adventures in sourdough

One of my major Someday When I Quit My Crappy Job projects was homemade sourdough. Who’s ever looked at their counter and seen something resembling this gurgling up at them?

It is SO FUN.

Except.

Like so many out there, I’ve internalized the ancient Greek great grandmother kind of thing that says “DO NOT WASTE FOOD”. It’s powerful, and frankly I think wasting food is just morally reprehensible.

However, when making proper sourdough, waste is an inherent part of the process, or the euphemism in the recipes that coaxes you to “discard” half of the starter before you “feed” it. I ask you, once you’re humanizing it enough to talk about “feeding”, how on earth can you just casually then dump it out? Moreover, you are putting a LOT of flour into the dough, on a DAILY basis.

So the gist of it is, rather than taking half the starter and throwing it out, I just started a new starter. Obviously this will multiply verrrrry quickly which is where I found myself as I prepared to make eight. Yikes.

So fortunately for me, the King Arthur website, which’d been what got me hooked on this idea through their quite helpful sourdough tutorial, had recipes for “unfed starter”. I called my best friend, a savvy and experienced starter maker, and she skeptically told me that any starter under two or three weeks old wasn’t going to do much.

But I looked at my sourdough, just a few days old, bravely bubbling.

 

And frankly, it was odorous enough that I knew something was happening in its innards and I just sort of wanted it out of my kitchen.

And this fabulous and incredibly easy recipe for sourdough pretzels had a little added yeast in it, that I figured would pep up my starter, immature though it was.

And guys.

I AM SO IN LOVE WITH MAKING PRETZELS!

Things I love about making pretzels:

1. It prevents sourdough starter waste (Duh. The whole premise for this post). I am going to start Sourdough Starter Waste Awareness. It’s going to be a thing.

2. Rolling it into perfectly even 18-inch tubes is lots of fun. You can twist it in the air, you can do a twist-y pull-y thing on the cutting board that makes you feel like you are a pastry chef with magical hands that finesse perfectly even tubeys.

3. The recipe is sooooooo forgiving. I didn’t have dry milk so I just put in liquid milk instead of water. Worked beautifully. In one of my many batches (oh, just wait) I forgot to add the oil to the dough so I just mixed it in after it had risen. The dough didn’t care.

4. Making it into perfectly pretzel-y bows is fun. And you can involve your whole family (my mom’s off work, my sister’s home from school, hurray! We also all went to Zumba together!). My sister is particularly skilled at making the bows. They look like ribbons for AIDS, breast cancer, or another serious issue like sourdough starter waste awareness. (Please take that in the joking spirit in which it was intended, and recognize that sourdough starter is a trivial issue I am being snarky about but food waste is a BIG DEAL and even making a small difference in your own home can radiate outward into your social group and have a significant impact. Maybe only buy one bag of prebagged lettuce this week. Put your bread in the freezer if you’re not sure you can eat it all before it molds. See how it goes.)

Back to my project. Even pre-baking, they already look like real pretzels!

 

4. Brushing it with sugar water to make it shiny is fun.

5. Sprinkling it with salt is fun. And kosher salt is pretzel salt enough, in my book.

6. It smells awesome coming out of the oven.

 

7. I have TONS OF STARTER which means I’ve been making TONS OF PRETZELS.

8. Word on the street is that sourdough has a lower glycemic index than regular bread. Who knew? Word on the street is also that sourdough is better for those afflicted with Irritable Bowel syndrome. Who knew?

9. Pretzels contain lots and lots of carbs, and as everyone knows, carbs are the best.

10. If you are related to me you are getting pretzels for Christmas.

   

11. I am not a ballpark mustard girl at all- count me in for snobby Grey Poupon. But imagine my SHOCK to realize that I HAD HOMEMADE PRETZELS AND ALL I HAD TO PUT ON THEM WAS GREY POUPON.

It’s actually good. It’s okay.

  

12. My sister has accompanied the pretzels with fig jam and marinara sauce. She reports good results.

13. VARIATIONS GUYS! Basically once you know how to make pretzels the sky is the limit. Auntie Ann’s is at every mall and airport in the world, yet I know no one who buys Auntie Ann’s. This has to mean something. GIVE ME PRETZEL SUGGESTIONS.

14. Oh what’s up, cinnamon sugar pretzels.

+6 T sugar and a heavy dumping of cinnamon in the dough
-salt on top
+cinnamon sugar on top, duhh

Chewier than the other ones. Like a portion-controlled incarnation of a cinnamon-raisin bagel.

