A baking and gardening journal. Mostly.
by A.J. Coltrane
Maybe I’m just late to the party, but it feels to me like there are more and more websites featuring decadent food photography.
Assuming that’s actually true — I think it’s at least in part because during work hours, it’s safe to fantasize about diving into this:
But this is another story:
By Iron Chef Leftovers
Here is the even easier version of the Mushroom Soup recipe posted yesterday. It is relative since this saves you about 5 minutes total on the cooking of the soup and exchanges the roux and the volute with an extra potato for thickening. These recipes make about 1 quart of soup and freeze really well.
The Software
1 1/2 lbs mushrooms – you can use any kind you want
3 small or 2 medium Yukon Gold potato
1/2 oz dried Porcini (or any other kind of dried) mushrooms
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups water
1/4 cup marsala or port wine
1/8 cup cognac
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and Pepper
The Prep
Rinse the mushrooms well to remove dirt – you don’t need to worry about soaking them with water – they aren’t going to be seared. Half any that are larger than a 1 inch diameter. Scrub the potatoes and cut into quarters for a small potato or eights for a medium one.
The Soup
Add the mushrooms, potatoes, stock, thyme, marsala and cognac to the pot (don’t add the water just yet).If there is not enough liquid in the pot to cover all the dry ingredients, add a bit more stock or water to cover. Just a reminder, mushrooms do float, so it may look like they are not covered. If you are not sure, submerge them and see if there is any liquid on top of them. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for 1 hour.
The Finish
Puree the soup in three parts in a blender (BE CAREFUL, it is HOT). Taste and add salt and pepper. If you want a thinner soup, add additional stock or water. The soup is great on its own or add in some rice or pasta, maybe a few leaves of fresh thyme or a dab of sour cream or a dash of sherry vinegar and consume.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
A note to readers: It is really easy to make soup and unless you plan poorly, you should never have to buy pre-made soup.
Mrs. Iron Chef has a traditional hash brown recipe that calls for a can of Cream of Mushroom Soup. The store bought ones are not very mushroom-y and are loaded with sodium and generally they taste like crap, so I decided to make my own. It involves maybe 5 minutes of prep time, an hour of cooking and 5 minutes to blend it smooth, not to mention a few dollars worth of ingredients and a much better taste. The best part – you can make this a completely vegan recipe with very little modification.
I am including 2 recipes for the price of one – the first one is the one that I made which is a little more complicated but a richer soup which I will post today and the second one is slightly less tasty, but even easier and I will post that tomorrow.
The Software
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 lbs mushrooms – you can use any kind you want
2 small or 1 medium Yukon Gold potato
1/2 oz dried Porcini (or any other kind of dried) mushrooms
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups water
1/4 cup marsala or port wine
1/8 cup cognac
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and Pepper
The Prep
Rinse the mushrooms well to remove dirt – you don’t need to worry about soaking them with water – they aren’t going to be seared. Half any that are larger than a 1 inch diameter. Scrub the potatoes and cut into quarters for a small potato or eights for a medium one.
The Roux
In a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients, melt the butter over medium heat. Once melted, add the flour and whisk until combined. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring about every minute to a blonde color (you can keep cooking this as long as you want – the darker the roux, the more flavor, but that is for another show).
The Volute
Add 1 cup of stock in 1/2 cup increments to the roux, whisking as you add it. Once the 1 cup of stock is incorporated, add the remaining stock and whisk until the roux has been absorbed in the stock (i.e. you don’t see any pieces floating around).
The Soup
Add the mushrooms, potatoes, remaining stock, water, thyme, marsala and cognac to the volute. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for 1 hour. If there is not enough liquid in the pot to cover all the dry ingredients, add a bit more stock or water to cover. Just a reminder, mushrooms do float, so it may look like they are not covered. If you are not sure, submerge them and see if there is any liquid on top of them.
