Gingerbread Village displayed in the lobby of the Seattle Sheraton Hotel is my favorite holiday event. These aren’t just run-of-the-mill gingerbread houses mind you. These are giant structures designed by local architectural firms and cleverly constructed and ornately decorated by the culinary talent at the Sheraton Hotel.

Flinders Street Station- Melbourne, Australia by 4D Architects and Chef Jay Sardeson

These grand creations fill the lobby of the hotel with the sweet-spicy aroma of baked deliciousness delivering as much dazzle to the olfactory senses as to the eyes.

Gare Du Palais – Quebec, Canada by Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties and Gelotte Hommas Architects and Chef Jay Sardeson

This is the 19th year that Sheraton has partnered with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and created Gingerbread Village. The event raises money to fund research for better treatments and ideally a cure for Type I diabetes. Gingerbread Village is open to the public, with a suggested donation of $5, of which 100% goes directly to JDRF.

Dunedin Railway Station - New Zealand by Callison and Chef Wally Walbert

Six notable train stations have been recreated with glorious holiday cheer and a touch of sugary magic to fit this year’s theme of Holiday Express. The attention to detail and creative use of materials seems to reveal itself slowly the longer each sculpture is pondered.

Sheep and Kiwi birds at Dunedin Railway Station

With attention completely immersed in discovering all the hidden details and humorous accents studding each piece, slipping into a fantasy state is effortless while following the red velvet roped pathway around the display. Gingerbread Village captures the awe and wonderment of Christmas at its fantastical best. It’s worth the trip downtown to lose yourself in this gingerbread fantasy land for a brief moment.

North Pole- Island of Misfit Toys by Weber Thompson and Chef David Mestl

You can even vote for your favorite gingerbread house via text. If you’re not in Seattle you can still support JDRF’s work by kicking them a $5 donation with a quick and simple text.

Visit Gingerbread Village at Seattle Sheraton Hotel, 1400 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA. The display is open 24 hours a day until January 1, 2012.

London's King Cross Station - Now Boarding at Platform 9-3/4 by KMD Architects and Maple Elementary F-3 Fifth Grade helpers and Chef John Hart

If you’re craving a gingerbready sweet-treat after reading this, whip up a batch of spicy molasses cookies. They’ll satisfy that gingerbread craving, without all the work of building a house, or train station.

Recipe Link

• Joe Frogettes

by Slow Food USA

Slow Food USA believes that slow food, as in cooked from scratch, shouldn’t have to cost more than fast food. They decided to put their philosophy to the test with The $5 challenge. September 17th was the day to take back the “value meal” by cooking a meal from scratch that costs no more than $5 per person. My twist on the challenge was to use one chicken as the basis for three meals that each feed four people, with each meal costing no more than $5. That gives me $1.25 per serving to work with.

Herb Roasted Chicken Legs & Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta

Starting with a Washington-grown free range chicken from Trader Joe’s costing $6.95, which breaks down to $2.32 per meal, I had $2.68 of creative wiggle room per meal to work with. Here’s my menu:

• Day 1: Herb Roasted Chicken Legs & Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta.
• Day 2: Chicken Soft Tacos on Homemade Tortillas served with Brown Rice & Black Beans
• Day 3: White Bean & Vegetable Soup

This 4.11 pound chicken is the basis for three meals.

First things first, Chicken butchery. Not a difficult thing at all as long as you think finesse rather than brute force. With a little practice, it’s a task that can be knocked out in nothing flat. The key is learning to slip your knife between the joints rather than trying to cut through bones. Take on a whole bird and you’ll be rewarded for your DIY prowess at the register because the cost per pound of a chicken you cut up yourself is significantly less than buying pieces-parts.

The rewards for DIY butchery don’t end at the cash register. Just like a box of Cracker Jacks or the coveted secret decoder ring hiding in the dark depths of a cereal box, there are surprises in your chicken if you’re lucky. Plunge your hand into the bird’s cavity and see what you pull out. A neck? Score! Liver? Score! Heart? Score! There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the bonus parts, but it’s exciting when you do because it’s more good stuff to work with.

The third big reward for going with a whole bird, is the carcass. You have the bones to simmer for stock…don’t click away at the first mention of stock making, hear me out. The reason you always hear that homemade stock is far better than anything you can buy is because it is, but as I recently learned it doesn’t need to be the big production that it usually is. I’ll explain shortly.

Whole chicken portioned into three meals.

Here’s how I decided to parse out my chicken, the thighs and drumsticks will be roasted with veggies for meal one. The breast meat, separated from the bone, will become shredded chicken filling for tacos on day two. The bones and remaining parts will be gently simmered in water to form the basis for soup on day three. (Gently simmering the bones in water is actually all there is to stock. No big production, I promise.) I was lucky and found good bonus-parts surprises hiding in my bird. The neck goes in the soup pot and the liver in the roasting pan.

Chicken bones in water is a flavorful start on a pot of soup.

I’ve been reading Michael Ruhlman’s new book, Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto. In it he presents twenty core cooking skills that once learned set you up to be able to make just about anything, recipe or not. I especially like his treatment of stock as a sub-technique in the chapter, Water: The Unrecognized Miracle in the Kitchen. He rightly points out that most people are intimidated by the perceived effort of making stock. I make stock enough that it’s become a routine process, but when I find myself short admittedly my first thought is to head to the store for a can. Ruhlman has effectively removed that thought from my mind for good.

“Pour water over meat and bones and vegetables, heat the mixture and eventually all the flavor from the meat and vegetables and all the protein from the bones and cartilage will wind up in the water. It’s simple and easy, and is probably the single most important difference between restaurant cooking and home cooking.” – Michael Ruhlman in Ruhlman’s Twenty

The simplest Stock, done.

