Almost No-Knead Bread

This is a Cook's recipe with our modifications.

Perfect bread.

Ingredients

• 3c unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4tsp yeast
• 1.5tsp salt
• 3/4c + 2tbsp lukewarm water
• 1/4c + 2tbsp dogfishhead 90 minute IPA or similar?
• 1tbsp white vinegar

Whisk together the dry ingredients, then add the wet.  Stir together until you have a dough.  Then cover it and let it sit for 10 hours.  Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead 10-15 times.  It's a wet dough, so do the best you can.  Then form it into a ball by gathering all the corners together on one side to create a smooth surface on the other side of the dough ball.  Turn the dough onto the counter, pucker side down, to create a smooth dome on top, and move dough around in a circle to seal the corners together on the underside of the dough.  Now move the dough to a shallow skillet lined with parchment.  Let it sit another 2 hours.  After 1.5 hours, put the dutch oven (covered) in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees.  When the dough is done with the second rise, take the dutch oven out of the oven.  Slash the bread once across the top - about 1/2" to 3/4" deep.  Insert the bread and parchment into the dutch oven (using the parchment to transfer it to the dutch oven), cover, and return to the oven.  Set the dutch oven to 425.  After 30 minutes, remove the lid and cook for another 25 to 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and take the bread out of the dutch oven to cool.

Thoughts: This was a fantastic loaf of bread.  The crust was perfect, and the crumb was about perfect as well.  Really rich flavor. I might consider trying this with bread flour?  Or possibly make an herbed bread with rosemary?  It's a thought.  The oven spring wasn't as incredible as I had thought, though maybe if I let it sit 18 hours instead of 10 we'd have more to report from that.  Still.  One of our best loaves so far.  Side note: the crust texture suffered after a few days.  It went from super crispy and chewy to just kind of limply chewy.  Toasting it helped, but after about 2 days neither of us were sure we'd eat it untoasted.  Not that this was a big problem, but something to consider.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Vegetable Biryani

Ingredients

For the rice:

• 1.5 cups basmati rice
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 4 tbsp golden raisins
• 4 tbsp chopped hazelnuts
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
• 1.75 cups + 1/8 cup water
• 2 tsp kosher salt

For the vegetables:

• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 2 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 4 cloves garlic
• 4 tbsp chopped hazelnuts
• 3 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp cumin
• 4 tbsp fennel
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 12 oz potatoes, whatever you have, peeled and quartered
  
• 3 medium carrots, cut into 1" pieces
• 1.3 cups water
• 4 tbsp shredded coconut

Make the rice: rinse it until the water runs clear. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add raisins, hazelnuts, turmeric, cumin, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon and cook, stirring, until toasted and fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until toasted (another 2 minutes).
Add the water and bring everything to a boil. Set to a low low simmer. Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Then remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes, covered. Set aside.
For the vegetables: melt the butter in a medium, straight-sided pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes.
Add garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant. Add the raisins, hazelnuts, coriander, fennel, cumin, and cardamom and cook until everything is toasty, about 4 minutes.
Stir in the carrots and potatoes. Raise heat to high, pour in water, and cook, covered, for about 8 minutes.
Uncover and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are tender and most of the water has evaporated.
Add rice to vegetables and stir to combine. Season with salt to taste.

Thoughts: Pretty darn delicious. We made this for a dinner party of sorts, and it got good reviews. The original recipe calls for two more kinds of vegetables, cauliflower and green beans, but we didn't use those, and to tell you the truth, we didn't miss them. Next time I might add some peas in there. But the rice actually turned the yellow color it's supposed to, which is a first for us (not that we've made a whole lot of forays into the realm of Indian cuisine). We would also consider adding meat next time, maybe something like lamb or beef. Because everything is pretty much better with meat. This recipe calls for a lot of different ingredients, but the cooking aspect is actually pretty easy.

Disaster Index: 1/10 would definitely make again

Roasted Corn Guacamole

Ingredients

• 2 cups frozen corn, defrosted, or kernels from 3 fresh ears of corn
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp finely chopped red onion
• 2 tbsp fresh cilantro, finely chopped
• the juice and zest of 1 lime
• 1 jalapeno, stemmed and seeded, finely chopped
• 1 avocado, pitted and chopped

Preheat oven to 450. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper or tinfoil.
Spread the corn kernels in an even layer over the sheet. Drizzle olive oil over it and sprinkle with enough salt and pepper to make it tasty.
Roast for 20 minutes, until the corn turns a golden brown. You want the corn to caramelize a little. It might be a little crunchy. That's ok.
Remove corn from oven and set aside.
In a bowl, combine the roasted corn, red onion, cilantro, lime zest and juice, avocado, and jalapeno. Mash it all together. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with corn soup.

Thoughts: We probably didn't roast the corn for long enough, and it probably wasn't totally defrosted when we put it in the oven. At least, it certainly wasn't at room temperature. Next time I would make sure to cook it until it caramelizes. The flavor was pretty intense as it is, but it would have been better caramelized. This tastes a lot like Chipotle's corn salsa, actually. It's hella spicy. If you're going to serve it with the corn soup, I might recommend taking the jalapeno out of either the guacamole or the soup. You don't really need two of them. Also Dan thinks that the flavor is good, but the texture needs work.

Disaster Index: 2/3-10

Corn Soup

Ingredients

• 3 cups frozen corn kernels, defrosted (or kernels from 5 ears of fresh corn)
• olive oil
• garlic
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeno, stemmed and chopped
• salt and pepper
• 1.5 cups chicken broth (or veg)
  
• cilantro sprigs
• sour cream
  

Put kernels in a blender. Don't blend yet. Just let them sit there.
Combine oil and garlic in a small soup pot over medium heat and let cook until fragrant. Add onion and jalapeno and cook until vegetables are soft and translucent, about 6 minutes.
Transfer the vegetables to blender and puree with corn until smooth.
Pour the corn puree back into the soup pot and place over medium heat. Add cilantro sprigs. Stir constantly for a few minutes until soup thickens. This will be tricky because this soup is so thick that when it splatters, it really splatters. Just do your best. Your stove will be a mess, but just come to peace with it.
Once soup has thickened a little, add the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, decrease heat to a simmer, and cook for 15 minutes (covered, if you value your stovetop).
Top with roasted corn guacamole and serve. Garnish with sour cream and cilantro sprigs.

Thoughts: Hella easy to make, but hella spicy. It's those really ripe jalapenos. We got a whole bag of them and we're still working on using them up. So only make this if you like really spicy things. Also, don't drink alcohol with this soup -- it will just make the spiciness even worse. There wasn't a whole lot of depth of flavor here, probably because the spice took care of that. But it's good nonetheless. A good starter recipe. We'll see what else we can add to it, I think.

Disaster Index: 2-3/10

Three Cheesecake

Just as we were starting to lose faith in Martha.

Ingredients

For the crust:

• cooking spray
• 1 & 1/3 cups crushed cinnamon graham crackers
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  

For the filling:

• 1 cup sour cream, room temperature
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 4 oz mascarpone cheese, room temp
• 4 oz cream cheese, room temp
• 2 oz soft goat cheese, room temp
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp lemon zest
• 1 cup heavy cream

Make the crust the way you normally would. Coat a 9" springform pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Crush the graham crackers in a food processor, adding the butter slowly. Press the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Refrigerate while you make the filling.
Beat the sour cream, 1/3 cup of the sugar, the cheeses, vanilla, and lemon with an egg-beater on medium speed until very smooth, about 4 minutes. DO NOT pass through a sieve at this step. MARTHA. Add the heavy cream and the other 1/3 cup sugar and beat on medium until medium peaks form.
Spread evenly over the crust. Smooth top and freeze until firm, about 2 hours. Move to the refrigerator for about 45 minutes about serving.
Can be topped with fruit compote of your choosing.

Thoughts: Hot damn. This is the best cheesecake I have eaten. Dan agrees. The goat cheese really does good things here. The only thing I would do differently is add more butter to the crust. There wasn't nearly enough to make the crust adhere properly, so it sort of crumbled away when you cut a slice. But that's easily remediable. We would maybe double the amount of butter in the crust to 4 tbsp. It's also a little tricky to move the cake from the freezer to the fridge, and then back to the freezer. You have to remember to let it thaw a little before you eat it, otherwise it just sort of tastes like the freezer. But I don't think you can just leave it in the fridge 24/7, because it's no-bake and it might de-constitute itself or something. All in all, this is hella easy to make and hella delicious.

Disaster Index: 1/10, even with the imperfect crust

Rhode Island Johnnycakes

Terrible cakes, more like. This is based off of a Martha recipe from the July issue. Something about regional specialties. And I was like "cornmeal pancakes! What could be better?" But I was wrong. I was so wrong.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups cornmeal
• 1.25 tsp coarse salt
• 4 cups boiling water
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• neutral oil, for griddle

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Toast the cornmeal, stirring often, until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add salt.
Gradually add boiling water to cornmeal. When it's completely incorporated, stir in the milk. Heat griddle over medium heat and coat with a thin layer of oil. Drop batter like pancakes. Flip them when the edges look crisp and "lacy" (whatever that means). These take a little longer to cook than normal pancakes.
Serve with syrup?

Thoughts: Like I said, you'd think there would be plenty to like here. But there wasn't. There was nothing to like. It's possible that it's all about the user error, and that this is an otherwise delicious recipe. The original calls for "Johnnycake cornmeal" (as if we could just go around to our local grocer and pick that up. Please) or white cornmeal. Our "grocer," if you can call Giant a grocer, only has yellow. But my research indicates that there is no real difference between yellow and white other than the fact that yellow MIGHT be a little bit sweeter. But you'd think that would help this recipe. Toasting the cornmeal might also sound like a good idea, but really, "fragrant" means "burned smelling." Cornmeal doesn't get "fragrant." Your kitchen just starts to smell like popcorn. Maybe our pans were too thin for this endeavor. But we strained out the burned bits anyway. I'm not sure how you can avoid burning it -- it's like saying "put all this powdery stuff in your saute pan and turn it on." How do you not burn powder? Anyway.
So despite all these misadventures, we did make a batter. And Dan was like "so this is pretty much just polenta. You are making polenta pancakes." And I was like "Says YOU. These are JOHNNYCAKES. Totally different y'all." But guess what? They're not different. They tasted REALLY bland. Like, there was no flavor in here whatsoever. I tried to put a whole bunch of syrup on them, but just imagine putting syrup on polenta. Gross. It did not help in the slightest.
I'm just going to stop right here. These were a travesty. We made one batch, ate half of it (mostly because I was still in denial), then threw the rest out. We let the batter sit in the fridge for a while (again, denial), and then just threw that out too.

Disaster Index: 10/10 -- it's been a while since we've had to whip out a 10. But it had to happen.

Tapenade

Based off of Alton Brown's recipe.

The wild tapenade stalks the plate of toasted French bread.

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb pitted olives, rinsed (we used Peruvian olives, which are a lot like kalamata olives except that they're larger, they're purple, they're softer, and the taste is slightly more mild)
• 2 anchovy fillets (you can rinse them if you like -- it depends on what they're being kept in)
  
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/8 cup torn basil leaves
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Once you've done all the rinsing you would like, put everything in a food processor and process it. Eat it.

Thoughts: This stuff is awesome. It was purple, of course, instead of black or green, which was a little weird but not enough to be off-putting. The flavors were perfect. I might go through and modify ratios of things just for fun, but this is like, restaurant quality.

Disaster Index: 1/10