The Finish
Puree the soup in three parts in a blender (BE CAREFUL, it is HOT). Taste and add salt and pepper. If you want a thinner soup, add additional stock or water. The soup is great on its own or add in some rice or pasta, maybe a few leaves of fresh thyme or a dab of sour cream or a dash of sherry vinegar and consume.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
One IPA blind tasting was not enough for the Iron Chef, so we had to do another one. Same rules as the first, once again with 5 tasters, but a slightly different cast of characters – Port Townsend Hop Diggity replaced Harpoon IPA, Skagit River Sculler’s IPA replaced Avery Maharaja, Ninkasi Tricerahops replaced Laughing Dog Alpha Dog and Port Brewing Wipeout IPA replaced Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. The beers were ranked 1-9 with 1 being the best. This time around, no one except me knew what the beers were. The results:
| Beer (Previous Finish) |
Judge 1 |
Judge 2 |
Judge 3 |
Judge 4 |
Judge 5 |
Total Score |
| Firestone Walker DIPA (6T) |
1 |
3 |
9 |
1 |
2 |
16 |
| Pliny the Elder (1) |
7 |
4 |
1 |
2 |
4 |
18 |
| Port Brewing Wipeout IPA (NA) |
2 |
6 |
2 |
5 |
5 |
20 |
| Anacortes IPA (4) |
8 |
1 |
5 |
6 |
1 |
21 |
| Diamond Knot Industrial IPA (3) |
3 |
2 |
8 |
3 |
8 |
24 |
| Ninkasi Tricerahops (NA) |
5 |
5 |
7 |
4 |
6 |
27 |
| Port Townsend Hop Diggity (NA) |
2 |
8 |
6 |
9 |
3 |
28 |
| Boundary Bay IPA (1) |
4 |
7 |
4 |
7 |
9 |
31 |
| Skagit River Sculler’s IPA (NA) |
6 |
9 |
3 |
8 |
7 |
33 |
In the interest of disclosure, I am Judge 5; all others will remain nameless to avoid the wrath of disgruntled beer drinkers everywhere.
Let me stress – finishing at the bottom of the rankings is in no way an indication of a bad beer. If anything, the general comments this time around was that the beers were very difficult to rank as there were a number of them that were liked equally. That definitely shows up in the voting totals with less than 10 points separating 5th from 1st and just 17 points separating first from last (it was 25 points the last time around). The similarity of the beers was by design and had an inadvertent consequence of making it harder on the judging – all of the beers ranged on the higher end of the IBU scale, with Diamond Knot coming in at the low of 72 and 5 of the beers topping 100 IBU.
Some interesting results in this one – Pliny remained near the top again, but Firestone seemed to be the clear favorite this time around after a disappointing showing last time (and almost not being part of the competition this time around). Port Brewing made it a clean sweep at the top for the California beers by finishing 3rd. Anacortes again finished 4th, despite it getting 2 “best in show” votes and previous winner, Boundary Bay fell hard to 8th.
Once again there was great conversation surrounding what everyone liked and did not like and much food and beer was consumed in the festivities.
Based on the feedback, I think that the scoring will be handled differently for The Great Blind IPA Challenge, Episode 3: Revenge of the Simcoe (It is a play on Star Wars Ep.3 in case you are wondering and Simcoe is a variety of hops).
by A.J. Coltrane
Hello to everyone who got here through the Gary’s Games And Hobbies Facebook page!
Obviously, our principal focus here isn’t just games — it’s sports, food, and beer too.. it’s all the Good Stuff. You like all those things, right? (At least the games, food, and beer part anyway.)
A couple of minor site changes: I’ve added a Recent Comments section to the right hand column, and I’ve added a new page describing our GNOIF — Game Night Of Indeterminate Frequency. (See the tab at the top for how we host our game night. It seems to work pretty well.)
Anyway, poke around, and we’d love to hear from you.
