Thanksgiving bread

Happy Thanksgiving!  And look at that!  It's almost one month after my last post!  How time does fly...

Really, it's been crazy, crazy busy.  This past weekend Ryan and I performed in the school's fall opera production, which means the previous week was filled with daily rehearsals.  We had one day "off" on Sunday to recover and prepare for coming week.  Monday was a busy day of classes (and a happy meeting with a friend from college, in town to look at schools).  Tuesday was class and the New Music Ensemble concert at the Canadian Opera Company, also filmed for a TV broadcast, which thankfully went very well!  Yesterday was a meeting with the man coming in to asses the school for the Canadian Heritage Fund, who then also observed my lesson.  And then finally I had the afternoon off!  Holy mackerel!  It feels like it has been ages since that happened (and let's not even think about the rest of the week...).  So Ryan and I made vegetarian stuffing for dinner (homemade sourdough with mushrooms, celery, leeks, chestnuts, and apples--recipe below) along with a salad with pomegranate seeds (the pomegranate was given to me by Rubana at Economy Fruit).  I also put together another batch of bread to retard in the fridge overnight and to bake today.  Per the request of one of my classmates, I measured the ingredients in volume in addition to weight so that I could make a version of the recipe for people who don't have a scale (though investing in a kitchen scale is probably a good idea if you're going to be doing a lot of bread baking because it makes measuring really easy and largely reduces the large margin of error found in volume measurements).

One loaf made last week.

So here is Susan's recipe for Norwich Sourdough from her blog Wild Yeast, adapted for volume measurements and with my little addenda.

Yield:
Two big loaves, or 10 mini loaves (which is what I made today), or one loaf plus a pizza, or... you get the picture.  It's a lot.

Time:
Mixing -- 5 minutes
Autolyse -- 30 minutes
First fermentation -- 2.5 hours

If you're baking that day, then you divide/rest/shape
And then you proof -- 2.5 hours
And then you bake -- 30 minutes max

If you're not baking that day, I've been (in a probably incredibly unorthodox move) just transferring the dough directly to a container, usually a big tupperware, to retard for up to two days.  Then I form the loaves as quickly as possible before throwing them in the oven.  I've found that the sour flavor really improves after the two days in the fridge.

Ingredients:
900 g white flour  -- or 6 cups

120 g whole wheat flour -- or 1 cup

600 g water at about 74F -- or 3 cups

360 g mature starter -- or 1 3/4 cups (which in my case is about half white and half wheat)

--later--

23 g salt -- or 2 tbsp

cornmeal for dusting

Method (for a completely handmade, no mixer 'cause I don't have one, bread):
Mix the flours, water, and starter until just combined, which usually I'm not quite strong enough to do with a big wooden spoon, so usually I just use my hands.
Let the dough rest (autolyse) for 30 minutes.
Add the salt and mix until the dough reaches a medium level of gluten development.  (Her pictures are really nice, so check them out.)  I usually wind up sort of pulling the dough between my hands until it actually stretches.  In the beginning it sort of breaks and won't stretch very well, but then as the gluten develops you can stretch it farther apart.
Transfer the dough to an oiled container (I usually just oil the bowl I mixed it in).
Ferment at room temperature (72F – 76F) for 2.5 hours, with folds (again nice instructions here, but basically you just stretch and then fold up) at approximately 50 and 100 minutes.

At this point I sort of deviate from Susan's instructions.  If I'm baking that day, I might shape one half of the bread into a ball, which I'll place on a piece of parchment paper dusted with cornmeal.  Otherwise I'll take my nicely oiled ball, find a big tupperware container, and dump the whole thing inside.  Make sure there's some room for it to expand because it will keep growing.  And then I put it in the fridge and wait a day or two.  I've found that 48 hours in the fridge results in a really nice and sour bread.

When I'm about ready to bake, I preheat the oven to 475 and put in the vessel I'm using for a cloche along with a baking tray (I don't own a bread stone, but I hear those are great).  Thanks to Susan's website, I recently started using this technique instead of trying to make steam in the whole oven.  First of all it's a lot safer.  Second of all it basically doesn't require any equipment (except the cloche).  Third of all it actually works. 

So what is this cloche thing?  Basically it's a heat-proof vessel like a big ceramic casserole or something that you can turn upside down and create a seal with a baking sheet.  You can also purchase a real one, or apparently make one out of a flower pot (instructions on her website), but really a deep ceramic baking dish seems to work perfectly.  The cloche traps the moisture that's already inside of the bread, allowing the dough to rise much more and ultimately creating a better crust.  You bake for 12 minutes or so with the cloche over the bread and then remove it for the last part of the baking.  Easy peasy.  No trays of boiling hot water or squirt guns or whatever.  No giant steam cloud threatening to cook you to death like a squishy lobster.  

So, you set the oven to 475, put in your big ceramic pot and your tray for baking the bread.  When the oven reaches the proper temperature, take a piece of parchment paper and dust it with your cornmeal.  Take your dough out of the fridge and quickly and gently shape (pat, coax) it into a size that will fit underneath your cloche.  Using a sharp knife, cut two long slashes into the dough.  It sometimes helps me to oil the knife blade a little first.  Then, I usually take the baking tray out of the oven and put it on the stove; transfer my dough to the baking tray using the parchment paper; and then take the cloche out of the oven and invert it over my piece of dough.  Then the whole thing goes back in the oven and you set the timer for 12 minutes and turn down the oven to 450.  After 12 minutes, carefully remove the cloche.  Mine's a little hard to grip, so yours might be too.  Just don't burn yourself.  And then keep baking until the bread is brown and done looking.  Depending on the size of the loaf and the temperature of the oven, this might be another 10-20 minutes.  And it's as easy as that!

And what will I be doing with my 10 mini loaves of bread?  I'm bringing them to a few of the people I'm really thankful for here in Toronto, including Rubana at Economy Fruit and my teachers and administrators at school.  It is sad not to be able to take the day to celebrate with my friends and family the way I have growing up, and I would especially like to be able to personally contribute to the storm clean up effort in New York, but I figure that I can at least do this small thing to give thanks for my innumerable blessings and the bounty that is in my life.

Garret Girl's Kitchen Spooktacular: Bones, bones, bones!

Just in time for halloween, I bring you this blog post about eating bones!  So, please be forewarned if you think this is a subject that might make you upset (there are pictures).

I was under the weather for two weeks just recently, felled by this nasty bug everyone in Toronto seems to have gotten (some virus I've dubbed "the plague"). It wasn't anywhere near as terrible as influenza or mono, but it was a quite nasty cold that ended with laryngitis and left me struggling to get up the stairs. Plus, I'm not usually sick for that long!

Probably related to this, on Sunday I suddenly had a craving for roasted marrow bones. I had them for the first time back in May, I think, at Prune, a restaurant in New York City where I dined with my Aunt KS. They were served with a parsley and caper salad and a small dish of sel gris as well as little bits of toast. They were also really, really delicious.

Now, I imagine that this might be a turn-off to some of you, vegetarians and omnivores alike. Given the way we generally consume meat in America/Canada/the West, the concept of bones is a little different (though I'd think much more "familiar" than some organs).  Ryan says it makes him think I'm going to cut off his leg and eat it.  Ya never know, I guess...  Still, there are a few reasons why I think they might be an interesting foray for those of you who do eat meat.

I constantly think about, and second-guess, my own desire (and perceived need) to eat meat. It's not something I feel morally justified in doing, though I also notice myself feeling more energized and "healthier" after I eat a moderate amount of meat--particularly red meat. I also feel satiated for longer periods of time and do not crave simple carbohydrates. However, I eat meat, especially red meat, very infrequently. Aside from the obvious ethical problems with raising inhumanely and then killing sentient beings for food, cattle--particularly industrially-raised cattle--are enormously bad for the environment and contribute to the failure of antibiotics and the rise of drug-resistant bacterial strains.

So, part of what I try to do when I eat meat is to be conscious of the choices I'm making as a consumer (i.e. eating meat infrequently but trying to purchase more ethically-raised animals when I do) and to use the meat I purchase in a respectful and thoughtful manner. This is somewhat easier when it's chicken (after eating the meat I can use the bones for stock) and a little more difficult when I'm purchasing a part of an animal (such as a cow) and know I'm not prepared to deal with all of it. Perhaps this just makes me a self-deluding hypocrite, but I do hope that eating the bones is one way of trying to be a bit more "nose-to-tail" even if I'm not brave enough for stomach, feet, noses, or the other sobering items available in many shops in our neighborhood.

Another plus is that bones aren't very expensive. I guess most people give them to dogs rather than eating them, though they're also great for soup stock (both straight from the freezer and also post-roasting and marrow-eating, which is why I put my "empty" bones back in there). All in all, though, it means that you can purchase better quality bones without setting yourself back too far. I got mine from the local Italian butcher, Gasparro's Meat Market (or, as their website says, "Vince Gasparro's Qaulity Meats"). One of the sons pulled two big bones from the freezer in the back and the father cut them into small, 2-3 inch segments using his giant saw. [I meanwhile tried to surreptitiously inspect their hands for small warts (I heard in my microbiology class at Yale that butchers are usually infected with papilloma virus; you can read more about it here), all to no avail.] A big bag of them cost me ten dollars. I slung it into my bike basket and then stopped by Economy Fruit for a cornucopia of delights, all for the tune of six buckaroos.

Paulie is the "No Groceries Left Behind" inspector. 

Yum!

