Photos

Categories

• About
• Travelogue
• Dining
• Books
• Wine & Spirits
• Freakish Ramblings
• Tools
• Recipes
• Des Autres Bon Mots

Monthly Archives

• August 2010
• June 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• December 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• Complete Archives
• Category Archives

Most recent entries

• Suddenly, we’re in Paris.
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Friday and Saturday, St. Petersburg
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Thursday, Tallinn
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Wednesday, Stockholm
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday at Sea
• Minor Calamities
• The Summer of Us
• Valentine’s Day
• If You’re Ever in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …
• The Cowboy Star Restaurant and Butcher Shop
• Beginning the New Year With a New Kitchen
• Favorites from 2009
• On My Not Getting Lucky Last Night
• And I’ve Decided That Close Enough, Is Enough
• A Little Closer

Syndicate

• Atom
• RSS 2.0

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Start-Stop-Start of Something Good

Yay, holidays! I love this time of year--almost two weeks home, toggling between ebooks and a warm fire and cookbooks and a hot oven.

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of making sourdough bread with yeast from red cabbage--something I’d read about on rulhman.com and gotten more detail on from Two Sister’s Bakes!, from which the original starter recipe came. The starter looked quite promising, and I set about making the bread dough earlier this morning. Harder than I expected ...

In his book Ratio, Michael Ruhlman talked about the windowpane test--the fact that you can tell dough is ready for rising when you can stretch it to translucency before it tears. The recipe estimated 10 minutes of kneading in the mixer--it actually took me more like 45 minutes, and I finished kneading the bread by hand because my Kitchenaid mixer was close to overheating (my next toy has got to be an upgrade). I got the dough to windowpane status, finally, and watched expectantly for it to rise. Color me disappointed.

One hour, no rise. Another hour, no rise. Three hours later, I found a sourdough bread post on the net that explained my problem--I waited too long to use the starter. And so I threw away the flaccid lump of dough and started again.

On to the next kitchen challenge of the day: braised pork belly from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home. After brining the belly for 10 hours, I seared the fat side to golden brown and braised the belly with a parchment lid in a 325-degree oven for 2.5 hours. So far, so good. The next step, cool the pork, place it in a deep baking dish, cover it with enough of its braising liquid to completely immerse it, and place a heavy weight (another dish with a can or brick) on top of it to compress the meat. The only problem was that there was barely any braising liquid left. Maybe my parchment lid was too small? Whatever the issue, I had one cup of liquid left and a pork belly to be pressed. I ended up wrapping the pork tightly in saran instead. My one relief was the little taste I had of the pork before wrapping it--the brine in Thomas Keller’s book is fantastic, and the pork tasted wonderfully good.

Tomorrow morning, sourdough attempt #2, the start of a coconut chocolate cake from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appetit, and mushroom risotto part 1.