And speaking of beer – I believe we may be going to Chuck’s this weekend. Iron Chef Leftovers is a regular customer there and says it’s a great place.. I haven’t been yet, somehow.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
The stretch of Fremont Avenue between 41st and 43rd in Fremont is becoming a dining hotspot – you have old stalwarts Paseo and The Swingside Café (although the Buckaroo Tavern is missed) and newcomers Via Tribunali, Hunger, Uneeda Burger, Pecado Bueno and Dots Deli. On top of this, we now have the food centric bookstore, The Book Larder located here. This stretch of road has always been a good spot to eat, but it is starting to rival downtown Fremont for the best places in the neighborhood.
I took advantage of a day off to visit Dot’s Deli for the first time. Dot’s is located next to the Fremont Abbey, in a space which I believe used to be home to a bookstore and was empty for quite a while before Dot’s came along. Dot’s menu is small and consists mostly of meat dishes, predominately house made sausages and charcuterie. The prices are relatively good for lunch, with nothing really coming in at over $10. They also have a small dinner menu with about 5 items that mostly consists of comfort food items such as coq au vin and mac and cheese. Those entrees were priced in the $15 range.
The place is small – 4 tables that will seat maybe 10 people and six counter stools, so if you are thinking about going, you might have to plan on taking your food elsewhere to eat it. Everything is cooked to order, so it will take you a few minutes to get your order. I was there at 1:30 in the afternoon and the place was relatively crowded and the line was about 5 people deep when I arrived. I placed my order and had my food ready in a little less than 10 minutes and I was able to grab a counter seat (warning – the counter seat chairs are not comfortable). There were also a number of choices that were completely sold out (the Reuben, the Braised Ox Tail Sandwich).
I ordered the spicy polish sausage with sauerkraut ($8) and mustard and a small order of frites ($3.50). The sausage was a generous link (guessing somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 lbs.) grilled on what looks like it may be a specially made baguette like roll (it definitely was not a supermarket bought hotdog bun) topped with a nice amount of sauerkraut with caraway (not sure if this was house made or not). On its own, the sauerkraut was nothing to write home about and was very acidic with overpowering caraway, but the sausage had a nice heat and spice flavor to it and I could have eaten it by itself. The roll was a nice combination of soft and chewy. When you put all of the elements together, you got what may have been the perfect sausage sandwich – the acidity of the sauerkraut balanced the spiciness of the sausage and married well, but still allowed you to taste the individual components with the mustard playing a supporting role in boosting the flavor (it was yellow mustard – not an Iron Chef favorite, but that is for another show).
The frites were good – hand cut potatoes, which seemed to be only fried once, but not great. They were hot and well seasoned, but not as crispy as I would like. Texture aside, they were tasty and the small portion could easily be split between 2 people and I would order them again. My only other complaint about the frites was the lack of aioli. Can they really be called frites without aioli?
Dot’s will also sell you their sausages to bring home (they run about $8/lb) as well as their house made pates (at varying prices). They had a nice selection of both when I was in and I had to resist the temptation to bring home one of everything in the deli case. My only other complaint – no website (but here is their Facebook page). I really hate this trend of places not having websites.
A return trip to Dot’s is definitely in order for both lunch to sample more of their lunch choices and for dinner to get some potentially tasty comfort food on a grey Seattle winter day. Dot’s gets 4 polka(dots) out of 5 for the killer spicy Polish sandwich.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about cheese steaks in Seattle. Today, I began my quest to find out if there are any good ones with a trip to Calozzi’s in Pioneer Square (they don’t have a website, but here is the yelp page).
Calozzi’s is nothing to look at – it is a pretty big space filled with a bunch of tables and a small counter. I am fine with that. Eating a steak isn’t exactly fine dining and the two best in Philly don’t even have indoor seating, so the large indoor dining area is a plus.
The menu is pretty bare bones, about 5 or six different steaks and one or two other sandwiches and your sides are pretty much limited to fries and cheese fries, pretty standard for a Philly joint. I ordered a stake, wiz, without (that would be a cheese steak with cheese wiz without onions – the Philly equivalent of a cheese pizza), the cheese fries and a bottle of water. The total with tax was $15.
