CSA Week 8

I somehow seem to have gotten my numbering off on these posts. We are in week eight now, but the last post was on week six. I suspect that my catchup should have covered an extra delivery, but let's let sleeping dogs lie, shall we?

More Fennel this week. This time it had more bulb and a little less frond. We made a roasted pork tenderloin with apples and fennel with it, and it was absolutely delicious.

Portobello Mushrooms went into a pasta.

Hey look, it's more potatoes! We used a bunch in a Rosti and are down to just under one bag. Until this week's share comes.

Apparently green beans like the cold weather. We have been getting a ton of them. We made a bean and bacon salad for thanksgiving one year, I think it's time to bust that bad boy out.

At this point in the season, what is left to be said about zucchini?

A small bunch of parsley. For a change, it's small enough that we might reasonably be able to use it.

We plan on stacking these carrots up with last weeks carrots and building a tower to the moon.

Having grown weary of making cucumber and feta salads, I decided to try making a sorbet with these cucumbers. My plan was to aim for a Cucumber Mojito Sorbet, and I based it off a recipe I found online. I swapped out the vanilla in the simple syrup for mint from the rooftop deck, but found that after I mixed it into to cucumber puree, the cucumber flavor was still surprisingly dominant. I ended up picking some more mint and pureeing it into the mixture. This lead to a nice balance of flavors, and flecked the sorbet with tiny bits of dark green. The sorbet has a surprising melon flavor, and is really growing on me. I can definitely see making it again (maybe next week, if we get even more cucumbers.)

These oblong onions appear to be the only kind we are getting this year. Either that, or the normal ones are delayed along with the corn and tomatoes because of the screwy weather.

CSA Week 6

Back on schedule!

The big kitchen excitement from last week was my attempt to make a sourdough starter. I was following the method outlined in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which involves multiple days of feeding and culling the starter, followed by turning it into a more standard starter (called a 'barm'.) Sadly, this didn't go so well. I made it about halfway through the process (just about to barm) and decided that I really wasn't getting any rise at all. I looked online and got some tips to help with the situation, so I started the process again. This time I rode it out all the way to the barm stage, but when that was supposed to have doubled in four hours but showed no rise in eight, I threw in the towel. Instead I made french bread which was more delicious than I remembered. Take that, sourdough!

We are firmly in summer now (despite the lingering cold) which means we are getting hardier fare. Still no corn or tomatoes, but we'll hoping for a good season (and raiding the farmer's market.)

We got our first potatoes of the year. It feels a bit early for these, and if we end up with more than ten weeks in a row of getting potatoes then we are in real trouble. These are going into a roasted potato salad that we like.

Two huge bulbs of garlic. I mean, really huge.

More onions.

A very small head of lettuce. After the spring's onslaught, we took a bit of a break from salads, so this guy ended up being a nice, fresh reminder of spring.

Chives will get snuck into pretty much every place we can think to. We always find it a challenge to get through them before they go bad.

This year seems to be the year of Green beans and dill. We made a recipe with the last share's beans using dill and goat cheese, and plan to use this one to make an orzo, dill, and fennel salad.

Portobello mushrooms are not an acceptable substitute for meat no matter what the vegetarians say, but they are tasty marinated and grilled.

And so our nemesis carrots slip into the house silently. Again, if we get two pounds a week for ten weeks we are in trouble.

Two small bulbs of fennel with hugely long fronds. These are slated for the bean and orzo salad. Fennel is an odd duck. It has such a strong scent when I cut it, but it seems to disappear into most dishes we put it in. I do like it, but it befuddles me so.

CSA Catchup

With the excitement over the bathroom remodel and pastry camp (combined with my general laziness) I have fallen behind on CSA posts. Let's remedy that, shall we?

Week four to me marked the end of spring produce. We got more lettuces (salads, natch), more berries, and more scapes. The scapes were very long lasting, which is good because we are pretty slow to use them. The last of them are actually going into a stir fry for lunch today. We also started getting hearty greens in week 4, which we actually quite enjoy. These ended up in a pasta dish, though we have many uses for them. The zucchini flow continued unabated as well, and we tried some muffins with a cinnamon topping with some of this batch.

Week five brought more summer produce our way. Zucchini was used as a vegetable, as well as turned into zucchini bread. Cabbage is usually a tough one for us, because most recipes call for at most half a head, and make many many (many) servings. We made a slaw and soup with this head, though half the soup went straight to the freezer. We were super excited to see the first beets of the season. We roasted them and tossed them with feta and onions as we always do, because it's a recipe that never lets us down. It was wonderful again this time. We actually had a similar salad that a friend made for a cookout that put the beets and (in this case) goat cheese over baby spinach, and it was a great combination. We'll try that later in the season when we get arugula, since it would probably translate well. This week also signaled the end of the berries. Alas, poor berries, we hardly knew ye. We love the CSA fruit, since it's usually so perfectly ripe and sweet, but the season can't last forever.

By week six, we'd usually be nearing tomato season. Sadly, this has been a very cold summer, so the summer crops (corn, tomatoes) have been slow growing. We fear that this also means they will be smaller and appear is less quantity, and for that we weep. Tomatoes and corn are two of our favorite produce items, so it's sad that we may see less of them this year. Oh well, at least we didn't get grape leaves. We oddly saw a decline in zucchini this week. It seems a bit early for it to peter out, so I suspect that it's just saving it's energy for a serious onslaught next week. Cucumbers, on the other hand, are coming on strong. One a week is a pretty brisk pace for us, so getting two this week will present a challenge. They'll likely get tossed with feta and cherry tomatoes and served as a side. As always, we keep meaning to bring celery as snacks to work, but fail to do so. The broccoli is going into a stir fry (the great clearninghouse of vegetables) and the basil onto a pizza we are making for dinner tonight. Chard, finally, went into a skillet meal with onions and parsley (which also lasted an impressively long time) with eggs and asiago cheese. It was delicious and woudl actually make us seek out chard again to make it.

The End of the Road

The bathroom is officially completed! As usual, several steps took much longer than we had hoped. The grouting and sealing went well, and there were no surprises there. Each coat of sealant in small areas like this takes less time to apply than to clean up from. A day needs to pass in between coats, and we were aiming for three coats. Luckily, this is a task custom made for weeknights after work. Our first unexpected roadblock was with the light fixture. When we took down the old one, we found that there was no junction box behind it. Putting in a junction box isn't usually too hard, so we didn't think this would be much of an issue. Oh, little did we know. When I started looking seriously at planning the junction box installation, I realized that with the location of studs and pipes it was going to be more off center than expected (and a bit of a challenge to put in.) When we held up our light to the actual location it be in, we found that it was too wide and would be hitting the wall on one side. Back to the drawing board (or lighting store, as the case may be.) It took us a week to find a light we liked, and since that was in a catalog it took another week for delivery. It's these little extra bits that are killer to projects and really drag them out. We had tried to be good about getting everything in advance but alas, twas not to be.

While waiting for the light I put in the junction box. For various boring technical reasons, this was quite difficult, but after creating several jigs and after several attempts, I got it where I wanted it. The light arrived and looked great in the space, so at least there's a happy ending. The light fiasco delayed our painting of the walls, because we needed to patch around the new junction box but I wanted to actually have the light to verify that it was good where it was. I had images of having to redo the box and the patching around it dancing through my head, but luckily those didn't come to fruition. With the patching done, we painted and headed into the home stretch of what we hoped would be simple installations. First up was the vanity and sink. Plumbing projects require saints' patience, and since I know this I always go in planning on having to make several trips to the store. My goal this time was to only have to do three, and I met (but didn't exceed) that goal. Our water shutoffs are very odd sizes, and it took two Home Depot trips and a trip to the real plumbing store (who I really should have just started with) before I got the right bits. With those in hand, I plumbed the various bits together (this was in the afternoons after pastry camp) and got the vanity in place and the sink secured. Other than a drip from a bad shutoff valve (which required a shockingly expensive plumber visit) it went well and everything worked on the first try.