“Where did we get the notion that stock making requires giant pots and huge amounts of time?…The carcass of a roasted chicken makes about 4 cups of an amazing stock. You don’t even have to use a whole carcass, just parts. Let the water do it’s magic on a single piece of chicken if you want. It’s beautiful.”  – Michael Ruhlman in Ruhlman’s Twenty

With my $5 budget I didn’t have the money to buy an onion or carrots or celery for the stock. I trusted Michael Ruhlman’s argument that a homemade stock of just chicken bones without all the areomatics would still be better than than stock from a can. I simply covered the bones and miscellaneous chicken parts with about two inches of cold water, tossed in a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and the ends of the carrot I’d cut up to be roasted. I set the pot on a low heat and let it come up to the barest simmer. Not letting it boil or even fully simmer keeps the liquid clear and beautiful. You know what? That Ruhlman fella is right. I started my stock right after cutting up the chicken  and let it simmer while I went about making, eating and cleaning up from dinner. About 3 ½ hours later I had just over four cups of clean fresh tasting beautiful stock. No big pots. No need to set up rows of storage containers to be filled, labeled, and wrestled into the freezer. No fuss. My soup for day three’s recipe is already well underway.

Homemade chicken stock, the minimalist way.

The Herb Roasted Chicken and veggies require nothing more than tossing the veggies and chicken with a bit of oil, vinegar, and seasoning and letting it roast in the oven for 45-50 minutes. Making polenta is just as easy involving only boiling, stirring, and simmering. This meal requires very little tending to during the cooking process. For this minimal effort a dinner so satisfying with great flavor, texture, color and nutrition is your reward. 

Chicken and veggies ready for the oven.

As easy as these recipes are, it did make me realize that there is one important element to the success of slow food over fast food, and that’s cooking skills. Would someone who has never cooked before know the difference between simmer and boil? Or ever consider buying a whole chicken with no idea how to cut it up? Cooking skills matter and it’s the reason I’m so passionate about volunteering for Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program. It’s a free six week cooking and nutrition class for low income families. All the recipes we use in the classes are targeted to cost about $1.68 per serving so families receiving SNAP benefits can afford to make them. With low cost recipes and cooking skills, slow food can win out over fast food even for families living below the poverty line. I’ll grant you that it takes time and effort to shop and plan meals, but the return of taste, nutrition, and quality family time spent preparing and sharing a meal together is, as the saying goes, priceless.

Herb Roasted Chicken and Vegetables with Garlic Polenta. $5 total and serves four.

If you have the means and are interested in further developing your core cooking skills I highly recommend the Rouxbe Online Cooking School. Like Ruhlman’s Twenty (which I also reccomend), Rouxbe focuses on technique and uses recipes as a way to practice core skills. TableFare is an affiliate site for Rouxbe and we are thrilled to be able to offer a free 14-day membership to their site so you can test drive their cooking school. If you do buy a month or year membership 100% of our affiliate commission is donated to Share Our Strength to help end child hunger and fund great programs like Cooking Matters. Here’s a little taste of a partial lesson from Rouxbe’s online cooking school. Of course you can also always donate to Share Our Strength directly too!

My Herb Roasted Chicken and Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta was delicious and turned out to be enough to actually feed four people. If you aren’t limited to $1.25 per serving, adding a few more veggies and a nice green salad would round out the meal nicely. A little cheese or butter stirred into the polenta before serving would be a nice decadent touch, but certainly not necessary. Though this recipe is about as stripped down as can be, the flavor is there and I wouldn’t hesitate to serve it to dinner guests just the way it is. 

Here’s how my budget broke down. I made the decision to consider pantry staples like oil and seasonings freebies and not break out the cost per bay leaf or teaspoon of salt; that  just seemed like too much minutia. I did, however, leave a little spare change in the budget as a good faith effort toward the cost of these unaccounted for staples.

1/3 whole chicken   $2.32
1 yellow onion         $0.69
1 medium carrot      $0.25
½ lb. broccoli          $1.13
2 cloves garlic         $0.08
¾ cup polenta         $0.40
Total cost              $4.88
(Spare for staples $0.12)

I hope Slow Food’s $5 challenge will inspire you to embrace the joy and satisfaction that  comes with creating meals for yourself and people you care about. The only thing fast food really has going for it is that it’s fast. With some planning, I contend the food you cook can be just as fast when necessary, but there is something deeply satisfying about letting food happen in its own time and just enjoying the process. The meals for day two and three will be separate posts that I will link to once they are up.  

I’d love to hear what kinds of low-cost meals you like to make, please share in the comments.

Recipe Links:

• The $5 Challenge Herb Roasted Chicken Legs and Vegetables
• The $5 Challenge Garlic Polenta

Images of stalwart women circa Little House on the Prairie posed with tall wooden butter churners come to mind when I hear “making butter.” The modern swell of interest in slow food, buying local, and supporting small farms, seems to go hand-in-hand with a growing desire to preserve such homesteading skills. Skills like caning and preserving, charcuterie, gardening, and butter making have all but disappeared in the shadow of modern-day conveniences. Even daily home cooking could be a contender for the endangered skills list.

Fresh Homemade Butter

A group of people in Ireland deeply concerned that we’re the first generation of humans so completely reliant on grocery stores, mini-marts, restaurants and prepared foods, that we might likely starve to death if faced with growing our own food, are working to snap some self-reliance into people. Their mission? To get us to grow something; grow anything, as long as it’s edible even if it’s as simple as a few pots of herbs in a windowsill. Grow It Yourself Ireland provides education, resources and community for inspiration.

