french cooking in ten minutes

Edouard de Pomiane and his 1930 book French Cooking in Ten Minutes OR Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life are mentioned by Julian Barnes in The Pedant in the Kitchen. It's discussed at some length, actually, and sounded delightful to me. I have now read the translation by Philip and Mary Hyman and have been trying some recipes. It is indeed a wonderful little book.

Pomiane was an eminent medical doctor and researcher at the Pasteur Institute, not a professional chef. He was very much a food scientist, though, referring to this field as gastrotechnology. He was a renowned cooking lecturer, teacher, and radio host. He wrote twenty-two books on the art. Judging from this brief volume he was as entertaining as he was concise, and as philosophical as he was scientific.

And it's not just a collection of ten minute dishes. He has entire multi-course luncheon and dinner menus that can be prepared in ten minutes or so by a well-organized cook. (Of course he does not include the time it takes to boil water or heat oil, and allows for one dish to be finishing while its predecessor is being consumed.)

Here's how it begins:

I dedicate this book to Madame X, asking for ten minutes of her kind attention.

Heh.

Barnes mentions Tomato Soup as a dish that failed for him. It's the first one I tried. This is my paraphrase:

bring two cups of water to a boil
stir in a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste
stir in two tablespoons of finely ground semolina
salt the soup
boil for six minutes
stir in four tablespoons of heavy cream

I also added a sprinkle of tarragon. I didn't have any semolina so I ground couscous made of durum wheat. I suspect it wasn't ground finely enough, as the soup had the distinct texture of very small couscous. However, it was not an objectionable texture, it stayed in suspension, and the flavor was just fine. Just as good as any canned tomato soup I've ever had, really, and it probably cost ten cents!

I've also made the Alsatian Dumplings and Whiting Boiled in Court Bouillon. Rather than whiting fish I used striped pangasius fillets. The court bouillon was made with a bay leaf, white vinegar, curry power, ground nutmeg, black pepper, and salt. Topped with lemon butter and bread crumbs the fish was excellent. The boys loved the dumplings, which I finished with just butter, salt, and pepper.

This book is a treasure trove of simple recipes and efficient methods. Great fun.

first homemade kvas, part 1

For my first kvas I used the recipe that calls for rye sourdough starter that I found at http://ask.metafilter.com/64513/Kvas-recipe:

Here is a simple recipe for kvas in every way except time (preparation takes at least 5 days, though you don't have to be paying attention the whole time) but I imagine it will be very good. My wife just got a great cookbook called "Bread Matters" and I noticed the kvas recipe in it just a few days ago.

The (five) days before, prepare a rye production sourdough (recipe below).

450 grams rye bread
4 1/2 litres water
300 grams molasses
150 grams rye production sourdough
2 raisins per bottle

Cut the bread into small pieces and dry them out thoroughly, either in a warm place or in a low oven. Put them in a bucket of at least 5 litres capacity. Boil the water and pour in over the bread. Cover and leave until the temperature has dropped to about 35 degrees. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into another bucket. Press the crumbly sludge very gently to release the last of the liquid, but do not squeeze it hard or too much sediment will fall in. Add the molasses to the warm liquid and mix thoroughly. Then mix in the rye sourdough and leave it in a warm place for twelve hours. In the morning, strain and pour into sterilized bottles, adding the two raisins per bottle. Seal the bottles and leave them in a cool place.

If after two days, the bottles have not carbonated, give them a shake and move them to a warm place to carbonate. Drink chilled, or use as the liquid for making soup such as borshch.

In order to make rye production sourdough, you first have to make rye sourdough starter.

To make a rye sourdough starter, start by mixing together 25 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of warm water; keep these in a warm place. The next day, add another 25 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of warm water. Again on day three, and again on day four; same proportions. Leave the mixture for one more day; now you have your rye sourdough starter.

Now, take 50 grams of the starter. Add 150 grams rye flour and 300 grams water. Mix together to form a sloppy mixture and leave for 12-24 hours. Now you have your rye production sourdough.

I started with 485 grams of fresh bread.

The bread dried to 371g. Broken open it was not really fully dry inside, but close. I failed to break it into small pieces to start with.

