desperance

[There are many pretty photos of the process, over on my original Facebook post - https://www.facebook.com/chaz.brenchley/posts/10154494256046323 - which I will try to remember to port across to make this pretty too, but for the moment I'm just slamming the words up here so's I'll know where to find them next time FB rejiggers.]

Chaz'z new cheese garlic basil bread, fit for all occasions:

360g bread flour
8g instant yeast
5g salt
112g lukewarm milk
75g lukewarm water
1 egg

Mix that all together and kneady-beat it for five minutes. Be aware, it makes a very sticky dough that's horrible to handle; I use a stand mixer with the dough hook, and end up with something clinging tight to the floor of the bowl, halfway between a batter and a dough.

Work it into a ball with your fingers, splash a little olive oil into the bowl, roll it around till the ball is coated. Cover and leave for an hour or so. It'll rise into the airiest of doughs. Deflate it gently, and spread it out on a board. At this stage, it's suddenly lovely to work with; you can stretch it almost to translucence, and it'll stay coherent and peel off anything. Shape it into an oblong about two foot long and ten inches wide. Give or take.

Pulp some garlic with a little olive oil, and spread that over the dough. Grate 200g of cheese [your call: I'm using Gruyere because I have a great block of it, but cheddar or parmesan would work fine, or half a hundred others] and scatter that over. Chop half a bunch of basil from the farmers' market (or, y'know, the supermarket, or the garden, or...) and scatter that.

Roll it up like a long sausage, and pinch the seam and the ends closed. Put parchment paper on a baking tray, and lay the sausage thereon in an S-shape. Take kitchen scissors, and cut an inch deep, from one end to the other.

Now tuck the ends underneath to make a figure-8 or an infinity coil. Pinch things together a bit, cover and leave for an hour to rise.

Preheat an oven to 350F, and bake on a centre shelf for thirty-five or forty minutes. You might want to cover it with foil halfway through, to stop it overbrowning. (I have cooked it twice, covered it once; things vary, even in the best-regulated of ovens.)

Cool on a cooling thing, and eat warm or room temp.

So various things have happened, personal and travel-related and such, and relatedly or otherwise, I have been neglecting this journal shamefully.

But now we are home again, and I am fully resolved to mend my ways: in pursuit of which mending, one thing I want to do is talk more about food. Especially Thursday food. As you know, Thursday is when friends come around to dine: sometimes half a dozen of 'em, sometimes twice that. It's never a dinner party as such, it's just a chance for them to hang out and for me to show off, or to experiment, or just to stretch myself. It is, in fact, all about me. Unsurprisingly.

Anyway: we've been away, and now we're back, and this is the first Thursday since the interregnum. And as we just spent two weeks in England and I somehow managed not to eat a single curry, guess what I'm cooking tonight?

Specifically, I am cooking the dish I most despise, the dish most laughed at among the soi-disant cognoscenti of the English curry cuisine: I am making chicken korma. And I mean for it to be awesome.

Thing is, chicken korma as served in every British takeaway is essentially curry for people who hate curry: cooked with boneless chicken breast so mildly spiced it might as well have none at all, thick with cream, padded with banana and pineapple and I know not what more. It's what they sell to the old folk who've never crossed the threshold of a curry house before, and to kids who've never so much as put pepper on their eggs.

But it doesn't need to be like that. My chicken korma is going to be redolent with onion cooked sweet and slow, heavy on the ginger and the garlic, flavoured with fennel and coriander. There will be serrano chillies, left whole for those who don't like 'em to pass 'em on to me. The chicken will be dark meat, thighs, and cooked on the bone for better savour. That'll cook with its yogurt marinade and not a hint of dairy more. No cream, no fruit. Ground cashews to thicken the sauce. And there'll be a vegetable curry on the side, and a channa dal, and lemon-rice-without-the-lemon, as is traditional around here.

I'll let you know if anyone storms out.

[EtA: in other news, I had dentistry today. I just wanted to say that, so's you'd understand how radically awesome I am being.]

For some inexplicable reason, our local acquaintance (m'wife included) continue to find my buns hilarious.

