Wild Beasts

I recently took on a project that I've been meaning to do for a while and I've been putting off and putting off, mostly because it's kind of high maintenance and I'm kind of a low maintenance type of girl. The project was to grow a wild yeast culture using the organic grapes that grow in our P-patch. 

This year the grapes were ripe right before we were due to go out of town for a week, so I picked them and then froze them, hoping that it would still work but setting my expectations fairly low in case it didn't. I figured with that handicap and the fact that our house is almost as cold as it is outside, I wasn't sure any yeast could survive, let alone thrive.

The starter in it's early home, by the oven.

I'm using the method from Nancy Silverton's Breads from La Brea Bakery. I was given a copy of this book as a wedding gift (I think?) and haven't had a chance to use it at all since every recipe in the book calls for a starter of some sort that I just didn't have the time to set up until now. The recipes in the book are fairly technical, so it's not the best book for beginning bakers, but since I've baked a bit before I feel comfortable with the way she talks about the bread. I take it all with a gain of salt because she's way way more into bread baking than me, but even us amateurs like a good loaf now and then. She does a very good job explaining all the steps and giving tips for how to do each part of the bread making process. 

So I went ahead with all the steps. It wasn't too complicated, just sort of messy and delicate, also requiring a heaping helping of patience. The process takes about 2 weeks, from the day you crush your grapes to the day you bake you first loaf.

The first 9 days were simple. You make a mixture of flour and water, crush the grapes and add them, all secured in a clean airtight container. You check it every day, but you don't have to do anything else very often. 


After those first 9 days is when it gets a little more time consuming. You have to feed the mixture 3 times a day--breakfast, lunch and dinner--with a rigid schedule of how long the bread can go without being fed. And you have to dump out a ton of mixture and start over with just a little over a pound every morning. This was the part I had the hardest time with. It's not in my nature to throw away pounds and pounds of perfectly good flour. One, we're pretty frugal around here, and two, I'm a pastry chef. Food waste is a huge sin in professional kitchens. 


So I set out on a mission to use up as much of that dang starter as I could. I also tried to give a lot of it away, by offering starter batches to friends and people in our farm co-op. I think I ended up giving away 4 batches, and using the starter in an equal number of unexpected projects in the kitchen. 

I made lots of cracker dough to freeze for entertaining over the holidays, with cayenne and olive oil. I used some to make sourdough waffles with apple cider. Eating those was like a little preview of heaven for foodies. And I made crumpets. Dozens of crumpets, two days in a row. Some of which we ate and the rest of which maxed out what was left of our freezer space. 

I can't share the recipe for any of these things, since I made them all up on the fly. I guess my baking and cooking knowhow came in handy here, because I was able to just add enough of ingredients X, Y, and Z to make stuff work. 


What I can share is a very simple recipe for a salad. On Friday after making crumpets for what seemed like hours, we used them as our "challah" for a Shabbat dinner with our friend Aviva. Dinner ended up being sort of rushed, as she needed to be at the airport at 6:30, but it was still good to see a friend and share a meal, and to be able to enjoy some of the fruits of my hard work in the days leading up our meal. 





















The salad had endive, warm roasted beets and goat cheese and a dijon vinaigrette. That's it, the entire recipe. Really. I think it would be equally good with some butter lettuce or blue cheese. And I suppose you could really use any vinaigrette that you like. Whatever you have lying around really. The secret is that the beets should still be warm, so the cheese and the dressing really meld all together. That's what made it so fantastic.


I did finally get around to actually baking some real bread on Saturday--a rustic white bread, which I shaped into rolls for dipping in the minestrone I made that night. (More crust is totally better, right?) The bread was great. It rose slowly but had great oven spring, so I know my yeast is happy and healthy. Onto real challah this Friday!