The rich and delicious tradition of butter making in Ireland is a skill also on the verge of extinction, but Grow It Yourself, with the help of modern technology in the form of a webcast, may have just hatched a new generation of artisan butter makers around the world. As soon as I saw the Facebook post about Butter Live!, my “fun project!”, “new hobby!”, “valuable skill!” brain-alarms sounded and I was off to the store to buy cream. I stood by in my kitchen with two pints of cream from a local-ish (Oregon) dairy and my laptop, eagerly awaiting my butter making lesson from half way around the world.

Ready for Butter Live! to begin

If you’ve ever over-whipped cream, you were dancing on the slippery slope of butter making. Getting to butter takes nothing more than whipping cream to the point the liquid separates from the fat. I’m a bit of an expert at over-whipping cream, so I knew I’d have a leg up on this one. By the way, mixing in a little un-whipped cream is the quick fix for slightly over-whipped cream.

Cream into butter

The webcast was hosted by Irish radio and TV presenter, Ella McSweeney, along with Alan Kingston of Glenilen Farm and Imen McDonald who writes the blog, I Married and Irish Farmer. As they demonstrate various simple and straight forward techniques for making butter, a group of school children they’d invited to participate successfully transform thick white cream into delectable blocks of golden yellow butter along with all of us remote learners scattered around the world. There is something poetic about using such high-technology to teach such a traditional and down-to-earth skill.

The most likely culprit of a butter making disaster is temperature. The cream needs to be cold, but not too cold. I didn’t know this initially and simply worked with cream that had been sitting out at room temperature for about thirty minutes and lucky for me it must have been right in the temperature sweet spot. The example Alan Kingston gives for deciding on the working temperature is if the room is 59˚F then the cream should be about 46˚F. It needs to be cold enough for the fat to remain solid so the grains separate rather than melt.

Buttermilk separation

Whip the cream on medium speed with an electric mixer. The cream will soon pass through the beautiful fluffy white whipped cream stage and begin to clump and most interestingly take on a yellow tinge. It’s important to watch for the point at which the buttermilk separates from the fat grains. As the butterfat takes on a more decidedly yellow hue and begins to appear grainy, the buttermilk will start to pool in the bottom of the mixing bowl. Stop mixing at various points and tilt the bowl to assess your progress. It should only take about 6-8 minutes to achieve separation. If you whip beyond this point of separation the buttermilk will actually work its way back into the fat grains, leaving you with a useless mass of grainy whipped butter.

Irish Brown Soda Bread

Pour off the buttermilk and save it for baking. Especially save it for making the Irish Brown Soda Bread from Rouxbe Online Cooking School. Really, you must. This bread will get its very own post. It’s so good I nearly gave up eating all other foods while it was in the house.

Rinsing butter with water

After the buttermilk separates from the fat grains and has been drained off, it’s time to wash the butter. Rinsing away all traces of the buttermilk is important to keep the butter from spoiling. Pour a pitcher full (about 6-8 cups) of clean cold water over the butter and with the mixer on low, let it mix for just a few seconds, and then pour it through a strainer to drain. Repeat the water rinse two more times or until the water being drained off appears clear.

Straining rinsed butter

Turn the butter out onto a work surface and knead, press, squeeze and squish to remove the water from the butter. Traditionally butter spades are used for this task, but a spatula, or your hands works just as well. Once it appears the water has been squeezed out, it’s time to add salt if desired.

Irish butter is known for being salted where as French butter never has added salt. Historically much of the butter produced in Ireland was exported and the salt acted as a preservative extending the shelf life during transit. Alan Kingston recommended starting with a ratio of 1% salt and adjusting from there. Ideally I would have used a local artisan salt, but given that this project hit me with very little notice, I reached for a favorite I had on hand, Murray River Flake Salt.

The ways in which food can be transformed through simple manipulations like whipping, heating, chilling, combining continues to fascinate and astonish me. I hope you will give this a try and experience the thrill of seeing pure white cream completely transform into a different ingredient with nothing more than a bit of whipping.

Watch the Butter Live! video archive to see butter making in action. Advance to the ten minute mark, which is when the broadcast actually begins. Also, occasionally there is a very short commercial interruption.

Darina O’Connell Allen’s book, Forgotten Skills of Cooking, might also be of interest. There was a nice New York Times article about her work to reclaim Ireland’s culinary heritage published last year.

Fresh Homemade Butter

Update 12/6/11 – Tickets for the Walrus & Carpenter Picnic Dec. 21, 2011, Jan. 7, 2012, and Feb. 6, 2012 are on sale now.

Armed with head-to-toe rain gear, a head lamp and an oyster knife, I set out with a bus load of other hungry adventurers on a chilly December night to experience the ultimate in oyster eating.   

Pacific Oyster

The Walrus & Carpenter Picnic is a venture organized by Jon Rowley in conjunction with Taylor Shellfish Farms and named after Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Walrus & The Carpenter. It takes place on just a few dates during the coldest months of the year with the goal of creating the ultimate oyster eating experience. If you’re envisioning a glamorous dining room, elegant fireplace, fancy crystal stemware and an exquisite selection of fresh oysters on the half shell served on silver trays by white-gloved waiters you’re on the right track, sort of. Just add a Northwest-style twist; Gortex, REI-gear, and trundling about on a beach during low tide, which happened to be at 10 p.m.   