At home, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees and set a few bone segments standing upright in a pie dish. When the oven was hot, I put them inside and roasted them for about 30 minutes until the marrow was bubbling and the bones were light brown. Most of the recipes I've seen call for about 20 minutes of roasting and some recommend 350 degrees. I don't know if this is because some bones are frozen and some are not, but I have to say that my method seemed to work just fine. It seems like it might be a little messier if the bones were warmer, plus I'm storing my extra bones in the freezer and it's just easier not to have to thaw them first.

Pre-roasting

Meanwhile I cooked up some onions and mushrooms, adding a little lemon and a lot of parsley for some extra flavor. It seems that a parsley salad is a traditional pairing with marrow bones, but I thought my method was pretty tasty too. Because marrow is so rich (i.e. it is mostly fat), it helps to have something lighter and a little acidic to help cut through and lighten the flavor. I also toasted some of my homemade whole-wheat-and-spent-grain bread and sliced up some cucumber... et voilà!  You spread the marrow on the toast and you're set to go.  I found a knife and a spoon worked just fine for extracting the marrow, though of course you can use a marrow spoon if you're so accoutered (are you allowed to use that word with cutlery?).  And what does it taste like?  The coordinator for the pre-college program at school said it tastes like "meaty butter."  I guess that makes sense.  It's a little bit gelatinous, it's a little bit meaty.  It's not really like butter, though.  It's just different.  And tasty.

A somewhat unappetizing photo, I'm afraid--but I promise it was scrumptious!

Now, the nutritional benefits (and dangers) of marrow are somewhat disputed. What seems abundantly clear is that the bones are full of fat. Marrow was a food of choice for our scavenging paleolithic ancestors, namely because it is... full of fat! And when you're a scavenging cave person, something like marrow is a ticket to survival. However, I am not a cave person. (Sort of, anyway; I do live in a basement.) Proper nutritional analysis of marrow does seem to be lacking. I read that the fat isn't saturated, so that's a plus. Some places on the internet say that it's a wonderful source of all these things you need, like vitamin K and iron, and will solve all your problems; some places say it's a source of fat, which makes you fat. I say this:

Bone marrow is delicious.

Bone marrow makes me feel really good after I eat it: satiated but not over-full or greasy, and with lots of energy for hours. I ate the bones yesterday for a good-sized late lunch and didn't eat dinner or any dessert because I was full and energized all evening. And I didn't just sit around! I speed-walked to the post office and back, rode my bike to school (second trip of the day), had opera rehearsal in which I was running around, waltzing, and generally working up a sweat for a few hours, and then I rode my bike home and did homework.

It's surely not a good choice for every day eating, but then I don't think any kind of meat ever should be.

A pianist, a bassoonist, and a soprano take Georg Friedrich Haas to Niagara Falls...

(An image of the Toronto Christmas parade a few weeks ago.)

Oh oh oh. (Ho ho ho?) It sure has been a while. I vacillate between wanting to update this blog every few days and forgetting about it for weeks. I think many things have happened recently, though I typically have forgotten most of them. We celebrated American Thanksgiving here a few weeks ago, on the Sunday after normal Thanksgiving. It was strange to be here and to know that everyone in the States was gathering for big meals and family while we were in classes, as usual. Luckily--thankfully--the Comrades upstairs joined us in a feast a few days later. I bought a free-ranged, Mennonite-raised chicken from Gasparro's meat market and made a dizzying array of dishes including: the roasted chicken (simple, with herbs), polenta stuffing (both vegetarian and with meat), a warm cabbage salad with pomegranate, a mushroom bread pudding (for the vegetarian entree), and two kinds of desserts (an apple-pear pie with a cheddar cheese crust and almond/chocolate macarons). Ryan made some mashed potatoes and Comrade MM made a delicious "sexy squash soup" and really fantastic Brussels sprouts, both from recipes in the New York Times. My recipes came from Gourmet magazine; though I changed most of them heavily I think they're all very interesting and you may enjoy clicking the links above to see them for yourselves. The bread I used in the bread pudding was also home-made and has been quite a hit recently--it's the one from a few posts back that we ate with soup. This is my third time making this recipe, and I've been changing it up with a few other additions/substitutions including wheat berries, sunflower seeds, oats, molasses, yogurt, lower-fat milk, etc., as well as making loaves instead of rolls.

(Ye olde Canadian Christmas tractor? It reminded me of Davis.)

