Clay Pigeon Focaccia

J and I sold our breadmaker before moving. My sister (hello!) has asked me why we sold it, and I think it's worth discussion.

We had a Zojirushi breadmaker that came with a video and a cookbook and a million settings. As with most breadmakers, the bread that was baked in its own oven was a strange vertical doorstop, so from the beginning we were only using the machine to knead the bread using recipes it came with (I have never figured out whether you can put an ordinary, non-bread maker recipe into a bread maker). It was our fanciest kitchen appliance...until we acquired our Kitchenaid with handy-dandy dough hook.

Has anyone had success actually making the bread in the breadmaker?I know people swear by them for the kneading, or for making non-bread items like jams, but when is a breadmaker actually used as a breadmaker?

Now that our empire red mixer took the place of the kneading machine, we found ourselves with an enormous appliance gathering dust at the top of the fridge.

Making bread by hand, with a bit of kneading assistance from said mixer with dough hook, was easy and satisfying and wonderful. After all, humans have been making bread for millenia with flour, sugar, water, and yeast. Who needs anything else?

In fact, I was feeling so confident about how easy it is to whip up some wonderful bread without the breadmaker that I came home and decided to whip up some focaccia. As you do.

I found a recipe that was biblically simple - with only the ingredients listed above, in Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Book - and off I went.

The yeast had been in the fridge, and I didn't wait for it to warm up because I wanted bread for dinner.

When it didn't froth after a few minutes in warm water, I thought, never mind, it will wake up a bit when I've mixed it in with the flour.

When the dough didn't double, I thought, that's alright, when it goes in the oven, it will surely wake up and be bubbly and fluffy and light.

Well. Guess what. There are some things you can't rush.

Bread, no matter how ancient, simple, timeless, is simply not one of them.

These were like doorstops. The bread doesn't look half bad, though, does it? But you did need a good set of chompers.

No Vampires Coming Over Anytime Soon

Folks, the CSA delivered an unholy amount of garlic cloves last week. No fewer than 12.

I have always been incredibly stingy with garlic. You should see the amount of olive oil we go through in our house (gallon/month), but garlic? I have no idea how this habit began. Do you have something that you're completely stingy with that has no rational or memorable basis?

But here was an opportunity. An opportunity to break through my aversion to cooking entire bulbs at a time. And an opportunity to repel every vampire within a twenty-mile radius with the scent of roasting garlic.

I turned to trusty old Martha. I bring you Oven-Poached Garlic. And by poached, she means, IN OLIVE OIL. No troubles there.

This method renders the garlic caramelized and gooey, spreadable on the nearest piece of crusty bread.

Chop off top 1/2 inch of the bulbs.

Put in an ovenproof dish with herbs.

Almost cover with olive oil.

Roast for almost two hours at 350°. Devour.

Bliss (Still Life with Tea and Parasol)

Lemon Shallot White Wine Risotto

Risotto is frequently heavy, luxurious, and wintry in style. Especially when you cook it with mushrooms and butter and wine and bacon. Add to that the overall creaminess of the arborio rice and you have a bonafide substantial and hearty dish.

Yum.

This dish, however? Light and bright and zingy.

I read a blog post about lemony risotto with peas, but couldn't find an accompanying recipe to save my life. But the idea was enough. With spring just around the corner (or in my case, happening here in NorCal), this is a glorious revision of risotto in our house.

Ditch all of the heavy things I mentioned. No butter. No cheese in sight. Not even your regular onions. Cook with the following:

Shallots
Olive oil

When the shallots have softened, add the grains of rice, stirring until they become translucent.

Start adding the liquid. This always takes me a whole hour (if you haven't made risotto before, you stand over the stove adding liquid bit-by-bit until the whole thing seems like a terrible idea - that is, until you eat it). I combined white wine, stock, and lemon juice.

As the rice approaches the perfect al dente stage, grate lemon zest into the mixture, and add the peas. The peas should go bright green in the time it takes for the rice to reach the perfect stage.

Sprinkle with parsley. Enjoy! This is incredibly refreshing.

I'm Famoose!

Looks like the NYTimes has been reading my blog.

Probably not. But I like to see that recipes as easy as this have their place in a classy rag like theirs.

You Know You're a Grownup when...

Do you ever have those moments when you think, Wow, now I'm really a grownup? If you have kids or own your own house, these moments may happen all the time.

For me, the most recent reminder was a fungus. The fact that I want to wax lyrical about a mushroom makes me feel ridiculously grown-up. Of an exceptional three-course meal out to celebrate ten years with J, the taste I keep coming back to is a white mushroom which I wish I knew the name of that tasted like the juiciest piece of happy meat in the world.

My second recent mushroom revelation was when I sat at my desk hungry for a non-sweet snack, and all I could find in our CSA bag was a small damp bag of mushrooms. "Some people eat these raw," I thought. They were shiitakes. They were earthy with a lingering aftertaste of garlic. I ate almost the entire bag.

Mushrooms have been cropping up on our home turf much more often now.

One of their most useful properties when cooking is that they release their liquor into the pot, perfect for creating a sauce. So with a tupperware full of leftover noodles with no sauce to go with them, I fried up this batch of shiitakes in olive oil, added a dash of cream, hot pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and parm, and served them up. A great quick lunch.

A Lamborghini I Can Afford

Moving has a way of bringing any extraneous activity to a halt.

It's so nice to reach the point where you can start doing things like uploading and organizing photos again. It's one of those signs that things are starting to feel settled.

Hence the pictures from Peru.

Like this ice cream stand in Cuzco. These guys sell the Lamborghini of ice cream. Misspelled, but no less of an entertaining rip-off. Probably more so.