Julie in oyster heaven

This isn’t just any beach we went to, but a beach cultivated by Taylor Shellfish Farms on the prized Totten Inlet. Renown for producing some of the best tasting oysters in the country. Much the way terrior reflects the taste of the land and is associated with the nuances of flavor found in wine. Merior reflects the taste of the sea and is the term used to describe the unique flavor of an oyster based on the waters in which it grew. Jon Rowley and Greg Atkinson coined the term to acknowledge the importance of place with regard to shellfish. Temperature, mineral content, water salinity and the food available to bivalves directly impacts their flavor, and lucky for us the waters in the Northwest producing award-winning shellfish.   

Like any respectable event, the Walrus & Carpenter Picnic has a mascot.  When feasting on some of the best oysters in the world it’s important to not take yourself too seriously. The oyster costume made the rounds and was the catalyst for much silliness. 

@SaltySeattle embracing the theme of the evening

Braced for rain, wind and bone-chilling cold, we arrived at Totten Inlet to find calm crisp air with the temperature hovering around 37˚F and no rain. Not only did we have dry weather, but the skies were clear enough for the full moon to bathe the beach in beautiful light. The water in the inlet was like glass. Seeing the faint silhouettes of boats anchored off the shore I felt like I’d just stepped into a jigsaw puzzle picture. 

Walrus & Carpenter Picnic complete with wine

A roaring bonfire welcomed us to the beach and pop-up tents were ready to serve wine and shucked oysters. We had it all; an elegant fire, wine served in Riedel stemware, an exquisite selection of the freshest oysters, and a quite beach which is one of the most glamerous dining rooms I can think of. Yes, this was going to be the ultimate oyster eating experience.   

Oysters being shucked by a pro

For a warm-up my friends and I decided to start with a shucked oyster served from one of the tents. I picked a Kumamoto and sucked it off the shell. The flavor was sweet and clean and the texture was remarkable; delicate, tender, and firm. How it can be all three I can’t explain, but this first taste was exciting. After our warm-up oyster we instinctively reached for our oyster knives and wondered off down the beach for more.  

Walking along the oyster beds

My first taste of an oyster plucked from the beach was a bit of a revelation. Just as fresh and crisp as the oysters served up under the tents on a bed of ice, but not having been rinsed they had the earthy aroma and briny taste of seawater. The salty accent was slightly pungent adding a stronger mineral note that made these oysters like none I’d ever tasted. The occasional touch of grit from sand only added to the experience. I was happy to wander the oyster beds and  shuck my own from here on out.  

The first oyster we shucked

Oysters were everywhere at our feet and with a quick lesson from the experts of Taylor Shellfish Farms we were able to easily identify which variety we were picking up.   

Virginica Oyster (top), Kumamoto oyster (bottom left), Pacific oyster (bottom right)

Four of the five basic types of oysters were on this beach. Kumamotos (Crassostera sikamea) are rather small and have a deep bowl-like shape to the shell with distinct ridges fanning out from the hinge to the broad edge. Pacifics (Crassostrea gigas) had a remarkably sweet flavor and were easily identifiable by the shell’s fluted edge and flatter shell compared to Kumamotos. Virginicas (Crassostrea virginica) were the largest oysters with a relativly flat smooth pear shaped shell. The tastes and textures of the varieties were identifiably unique and whatever I was eating at the moment seemed to be my favorite. The tiny Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida or Ostrea conchaphila) are the only oyster native to the North American West Coast, but I never managed to find one myself so I enjoyed a few of them complements of the pro-shuckers stocking the ice tray under the tents.   

Olympic oysters are significantly smaller than the other varieties.

Our free-range oyster eating was only interrupted periodically to warm up by the fire. I did try to pace myself as I’ve never tested the limit of my oyster consumption capacity and didn’t want to unknowingly cross the line tonight. The evening wrapped up with a lovely bowl of Oyster Stew made by Xinh’s Clam and Oyster House. Even though we’d been devouring raw oysters on the beach all evening the oyster stew was enthusiastically received and universally praised. If you happen to find yourself in Shelton, WA I recommend having a bowl of Xinh’s oyster stew.   

Oyster Stew made by Xinh's Clam and Oyster House

This truly unique, deliciously enjoyable adventure came to an end and I crawled into bed happy, sleepy, and dreamt of the sea all night. Sunday came and went in a usual way. Come Monday morning I noticed I just didn’t have an appetite because I felt somewhat nauseous. This lasted all day and the next. The question of what eating this many oysters might do to me that had flashed through my mind while standing on the beach as I was sucking and eating, shucking and eating, had returned.   

Curious about the nutritional makeup of an oyster I turned to the internet. I’d always thought they were a good source of zinc, but didn’t fully appreciate how good a source they were. It seems that six oysters have 76.3 mg of zinc. To put this in perspective the next highest ranking source of zinc is a 3 ounce serving of beef coming in at 6 mg. With the recommended daily allowance of zinc for an adult woman set at 8 mg, I clearly blew that requirement out of the water. I don’t know how many oysters I ate, but it was quite likely three dozen (or more) which would shoot my zinc intake up to 457.8 mg. After doing a little reading up on zinc toxicity my symptoms of nausea, abdominal pain, and loss of appetite were beginning to make sense. Other common signs of zinc toxicity include vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and joint pain. According to Oregon State University’s Linus Pauling Institute’s micronutrient research, a single dose of 225-450 mg of zinc usually induces vomiting. Thankfully I didn’t go there. By Wednesday, most of the excessive zinc was apparently gone because I was feeling better and my appetite returned.   

My suspicion of self-induced zinc toxicity has in no way diminished the fun I had at the Walrus & Carpenter Picnic, or turned me off from oysters in the slightest. I’ll just keep track of my oyster consumption in the future.   