15. EVERYONE’S FAVORITE. Parmesan Pepper Pretzels- delicious and alliterative.

+black pepper!
+lots of Parmesan cheese!

Cheese bubbles cheese bubbles cheese bubbles!

Pardon the pictures, as I have yet to take these out of the oven during daylit hours. There are more in my future, but suffice it to say that this recipe is worth a gander.

 

16. I have a blog. Which enables me to poll the net.

What flavored pretzel shall I make next?!

woke up wanting…

… a tuna melt! So I had one at, oh, 9:30 in the morning. (Note that I didn’t wake up at 9:30… at least on that particular day. I tend to spend the morning pleasantly loitering, perhaps doing crossword puzzles in bed, until my appetite wakes up. This is an absolute luxury of funemployment- my temporary state til classes start up in January- and I am thoroughly taking advantage of it).

Anyway, the tuna melt was everything I dreamed of and more.

 

Joining the tuna melt on the plate (along with Sriracha-spiked ketchup) were a few leftover green tomatoes and sweet potatoes I’d made earlier.

At long last, my summer tomato adventure had ended (*sob*), finding me picking tomatoes in my boxers at 11 at night before the first frost came. They came in green, and I figured I’d take advantage of the assertive texture and mild flavor and make the all-so-famous fried green tomatoes.

While not actually wanting to deal with frying (or grease making me sleepy) at lunchtime.

I threw together a batter-ish of egg, paprika, cornmeal, etc. and dunked the sliced tomaters in it.

 

Then “fried” them in a skillet with cooking spray.

The day I actually cooked them, in the general bar-food spirit I was in, I was also jonesing for sweet potato fries, so I sliced sweet potatoes and tossed ‘em with olive oil and cajun seasoning (yes!) and baked ‘em til tender.

 

Served with another craveworthy item: yogurt with fresh pomegranate. HMart had a ridiculously good sale- a pomegranate for like a buck? And perfectly ripe and fresh and awesome.

 

Woke up another morning craving pizza. This time I managed to wait until lunchtime, and made a healthy yet shockingly good version.

Flatbread (I get it from Costco), whole wheat, revived from my freezer (I find they go bad fast so I keep them there) in the toaster oven. Baked til crispy on one side, then flipped and smeared with marinara. Sprinkled with GOAT CHEESE and red pepper flakes. Baked til the other side is crispy.

Half the fun of making homemade pizza is using a pizza cutter. Tip: Target sells them for like $2. Can we say stocking stuffer?!

Served with roasted broccoli and mushrooms.

Such a virtuous yet amazingly awesome meal.

And finally, as you may be able to tell, I crave cheese almost continuously. There was a (skinny) period of my life where I didn’t eat any cheese and I am SO glad that period of my life is over, because cheese brings a lot of enjoyment to my life and life is just too short not to eat something you love, even if it makes you skinny.

In addition, for my birthday, Steve gave me a Groupon to Red, White and Bleu, a cheese shop I’ve literally passed every Saturday on my way to the farmer’s market for years and years and never gone into! Shame shame shame.

I made up for it.

Beware: the following series of photos were taken on my iPod. They are not very good.

Let’s review the cheeses I opted for. Steve didn’t go to the cheese store with me and didn’t answer his phone when I called for a cheese consult so he just had to SUCK IT UP if he didn’t like it. Fortunately, the person at the store was not only very friendly and nice, she also gave great cheese tips.

On the left is Hook’s black truffle cheddar (so deep! So decadent!). At the top is the Beemster, an intensely scented and crumbly textured very aged gouda. To the right is smokey bleu (this bleu cheese was smoked over hazelnut shells. Sounds amazing, right? Really, it just tasted like bleu cheese. I like bleu cheese, so this was not a bad thing). A recommendation from the person at the counter was the St. Marcellin, which was EXCELLENT! Like a brie on steroids. It came in its own dear tiny tureen and we put it in the oven and it got all melty… mm mm mm. SO GREAT! All of them were strong-flavored cheeses, but that’s how I like ‘em.

 

Meanwhile, Steve made pasta, I made- and burned- kale chips, and the microwave made edamame.

Steve opened up a nice Malbec- his and my fave- and I got out my other fun purchase, which was these cookies specifically designed for wine tasting. There was a sort of savory cheddar herb cookie, a chocolate-peanut butter-espresso cookie (which I never would’ve thought of with wine but was great!)- and a traditional shortbread. I was excited to buy them and support a local business. Truthfully they were a bit dry.