Easy Dijon Vinaigrette
makes about 1 cup


1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup champagne vinegar
1 Tbsp or so sugar, honey or my favorite, pomegranate molasses
1 Tbsp good dijon mustard
1-2 cloves crushed garlic
salt and pepper to taste


Shake all the ingredients in a jar, adding more mustard if necessary to achieve a very smooth, emulsified texture. Taste for acidity and add more sweet if you like. I tend to like my pretty acidic and low on the oil. Keeps in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Having Given Thanks

I have vivid memories of being at the kids' table when I was a little girl. This would have been at my Grandma Vernice's house for holiday dinners, probably Christmas because we mostly spent Thanksgiving with my mom's family. But still, a holiday dinner nonetheless. 

I remember feeling very grown-up getting to sit in a totally different room from the real grown-ups. We even got out own butter plate. How cool is that? There were probably times when I wished I could be part of the larger group, but thinking back, those feelings are overwhelmed by how special it felt to sit with just my older cousins in charge. 

Our Thanksgiving Day hummingbird visitor.

But now, I can't even remember the last time I was at a family event that had a kids' table. That thought prompted me to set places for the boys this year that were a little apart from the grown-ups, but not too far. I hope they liked it. Even if Nanna sat with them. 

This year was my last small Thanksgiving for a while. While it was nice to have complete control over the food, I've decided it is time to go back to going big. I used to have family thanksgivings that were probably at least 15-18 people, and I kind of miss that. The last couple of years we've had just 5-8. That's a pretty big difference. I guess I'm just cut out from a bolder cloth than that.

As you can imagine, having fed only 8 people this year, 3 of them under 10, we had a lot of food left. So this week I have been using it up and spreading it all out. I wanted to pass on my favorites, just in case you still need some ideas for creative ways to use up those leftovers. 

• Fried dressing cakes. Just press out some thin patties of leftover dressing/stuffing and fry it up on the griddle or in your favorite skillet.
• Rose's amazing leftover pizza, which I didn't get to try but did sound pretty swell.
• Creamed corn with pumpkin puree added to it. Seriously. Just make creamed corn but add pumpkin puree. 
• Turkey Pot Pie. I made one of these and put it in the freezer. Instead of cream of whatever soup, use gravy and pumpkin puree, and replace the traditional crust with leftover mashed potatoes. Thaw overnight before baking.
• Turkey Enchiladas en Mole. I used store bought mole sauce, and in our house we omit the cheese and use fake sour cream. Just put some avocados on there and you will never ever know.
• Turkey Shawarma. This one is tomorrow night's dinner. Joe just about fell over when I suggested this as a meal. I think he would move to Israel just to eat shawarma everyday. No joke. It might be how he convinces me.
• The obligatory turkey stock, to be used later to make soup or risotto or whatever I can dream up.

To aid in the making of shawarma, pot pie, etc. I shredded all the meat that was leftover as I made the stock. That way I was able to get all the bones and bits into the stockpot, and have all the leftover meat ready to go for making dinners this week. 

I hope your Thanksgiving was something special, no matter how many people were there or what you ate. And now on to the end of the year!

Filming their "Thanksgiving Special"

A San Francisco Treat

(Sorry, I couldn't help that one)


While we were in San Fran last week I got the chance to do something I am totally jealous of my past self for getting to do, which is eat and cook with very fresh citrus fruit.


Our first night there we walked up to a lookout point in the neighborhood were our friends live, Cole Valley. I never caught the name of the lookout, but it had truly breathtaking views, especially since most of the time we were In San Fran we had very clear and sunny weather, and that evening was warm to boot. The perfect antidote for what the weather's been like here in Seattle. 

On our way back down the hill to order dinner (awesome and easy Thai, because Thai is never wrong.) I spotted something you would never in a million years see in Seattle, even if we did have actual summers and decent autumns: a fruiting Meyer lemon tree. Though by this point it was quite dark, I peered in among the branches and felt out some of the fruits that looked yellow in the glow of the streetlight. I tried to twist off a fruit I thought was ripe, but it wasn't quite there yet, or so I guessed since it didn't easily come off. I left it alone and went on my way with an added spring in my step.