Bill Dewey demonstrates how to shuck an oyster.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=50U3a3t6vRI

I’ve made dulce de leche once using fresh milk and sugar cooked on the stovetop and had lack-luster results in the form of a gritty texture. Wanting to conquer dulce de leche I decided to research some recipes and test various methods head to head. 

My options: 

Boil in the can method: Sweetened condensed milk cooked right in the can. This method comes with the warning that it’s possible for the can to explode, followed by, “ but it’s never happened to me.” 

Bake in the can method: Same concept as boil in the can, but the explosion danger is contained to the oven. 

Bake in the oven not in the can method: The convenience of the cook in the can method without the risk of an explosion. This sounds worthy of testing. 

Cook fresh milk and sugar on the stovetop method: Having had lousy results with this one, I was eager to try it again armed with better instructions. 

I followed David Lebovits’ instructions for baking sweetened condensed milk in a shallow pan in a water bath at 425 degrees F for an hour to an hour and a half. Simple. (Not wanting to crank up the oven just to bake a little pan of milk I baked a batch of muffins at the same time!) After an hour the milk had a nice caramel color, but wasn’t deeply golden, so I let it go for another 30 minutes. That would be a little too long. The center is clearly burned, but the edges were nicely salvageable and resulted in a lovely dulce de leche with a nice thick texture. Next time I won’t cook it as long, and I’ll place a silicone pot holder in the water bath to add some insulation to the center of the pan. 

Simultaneously I had a pan of milk and sugar simmering on the stove following Pim’s instructions. I made half of her recipe and decided to spice it up by adding a cinnamon stick, 8 allspice berries, and a 3” long dried New Mexico chile with the seeds removed. My first experiment with making dulce de leche suggested stirring occasionally; Pim mentions nothing about stirring once it’s set on a very low heat to cook. It seemed like keeping the milk moving would be a good thing, and I had the perfect underutilized tool for the job. 

I bought a StirChef years ago thinking it would be handy to have a pot sitr itself while I went about other tasks in the kitchen. It would be, but this little guy stirs so slowly that I have yet to find a good application for it. Dulce de leche could be it. The milk doesn’t put up much resistance and the slow pace is fine.  After about 3 hours it quit. Likely the batteries died, so I just pulled it out and let the milk sit over the lowest heat of my burner. After 3 ½ hours the milk had taken on a bit of color and reduced by about a third, but was still quite thin. The flavor with the spices was fantastic. While it was still so thin, I strained out the spices and returned it to the heat bumped up just a touch to try and move things along; it was getting late. Next thing I know it’s boiling and looking very curdled.  A blast with the stick blender smoothed it out and I returned it to the very lowest heat. After cooking for 4 hours bedtime was approaching, so my only hope is that it would thicken once chilled.  

After an overnight chill, it’s delicious but runny. I have bread ready to bake and decide to take advantage of the hot oven and bake this dulche de leche to see if it will thicken.  Using the silicone potholder trick, I manage not to burn it and it does thicken somewhat, but not enough to be filling for cookies, though rather perfect for drizzling over ice cream. 

Dulce del leche before and after baking.

I haven’t yet conquered dulce de leche, but I am a little further along on the learning curve. I was surprised that the sweetened condensed milk version had a stronger milk flavor and was less sweet than the batch made from fresh milk. The spices I added to the fresh milk version could account for this. It could be that the constant stirring prevented my stovetop batch from thickening the way Pim’s did, so the next time I have a spare quart of milk and six hours I’ll give this another try without stirring. Now, what to do with all this tasty dulce de leche…

While Carol is off on her big TableFare road trip spreading the news about SpiceCare, I thought it would be fun if I took over the blog to document an experiment I’ve wanted to try for some time. In short, I wondered what would happen if you applied good technique to bad ingredients. Is it possible to end up with something edible?

When I was a kid, I probably ate more Chef Boyardee boxed pizzas than any other food item. After a while, my mom apparently got tired of making them for me and let me start making them myself.  I guess this was the start of my homemade pizza obsession that continues to this day. So what would happen if I combined what I know now with what I had then?

I was a bit surprised to find the Pizza Kit product was still on the market after all these years. It’s essentially the same as it ever was, though the  yellow box has given way to red, and what was once 79¢ will now set you back $3.59. Inside, however, are the same three components: a package of dry dough mix, a can of sauce and a packet of powdered Parmesan cheese.

I established some simple rules for my experiment. I could not add any ingredients to my Test Pizza, such as better cheese or a splash of herbs on the sauce. I also had to make another Control Pizza according to the box directions, just in case they made any improvements to the ingredients over the last 30 years.

Respect the Dough

Before I go any further, let me say a few words about pizza crust. It is my opinion that the crust is the pizza. While it possible to start with a good crust and still create a bad pizza, it is absolutely impossible to get a good pizza if you have a bad crust. Carol and I have spent over 20 years fine-tuning and tweaking the way we make pizza and I think we’ve taken it about as far as can be done using an electric oven.  One thing that we’ve learned is that technique is every bit as important as the ingredients. The best crust is a simple concoction of four ingredients (high-quality pizza flour, salt, yeast and water…no oil!)  teased into chewy bubbly perfection by a slow, delicate handling process. You must genuinely respect the dough.

Control Pizza

I made the Control Pizza in strict accordance with the instructions on the box. The only area in which I had to improvise a bit was on the rise time. The instructions say to let the dough rise for five minutes, but that you can extend that to 20 if you want. I decided to split the difference and let it rise for 12 minutes.