As everyone knows, explaining the joke kills the humour.

Therefore, and for no reason else, here is how I make them:

650g bread flour
25g sugar
6g kosher salt
8g instant yeast
350g buttermilk
50g melted butter
1 beaten egg

Mix the dry ingredients together in the bowl of a stand mixer, add the wet ingredients and let the dough hook at ’em. Keep it to a low speed - 2 is just fine on my KitchenAid - and let it work everything into a dough, then give it another six minutes.

Take the bowl out of the machine, lift the dough ball out of the bowl and dribble in a little olive oil; roll the dough in the oil until it’s coated, then let it sit covered in the bowl until well risen, an hour or two depending on environmental factors and the freshness of your yeast.

Dump the risen dough onto a counter or butcher’s block, divide in half with a dough scraper and then in half again. Roll each quarter into a tube, and divide into three or four pieces, depending whether you want big buns or dinner rolls.

Work each piece into a sphere (ish), and set on a floured reliable baking tray (I use a Silpat sheet on a regular tray; baking parchment is also excellent; natively nonstickerised will do too, or simply well-seasoned will be fine - I could use my trays without the Silpat, but hey, I’ve got it, so why not?).

When you have set out between a dozen and sixteen buns or rolls, you will have no dough left and are done. Cover ’em with plastic wrap and let them rise 45 minutes to an hour - you want a little resistant spring in ’em, so that they’ll rise more in the oven. If they’re over-risen, the most they will do is collapse.

With a pastry-brush, coat the exposed surface of each bun with beaten eggwash, and scatter sesame seeds generously over all.

Bake in a preheated oven at 400F, 200C, gas mark 6 for 15 minutes. Have a look; they might want a couple of minutes more, depending on your oven. When they’re golden brown and hollow-sounding, take ’em out and slide ’em onto a rack to cool. Fight your wife & guests off for at least fifteen minutes, to let the texture set; it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Squishy rolls are nobody’s friend.

So we have all these strawberries. It can happen, hereabouts.

Monday's strawberry-and-rhubarb jam is nice. I am pleased with it. But I had no more rhubarb, so yesterday I made strawberry balsamic jam with black pepper.

This, O my people. This is the thing.

Take a kilo of strawberries; hull, halve, quarter if they're huge.

350g of sugar. Stir together, and leave the fruit to macerate for a couple of hours. Stir it every now and then, if you like that sort of thing.

Dump it all into a broad pan, bring to a boil, squeeze in half a lemon and seethe it, stirring every now and then, until it's ready to set. You can do saucer-tests to confirm this, or use a spoon, or just go by eye and ear: when it's sizzling on the bottom of the pan when you draw a spatula through it and it doesn't immediately flood back, when you can actually see the bottom for a moment there, it's pretty much ready. It'll be a soft set, because there's not much pectin in it, but it shouldn't be runny even so. I disavow runny jams.

When you're tolerably sure that it's ready, turn the heat off, and stir in two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

Jar it up (you'll get about three half-pint jars out of this), seal it according to your preference (I am all about warm jars, screw the top on and don't worry about it; other people are all about ten minutes in the waterbath or you'll all die; my entire continent has not died yet, but who knows? Maybe tomorrow we will) and it would technically keep for a year or more but I bet you eat it before then.

Thanks to Jeannie (thanks, Jeannie!), we had lamb (duh!)* for non-yogic dinner last night. Slow-baked with Indian spices, because hullo, mere awards aren't going to shift my palate westward.

But actually my favourite bit was the mere cabbage. We have fabulous good organic savoy cabbages in the farmers' market this time of year, and I love this particular way of cooking them. It is my go-to, curry-wise. Based on a recipe from Monisha Bharadwaj but adapted to my own convenience, I give you Cabbage Chorchori:

Heat mustard oil in a wide pan, and add a teaspoonful of black mustard seeds; clap a lid on when they start to pop.

When they've stopped popping, add a finely sliced onion and sizzle until softened and translucent but not coloured. Then add a finely shredded cabbage (preferably savoy), an inch of finely chopped fresh ginger, a few whole fresh bird's-eye chillies (if liked: I used red ones, figuring people would spot them and not eat them if not liked, but alas, m'wife took one for a carrot...), a teaspoonful of chilli powder, a teaspoon of turmeric, salt to taste and a generous splash of water.

Mix it all up, clap the lid back on and cook until the cabbage is tender-crisp.

Heat a splash more oil in a small pan and add a couple of teaspoonsful of panch phoran (a mix of whole seeds, generally equal parts nigella, black mustard, fenugreek, fennel and cumin; you can buy the mixture at Indian stores, but it's just as easy to mix 'em yourself).

When the seeds crackle, dump the whole contents onto the cabbage and stir it in and serve it forth.


*Okay, did anyone see what I did there? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

I have boiled, cooled and dried rice. I have peeled shrimp. I have destringed (unstrung?) sugar snap peas. I have chopped ham and mushrooms and celery and asparagus and fennel and chillies. I have crushed garlic with a little sel de gris. Nothing now remains, but to sizzle and spice everything up, and then to eat it. I think we'll call it shrimp and asparagus with confit of fennel, and ham & mushroom rice with peas. I 'spect there will be soy and sesame oil in the rice, and maybe little more than fennel seed in with the shrimp. It's all up for grabs, though, till the oil hits the wok. Anything might happen. Which side should the ginger go...?

So I made a haggis, and I am pleased tho' not satisfied; and everyone ate some of it, and some people ate most of it, and there wasn't much at all left for my lunch today.

And I'm mostly posting this for the record, because it may be some while before I do this again and I'd like to remember what I did; tho' I have also been asked for the recipe, which this is barely really a recipe so much as a process, but anyway. This is what I did.

First pluck your sheep:



Then disassemble the pluck:



Then simmer the lungs, liver and heart in water to cover for a couple of hours. Save the liquor, and cool the meat.

Then chop it and mince or grind it coarsely:



Follow the meat through the mincer with three onions. Mix all those minced things thoroughly together, and add half a pound of suet. I used mutton-suet, to wit the fat that was around the kidneys of the sheeps, not rendered in any way but simply chopped very finely with a knife; but it took two sheeps'-worth to come close to half a pound. Weirdly, this was my favourite part of the whole process. Is suet-maker a profession?

Toast a pound of pinhead oatmeal (steel-cut oats, for US consumers) on a baking tray in the oven, till it's golden and nutty, ten minutes or so; turn it over a few times as it toasts. Cool that down, and mix it in.

Chop quite a lot of sage leaves finely, and grind a tablespoon of allspice berries. Mix those in, along with more than a tablespoon of salt (I used a tablespoon and it wasn't enough) and ditto ditto freshly ground black pepper (ditto ditto).

Do all the mixing with your hand, unless you're texture-phobic. Add half a pint of the cooking liquor, and end up with this (which is the point it starts smelling like haggis):



If you don't have a sheep's stomach to pack it in - as I, I myself did not - then oil or butter or otherwise grease a pudding-basin. I used almond oil, and I'm not sure why; we had a conversation at the time about why I was choosing almond over olive, and I had no more answer then than I do now. Maybe it's some association with "pudding", because almond is my sweet oil of choice for non-savoury dishes, but nothing is more savoury than a haggis, so... *shrugs*

Then set in a pan of water, bring to the boil and cook for three hours.

At this point I would show you a photograph of the finished article, but I forgot to take one. I believe others have posted pix to Facebook, but it just looks like a pudding-shaped skinless haggis.

It was maybe a little drier and more crumbly than I'd like; it was certainly underspiced, and I don't just mean for my palate. M'wife said "bland", and meant it. Haggis should not be bland. But nevertheless, I'm pleased; and confident now, ready to plunge ahead with a bolder and more assertive version. Wanting only the opportunity, sometime this side of next Burns Night...

Rather to my surprise, it turns out that my favourite (so far) of the Meyer lemon marmalades is the kind I make the same way I make Oxford marmalade with Sevilles: essentially weigh the lemons (for later), cover with water and boil 'em for an hour, leave 'em in the water overnight; next day scoop out all their insides and parcel that up in cheesecloth or muslin, chop the peels and add them back to the liquid, add sugar equal to the lemons' original weight, add the muslin bag (for flavour and pectin), and boil to a light set. Fish out the bag, squeeze it in a colander over a bowl, pour the squeezings back into the pot, let everything sit for ten minutes and then ladle it into warm jars and seal.

And this morning Katherine brought her dehydrator round, so I'm going to try slicing and drying a few, see what I can do with those.

I read today in my internets that the US govt is allowing honey producers to mix corn syrup with their honey and still sell it as 100% pure honey. Sometimes the stupid it burns us it does. Precious.

However, we all have our own stupids, and I'm sure that mine are burnful to other people. Sometimes they are even burnful to myself. As for example my dithery nature. Ever since two things crept into my consciousness - serious food blogging, and Kickstarter - I have had this little private yearn to mix the two together, and Kickstart a food-blog project. It wouldn't be too expensive - set-up costs for a tolerably complex website, some professional design work, a DSLR camera and a little training in food photography - and, y'know. Food, Chaz and the internet - we go together well. And I could call it "All The Better", for reasons of a wolfish appetite and aspirations to improve; and stretch goals could include themed little books, "All The Better: Bread" and so forth, and oh, it is such fun to think about.

So of course that's what I've been doing, holding it in my head like a treasure, while the world has become oversupplied with both food blogs and Kickstarter projects. And sometimes I think "Oh, c'mon, Chaz, you haven't even finished a novel since you came to America; why in the world do you imagine you could even consider taking on some new timesuck that's only going to fail anyway?" and sometimes I think "Yeah, but I haven't even finished a novel since I came to America, so maybe I'm not actually a novelist any more, and it might actually be time to think about doing something different," and yadda yadda, like that. Honestly, I think its time is past, if ever it existed. Maybe I'll write a novel about a food blogger, and settle for that.

Meanwhile, my friends to continue to let me cook for them. Back at the weekend Dave took me to Costco, and one of the things I came home with was a 25lb sack of salt, because I've always wanted to bake things in salt and never have. So yesterday was a halfway-house kind of dinner, where I wrapped a chicken in a salt pastry crust not meant to be eaten, kinda like a mediaeval coffin (and of course Katherine and Mac and I all tasted it, and yup: not meant to be eaten), and it came out moist and delicious and more thoroughly imbued with salt (in a good way) than I had quite expected. Which leaves me wondering how salty the flesh would be if it's packed in pure salt rather than a flour/salt crust. There is, of course, only one way to find out. But I may dither for a while.

Today's meaningless chanting is brought to you by the letter C (to the tune of Don McLean's Vincent, an earworm of such longstanding it has rent protection and all the privileges of a citizen).

In other news, I have decided to stop worrying and learn to love the feeling as we slide ever further down the razor blade of life.*

In pursuit of which, this is what I'm doing for Hogswatch tomorrow:

slow-roasted shoulder of pork, marinated overnight in garlic and rosemary and such;

chestnut-apple stuffing, as a loaf (because I am not boning out the shoulder, no);

warm fingerling potatoes in a mustard vinaigrette;

roasted carrots, maybe (if there's room in my supersized utterly inadequate oven; if not, tarragon butter carrots maybe);

green salad;

sesame buns for sammiches (for those who want to watch Hogfather while munching, instead of dining civilly at the clubhouse table);

pannetone if I remember to start it off tonight;

sossidges in bacon (because Americans seem not to know this panacea of all things);

persimmon bread (and this time I'll weigh everything as I go, and post a recipe);

- and the cynosure of all eyes, the piece of probable resistance, a whole roasted pig's head. I know I said I'd do soused pig's face, but I can't find the book and I'm a tad stressed and so forth (see above, under razor blade, and ask yourself when I last slept past five am) so I'm going for the easy option**.

The pig's head is currently relaxing in a nice warm bath, his snout poking out like a periscope, wreathed in steam. White Cat has already come to pay a social call, but I had to turn him away; Mr Head does not receive visitors in his bath.


*Yeah, right.

**Yeah, right.