More Deliciousness

Two things keep happening:
1. Babies keep growing
2. Charlie keeps cooking


Thus far the two items do not intersect, but they will someday. For now let's look at the tasty treats coming out of our kitchen.


Blueberry Basil Goat Cheese Pie. I have to capitalize every word because it is pretty much the most epic pie ever. It rolls a 20 in deliciousness. First seen several months ago on an episode of Diners Drive -ins and Dives, Charlie watched the segment several times and meticulously copied down what he thought the chef was doing. He researched the pie again before cooking and the recipe had been recently posted online. Turns out he had figured it out almost perfectly. His ratios were spot on, but he had guessed one cup where the recipe called for 1/2. Pretty good for sherlock holmes recipe writing!

marcona almond crumble on top, oh my.

This pie, oh this pie was delicious. I could eat it every night, so it's a good thing he only made one.

Then there was the limoncello. Citrus has been in season around here, and we picked up two big bags of lemons the other day. When we were in the Amalfi region of Italy, every restaurant had their own limoncello concoction. To my delight, they all seemed set on acquiring your judgment through bringing you a small glass of it after every meal. Oh yes, fantastic restaurateur, if you would be so kind as to bring me a frosty finger of your best lemon, I will be happy to give you my opinion. And while our own first effort wasn't as good as the best limoncello we had there, it was pretty damn tasty.


First, a week of the pith-less peels floating in some Everclear. Then marry that with a simple syrup blend and viola. The most interesting part: the lemon-infused liquor was absolutely clear yellow (not photographed because, well, it looked like pee). The cooled simple syrup was also crystal clear. But combine the two and instantly it assumed the traditional cloudy bright yellow color.


And finally, a cute baby attack:

rainy

It's been raining forever I think. I did manage to make another round of pain levain, and it made improvements. I added a bit of dark rye flour and it made a huge difference in taste. The crust was crispier too. Of course there had to be a mishap, and I dorked up one of the steps in the rise process but the loaves didn't turn out leaden. What will happen when I manage to follow all of the directions at once?

On the eve of their six-month birthday, cute boys:

Dash looking out the window at the rain, while chewing on a toy. Always gnawing.

Liam in his chair

I love these wee baby jeans

why, hello

other slices

Sometimes I am not covered in babies. It doesn't happen very often, but I try to take advantage of it.

I decided that this year I'm going to master 1) Roasting a Chicken and 2) Pain au Levain.

For the chicken, I have puttered around with a few different recipes but am focusing on the very simple roast from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook. It's a dry roast, just with salt pepper and thyme. I'm not very good at making pan sauces but I am quite good at making mustard so this is perfect. Bake it, let it rest, cut it up, slather with fresh mustard (pink peppercorn is my current favorite). It's not perfect yet, but I think I've gotten skilled enough that it is always tasty.

The bread is a bit more thorny. I've got a reliable sourdough starter living in the fridge, and I've gotten my hands on some french-style high protein flour. I have many bread cookbooks but am using the very detailed Local Breads for instruction. He makes this bread sound more like an animal than a grain, and it feels that complicated sometimes. This type has very precise requirements for humidity, acidity, flour, and the undefined "magic" category. But at the same time you need to roll with the day to figure out how much flour you need and how long it wants to rise. It's a very wet slack dough and I can't work it with my hands so I'm using my mixer. Nice to have my hands free. I think it's actually helping me because I think that the consistency and amount of flour that I would add based on previous experience is detrimental to this bread. You want the dough wet.


First attempt tastes pretty good but is heavy. None of the lovely air bubbles and pockets I was looking for. Made good toast, don't think I would rip off hunks and dip in soup. It's too tough for that. But toasted with butter and honey? Divine.

crumb-y

I enjoy baking bread. We often don't eat it all, and sometimes the loaves come out a little less than tasty because of textural issues. Leftover bits and sometimes those leftover loaves are destined for one thing: breadcrumbs. A basket lined with a tea towel lives behind our bread bin and into that go the ends and stale slices from bread past the tasty point. Last week I baked a pair of loaves and through some vagary of rain or too much kneading the loaves were dry from the get-go. Ok for toast but even I must ration my toast consumption (trivia answer: my favorite food is toast). Part of one loaf and the entirety of another got sliced up and it was past time for breadcrumb making. That little basket was overflowing already.