I am going to share with you something about myself that you might not have know. I am a shameless urban fruit "forager" and while mostly I only take fruit that is on public or abandoned land, I will occasionally venture onto the more private side of things and pick fruit that is very obviously going to waste. These lemons were just at the tip of someone's yard. A very very wealthy person's yard. The tree was very well pruned, in a yard that looked pretty well manicured, and it was chock full of fruit that was ripening or ripe. Clearly, I told our hosts, they were not going to miss a lemon or two. Or a dozen. Right?


The next morning I went to the lookout by myself, early, in the fog, to take some pictures and see the city in a different light. I scoped out the tree again, this time with the sunlight on my side, and found that there were indeed quite a few ripe lemons hanging out in this tree. Hooray!

The day before we were set to leave was pretty busy. There were two very small earthquakes (exciting!) and it was the start of the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah (awesome!) which we celebrated by dancing with Torah scrolls and drinking tequila in a Baha'i Temple (drunky!). We ate dinner at a food truck gathering to make the food trucks in Seattle blush with inadequacy (yummy!) and had an awesome burrito in the Tenderloin of all places (wacky!). 

We were supposed to pack for home and then be at a friend's house for breakfast the next morning at 8, before tooling around and then heading to the airport by 1. So of course, it was the perfect time to go steal forage lemons and then start an involved canning project which we maybe didn't have all the right ingredients for.

Aviva and I bundled up a bit (it finally was a little chilly in the evenings) and decided to take a trip up to the lookout one last time. And we took with us a cloth sack, "just in case" we found something worth bringing home. Maybe we would get lucky and there would be enough ripe ones to make a quart of preserved lemons. I maybe got a little carried away and we ended up with quite a few lemons, all without even a soul finding out what we were up to. It was slightly exhilarating, or maybe that was just the heady smell of the fruit wafting from the cotton bag as they jostled around in there while we practically skipped back home. 

Anyway, we ended up having enough fruit to make a quart of preserved lemons, and a batch of ginger lemon marmalade. We cheated and used a couple of oranges and some lemons that were sitting around getting old. But we had a few fruits that were still sort of green so we sorted those out to ripen and use later, and there were even enough that I got to bring a couple home. As I peeled the zest from the fruit to make the marmalade, I couldn't help but taste the fruit itself. If you've never had fresh citrus like this, I highly recommend it if you get the chance. It made me insanely jealous of those Californians, even if I do love my hometown to pieces. 

I don't own a copy of the Ball Book of Home Preserving, but that is the book we took both recipes from. We followed the marmalade pretty closely, substituting a couple of oranges for part of the lemons and halving the ginger, since that's just what we had on hand. We also used raw sugar instead of the usual white, which I think played off the ginger very very nicely. I have to remember that trick for other jams. 

For the preserved lemons we substituted the bay leaves for fresh basil, and added a star anise. Basil and lemon are so nice together, and while this makes it a bit less traditional, I'm confident that the flavors will work well together and be great. I just hope the basil doesn't overpower the delicate flavor of the Meyer lemons. We'll see! 

P.S. We live tweeted our canning adventure, but if you missed it and are using twitter, you can follow me @infamouspastry and get updates for future adventures!

A bumper crop

Next week we are going to be out of town, so of course, this week is the week that I have two largish orders for custom cakes, a bushel of tomatoes to deal with and 75 lbs of fruit coming on Saturday.


The cakes are easy--they require a bit of work, but should come together smoothly and almost without thinking. That's my job, after all.


The fruit, 50 lbs of apples and 25 of pears, will probably keep just fine in the cool basement for the 5 days we will be gone, so long as the cat doesn't suddenly develop a taste for tree fruit. I just hope those raccoons don't figure out how to get in the house...