Test Pizza

The big difference between my two pizzas was obviously going to be in the crust since my rules prohibited me from making any changes to the sauce or cheese. Here’s how this crust differed from the previous:

1. For the Control Pizza, the instructions directed me to mix 2/3 cup water with the dough flour and then mix it with a fork just until it was a moist ball. For the Test Pizza,  however, I gave the mix the royal treatment.  First, the flour and water were mixed in the KitchenAid on low for four minutes. During this time I thought the dough was much too dry so I began adding extra water (the judges determined that this did not constitute adding additional ingredients and therefore was fair). The dough was then allowed to rest for five minutes so the water could be better absorbed. Finally, the dough was mixed on a medium-low speed for a long time until it took on a beautiful, smooth appearance. During this long mixing I continued to add water to keep the dough very sticky. A wet dough is a good dough.
2. The Control Pizza had me give the dough a 5-20 minute rising. For my pizza crusts, I do a two-day cold rising, which gives the dough an incredible just-barely-sourdough tinge. I was afraid, however, that the dough mix probably used a rapid rise yeast that would completely blow up if I left it for two days, so I dialed that back to a single day cold rise.
3. The Control Pizza instructed me to spread the dough on an oiled cooking pan and bake it at 425˚F. For the Test Pizza, I put one of our pizza stones in the oven and cranked it up to 550˚F, letting it stabilize for over an hour before doing any actual baking. The dough was hand-stretched then transferred to the stone on a peel.

The Results

I think the pictures tell most of the story.

The Control Pizza is extremely thin and lifeless. Now, thin is not a bad thing in the world of pizza, but there’s definitely good thin and bad thin, and this was bad thin. The crust was hard with a plain white-bread taste. The fact that it was baked on an oiled pan also made the very bottom part taste deep-fried.

Now look at the Test Pizza. It is, I must admit, somewhat ridiculous. As soon as it went onto the stone it started puffing up aggressively and it didn’t let up for the entire baking period. The yeast was having a heyday, and all that extra water I used was steaming up things mighty fierce.  I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a thin crust puff up that much before.

This cross-section of a slice of the Control Pizza shows how flat it turned out. As I said, thin is OK, but there should still be some nice bubbles and variety throughout, and this has essentially none.

The slice of the Test Pizza looks pretty much what you’d expect based on the picture of the whole pie.  It has puffed up considerably more…but obviously a bit too much.

But How Does It Taste?

The Control Pizza was exactly how I remembered these things tasting all those decades ago. The only difference was that back then I enjoyed it. This time, I ate one slice, took the photos, and tossed it out.

The Test Pizza really was quite a bit better. No, it was still not good, but bringing the crust to life definitely improved the overall texture and flavor, resulting in a somewhat surprising pie. The crust still had a very white-bread flavor, but at least it wasn’t hard and cooking it on the stone prevent the deep-fried taste that hindered the Control Pizza.

Conclusion

Yes, in this case you can help bad ingredients by applying good technique. But is it worth it? No.  I had to do a fair amount of work to improve this crust and it seems like a waste of time and effort to apply that work to these ingredients. It obviously defeats the purpose of the quick pizza-in-a-box concept if you need to give the dough a full day to rise, so I would never recommend anyone actually go through all this work if you’re starting with Chef Boyardee.

This was, after all, just an exercise to satisfy my curiosity rather than to unlock a secret method for creating a stellar pizza from a $3.59 kit. But after eating all this boxed pizza, I am really going to have to seek out a good pie to erase the aftertaste.

Strolling through Trader Joe’s I came upon a fruit I had never seen before and it instantly captured my interest. Mandarinquats are a cross between a mandarin orange and a kumquat. I adore kumquats and dropped the little container of mandarinquats in my basket before I could even flinch at the $4.99 price.

Like a kumquat, mandarinquats have a thin sweet peel and a bright tart flesh.  They have a graceful teardrop shape and the size seems like a perfect compromise between the two. The color is influenced more by the bright orange hues of a mandarin, but the flavor plays sweet against tart in the same delicious way a kumquats does. I quickly determined that unlike kumquats the seeds are not edible and like a mandarin, there are a lot of seeds.

Mandarinquats are grown in southern California and harvested from January to early March. Sadly on my last trip to TJs I do believe I snatched up the very last container of my newest culinary fascination, so now I will wait with great anticipation for next January when the mandarinquats return. In the mean time, I am happy to see a steady supply of kumquats still available.

When I first saw the mandarinquats I instantly thought of marmalade, which is a bit odd because I don’t really care for marmalade. I find it too bitter. Kumquats, however, don’t have a bitter peel so I thought mandarinquats could make perfect marmalade. In addition to the novel fruit, I was excited about the idea of making a small batch of marmalade to be eaten right away rather than canned. Canning isn’t so difficult, but inevitably I don’t have enough jars or lids which completely derails a spontaneous jam-session. The idea of whipping up a fresh batch of jam that is small enough to consume in a few weeks had never occurred to me.

After reviewing a pile of marmalade recipes I settled on a plan that turned into a saga paralleling the story of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. I had no idea what the pectin level would be, so to be on the safe side I collected all the seeds and cut them open and put them in a tea strainer to cook with the rind. It turns out mandarinquats have a very high pectin level. So high that when the marmalade cooled I couldn’t even pierce it with a fork! The second batch included only six seeds. Better, though it didn’t so much as spread, but rather crumble. The third batch had no added seeds and a reduced cooking time, wouldn’t you know, it was mandarinquat soup. The forth batch was a charm, with no added seeds, but using the cooking time for the earlier batches it came out perfectly. I wish the mandarinquat season weren’t over already, but you can pencil this activity in on your calendar for January 2010!

Mandarinquat Marmalade

Makes about 21/2 cups

8 oz.  mandarinquats
3 cups water
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. cardamom, ground

Have a 2 or 3 qt. sauce pan ready and set a mesh strainer over a bowl.

Wash the mandarinquats by scrubbing the rind well. Slice each piece of fruit in half and squeeze the juice and seeds into the strainer set over a bowl to catch the juice. By squeezing the fruit before slicing it, the juice will end up in the marmalade and not all over the cutting board.

Cut each half-rind in half again and then slice into very thin strips. Slice up the inner membrane that separates the fruit sections right along with the rind. Place the sliced rind in the sauce pan.

Add the collected juice to the sauce pan along with 3 cups of cold water.

Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered for 35 minutes.

Place a small saucer in the refrigerator to chill. It will be helpful when testing the marmalade to determine if it is set.

After the rind has simmered for 35 minutes, add the 2 cups of sugar and stir to dissolve. Once the sugar is dissolved, bring the mixture to a full boil and boil for 10 minutes. Skim off any foam that develops on the surface.

Remove the marmalade from the heat and drop a small amount on the chilled saucer. Let it sit for 30-60 seconds and then gently push on the side of the dollop, if the surface wrinkles, the marmalade has set to a nice consistency. If it is still runny, continue to boil an additional 5 minutes and recheck.

Once set, remove the marmalade from the heat and let cool for 2-3 minutes, then stir in the ground cardamom. Pour the marmalade into clean jars or a bowl and let cool to room temperature uncovered. Once cool, cover and store in the refrigerator.

If the marmalade is too set once completely cool, re-heat it in a sauce pan with some water (1/4 to 1/2 cup) to thin it out. Stir the marmalade to dissolve it in the water over a medium low heat and then bring to a boil for a minute. Cool and store in refrigerator.

Crystallized ginger sounds difficult and time consuming to make, at least that’s what I thought until I actually did a little research on how to make it. It’s easy, and if you are fearful of candy making because of the fussy steps involved with washing down the sides of the pan to avoid sugar crystal formation, this is the project for you; it’s all about creating sugar crystals!

photo by David Peterman

It seems like Asian markets always have the most gorgeous, fresh, young, ginger for sale, so that’s where I shop when I am making this. The most potentially tedious part of the process is peeling the ginger, but I have a great tip for you if you haven’t already discovered the spoon technique. I learned this years ago in an evening cooking class. To me, this tip alone was worth the entire cost of the class and it wasn’t even the point of the class, just a passing comment. Simply scrape the skin of the ginger off with the side of a spoon. A spoon takes off the thin skin easily and without removing a bunch of ginger with it. It also leaves the ginger root nice and smooth. When I use a peeler or a knife, I seem to leave all kinds of angles and cut marks behind. The spoon is fast and really easy to maneuver around the bumps and contours of the root.

photo by David Peterman

I experimented a bit with this batch to see what would happen if I added a vanilla bean, cardamom and cinnamon. Something good happened. The vanilla, cardamom, and cinnamon are subtle but noticeable right up front in the sugar coating, then the bite and heat of the ginger hit followed by a lovely soft lingering vanilla flavor. Home-made crystallized ginger is darker in color than commercial product and the added spices add even a little darker color, but I like the look of the speckles.

photo by David Peterman

In addition to a wonderful stash of crystallized ginger this recipe generates a sugar by-product that is fantastic to baking with. The excess sugar is infused with the ginger and spice flavors and would be wonderful in your next batch of brownies, pancakes, or cookies. It is very clumpy, but a quick spin in a food processor breaks it down to a nice fine texture.

Spiced Crystallized Ginger

1 lb. fresh young ginger root
water
1 vanilla bean
20 whole cardamom pods, cracked open
2″ piece of True Cinnamon stick or Cassia Cinnamon stick
1 lb. granulated sugar, plus 1/2 cup
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

Peel the ginger and slice into 1/4-1/8 inch thick slices. Place the ginger slices in a 3 qt. sauce pan and add enough water to cover. Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds from the pod, then add the seeds and pod to the ginger. Add the cardamom pods and cinnamon stick. Bring the ingredients to a boil and cook at a simmer for about 40 minutes until the ginger is tender.

Drain the ginger and remove the pieces of spice. Don’t worry about the little cardamom seeds, but be sure to remove the tough pods. In the empty sauce pan, mix 1/3 cup water with 1 lb. of sugar and bring to a boil. Add the ginger and cook at a boil, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook and stir until the syrup begins to thicken, another 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup sugar, ground cinnamon and cardamom together in a medium bowl and set aside. As the ginger mixture begins to thicken the syrup will look like foamy bubbles when stirred rather than bubbles in liquid. At this point, using tongs or a  fork, lift the ginger pieces out of the pan into the sugar mixture and toss to coat. Once the ginger is well coated spread it out on a sheet pan to cool. Let it sit for a few hours to dry and then transfer to an airtight container. It will keep at room temperature for 6 months.

Collect all the extra sugar and process in a food processor until it is a nice fine consistency. Store in an airtight container to use in your next baking project. This sugar would be great in brownies, pancakes, or cookies.

Fresh cranberries are showing up at the market, so it is the perfect time to share my cranberry sauce recipe with you. Freshly made cranberry sauce is such a world away from the canned version. Granted it won’t have the lovely can shape and can ridge texture on the sides, but the taste of freshly made cranberry sauce easily outweighs the nostalgia of cranberry sauce shaped like a can. If you have never made cranberry sauce, you need to know it is a snap to make. I have been making versions of this recipe for my entire adult life. Over the years it has evolved into what is now my favorite version.

photo by David Peterman

Warm exotic spice flavors play between the sweet and tart flavors of this sauce. It is perfect for the Thanksgiving table, but I enjoy this cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches all year long.