Originally I'd thought I'd write a post about Christmas in Canada. It seems to come awfully early here, though perhaps I was largely sheltered from the holiday marketing in New Haven, Connecticut. There was is little in the way of big-box retail downtown, within student reach, and I was so busy that I guess I avoided it. Here, though, it smacks you in the face on November 1st. It felt a little forced in the beginning, but now that we're actually midway through December all of the lights and decorations are beautiful. There are a number of lit-up houses on our street and of course the department stores and malls all have lots of displays. Many of the corner groceries sell Christmas trees and wreathes, so the air is perfumed when you ride by. Ryan and I went to the Distillery District last weekend to have dinner and discovered that it is turned into a Weihnachts festival, complete with Weihnachtswurst and little wooden stands selling little gifts. It was rather lovely, though cold. In fact, winter seems to have finally arrived--today was positively (negatively?) frigid! It has also snowed a few times over the past few weeks, though nothing has stayed for long. My voice teacher, Monica Whicher, gave a beautiful recital last weekend of holiday music with harp (a bit like the album I recently recorded). It was wonderful (and instructive) to watch and hear her sing. She has a commanding stage presence in that she invites you into the space she creates and holds you rapt from beginning to end. I was very glad I had the opportunity to see her perform.

We've also had a smattering of excellent master class artists recently, most notably Sir Roger Norrington. Perhaps some more musings on him later, as what he had to say about period performance practice--particularly vibrato--was very interesting, but I think I would like to move on to the joke which I began in the title.

It is not so much a joke as real life, as Ryan, a bassoonist friend from The GGS, and I did take Mr. Haas to Niagara Falls. But it was a funny, somewhat surreal experience which I shall recount here:

After a few mishaps with the renting of the car (the bassoonist doesn't have a license but wanted to use his credit card, and the two names had to match; Ryan was to drive but doesn't have a credit card; and I arrived to help them out of the mess by officially renting the car myself) that put us a bit late to pick up Mr. Haas, we were on our way. He is extremely soft-spoken (and for those of you who don't know, he's an Austrian-born spectralist composer best known for the piece "in vain" which the New Music Ensemble performed a few days ago and which occurs, in parts, in complete darkness) and kind. His English is good, though he worries it is not good enough. He is always able to make himself understood, though, and I had fun talking to him a bit in German. He was happy to talk about his music and about his inspirations, though he seemed more animated when we started discussing Death Valley.

As a side note: when my dad and I were in the Southwest this summer we realized that about 80-90% of the people we encountered similarly exploring the Great Outdoors were either French or German. A bit of a mystery, I guess. How do you explain a bunch of Germans in southeastern Utah? Is it because the Euro is stronger than the dollar? Why aren't they in New York? Haas explained that it was his first time in a desert, ever. Perhaps we are too quick to dismiss the profound (and unique) natural beauty of our own country, even when we are enjoying it. Recalling the German landscape, and perhaps even the Romantic ideals of nature, it does make more sense that they would want to see our country. Anyway, I digress...

The day was overcast and cold and the trip relatively uneventful. We arrived in Niagara Falls City, a garish strip of blinking lights and towering hotels advertising breakfast specials. It's hard to imagine an uglier city, except maybe Las Vegas. They're rather similar. There are a lot of casinos and such. But, just as we passed an Alpine-themed restaurant advertising a $1.99 breakfast special and covered with murals of people in Lederhosen (closed, but up for sale!), I caught a glimpse of the falls. And they really are beautiful. I'm sure because we were there with a composer I was more attuned to the sounds they made than I might have been otherwise. Standing above the falls, the crashing sound of the water is not very strong. The sound of the river as it flows along is full of higher-pitched, gentle sloshings in counterpoint with the rumble from way down below. The volume of the water and depth and breadth of the falls is incredible. I know there are bigger ones out there (Victoria Falls, Iguazu Falls, probably others), but I haven't seen them. Haas pointed out that it is hard to train your eyes on one particular spot on the falls: you want to keep following the water, making that continuous glissando that appears in so many of his works. It was a little like being in a stationary car when a truck is pulling forward. Though you're immobile, you feel like you're going backward. In the same way, the water made you feel as if you were shrinking and the falls were growing. A little Alice-in-Wonderland-esque.

We walked around them for a while and eventually decided to try to make it to the other side of the gorge, America! So we walked to a bridge which had a little building with a funny little turnstile and a 50 cent toll. After collecting the proper change, we all pushed through and walked across the bridge. On the other side we passed through customs and I was finally in America after so many months! How exciting! I called home! On the other side of the gorge you can walk along the falls and the river, and over a series of bridges, to traverse the span of the island and falls. When we finished exploring it was almost nightfall (and very cold) so we looked for somewhere to eat. Nothing gave. There was a pitiful Christmas market, like in the Distillery, but on a Wednesday no one was out and about save ourselves and a few hardy vendors. Eventually we reached a giant casino, bedecked in stained glass and architecturally rather similar to a mega-church from the 1970s. Slightly creepy. Across the street: a TGI Fridays. Ryan and I had never been and Haas was hungry, so we went in. There literally wasn't a single vegetarian item on the menu, though they accommodated Ryan's request for a vegetarian pasta without question. Mr. Haas, luckily, seemed very happy with his steak (he is German, after all... and then I remembered the meals I had in Regensburg which, despite my efforts to the contrary while ordering, always seemed to result in a boiled hotdog floating forlornly in a soup tureen).

He very generously treated us to dinner in America and we traipsed back in the cold, over the bridge, through Canadian customs, and back along the river. By then the falls were illuminated in colored lights. Perhaps it was only in contrast to the beacons of consumerism--the giant guitar of the Hard Rock Cafe, the flashing signs and neon lights--but they were actually somewhat beautiful. It was nicer when, just as we were leaving, the lights became just white and the brilliance of the cascading water was illuminated further. In the huge plume of mist that results from the falling water in the Canadian falls the lights created circles of rainbows which seemed more like nebulae, images from the Hubble Space Telescope, than anything else.

The next night was the first performance of "in vain." I had heard slips and snatches, bits here and there, but not the whole piece. The effect was incredible. I haven't had an experience like that for a long time, probably not since hearing El Niño live at Carnegie Hall a few Decembers ago. There were moments of extreme beauty despite all the microtones grating against each other, something that usually gives me a headache. Because we often categorize those sounds as "noise" rather than music, parts of the piece were distinctly non-human and sounded more like machines than anything I'd heard in a concert hall. I had one strong mental image of an airplane flying happily through an Alpine meadow. Not a real airplane, but one which was native to that clime. I don't know why. The parts of the piece that were to be played in complete darkness were wonderful. I don't always like the dark. I'm not afraid of it, but with my bad eyes I think I value the light even more than I might otherwise. I especially love the sun now, when sunset comes so early. Anyway, I wasn't sure if the whole "pitch black" thing would come across as a gimmick. When the first period of blackness came, I was actually more frustrated that they hadn't achieved a true blackout. The exit signs were covered but light seeped around the edges, and the person controlling the light cues in the box was apparently inattentive and some light entered from there. I closed my eyes against the distractions and listened. In many ways it felt like a more true concert experience than what I normally enjoy. My mind often wanders, which I don't feel to be a detriment, but sometimes it wanders to inconsequential things and I begin to watch people. With a blackout, you are both alone with the orchestra and together with the other darkened bodies, but you are free to listen in a sort of stillness that comes from this sensory deprivation. The second blackout section is interrupted by flashes of light which become stronger and last longer as the piece progresses. These too were strangely powerful, another form of percussion. They were also very beautiful. You do not want the blackness to end, to be returned forcibly to the humdrum of people and clothing and faces and instruments and walls and chairs. I was so grateful for the opportunity to meet Mr. Haas, to see Niagara, and to experience his music.

Finally, here is a link to some beautiful pictures (and a little information) about one of my favorite types of squid.

Encounters with the Pantheon in Downtown Toronto

So. It has been a really long time. I think a lot of things have happened, but I've been busy so I haven't noticed. Really, the most eventful moments have probably been in the kitchen. Oh, and the CD I released with Etherea that has been selling rather well. The digital release was on November 1st and it is available in hard-copy starting on Tuesday, the 15th. Currently we're 14 in the nation-wide "Billboard" charts and still number two (after falling from number one, which we held for a week) in the "traditional" new releases on iTunes. Ahead of Lang Lang and behind Hélene Grimaud.

Otherwise life is chugging along at its usual pace: lots of singing mixed in with some learning and then the boring "life" stuff. Halloween came and went; Ryan and I didn't do anything eventful (other than make dinner and help to hand out a little candy) because it fell on a Monday. November entered the picture and with it came the end of daylight savings. Now it is pitch dark by 5:30, which is a little sad. On the plus side we didn't get any of that pre-Halloween storm that blanketed the East Coast and the weather has been perhaps unseasonably warm. It might snow later in the week, but if it does it will probably just be a dusting. Otherwise I've been chipping away at learning La Calisto, thinking about technique, and working on some shorter assignments for school.

We have another ADP master class this Friday with the baritone Timothy Noble but luckily for me there is slightly less pressure as I'm not singing in the class itself, just in my coaching with him (we alternate, so all of us sing publicly in three classes but in private lessons for all six visiting master class artists, plus there are two extra classes this year, with Susan Graham and Ian Bostridge). I'm not sure what I'll be working on for Mr. Noble, but I've had Schubert on the brain of late so it may be some of that. My teacher recommended two songs of his to me: a short but beautiful one called "Florios Lied" (the only drawback being that about 45% of it sits on an F-natural, right in the passaggio...) and a 13-or-so minute long Blumenballade (or flower ballad) called "Viola." "Viola" is pretty awesome. It is somewhat like a giant version of the Goethe poem/Mozart Lied "Das Veilchen," but grafted onto a piano sonata or something like that. The poem (and song) alternates stanzas of storytelling with a refrain that, as one eventually realizes, rings with funeral knells for the dead violet. Per usual, the song is not so much about the different flowers of spring as it is about unrequited love. Poor Viola just gets too excited, stops paying any attention to anything but the coming of Spring, and then freezes to death. The music that falls between the refrain stanzas (there are a few strophes between each refrain) changes from strophe to strophe, with different textures and figurations in the piano reflecting the changing sentiments. It is rather nice. Highly recommend a listen.