The usual life cycle of bread-to-crumb is as follows: Uneaten ends of loaves (and whatever may remain of a stale loaf, sliced thinly) gets put in the crumb basket to dry out. Over the course of several weeks, even the hardest thickest end slice becomes a vulnerable dry hunk.

When I have a larger supply (say, an entire loaf not good for eating but fine for crumbs) I slice it thinly and give it a few 10 minute doses in a very low oven. I want to dry it out, not toast it. Then for a few days I spread it out on a clean tea towel on the dining room table to get good and dry. And hope that no one comes over and asks why I have 50 super thin slices of curling dried bread on my table.

Once dry, I employ freezer zip bags and my favorite mallet (a weighted pounder Charlie uses to flatten cutlets) and pound the slices into bits and pieces. I want them relatively small, nothing bigger than a dime.

ready to get out some aggression

Then comes my high tech solution. If you don't have a mixer and a meat grinder attachment, proceed to beat the crap out of your bread pieces until they are small. I use the larger disk on the grinder and some saran wrap to help with the crumbs-all-over problem. This is an effortless way to get your crumbs a uniform small consistency. I used to think that pounding them pretty small was fine, but then realized when cooking that you really want your breadcrumbs to be more of bread dust. The only time you want something larger is with panko, and that's an entirely different creature. So run all of your bread gravel through the grinder and you end up with lovely uniform crumbs.

the white zephyr

Since I'm using homemade bread, I can control the preservative and other chemical content. A bonus is that most of my bread contains a combination of buttermilk, regular milk, flax meal, and frequently a seed mix of flax anise poppy caraway and sesame. The resulting crumbs can only be described as....seasoned. They add zest. They are a secret ingredient in my meatloaf.

the end result

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Liam prefers giraffe meat

Valentine memories

Charlie at work

For Valentines day, Charlie traditionally cooks me something fancy. Since he mastered The Steak a few years ago, that is typically my request. He can cook a filet mignon better than any restaurant I have ever eaten in. First he figured out how to produce perfect just a shade over rare steaks every single time, and once he perfected the art of dusting them with powdered porcini mushrooms before the initial sear, that was the final straw. I will only order it out again under duress.

This year he has been trying to cook more with courses, and I just asked for a surprise. There have been some amazing mushrooms lately at Pike market so those became the theme. And for the second time in my life I ate truffles. We each wore a baby into the market because we knew there was no way to survive in there with a stroller. I was tucked in a corner by the mushrooms while Charlie ordered from our favorite produce stand, and I knew it was him behind the truffle order. One of the guys at the shop came out and was putting various mushrooms in bags and then proceeded to delicately sniff every single northwest truffle before picking the one he thought was best.

First course: porcini truffle mustard with coppa and taleggio cheese

second: oyster mushroom, arugula, and sweet garlic fettucini (full disclosure: I was the pasta maker. That is one of my jobs when Charlie cooks)

third: pork, savoy cabbage ravioli with a crimini/shiitake mushroom sauce

fourth: a salad of raw mushrooms, parsley, shaved truffle, and abbaye de belloc cheese

finally, maple mascarpone cheesecakes with walnuts

Oh, it was so good. Photo credits go to Ido, and tablecloth credits to my grandmother's wedding tablecloth. It's one of those cloths that could only have been made in a previous generation....cream shot through with a shimmer of gold.

chewy

Oh were the boys ever crabby today. We ended the day just trying to get to 7pm. Liam spent the last 45 minutes demanding that I dance and jiggle and bounce constantly or face The Dolphin Scream. Then thankfully it was time for pajamas-eat-bed and after an hour of tossing around they were finally blissfully asleep.

liam also gnawed on his discus. Just imagine the squeak-squeak-squeak sound that his busy little gums make on it for added hilarity.

And we adults (Charlie's mom is visiting) cooked some hamburgers and piled them high with all sorts of condiments on top of homemade ciabatta rolls. The bread was mostly a success. I started the biga last night and managed to pretty much burn out our weakling kitchenaid during the kneading process today (12 minutes at speed EIGHT). It's a good thing my bread book gave specific directions on how to use the mixer and how it would probably walk off the counter at that speed. The dough is way too wet to knead with your hands and the mixer did indeed shake and shimmy and wobble all over the place. By the end of the time, the motor was responding with the same speed at positions 6-10 so this may be the end, beautiful friend. Then I kind of forgot to add salt to the dough but other than that the rolls puffed up beautifully and baked up smelling wonderful and when I took them out of the oven there was the sweet sound of crackling tell me that they were crispy and delicious. Next time: add salt.

tasty, just add well-salted butter.

milestones

green peppercorn on the left, pink on the right

The mustard was whipped into submission, and now must relax in the fridge for a week before consumption. I will celebrate with a Bouchon roasted chicken (page X) for dipping. In better lighting, the paler mustard is full of electric pink flecks from the peppercorn.

I put Liam down and went to change Dash, and when I looked over I found him pleased as punch propped up on his elbows. Congratulations lad for rolling over!

Dash worked on his smiling skills today. We went to get Charlie some more gatorade and graham crackers, so that he can recover from his crazy illness. The doctor thoughtfully provided hardcore antibiotics and cough syrup. We make a good team.

spice

Dash enjoyed his first dinner party on Saturday night. An asian-themed event with friends, Charlie made his delicious banh mi sandwiches. I love a man who makes his own baguettes.

Another day, another refrigerator full of bottles. Yes, this will only last a day.

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How to impress people when you have very little cohesive time to do anything: make your own mustard! If you think it makes you look a little like Martha Stewart, it's because it is actually one of her recipes. I've made all but the pink peppercorn mustard types from this set of recipes. The red wine has been the least favorite, but I really think it's because I used a so-so bottle of red wine vinegar. Like many foods, the quality of your end result is only as good as the ingredients. I order all of my mustard seeds and peppercorns from Penzey's and do make one substitution: whenever the recipe calls for black mustard seeds, I substitute brown. At first this was because I misread the recipe, but the end result was so tasty I'm going to keep going with the error.

I started green and pink peppercorn today

The english mustard is spicy and delicious. The green peppercorn is pretty much divine. We regularly roast simple chickens and just eat them with this mustard on the side. This week I'm making the pink peppercorn for the first time and can't wait to try it.

Liam supervised

Making mustard is super easy, and I mean that. You just need a few large-ish mason jars. You add some of the ingredients, sit for 48 hours, add the rest, and beat the tar out of it in your food processor. Total time is maybe 10 minutes the first day, 20 the next because it can take a while to get it good and creamy. Then separate into tiny jars, give some away, and eat the rest of it.

Dec 18

On the eighteenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: B is for Brown!, a tasty candy cane, one green tree, a nut-eating squirrel, tasty purple grapes, a frosty white tree, one sly grey cat, a charlie brown ornament, one jaunty snowman, a lone acorn, one golden bell, a festive wreath, one goldfish, batman, a sparkly white snowflake, one delicious looking gingerbread man, a happy bluebird, and one cute disembodied santa head.

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Calliope and Sappho help Charlie make meatballs for dinner...

Dec 8, things 1&2, and cheeseburgers

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: one golden bell, a festive wreath, one goldfish, batman, a sparkly white snowflake, one delicious looking gingerbread man, a happy bluebird, and one cute disembodied santa head.

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My favored way of dressing the twins is a lot like my mom's quilt design: similar but different. If they're wearing exactly the same outfit it actually makes me a little uncomfortable, like I'm trying to get them to be the same person. Now, we did get a lot of two-some outfits as gifts and I think that's super because it just means I have to wash them less frequently. :) But for the most part my favorite style is to have them, for instance, both wearing white undershirts and white socks and different colored pants and sweaters. Then they look like brothers. Similar but different.

pancakes improved everyone's mood

Today was an exception because these onesies have made me laugh for as long as I can remember. I bought them at a consignment sale and it's a good thing I decided to put them on for our wednesday pancake lunch today because I practically had to shoehorn the boys into them. The boys didn't exactly cooperate with pictures but trust me they were super cute. I decided to let Dash have 1 because he was the firstborn.