Spiced Cranberry Sauce

Makes about 3 cups

16 oz. fresh or frozen whole cranberries
¾ cup water
½ cup red wine vinegar or raspberry vinegar
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 cups sugar
zest of one medium orange
2 star anise, whole
1 ½ tsp. cinnamon, ground
½ tsp. clove, ground
½ tsp. allspice, ground
½ tsp. cardamom, ground
1” piece of fresh ginger, juiced in garlic press

Clean and de-stem cranberries. In a medium saucepan combine cranberries, vinegars, water, sugar, orange zest, and star anise pods. Cook over medium heat until cranberries begin to pop. Stir and mash the berries with the back of a spoon.

Add the spices and the ginger juice. Cook at a medium-low boil for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.
If you prefer less pulp, press a quarter to half of the sauce through a sieve to strain. Taste the sauce and adjust spices as desired*. Once the sauce cools it will thicken.

It keeps well for a few months in the refrigerator. If you like to can, preserve this sauce following proper canning proceedures. Leave ¼ inch headspace and process in a water bath for 10 minutes, if using half-pint jars or smaller. If you pack in larger jars, or live at an altitude above 1000 feet, refer to a trusted canning resource to adjust the processing time.

* Spice Note: I use whole spices and grind them as I need them. Once I made the switch to buying whole spices I dialed back the amount of spice in the recipe because freshly ground spices are so much more powerful. If you are using pre-ground spices and feel like the flavors aren’t as prominent as you would like, add a bit more of each to suit your taste.

I think I have finally conquered stock. Partly because I have realized that the biggest challenge for me is figuring out how to fit it into life. Though I have made stock now and again throughout my cooking life, I never managed to adopt it as a way of life. Reaching for a can of stock in the store is always accompanied by a tiny bit of guilt with hearing a faint chorus of cooking show host and chef voices ring through my ears saying, “you should make your own stock.” Now I think I will finally be making my own stock on a regular basis.

photo by Carol Peterman

The primary reason? I just made three batches in the last few weeks and managed to work out some little issues that make all the difference. The inspiration behind my stock-fest is an online culinary program I am participating in at Rouxbe.com. Rouxbe is a great cooking site with the best quality instructional video I have come across and this summer they started a self-paced online cooking school complete with lessons, homework and tests. Sign me up! The site has some free content, but the cooking school and bulk of the content requires purchasing a subscription to access. Though I received my initial subscription as a gift by being a Metrokitchen.com customer, I will resubscribe next year.

The revelations I have had come from seeing the stock making videos and finally understanding what “simmer” looks like. Seeing a great example of what clear stock looks like and realizing I achieved that; I can see a carrot at the bottom of my bowl! Having confidence that I am doing this right makes me want to make stock. Hooray for my new found confidence, but there is still the issue of working out a few irritating kinks. They may seem trivial, but I tell you it’s the little stuff that can make the difference between something becoming second nature and it just feeling like too much darn work.

The first batch of stock I made I carefully scooped out the bones and vegetables into a bowl and moved on to straining and cooling the stock. I now have this large bowl of very hot drippy wet stuff I need to throw away. I don’t want to just toss it in the outside garbage can loose, I can’t put it in a paper garbage bag, so I scooped it into a plastic bag that I then nearly burned myself carrying outside and was worried the contents would melt the bag before I got to the garbage can. That would be a fun mess to clean up! Not to mention that I now have a giant messy bowl to wash. The better way – empty milk cartons!

photo by Carol Peterman

Next issue of contention: cooling the hot stock. From a food safety aspect the only way to go is an ice bath. I now have the stock divided between two more large bowls that I then set in two more even larger bowls containing the ice bath. That’s four more large bowls to wash! It’s late and I am tired and not liking all this effort. Revelation: Plastic dish pans for the ice bath. They are light weight and really just need a rinse and quick dry before putting them away. I am now down to only dirtying two large bowls and a stock pot. This is progress! The ice bath is nice because it is fast and the stock can be portioned for freezing and put away within about 30 minutes. The tip for a good ice bath: buy a bag of ice at the store so there is enough ice on hand to make an effective ice bath.

photo by Carol Peterman

After reading Harold McGee’s latest article in the New York Times on ice and cold things I learned how to make the most effective ice bath – add salt. It is colder and will chill faster. I had two ice baths going anyhow, why not have a little contest? The bath on the left was just ice and water the one on the right I added about a third cup of kosher salt. Sure enough, the stock in the salted water cooled to 40 degrees F in just about 30 minutes and the other one was still at 47 degrees F. After 30 minutes, the water temperature of the salted bath was 28 degrees F and the non-salted water had climbed to 37 degrees F. I didn’t get quite as dramatically different cooling results that McGee did in his tests, but my two samples weren’t so perfectly controlled as I suspect his were. I don’t know how long it would have taken the non-salted stock to cool completely because in the interest of getting to bed I moved the lagging bowl of stock into the salted water bath to wrap up the project as quickly as possible.

With only three practice batches of stock I managed to work out a few little process issues that make it just enough easier that stock-making is on the verge of becoming second nature to me. I now have the timing down – as in start early in the day so I am not up to all hours, know the volume of ingredients off the top of my head, and don’t end up dirtying every bowl in my kitchen during the process. I don’t stir and have learned to control the heat so I never let the stock boil, just simmer. Best of all I have a freezer full of great tasting stock. The true test will come when my freezer supply runs low. Will I pull out my stash of bones from the freezer and get cooking, or head to the store and once again hear that little chorus of voices?

I bet you already own many cookbooks with instructions on making stock, plus you have the Internet at your fingertips as a further resource. I hope you will have your own little stock-fest and figure out how to work this core element of cooking into your life.