The Steak – I am not a big fan of chopped steak on my cheese steaks. I think they tend to be much greasier than sliced steak, but that is really just a matter of preference. The sandwich is large for $8 and could easily be split between 2 people, and are served in a paper wrapper, just as you would get in Philly. That, unfortunately, is the nicest thing I can say about the steak. The steak itself was nicely cooked, but really wasn’t seasoned well and actually tasted like it was cooked with green peppers. The wiz, while the right amount, was put on top of the steak and I ended up with more wiz on the paper than I did on my sandwich. This lead to a handful of bites that involved all 3 components of the sandwich while most of the bites were just soggy bread and mediocre meat. The roll was also not up to the task. Despite being no more than a minute from the grill to my table, the bread was already falling apart from the grease. Sadly, this is not the worst steak I have had in Seattle, but I probably wouldn’t order it again.
The Cheese Fries – A healthy portion of nicely cooked fries and cheese wiz served in a paper bag. They were tasty, although a bit salty, but were difficult to eat because the bad bag was essentially breaking down from the heat and the grease. I would however get these again.
If it was just about the food, I would give Calozzi’s 2 out of 5 Amaroso Rolls and I would say that Calozzi’s is probably fine if you are really jonesing for a cheese steak, but I wouldn’t make a special trip to go there. I, however, am grading it 1/2 out of 5 and will not be returning for a reason unrelated to the food. The reason – the bathroom in there was disgustingly dirty and the sink had been ripped from the wall and was not functioning. I seriously wonder if the bathroom had been cleaned recently anyway and it made me wonder about proper hand washing facilities in the restaurant for the staff. I understand that it is an old building, but I have been in portapotties at beer festivals that were cleaner and nicer at the end of the festival than the bathroom at Calozzi’s.
by A.J. Coltrane
I’m always looking around at how everyone is making Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread. One day I ran across a blog post where the writer recommended *not* preheating the cooking pot. Her method was to place the the dough on parchment and let it rise in the pot prior to baking. I had to try it out — if it worked then it wouldn’t be necessary to transfer the dough from a towel into a smoking hot pot. The approach would be neater, cleaner, and easier.
The two breads below use the same formula, one of the two didn’t use a preheated pot:
One bread is significantly lighter, isn’t it? The darker crust was preheated, and it had a better crust that was more highly regarded by the crowd.
The Lahey recipe calls for a 4.5-5 quart heavy pot. I don’t own that size – yet.
The larger of the two is 7.25 quarts (#28). The smaller is 2.75 quarts (#23).
The lighter bread used the smaller container. The darker bread used the larger one. I mention this because it might be possible that the difference in pots changed the color of the crust, though I doubt it. I do think the difference changed the finished shape. (Related note: From what I’ve read, smaller pots create a higher rise.)
So… In my opinion, the “no preheating” thing doesn’t work as well.
One change from the recipe that I think works is this: I let the final rise happen in a bowl instead of on a towel. I put about 1 teaspoon of olive oil into the bowl and spread it around the entire interior with a paper towel. I then dust the interior of the bowl lightly with flour. The flour prevents most of the interaction between the oil and dough, which keeps the oil from tendering the crust.
I use a bowl that is slighter smaller in diameter than the final pot. I’ve tried it with just flour in the bowl, or just oil towards the bottom of the bowl, and in my experience the dough will stick somewhat to the sides and/or bottom when I attempt it one of those ways. Using both flour and oil, the dough plops right out:
No dough is stuck to the bowl! That’s my $.02 “improvement”.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
In case you don’t know Pearls writer Stephan Pastis is a beer lover, which makes this strip from 12/21 even funnier.