So. I'm sure there are more things to talk about and think about, but for now I will segue to a photo essay, which will surely prompt memories...

Aha!

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away, we made butternut squash ravioli for dinner. Ryan and Comrade J are working the assembly line:

I went to see Mlle P. in a ceremony at her school a few weeks ago because she was nominated for an award and her parents couldn't make it. Her school is French immersion, so it was interesting for me to witness both Canadian public education and also hear a little Ontario French. Here she is proudly displaying her certificate!

That Friday, after attending the ceremony, I went to the Royal Ontario Museum (we had the week off for a fall break/extra rehearsals). It is the subject of some controversy, as a prominent architect was hired to update the building and he wound up designing this "crystal" that juts out from the original facade. The museum is next door to the school and I happen to think that it looks very pretty from the outside, but I have to agree with some of the critics when I say that I'm not sure it does much for the interior. The museum is somewhat confusingly organized, with a collection that is very strong in some aspects but lacking in others. The crystal is made of big windows, as the name might suggest, but these are also blocked to prevent harmful light from damaging the collections. So, one winds up wandering amongst dinosaur skeletons in a sort of strangely white atmosphere. Not my favorite. There were some smaller collections of art of all sorts, including a few beautiful early pieces and some interesting folk art, as well as a large collection of Asian pottery. Some of the most interesting pieces of Asian work were the early "native" pottery examples, actually, not the beautifully-formed pots with jade-colored glaze. Perhaps unsurprisingly, early Chinese pottery looks a lot like Anasazi/pueblo work from the American Southwest.

One of my favorite pieces, however, was a wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary standing with the infant Christ in a crescent moon. It struck me as oddly similar to the Artemis/Diana-Selene conflation that occurred in the post-Classical era...

The trees are less golden now than they appear here, but there are still leaves left on the branches:

Since then, I've clearly been busy with some interesting food.

On Halloween, I baked "Pane Francese," following a recipe from Mr. Hitz's book, to have with roasted vegetables and buckwheat groats:

One loaf is topped with poppy seeds and the other with sesame seeds.

I also must have made stir-fry of some sort involving zucchini, and then noticed how beautiful they are in cross-section!

Last Sunday I made a pie crust with a little whole wheat flour because apples were on sale at Economy Fruit. So, I made an apple pie augmented with some leftover Thanksgiving cranberry sauce and some almonds and oats.

Not pictured is the quiche I made later in the day with the remaining half of the pie crust. Talk about a fancy dinner! Quiche and pie! It was a good quiche. To make it less eggy, since Ryan doesn't really like eggs, I spiced it up with some garam masala. Yum!

The next night I decided I wanted to have some aioli, so I made it and lightly cooked some vegetables for dipping. It was reminiscent of some very good meals I had this summer at a friend's house! However, I was at a loss as to what I should do with the remaining egg whites. Until I decided to make French macarons: almond cookies, of course, with a raspberry-dark chocolate ganache. And they were pretty much divine. I highly recommend them. They are also apparently notoriously difficult to make but really behaved quite well. Not too tricky! I followed a recipe from Gourmet.com but made a few changes to their ganache.

Another picture, just for good measure:

A few days later I made my usual sojourn to Economy Fruit and picked up the following cornucopia-worthy items for only $6.50. The woman who works at the checkout might just actually be Demeter/Ceres. Seriously. Cere-ously.

The one drawback is that I have had to get very, very creative with the cabbage. Cabbage salad. Cabbage in couscous. Home-made falafel with cabbage. Andddd... that brings us to last night's dinner: minestrone soup.
I made vegetable stock by roasting vegetables and then made soup and bread in the evening. Here's the soup, bubbling away (before I added the cabbage):

And the bread, which was made following another recipe from Gourmet magazine involving bulgur wheat (and let me tell you... it is delicious!! I literally pulled one of the rolls out of the oven and ate it. The recipe made 12 medium-sized rolls and one medium-sized loaf):

And that, folks, is all for now. I need to spend some more time thinking about cabbage-filled recipes.

Challah for the Holidays

(Challidays?)

More bread!

I guess I spent the past year focusing on the whole wheat bread recipe I published a few entries ago, because I had forgotten about the surprisingly successful challah recipe that appears in Mr. Ciril "I want to scare off your pants" Hitz' book a few pages later. I decided to make some last Sunday after realizing we were low on bread and out of whole wheat flour (and I was too cold to go outside in the rain and chill to get some more) and despite killing the initial yeast in the sponge, having to add more, and letting it rise for far longer than suggested, it turned out rather delicious! Slightly more dense than the cotton-candyesque challah one can find, but still delicious and fluffy. So that's all to say that Mr. Hitz really won't fail you this time. And you don't have to have a weird steaming tray in your oven.

One begins with a sponge.
Combine:
1 1/3 c flour
1/2 c 75ºF water
~6 tsp instant yeast

Mix it up and allow it to sit, covered and undisturbed, for a half hour.

At this point it might be good to set out the following ingredients so that everything is ready to go.

Anyway, after a half hour, combine the following:
The sponge
3 2/3 c flour
1/3 c sugar (I always use brown sugar)
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp 70º water (have more on the ready)
3 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
4 tbsp oil (he calls for vegetable oil, I used olive oil)

Mix it up for a while. He says eight minutes on low speed with your dough hook and another 8 on a faster speed. I used my hands and had to add some extra water and was confused because the yeast wasn't working very well.

Anyway, after it's nicely mixed up, make sure your bowl is coated with a little oil and allow it to rise for 1.25 hours, or until doubled in size. If your yeast was dead like mine, you can always mix up some more instant yeast in some water, add it, and allow it to sit some more. Apparently this is forgiving bread.

After it has doubled, separate the dough into some smaller balls and let them rest for 20 minutes or so. Then, roll them into strands and braid them together. Be creative! Make it look pretty! Have fun! I've made this recipe a few times and have found that I tend to make a very large but compact loaf. I bet that it would work even better, though, and perhaps be lighter and fluffier, if it were slightly more spread. I'll try that next time. Or perhaps some smaller rolls... it makes a lot of bread...

Let it rest for another hour at room temperature, until it doubles again in size. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Before you put it in the oven, brush the loaf with a mixture of the egg whites and some milk and sprinkle with salt/sesame seeds/poppy seeds/other fun and delicious things.

And bake it until it looks pretty brown and puffy. It will probably be 20 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the loaf.

And there you go! It should emerge beautiful and resplendent and bedecked with little sesame seeds or poppy seeds or whatever you decided to put on top.

Just beware: it makes a lot of bread. See the pictures? Ryan and I haven't finished this loaf yet and I made it five days ago. If you're a single person, and particularly a single person who isn't carbo-loading for a marathon, you may want to halve the recipe. Or think of other uses... I KNOW! I need to make French toast!!! Just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving.

In other news, I have succumbed to the same cold that has had Comrade J in and out of bed for the past week it seems (perhaps not that long? but he has been rather ill). I'm trying to fight it off with goldenseal, spirulina, zinc, sage tea, and mental fortitude. However, my nose may have the better of me. We shall see!

And, in closing, an evil basement centipede (medium-sized):

(they get much larger)

Food: Mr. Hitz's recipe for bread and psychological battery

To begin, a butterfly from the Toronto Islands (visited today and perhaps the source of a later post):

And now to the subject of the post:
I do love to cook/bake/make things in the kitchen, so perhaps one facet of this blog will be the odd--as in infrequent, though perhaps also strange--recipe. Those of you who have witnessed me in action (or know my dad's cooking) understand that recipes do not form the core of the Fitz Gibbon repertoire. My specialty, random things in a pot, generally turns out pretty well and doesn't require trips to the grocery store for extra ingredients.

Side note on random things in a pot: Dinner two nights ago. Ryan requested peanut sauce and noodles for dinner, I countered with peanut sauce and noodles on whatever cheap vegetables I could find. Enter: "Economy Fruit" and the $0.49/lb eggplant, plus the "No Frills" $1/head cauliflower. Exit: Stir fried eggplant with cauliflower, ginger, cilantro, garlic, onions, and peanut sauce/peanuts.

Anyway, there are some items for which recipes are useful, like saag paneer and cookies and bread. My mom gave me this neat bread cookbook a while ago and I made bread for myself last year. I don't eat much of it, so the whole wheat recipe I followed was perfect because it made three easily-freezable loaves and one batch lasted me each semester. Ryan, on the other hand, likes it a lot. That's good because I still like to make bread and making it more often means more experimentation. I was slightly dissatisfied with the results last year, mostly because the bread was always a bit bitter--and I don't even particularly like sweet things!--but I was rather pleased with this iteration and thought I might post it for those interested.

The recipe is adapted from Baking Artisan Bread by Ciril Hitz. The nice and also frightening thing about the book is that Mr. Hitz includes advanced techniques and explains everything very well, but he also INSISTS THAT EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL FAIL BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS AND YOU DON'T WEIGH THEM AND YOU DON'T HAVE A SPECIAL STEAMING RACK but if you want you can do these other less-good things and maybe your bread will be okay. BUT NOT AS GOOD AS IF YOU DID IT THE RIGHT WAY! But then you make the bread, fearing the entire time that your efforts will be in vain, and in the end it's pretty tasty despite the dire warnings. Anyway, hence the psychological battery.