The tomatoes, on the other hand, can't wait. It's been very rainy here this week so they all had to come in out of the downpour one way or another.  There were about 10 lbs of green ones, 5 or 6 lbs of ripe ones, and a couple of lbs that are halfway in between. Those ones, I don't know what will happen to.  And I'll have no problem getting rid of most of the ripe ones. Even Lilli eats at least a tomato a day.


But the rest, I found uses for with just a little bit of research and brain power.

I made tomatoes 5 ways this week, over the course of 3 nights.


First, I put up 4 quarts of green tomato mincemeat, made with honeycrisp apples and some asian pears I helped harvest from a neighborhood tree last week. Plenty of currants and spices, some lemons and sugar, and sometime this winter this delicious mix will meet it's match in philo or pie dough. 

Next, I started a couple different batches of green tomato pickles. One that needed 24 hours; and one only 12. One that had curry seasonings and mustard and sugar; one that was laced with garlic and mint and basil and chili.  One that is a simple refrigerator pickle and one that needed to be processed. I think the 2 probably couldn't be much more different from each other, but each will be much appreciated in their own way. 

Wait, let me take a step back. The very first thing I did, even before the mincemeat, was start some oven dried tomatoes. And tonight I finished that project, a tomato pesto that I borrowed from Ashley Rodriguez who writes one of my favorite blogs, Not Without Salt. I have never met a recipe from her that I didn't like, so while I didn't have time to test out this particular one beforehand, I knew it would be great. I decided to make a much larger batch than her original recipe calls for, because of the amount of ingredients I had. I altered it a bit also, so that I could freeze it and use up what I had instead of procuring new things.


Drying the tomatoes turned out to be a frustrating thing for me, because I lack patience. They took much longer than I thought they would, so I got them most of the way there and then gave up. I figured since they weren't being kept as a dry ingredient anyway, it wasn't a big deal. 


The pesto turned out amazing, but, as with all things gooey, the pictures did not. Especially not in my night kitchen. 

Chatting with the cat.

She likes to be part of the action.

And after all was said and done, I still have a few nice green tomatoes to make into a tasty quick bread as an airplane snack. 

Green Tomato Mincemeat
makes 4 quarts

4 quart jars full of whole green tomatoes, rinsed

1 ¼ cups vinegar or 1 cup vinegar and ¼ cup lemon juice
4 cups currants or raisins
2 lemons seeded and chopped up fine in a food processor
2 quart jars full of apples or apples and pears, quartered, skins removed, and sliced thinly
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp allspice
2 tsp salt
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar

A note about the fruit measurements. To measure the tomatoes, I packed them into a quart jar as I cleaned and de-stemmed them, stopping when I got to 4 jars worth. For larger tomatoes, I halved or quartered them to make more fit, but there was quite a bit of space in between the them, so don't worry about packing the jars too full.  For the apples I filled the jars as I sliced the apples, and for these I did pack them in rather tight.

Chop up the tomatoes in a food processor, pulsing so that they don't just turn to mush. You want the pieces to be roughly the size of a large lima bean, give or take. Pour into a large nonreactive pot.

For the apples and pears, I used one of those handy apple core turning machines. It peels the apples, cores and slices it all in one motion. (If you don't have one and ever find one at a thrift store, buy it. You will thank yourself the next time you need to do anything with apples in large quantities.) I just cut the whole apple in quarters after putting it through the machine. If you don't have one of these, peel the apples, quarter them, and slice them thin. 

Add everything else to the pot, stir it up, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium and cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick and the fruit has softened. The color will be much more uniform at this point as well.

Clean and sanitize 4 quart jars, and fill using a canning funnel, leaving 1/2" headspace. Remove air bubbles with a thin rubber spatula and adjust filling level. Wipe the rims clean with a damp paper towel and seal. Process in a boiling water bath for 25 minutes. You might have more or less filling, depending on how long you cook it down. As long as your jars are completely full you can process them. Otherwise store the jars in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks.

And in case you didn't see this floating around the internets, here's my real motivation for canning and preserving: