. I read the threads on chowhound, and finally, with new yeast, a slightly smaller pot, and renewed energy, I tried again.

This time, I simplified things a bit, no four-seeds (maybe next time) just whole-wheat flour and bread flour:

Ingredients for basic yeasted No Knead Method (from Breadtopia.com):

3 cups bread flour (the above video used 1 cup (5 oz.) whole wheat flour and 2 cups (10 1/2 oz.) white bread flour
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups purified or spring water

* Mix together the dry ingredients.
* Mix in water until the water is incorporated.
* Cover with plastic and let sit 18 hours.
* Follow video instruction for folding.
* Cover loosely with plastic and rest for 15 minutes.
* Transfer to well floured towel or proofing basket. Cover with towel and let rise about 1 1/2 hours.
* Bake in covered La Cloche or Dutch oven preheated to 500 degrees for 30 minutes.
* Remove cover; reduce heat to 450 degrees and bake an additional 15 minutes.
* Let cool completely on rack.
* Consume bread, be happy.

The result was most definitely marmalade-worthy.

The marmalade, sadly, was delicious, but a tad loose (I’m hoping it will improve with time), and if not, well, at least now I know how to make a killer loaf of bread. Maybe next time I’ll get more creative and add a some more interesting grains.

It has been a *very* productive weekend in terms of culinary endeavours: first there was the marmalade mishap and the marmalade recovery (I don’t have the energy to write about this tonight–but rest assured, its coming), then there was the marmalade cake (because I had to make *something* for valentine’s day) and last but not least, there was the dutch oven.

I suppose I should elaborate. The marmalade was something I’d been wanting to do for a long time, and a 3-day weekend seemed like a good chance to do it. Despite a rocky start we ended up with 6 lovely jars of normal marmalade, and 6 jars of looks-a-bit-like-molasses marmalade. I suppose batch #2 will be useful for cooking at least.

The marmalade cake is an old favorite. It got made because I had been leafing through Michael Pollan’s new book Food Rules, and feeling guilty about buying premade muffins, so I decided some baking was in order. Now the issue with the marmalade cake recipe is that it lives here, in Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries. This is a dangerous book. Everytime I open it I want to cook every recipe in it. I don’t think I’d ever have the perserverence to make it through Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking in one year, but Nige’s cooking is much more low-key, and given an adequate budget for organic meat, excellent cheese, and so forth, I would happily cook my way through his book.

But, as it was, I was already up to my eyeballs in marmalade fixin’s so keeping things minimal seemed like a wise call. I made Nige’s Marmalade Cake (picture below) as an tasty valentine’s day breakfast. It was the perfect thing to spice up a dreary Feb. morning.

Ingredients:

175 Butter, softened
175g Golden Caster Sugar (If like me, you live across the pond and the stores don’t carry Golden Caster Sugar, white, light brown, or cane sugar (also light brown in color) all work)
Zest of 1 orange
3 Large eggs, beaten
75g Marmalade
175g All-purpose Flour
Juice half an orange

Icing:
100g Icing sugar, sifted
2 TBSP Orange Juice

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 355F (180c) and line a loaf tin with parchement paper
Step 2: In a mixer (or by hand) cream together the butter and sugar, add in the zest, eggs and marmalade and beat.
Step 3: Fold in flour and orange juice and pour into prepared tin
Step 4: Bake for 40 minutes then turn out onto cooling rack
Step 5: To make icing mix together icing sugar and orange juice then spoon over cooled cake.

This time round, I skipped the icing, because I had no icing sugar. The cake didn’t suffer.

So that brings us to the last item of orange: The new cast iron, enamel, 22lb, real deal dutch oven. I have been on the lookout for one of these for quite some time. In addition to stews, braised meats, briskets, etc. I’ve seen them used to make kneadless-bread, clay-pot like Asian foods and all sorts of other things. BUT to get a new one–a good one, not a cheap costo/target knockoff, you’re looking at upwards of $200. Yikes. So when I found someone selling them for $45 on craigslist, I called immediately. While not La Creuset, the one I ended up buying did come from a restaurant supplier and so was industrial quality, which is all that really matters, in the end. So stay tuned for Kneadless bread in a casserole dish (learned from a friend at McGill who made absolutely stellar, bakery quality bread this way), and at least one meat stew before the dreary weather is out — oh and also the play by play of the marmalade-mayhem, coming soon, I promise.