Liam ate, then slept through everything

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Last night Charlie was working late, and the boys were being pills so I put a log on the fire and we all settled down to read some Calvin & Hobbes. It was loads of fun, but was a bit loud at times. Everyone was fed, dry, warm, didn't want to dance, didn't even want to be held, was just possessed of an overwhelming cranky. Damn can those boys cry!

looks peaceful, doesn't it?

trust me, he's just inhaling for more screaming

Just in case you thought things were ever quiet around here. I'm just very good at tolerating the volume.

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And why yes, I did have a glorious cheeseburger for dinner last night. And I ate it on my christmas china.

tasty relaxation

Harry lays a pet-me trap in the kitchen

It's Charlie's favorite time of the year to cook: fall. Recent experimentations have been delicious. He tackled his first souffle the other night. It looked beautiful coming out of the oven, full of fresh herbs and cheesy-ness. We had to take turn feeding babies to eat it, so by the time it got onto my plate it was a bit deflated but still good.

souffle!

An even better creation was his italian sausage on Sunday. Our local butcher had just enough fat-back in stock. It's spicy, because we like things that way. The first application was with orichette kale and aged parmesan. We both ate heaping bowls. Pasta in the fall, when it's been dark out for hours, is just the thing. Bonus: there are three more pounds sitting in the freezer. Yay!


In the relaxation category: my view from the kitchen table. After I get up in the morning and Charlie's gone off to work, I put my little netbook there and hope that in the next four or five hours I'll manage a cup of coffee and some reading. It's usually with one baby on me, which is fine. Much of the time I'm either feeding babies or sitting with both of them in my arms trying to make everyone calm (thanks, streaming netflix on my ipad... there are few things you can do with no hands).


But sometimes, like right this very minute both babies are not really asleep but entertaining themselves in the other room and I'm drinking a very strong cup of coffee and looking out at the trees. I love how once the leaves have turned and fallen, you notice that the trees never really are naked. They've always got a fuzzy coating of moss to keep them warm.

bananarama

Thank you, babies, for taking a nap this afternoon that was long enough for me to make a batch of jam. I read the recipe the other day and it seduced me with the serving suggestion of eating it on toast with peanut butter. Peanut butter and bananas on toast are just about culinary perfection. A way to preserve that and have it without having to rely on the capricious when-is-the-banana-perfectly-ripe threshold? Divine!

For some reason I had it in my head that bananas had no pectin and would be a brown mess during preserving. I was wrong on the pectin, and brown-ness was avoided with the addition of a generous amount of lemon juice plus a secret ingredient that I had never used before: fruit fresh. I'd read about adding vitamin C tabs to jam, but never tried it. Magically, the jam retains the sunny creamy color of a ripe banana. It's a little dark because of my other secret ingredient, a dark rum that Gary brings back from Cayman. The texture is smooth and creamy, with little bits of banana for texture.


Result: I found myself standing at the kitchen counter, turning my "is it set or not" taste of the jam into me eating three straight spoonfuls and having to resist eating more straight out of the jar.

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From last night: the boys were fractious and demanded to both be held. Liam really didn't have any idea what he was doing with that arm, but it sure looks cute.

spring

cute....baby? Is that an eye I see?

Spring has been busy here. My nephew Fenric was born, and I went to Minneapolis for two weeks to help out and play with clay and read stories and make snowmen and eat sticky rice. It was cold and sunny and the entire Bodkin house was buzzing with energy.

Lady, it was cold outside so of course I was bundled up. I remain suspicious of you.

Ok, I think I like you now.

proving that you can fit three Bodkins in a kitchen sink!

Spring has also started to peek out around here, and we're growing all sorts of things. The kitchen is home to trays full of hot peppers, pumpkins, a panoply of herbs, and an entire tray devoted to san marzano tomato seeds from our Italy trip.

Hopefully of the 24 sets, I can get at least a few tomato plants to rally to full size for planting outdoors. In the garden already are radishes, arugula, a salad mix, and a few kinds of beets. Oh, and some overwintered parsnips that are very tasty.


Today's activity was pickling some exceptionally slim asparagus. I've still got one big jar left from last season, so that will have to tide me over until these are done blending on the shelf.