Once I conquer the most debilitating of my breadmaking fears, I do the following:
the night before, mix together the following ingredients in a big bowl to make the biga:
1 1/3 c. + 1 tbsp white flour
1/2 c 70ºF water
1.5*+ tsp instant dry yeast

*I say 1.5+ because Mr. Hitz wants you to use some special yeast that I don't have, and he says it will fail if you don't use it... but it won't. The only problem is the conversion isn't exact (it should be 1.56 tsp) so I fudge a little. And it still works out.

Anyway, mix it in a dough stand or get a strong spoon and combine all the ingredients. They will be sad and not want to mix together. You may need to add a little extra hot water if the flour or air is very dry. Put it in a bowl, or keep it in the bowl, coated with a little olive oil or something so that it can expand without drying out or sticking to the sides. Cover it with a dishtowel and let it sit out for 1 or 2 hours before going to bed. Press down on it to degas the dough before putting it in the fridge, loosely covered with some plastic, and wait until morning. Or tomorrow night, or whenever you have time to bake the bread itself.

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Now that it is some other time after you have made the biga, you can make the rest of the bread, which goes like this:

Take your biga
and the following ingredients, which can be altered to suit your fancy provided that the general proportion of flour to other ingredients stays the same, but which at this moment reflects the bread I made on 9/6/2011:
3.5 c whole wheat flour (at the moment I'm using white wheat, a sweeter wheat)
1 c buckwheat flour
2/3 c spelt
1/3 c flax
1/4 c honey
1 tsp instant dry yeast
3 tsp salt
2 c+ 95ºF water (I often have to add a little more than 2 c)

Mix these ingredients for a while. Mr. Hitz says to use your bread stand and mix on low speed for four minutes and medium for two minutes. I generally mix until it is combined, which will probably take a little while longer if you're doing it by hand.

At this point, add the following nuts and seeds and things (unless you don't like them, in which case you can skip this step)
1/3 c sesame seeds
1/3 c chopped walnuts
1/3 c rolled oats
and mix some more until everything is combined.

Now, make sure that your bowl has a little olive oil or something coating it and roll your ball of dough around a bit to make sure it's sufficiently moist and happy. Cover it with maybe a slightly moistened towel or something and let it sit. Mr. Hitz wants you to check that the temperature is between 75º and 78ºF using your digital thermometer. I have no digital thermometer. It will be fine. Anyway, let it sit for 45 minutes.

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Come back! Check on your bread, which by now should have risen some. Stretch it out a bit, fold it up a bit, and let it rest again for another 45 minutes. Mr. Hitz suggests preheating your oven to 450ºF at this point. That's probably not necessary.
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Now that another 45 minutes have passed, you are ready to divide your dough into two or into sizes that are sufficient for filling the bread pans that you have. Make sure they're coated with some olive oil or something, or the bread will stick. Shape the pieces of dough into loaves. Generally I tug them out until they're flatish and then roll them up a bit. Don't handle them too much, of course. If you want, you can coat them with more rolled oats. Or you can just put them in the pans. Cover those loaves again with your slightly moistened dishtowel or plastic wrap or whatever you're using and let them proof for 1-1.5 hours. (When they're ready, apparently they should recover almost--but not entirely--from being pressed gently with your fingers. This never makes any sense to me, but if you wait an hour or so, I think it will be ready.)

While the loaves are proofing, you can start figuring out the oven stuff. Mr. Hitz suggests injecting your oven with steam, which can be achieved by putting a funky cookie sheet or something in there while you're preheating the oven and placing a wet dishtowel on it when you put the loaves in the oven. This will release a lot of steam and so you should definitely be careful that you don't hurt yourself, or fall in the oven because you can't see when your glasses are fogged up. Mr. Hitz thinks you will boil your arms off. I haven't done that yet, but you never know. I'd hate to create an army of armless breadmakers by suggesting this technique, so do be careful. Truthfully I have no idea if it actually helps, but I haven't tried not including it because I worry that it is the last step saving my bread from DISASTROUS FAILURE (Mr. Hitz really gets to you). In theory, the steam should allow the bread to rise more because the crust will not form as quickly. In reality, this is a dense bread that doesn't rise much to begin with. (Maybe it's because I'm not using the special yeast? I like dense bread, though, so I don't mind.)

Anyway, put your loaves in the oven and either do or don't include the wet towel. Bake for 20 minutes at 450ºF. After 20 minutes, remove the pan with the towel and reduce the temperature to 380ºF. Bake for another 20 or 30 minutes. If they start browning too soon, try covering them with aluminum foil. If, after this last baking time, you remove the loaves from the pans and they seem like they could use an additional firming-up, you can put them back in the oven--pan-less--and bake for another five minutes. Or you can just leave them for done! And let them cool.

This bread, as mentioned, freezes quite well when wrapped in plastic. And I hope you like it! And emerge unscathed from the process.

Here are some pictures of the finished bread from the 9/6/11 batch: