Gretchen brought cake to dinner, so she was in the kitchen a bit too. The Hazelnut cake she made has been really successful both times she's made it. My cooking this week - a little less successful. I've been falling into a trap of too many things on the plate; and my rut of having everything stacked lately has been another rut, that's caused bad results.
Breads
Oat/Kolsch Yeast Boule and Rye/Pale Ale Yeast Boule
Positive - I wanted to play it safe since we were bringing one of these loaves to a friend's house for dinner on Saturday night. So I stuck with a low hydration to make sure there was enough structure.
The starters were incredibly active- I'd normally add an eighth teaspoon of commercial yeast to make sure I get some rise, but I could tell on Saturday that the rise wasn't going to be a problem; so these were all sourdough leavened. The breads were rising so fast on Saturday that I put them in the fridge for a couple of hours when I went to practice; and that was only an hour or two after I put them together - normally I have a much longer initial rise with the sourdough starters; but I had fed them every 10 hours for 24-36 hours, so they were primed and ready.
The oat bread turned out to look a little nicer and had a better rise; so we brought that to dinner.
Tried the whole wheat bread flour in both of these (15%) and it seemed to work out pretty well.
Negative - I kind of messed up the timing of doing two loaves. Since we were eating it that day I wanted to get a more developed crust, so I cooked these in a dutch oven. I took out the second loaf (rye) too soon, and it was on the verge of overproofing. I lucked out that it didn't just collapse when I slashed it, but it felt like it wasn't going to have any oven spring.
Normally I do the method of baking on a baking stone, adding water to a preheated pan, spraying the walls of the oven, that a lot of people recommend for bread. Iffind that you can get a decent crust that way, but it's not as good as the dutch oven (although my dutch oven always seems to burn the bottom of the loaves). Usually I don't care since I'm just slicing it and freezing it.
As mentioned before - the pale ale rye didn't turn out great. It was fine, but not really what I wanted, the proofing was a problem. The rye flour from Farmer Ground Farms has so much germ in there that the structure is always an issue with any loaf you use it in.
Even though these rose really well, I didn't get a lot of yeast/sourdough flavor in either loaf; I was kind of disappointed and both were on the boring side from a flavor profile standpoint - not a lot of rye or oat - or yeast.
Dandelion Green Omelet
I like dandelion greens, but Gretchen can't eat them - she's allergic. She forgot once and ate some at the Little Owl - they came with that massive, over-rated pork chop; she felt sick for a while...although maybe it's because we stopped at Death and Co. after dinner and she had every drink on the the list that included cinnamon syrup or tincture.
Baked Sweet Potato
w/ Broccoli Raab, Tomato, and creamy carrot top/oregano Pesto
Positive - This looked like a mess, but tasted really good. The sweet potatoes have been awesome this year, and this whole thing went really well. I guess it's kind of like one of thos BS topped baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese.
Negative - Nothing really too bad here, a decent lunch.
Egg Topped Jagdwurst sandwich
Broccoli Raab, carrot top/oregano Pesto
Positive - Kind of a brunch dish. I made a 65 and a 63 degree egg to check out the differences. The 63 is much better for this (since the yolk is still liquid), but both are tasty. The white of the 63 degree egg is a little weird - I know you can drop it into some simmering water to cook them just a bit more, but I didn't really have time. I was making a completely different sausage/egg dish from Gretchen, since she can't eat poached eggs anymore.
I will say that the Jagerwurst is really good at room temp or a little warmer, but not cooked again. There was a really good smokyness here - the flavor of the dish was pretty damn good.
Negative - My plating sucked- the sausage just punctured the 63 degree egg and the yolk of 65 degree one just kind of slid out of the whites.
The bread wasn't toasted very well and got kind of soggy.
Grilled Red Pepper Fennel Sausage
with Roast Fennel and Sweet Potato Puree
Dandelion Greens, roast corn/fennel salad, corn cream, heirloom tomato sauce
Positive - I used about a million techniques and too many ingredients here - not so sure this is a good thing.
- Cooked the sausage in a water bath, finished on the grill pan.
- Fennel stock for use in the puree/corn cream
- Roasted half of the corn for the salad (with raw fennel)
- Pureed the rest of the corn, ran it through the chinois, and added some fennel stock for the 'corn cream'
- Roasted fennel and tomatoes
- Toasted fennel seed and pureed it into the tomato sauce.
- Roasted and pureed sweet potatoes
Negative - This was just an ill-conceived dish. The idea was to use ingredients in raw and cooked forms, and have fennel, corn, and tomato flavors all over the place. Since making it I've been obsessing about it, and came up with a million different ways to make it better....too late.
Texturally a failure, and the way it was served (stacked) muddled all of the flavors. The fennel stock I used tasted bad.
Too many ingredients - a waste and mess.
CSA
Carrots – 1 bunch
Dandelion Greens – 1 bunch
Sweet Potatoes – 4 lbs
Sunshine Squash – 1 piece
Japanese Salad Turnips – 1 bunch
Fennel – 1 piece
Green Romaine Lettuce – 1 head
Broccoli Raab – 1 bunch
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