It is obvious that Rat is drinking a Bud, which is owned by Inbev, a Belgian company. Here is a list of the top 50 brewers by volume in the US from beerinfo.com:
Top 50 Breweries by Volume
1. Anheuser-Busch Inc.
2. MillerCoors Brewing Co.
3. Pabst
4. D. G. Yuengling and Son Inc.
5. Boston Beer Co.
6. Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
7. New Belgium Brewing Co.
8. North American Breweries
9. Craft Brewers Alliance, Inc.
10. Spoetzl Brewery
11. Deschutes Brewery
12. Independent Brewers United
13. Matt Brewing Co.
14. Minhas Craft Brewery
15. Bell’s Brewery, Inc.
16. Harpoon Brewery
17. Boulevard Brewing Co.
18. Goose Island Beer Co.
19. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
20. Alaskan Brewing and Bottling Co.
21. Long Trail Brewing Co.
22. August Schell Brewing Co.
23. Stone Brewing Co.
24. Abita Brewing Co.
25. Brooklyn Brewery
26. Lagunitas Brewing Co.
27. Full Sail Brewing Co.
28. Shipyard Brewing Co.
29. Summit Brewing Co.
30. New Glarus Brewing Co.
31. Great Lakes Brewing Co.
32. Anchor Brewing Co.
33. Iron City Brewing Co.
34. Kona Brewery LLC
35. Rogue Ales
36. Firestone Walker Brewing Co.
37. Winery Exchange Inc. / World Brews
38. Sweetwater Brewing Co.
39. Mendocino Brewing Co.
40. Flying Dog Brewery
41. Victory Brewing Co.
42. Gordon Biersch Brewing Co.
43. BJ’s Chicago Pizza & Brewery
44. Stevens Point Brewery Co.
45. Odell Brewing Co.
46. BridgePort Brewing Co.
47. Cold Spring Brewing Co.
48. Rock Bottom Brewery
49. Oskar Blues Brewery
50. Straub Brewery
Numbers one and 2 are both owned by foreign companies, which makes Pabst the largest American-owned brewery in the country. What is interesting is that the top 3 make up something like 80% of the production of beer in the US. Apparently the American double standard of “Buy American” doesn’t apply here. We will buy Fords, which in a large number of cases are built in Mexico, because they are an “American” company, but we won’t buy Toyotas, which are largely built in the US, because they are not an “American” company.
I did find it interesting that the only Washington breweries on the list are Craft Brew Alliance, which make Red Hook, among others, and North American Brewers, which makes Pyramid, among others. There isn’t a single independent Washington brewery on the list.
You know what, I am fine with that. Just more good Washington beer that stays in Washington.
by A.J. Coltrane
People have been grilling Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread, that’s not new. From what I’ve found they all put a Le Creuset on a gas grill and cook the bread normally. That doesn’t seem to me to be very far up the “fun” scale. (But who knows, maybe placing an enclosed pot on a grill is a party-and-a-half — I’ll probably try it when it gets hot outside.)
Back to the point: My version of fun involved using the dough for grilled pizza and eating the results.
The recipe is based on Lahey’s No Knead Bread, with a couple of (related) differences. I halved the recipe, but kept the yeast amount the same, and I slowed the fermentation by refrigerating the dough overnight. In total, the dough got about 16 hours in the fridge and 6 hours at room temperature. I also did extra stretch and folds to the dough within the last two hours.
After the rising I oiled a pizza pan and rolled out the dough to about 1/4 – 1/3″. The dough went onto the pizza pan and I oiled the top. The dough was then covered with plastic wrap and allowed to rest for about 90 minutes. While the dough was resting I sauteed super thin slices of red pepper and red onion over medium high heat.
There was no chance this dough was coming off of the pizza pan easily. I put the pizza pan directly onto the medium grill for 2-3 minutes until the dough loosened and I could slide it off onto the grill grates.
After the bottom had nice grill marks I slid the pizza pan back under the dough and flipped it over. The pizza was then topped with a marina heavy on garlic, as well as the red pepper, red onion, and shaved parmesan.
Fin.
The pizza came out with a medium thickness crust that was nice and airy, almost weightless.
I’m going to have to try more high hydration pizzas!
FlatbreadGarden 