I combined the boiling water and bread and five hours later poured, strained, and added the molasses and starter.

The water tastes just like liquid rye bread. With molasses, the flavor is just what you'd expect.

The rye sourdough starter tastes startlingly like a Belgian ale! It's crazy!

I did not do anything to avoid aeration and didn't take any sanitization steps up to this point.

The next day I bottled, ending up with three full Martinelli's bottles (25 ounces, I think), plus maybe eight ounces of dregs. I cleaned and sanitized the bottles, funnel, and filter, but did not use any gear to prevent aeration during pouring.

It had certainly fermented and was quite lively on the tongue. The molasses is the predominant flavor and it's rather sweet. I would try making this with a different adjunct, and unless it becomes dryer in the bottle I would use less.

About an inch of sediment settled in the bottles. Two days later, I opened one. Ooooooh. Aaaaaah. All but about three ounces blasted forth like foam from a fire hose. It was quite magnificent in a dancing about the sink trying to keep the walls and ceiling dry sort of way. Needless to say, what remained was murky. It wasn't all that different in flavor or carbonation from when it went into the bottle. The boys didn't really like it. I thought it was OK for sipping but it's not what I'd call a refreshing beverage.

About a week ago I bought a two liter bottle of homemade kvas at European Foods. The proprietor told me to exercise caution when opening it. It was quite explosive, all right. Even the third and fourth openings caused it to release mighty blasts of CO2 and completely stir up the sediment. Hmm.

Well, crud. I'm going to leave the other two bottles alone for a while and think about how to better extract their contents. Mayhap extreme cold would help. At the very least I'll have to capture it and if it's not drinkable use it as a soup base or something.

auriferous espresso in the Poppery II

I tried five ounces of Sweet Maria's Auriferous Espresso blend in the Poppery II. This was an amount that I thought would work well, based on the first attempt at four and the second attempt at six ounces.

I let the popper preheat for a few minutes, and gave it a shake now and then during the early going since it was not fluidizing. The beans in this blend are generally larger than the beans in Moka Kadir; perhaps that's a factor. At ten minutes I pulled the plug, with it very audibly in second crack. Color is even. Final weight was 4.13 ounces.

There was enough smoke to set off the alarm, even though I was running the fan on the range hood. That did not happen last time; I was surprised.

After a couple of days rest, I'm pretty pleased. It's a touch dark but I don't detect any other flaws. I think I'm ready (on a day with slightly less revolting weather) to do some head-to-head comparisons between the Poppery II and the stovetop popper.

second use of Poppery II

The Poppery II does work better with more beans. The first attempt was with four ounces of Moka Kadir; the second was with six. In eight and a half minutes it produced a glossy dark roast with plenty of smoke and cracking. Final weight was 4.87 ounces, or 86% of original weight. That's an interesting result. I usually see something closer to 80%.

The main problem is that while the beans are heaviest they aren't getting much agitation. It takes a few minutes before any degree of fluidization is evident. Some of the beans at the bottom were done very quickly. Giving it a shake now and then seems to help.

Tipping it back doesn't appear to be a good idea. It seems to interfere with the fluidization. A few beans do pop out when it's level, but not as many as I'd feared.

This roast ended up slightly uneven, but I think it will be better next time. Things to try:

• no tilting
• occasional manual agitation
• five ounces

The immediately-pulled shots were an improvement. Lots of crema, though not the foaming torrent from the last roast. The under-roasted flavor is gone and the solvent notes are faint. It's still pretty bad, as experience suggests will be the case before resting for a couple of days, but I think it may turn out all right.

After resting for a day there was some improvement. It's darker than I usually take Moka Kadir, with a bit of char. Aroma is nice, with chocolate dominant.

Update: It's not improving. It's not producing good espresso at all, in fact. I wonder whether I just need to clean the espresso machine.

Update: Indeed. That thing was disgusting. It's now decalcified and every user-accessible component is spotless. Whisked out the grinder, too. Pulled shots pretty close to the ideal time/volume. The result is a much cleaner-tasting cup. My main objection is probably the darkness of the roast, which I think has destroyed some of the fruitiness that I've tasted in Moka Kadir in previous roasts.

drying hot peppers

I don't know what variety of hot pepper this is. Super chili said the tag at the nursery. Cone-shaped, green fruit turn orange then ripen to red. I pulled the plant from the greenhouse a week ago and the peppers have been drying since.

They are quite hot! Probably destined for my sole consumption.

discovery of kvas

Woot! It's bread in a glass! I was at the highly multicultural HT Oaktree Market and strolled past a pallet of big plastic bottles covered with Cyrillic letters, barley stalks, and a big bearded dude holding a wicker mug. There was some English, too: CLASSIC KVAS and UNIQUE OLD RECIPES. For $1.50 I wasn't about to pass that up, though I hadn't the faintest idea what it was.

Turns out that Kvas is an ancient fermented beverage made of black or rye bread, and sometimes flavored with fruit. It has long been popular in eastern European countries. The alcohol content is very low.

The recent history of Kvas is that the big soft drink makers have been trying to horn in on the action, leading to Kvas-like things that are mass produced and don't use traditional methods. What I bought is made in Ukraine by Danilo. The ingredients make it clear that this is one of those cola-like products: water, sugar, glucose-fructose syrup (I think that's high-fructose corn syrup, or perhaps derived from beets), carbon dioxide, and kvas concentrate based on rye malt. It is non-alcoholic.

While it's surely not authentic, it perhaps gives me a reasonable idea of what a kvas might be like. It has a malty aroma, is moderately sweet, and is moderately carbonated. I quite like it. It's pretty highly caloric, at 86 calories per 8 ounces. That's basically like any sugary soda.

I'm going to have to visit a European foods market and try to find a real kvas. And it looks easy enough to make it at home. Here are some recipes:

• http://oldrecipebook.com/canning-russianrecipes.shtml
• http://ask.metafilter.com/64513/Kvas-recipe
• http://www.whats4eats.com/beverages/kvas-recipe
• http://www.ruscuisine.com/recipes/beverages-and-drinks/n--297/ (beet kvas)
• http://www.ruscuisine.com/recipes/beverages-and-drinks/n--39/
  

ginger beef wu-mu noodles

I was scouting for interesting Asian stuff at the 99 Ranch and picked up a four pound box of Wu-Mu dry noodles for a few bucks. According to the ingredients list they are made of wheat flour, ice water, and salt. I couldn't find the ice water but perhaps I stored them incorrectly.

Engrish is my third favorite language!

Choiceness Grocery Nation Affirmation
We are the first company in Taiwan producing dried instant noodles meeting the GMP standard and its quality management system is ISO approved. It is non-fried and no preservatives. The quality is health and satisfaction. You can set your mind at ease, because we can safeguard you expenditure.

I love it. Seriously, I greatly appreciate localization efforts. I hope the enstructured word usement of my software offers the same level of entertainment to its international users.

The noodles are great and cook in three minutes. I threw together a quick stir fry with leftover medium-rare strip steak, lots of fresh ginger, king oyster mushrooms, onion, sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, and black vinegar. Worthy of being made again.

last of the tomatoes, for real this time

I cleaned out the greenhouse today, removing all the dead vines, fallen tomatoes, and other detritus. I'm running fans with the vents open to try to dry it out inside.

I kept all of the tomatoes that weren't split or moldy. Plus, a surprise cucumber. Several pounds in all.

I've been cooking with green tomatoes lately. For Thanksgiving I made a dish of sweet corn sauteed with green tomatoes, fresh jalapeño (still doing fine in the greenhouse), and roasted red peppers. Quite good!

first attempt at roasting with a Poppery II

I discovered another hot air popcorn popper at the thrift store and felt it worthy of the $3 investment. It's a Poppery II and is compact and quiet compared to the Popcorn Pumper.

I immediately roasted four ounces of Moka Kadir. Interestingly, my results were almost identical to the first time I roasted in the Popcorn Pumper. After 15 minutes I shut it down, having produced almost no smoke, no sustained cracking, and at a much lighter roast than I would normally use.

The result for the first shots I pulled were about as originally described. Under-roasted, solvent aftertaste, very little fruit or sweetness, and low aroma. After a day of rest the only change was that the sweetness may have developed a bit and the aroma was improved.

An interesting effect was that the espresso was produced very quickly and with an absolute torrent of foaming crema. This behavior lessened slightly on the second day. I didn't experiment to see how far I'd have to reduce the grind in order to mitigate it, since four ounces (3.2 after roasting) is not much to play with. There may be some underextraction that would account for a bit of the flavor, but I don't think that's the main factor.

I will try again with six ounces to see whether I can get results more like these. However, that quantity is going to be pretty close to jumping out of the top of the roasting chamber. I may need to tip it back slightly. This is a nicer piece of equipment to use, but at this point I don't know whether it can get the job done.

Update: After a few days, no real change. It is not going to improve with age. This is just a bad roast.

garbanzos con chorizo

I bought some dried chickpeas the other day. I've always used canned garbanzos and was curious to see how dried might differ. Coincidentally, I ran across Spain, in 5 ingredients, which happened to use dried garbanzos (plus chicken stock, chorizo, paprika, and kale).

I pulled out my sole book on Spanish cuisine to find out whether a bit of rosemary might be appropriate (it is) and discovered this entertaining tidbit:

Chickpeas (garbanzos) are the potatoes of Spain, growing well through the hot summers. In ancient times, the Romans mocked the chickpea-eating Spanish, suggesting that their enormous consumption of the legume not only indicated stupidity but also induced it.

It also mentioned that garbanzos con chorizo is a classic dish. The five ingredient recipe is clearly a simple rendition. Many recipes, generally with several more ingredients, can be found online (and, oddly, not in my cookbook).

I served it over chard from the garden, which I had, rather than kale, which I did not. The chard is still doing quite well in the greenhouse.

It really does take two hours, and even after that the garbanzos were bordering on water chestnut crunchiness. I'd guess that they could have easily stood another 45 minutes of simmering. It's a low-effort recipe and the results are satisfying, but another 10 minutes to incorporate onions, peppers, maybe some cumin would be time well spent in developing a heartier complexity.

boiled new potatoes with parsley and butter

Hardly an innovation in the preparation of the humble spud. But when you have spectacularly fresh and flavorful new potatoes this is the right thing to do. The butter and parsley may even be pushing it; steamed with a sprinkle of sea salt would be a perfect treatment too.

Wolfgang Puck said,

My motto is always, and has always been, "buy the best ingredients, no matter the price, and then don't screw them up."

Impeding the free speech of the finest, freshest ingredients is surely one way to screw them up.

Delicious!

potato harvest

The boys and I emptied the potato boxes today. I was a bit disappointed, as the promise of the boxes being stuffed from top to bottom turned out to be rather fanciful.

The vines were sufficiently dead, I thought. Off to the compost bin with them.

For harvesting it's sufficient to remove most of one side. I obviously didn't use the top six inches of the box, not that it mattered in this case.

We had 29 pounds of beautiful Desiree reds. There were also a few rotten ones, generally small.

The other box contained 18 pounds of Yellow Finns.

5 pounds of those had a bit of rot at one end, but were easily pared for fresh eating.

I also dug 1.5 pounds of both varieties from the plants beneath the forsythia. These were the leftovers after planting the boxes, and between the constant battering of soccer balls and the almost full-time shade once the forsythia leafed out this yield is hardly a surprise.

Almost all of the potatoes were from the bottom of the bins, although there were a few big ones in the upper parts of both bins. I suspect that my technique for covering the vines as they grew was not correct and I ended up almost entirely with stems rather than roots. However, that also means that the yield, where it existed, was not too bad.

The rot surely is from overwatering and poor drainage beneath the bins. That's not a surprise, now that I think about it. I don't think the growing technique had anything to do with it.

There's no doubt that grocery store potatoes can't touch fresh ones for flavor or quality, but as far as production is concerned this was probably not very economical. I'm sure I can get at least a couple more years out of these boxes, but the method demands more effort and cost than is justified without a significant yield improvement.

hard raspberry-pomegranate-apple cider, part 2

I bottled the cider today, drinking what didn't quite fit.

Clarification after adding the pectic enzyme has proceeded reasonably well. It has a nice translucence, if not total clarity. It's a lovely peachy color.

Flavor is dry and pleasantly tart with a nice balance between the apple and the other fruits. It has a faintly yeasty aroma, but I don't detect that as a flavor. I'd probably identify this as a rather fruity white wine if I tasted it blind.

It may be a little early to bottle, but I'd love to have it sparkling by Thanksgiving. I filled six 16 oz bottles, using about a teaspoon of corn sugar per bottle (boiled with cider). I just poured from the jug into the bottling bucket, figuring that it will be consumed before any problematic oxidation occurs.

last of the cucumbers and tomatoes

Last week I plucked the final Tall Telegraph greenhouse cucumbers. We had the last one tonight in a green salad. These had a sweeter, milder flavor than most of the others, perhaps simply because they weren't as large.

Tonight I picked what will probably be the final tomatoes. There are still plenty of greenies, but I don't think they're going to ripen on the vine. Some of the cherry and grape tomatoes were pretty good, though.

Cucumbers and tomatoes in mid-November! I guess that makes the greenhouse successful in extending my season a bit.

There would be a lot more if I hadn't had humidity and mold problems. I've probably been overwatering, and once the rains came the inside of the greenhouse was extremely humid. The massive amount of tomato foliage didn't help, and I began seeing mold. I did a lot of pruning and did what I could to dry things out, but I lost many pounds of tomatoes. Next year I need to prune aggressively, avoid overwatering, and figure out other ways to limit humidity. Between that and going to a permanent glazing I think I'll have pretty good results.

hard raspberry-pomegranate-apple cider, part 1

Saw a gallon of flash pasteurized cider with no preservatives on sale (only one jug left, unfortunately) which reminded me that I hadn't made a hard cider in six months.

I wanted to try something different, but I hadn't exactly planned this. A bit of kitchen scavenging turned up a few raspberries, part of a pomegranate, and some honey. I still had additives and champagne yeast from last time. Sounded fine!

Some of these quantities are a little approximate:

• 2/3 teaspoon yeast nutrient
• 1/3 pomegranate
• 3 oz red raspberries
• 2 oz clover honey
• 1/3 packet Red Star champagne yeast
• 1 gallon Ryan's orchard blend flash pasteurized cider, unfiltered, no preservatives

Pureed the pomegranate and raspberries. Simmered for 10 minutes with honey and yeast nutrient. Tasted like basic raspberry jam with just a hint of the pomegranate. It darkened while cooking; perhaps if I'd used an acid blend it would have stayed bright. I don't think this quantity is going to make much difference in final color, but once all the apple particles have settled perhaps I'll be proven wrong.

Warmed the refrigerated cider in a hot water bath to just above room temperature, then poured cider and jam into the glass jug with splashing. Pitched dry yeast directly into the cider and jam mix and rocked it for a while. Very murky, as expected.

Is cooking the yeast nutrient a problem? I guessed not based on the fact that you boil wort.

At the November meeting of the North Seattle homebrew club I was told by Eric that it is best to add acid blend after primary fermentation is complete. Adding it prior to fermentation may create conditions that don't appeal to the yeast. He said that it should be added on the basis of sampling and tasting.

Primary fermentation was done within a week. It was explosively vigorous for the first hour; I should have just left it uncorked. I racked to a new jug, where more sediment settled quickly, but unlike the previous ciders it has not really clarified. Perhaps the pectic enzyme I used in those was really effective. I've read that it's best to add it before primary fermentation, but that it may still help if added later. I may or may not.

I sampled when racking. Nice! The raspberry is subtle. The pomegranate I would never identify in a blind tasting, but I think I can detect it. There is certainly a hint of pink, which I think might be more apparent after clarification. I don't think I need additional tartness.

2009-11-12 update: I sprinkled in about a teaspoon of pectic enzyme yesterday afternoon. Within a few hours I thought there was more sediment at the bottom, and after a day it's considerably clearer. I doubt that it will approach the clarity of the pure apple ciders but it's prettier.