  

Cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese!

Feast.

giant sweet potato!

My mother’s coworker grew a VERY LARGE SWEET POTATO. Here is Steve interacting with it. 

Annnnd one with the sweet potato actually in focus, so you can marvel at its girth. I know it’s difficult to spot in the photograph, but also worthy of marvel is Steve’s blue eyes when he wears this blue shirt. Just know- know they are there.

So a sweet potato that GIANT can make many amazing things.

I made mostly lazy things. LOTS of oven sweet potato fries, with my current favorite roasted veggie spice combo: paprika, cumin, and garlic powder.

Another lazy thing I did was chopped up some sweet potato (I used the outer pieces with skin on ‘em for the fries and used the inner pieces, already skinless and not in need of peeling for this), and chucked it in a pan with some red lentils and water. Threw on some garam masala and cooked it all til tender.

Had it the first night with yogurt. Excellent.

Had leftovers the next day with a FRIED EGG ON TOP! YES! Continuing with the Indian(ish) motif, also had some roasted cauliflower, that I’d tossed with a bit of curry powder pre-oven.

This was deeeeeeeeeeelicious and very filling.

I am not sure why my fried egg looks so creepy and wrinkly. It tasted good. Farmer’s market egg, heck yeah!

   

And of course, the oozy yolk made the most creamy, decadent sauce. Love it love it love it.

Now for a more formal sweet potato meal.

We begin with the standard onion/carrot/celery trifecta, sauteeing in a bit of olive oil:

Then throw in some ‘shrooms.

Then get out a packet of tempeh! I’m so into tempeh. It’s such hippie food. It just tastes so… earthy and grungy and unglamorous and tasty.

I cut it into little chunks, the midpoint of which can be seen here. BUT, you could definitely do them in smaller dice, like to approximate the consistency of ground beef. I’d probably do that next time.

The veggies, meanwhile, got a sprinkling of seasoning. I could’ve put thought into herbs, but instead I chucked some Italian seasoning on.

Then sprinkled on some flour…

And in went the tempeh, some wine, and some water, to make some sauciness (I’d add more liquid next time. I would’ve added vegetable stock, but for the simple reason that I’m out and left my Better than Buillion at Steve’s like A MONTH AGO AND KEEP FORGETTING TO TAKE IT BACK).

 

Into a baking dish it went…

  

All set to be TOPPED. Because friends, here’s where the sweet potato goodness comes in. Okay so apparently giant sweet potato actually had been all used up at that point, so I roasted two new ones.

And then as a wonnnnnnnnnnnnderful treat, we had some cream in the house leftover from Thanksgiving baking, so I added just a bit (like, seriously, probably a tablespoon- it’s so FLAVORFUL, let alone rich, that that’s all I needed).

 

And shmeared it over the top. Untraditional shepherd’s pie!

Given a bakesie for 20 minutes or so at 350, til golden brown and gorgeous. Delightful.

On a final note, CHRISTMAS ALERT. If there’s someone who likes eating or reading in your life, I highly recommend getting them Blood, Bones & Butter. It’s written by a well-known chef who happens to be ( a woman, but more than even about food it’s just an incredibly beautifully written memoir about a somewhat insane childhood, a few lost years (decades?) and a really fascinating/bizarre look into a crazy relationship (including some intoxicating chapters spent in Italy). I got it from the library and inhaled it. A great read!

out with the fella

Had such a fun day Saturday!

I saw that the Swedish Embassy was having a Christmas bazaar, and since anything Sweden related is basically my boyfriend’s favorite thing ever in the whole world (he took Swedish in college… he loves their environmental laws… he’s convinced he was switched in the hospital at birth and is actually Swedish royalty- seriously!), I went for a hot embassy date. At one point I texted my sister telling her where we were and how ecstatic Steve was and she texted me back, “Leave and see how long it takes him to notice. My guess is six hours”.

Then since it was nice out, we went for a lonnnng strollsie.

Hello White House! 1600 Pennsylvania was decked out for the season/AIDS with a red ribbon. And there was a big stand being erected even as this photo was taken- we were thinking the tree lighting ceremony was imminent.

There’s always a crowd there. Protesters, too! First amendment, yessirree.

 

As I said to Steve- it is SO FUN living somewhere you can just stroll to the White House when you feel like it. I forget about these things!

Next we went wayyy up Connecticut Avenue to end up at… Zoo Lights! Every year the Smithsonian National Zoo does a big pre-Christmas light display. We meant to go last year but got there too late (I think the crowd changes later in the day… this year when we went around 6 it was all kids but last year as we watched the last people coming out at 9 they looked older… methinks it’s a big venue for making out!)

Very difficult to get a good picture. I did have no choice but to get the poor guy in a panda costume (!) in a Santa hat (!!) dancing (!!!) in a giant snow globe (!!!!!).

 

Go figure, the children loved him.

Elephant!

Funny how real that looks in the picture! No elephants were harmed in the making of this blog post.

Not pictured was a petting zoo with some amusingly bored farm animals and a GINGERBREAD HOUSE COMPETITION! Ooodles of fun.

Originally the plan was to Metro back to Foggy Bottom, go back to our car in Georgetown, drive through Arlington to the Trader Joe’s in Clarendon, then get back to Steve’s place and cook… but it was like 8, Trader Joe’s closes at 9, and Steve was already starving. And I was wearing inappropriate footwear and needed a rest.

And then we peeked through a restaurant window and saw this charming place.

And Cafe La Ruche it was.

When I’ve spent time in Europe (yknow… twice… well and in fourth grade but that doesn’t apply to this fact), I admired that you could get wines by the carafe or half carafe.

You can economize by getting a slightly larger quantity(rather than buying two individual glasses) but don’t have to get a whole bottle, the wine’s already been sitting out which makes red wine tastier, and for two people it’s a perfect glass-and-a-half. (Though of course, if one of those people is a lightweight like me, you’d think it was like four glasses a person).

Steve and I both opted for the special.

It arrived with first a Caesar salad. The dressing was definitely fresh made and delicious. It was actually a little too decadent for me to finish (ugh, I am saying this about SALAD, how obnoxious :D) so I passed the rest off to Steve, who was busy inhaling it (Steve REALLY enjoyed this dinner).

 

Annnnd the special of the vegetarian lasagna, in adorable individual dishes (I love food served in individual tureens and things. So cute!)

So vegetarian lasagna did not actually mean the presence of a great quantity of vegetables, but rather noodles drenched in the most heavenly cream sauce, scant little hints of carrot and broccoli, super sweet marinara, and the most heavenly crispy cheese atop (Gruyere?).

I ate wayyy more than I thought- perhaps 2/3 to 3/4 of this? It was marvy. And the rest, of course, went to cute Steve, who was swearing up and down to our waiter that he was half Italian and had never tasted anything like this.

 

Gossip at the next table over revealed that the restaurant was well known for their desserts, and it was one of those this-is-so-fun-I-just-don’t-want-to-leave-yet nights, so we opted to share a dessert. I told Steve to order whatever he wanted. He opted for the mousse au chocolat. Tasty!

 

Steve took me out for yet another fun night out (kind of a two year anniversary- YAAAAAY!- celebration).  He snagged a Groupon to Rabbit, a restaurant in Clarendon. I’m always skeptical of restaurants that say we emphasize local/organic food or we obtain local/organic food whenever possible because it’s just TOTALLY MEANINGLESS. I mean, Wendy’s could say that.

However, the food was good :) And hopefully at least some of it was local/organic.

Love that the food was good but the ambiance was casual. Witness barstools and buckets of cutlery, as well as a counter where you picked food up (and got to watch the action!)

The place actually produced a Steve-sized salad! Even my fastest-metabolism-on-Earth boy was satisfied! (Well, til like an hour later when he got a slice of pizza. But only one slice!)

And because the Groupon said any entree, I got the most expensive thing on the menu :D That’d be the seared tuna. Which came with a (slightly bland) green salad and mashed potatoes.

The tuna was good! Love a good rare tuna. The plate was larrrrge so Steve got some bonus food too!

 

Annnnd then the Groupon included cupcakes! After not at all lengthy deliberation, because these were both totally obvious choices, we opted for the pumpkin with cream cheese frosting and the chocolate with peanut butter frosting.

Look at the cute puff pastry pumpkin on top!

 

We went halfsies on both. Both were pretty good, but the pumpkin definitely outshone the chocolate- the spices in there were so good! It was also very very very moist- like, they had not skimped on the butter/oil! That is of course why it was so delicious!

And because my dessert stomach struck again, and we had a gap before Skyfall began (I enjoyed. Even the stupid gila monster part). So froyo happened. I know.

 

Anyone else been on any fun holiday season outings lately? Share!

And, do you have a dessert stomach?