From here on out it was smooth sailing -- The toilet went in without a hitch, the last trim pieces went up cleanly, and all of the towel bars and whatnot fit like a dream. We are very happy with how the bathroom turned out, and generally happy with how the renovation went. We certainly would have preferred fewer plumbing trips and not to have the light issues, but in the end nothing huge and irreversible went wrong, and what else can one really ask for?

Pastry Camp - Day Five

Before we get into the last day of pastry camp, I have to do a follow up on the macarons. After tasting the demo ones straight from the fridge, I had reported them good, not great, and the earl grey flavor to be very mild. Allowed to mellow at room temperature for a day, however, the ones I brought home were pretty spectacular. Now that I have sampled these, I may actually embrace the madness and attempt them at home.

On to day five! Before class I snuck into my office and left a care package for the folks there. We had a lot of pate d fruit for just Mary and I, as well as a ton of macarons. I left some of both of those for the guys, and also some of the nougatine crisp which was a bit too bitter for Mary (though I really like it's sharp taste.)

Out of the first demo, we got going on making guimauve (pronounced gee-mowve, but you can call them marhmallows) so that they would have time to set. When she got to the point of pouring them into trays to set during the demo, she mentioned that if we wanted to we could pipe them into peeps by whipping them a little longer. Exactly one person in class got excited -- luckily you are reading his blog.

Creating the marshmallow was a pretty similar to creating the italian meringue that we prepared as part of the macaron dough, but we whipped it slightly longer to get it to the proper texture. Since my partner wanted to take some actual marshmallows home, we pulled them at the proper texture for pouring and poured half into the prepared tray. After settings these got cut into cubes and dusted with corn starch and powdered sugar.

I let the other half of the mixture cool in a piping bag, periodically testing it to see if it was firm enough to hold its shape once piped. It took a long time for it to get to the point where it could, and left a trail of sad puddles where piped peeps had collapsed. Sadly it held this temperature for shockingly short time, and I was left with just one ok peep. Still, it had been an experiment, and since Mary doesn't care for marshmallows much it wasn't much of a loss to only have one success. If I do these again (and really, why wouldn't I?) then I will whip until the dough holds it's shape and then pipe more quickly. Hopefully keeping them whipping until they get to the right place will let them keep that pipability a little longer next time.

Next up was making our warm chocolate cakes. These are the plated dessert where you have a lovely chocolate cake and then cut in to find that it's totally undercooked. Have I sold you yet? The chef told the story of their creation. A junior chef undercooked the cakes for a large event by accident and the guests loved them. While I know a lot of folks who love these, they are just too richly chocolate for me. The mix was pretty straightforward, though once we baked them we got to make fun chocolate swirls for them. We served them plated with a scoop of the hazelnut ice cream from the previous day's demo and the chocolate swirls. I have to say, the best part was the hazlenut ice cream, which had a wonderful toastiness to it that just stole my heart. I brought home two (frozen) cakes to make later, and I will probably cook them almost all the way set when I make them, to help offset the richness.

We followed the cakes with lollipops. The chef had all sorts of flavorings, but when she used the lime in the demo the kitchen was filled with such a true fresh lime flavor that we just had to go with that. We died our pops green (though I threatened to make them red to through folks off kilter) and then used a neat trigger-action funnel to pipe them onto a pan. This was another recipe that made a ton, so I brought a lot home. Since each group only made one flavor/color, we did some horse trading at the end to make sure everyone got to bring home a variety. It is interesting to compare the caramel from yesterday with the lollipops from today, because even though the lollipops were cooked to a much higher temperature, the sugar didn't brown at all. It's amazing how much difference the amount of liquid you add can make.

Our last two tidbits where cutting and wrapping our chocolate caramels from the day before (again with some trading so that everyone got a mix of the chocolate and the plain) and brulee our creme brulees. The chocolate caramels were actually much tastier than I expected, but I was still happy to have ended up with more of the regular kind. I am a real sucker for caramels, and Mary prefers them as well. The brulee was fun, but fairly straightforward. At this point I was pretty wasted from all the tastings we had done, so I only ate about half of it. It was a little less set than those I have had in the past, but surprisingly light. The passion fruit puree that we added really brought down the richness, though it was still a lot of flavor. Overall this week has been pretty amazing. I have learned a lot of neat recipes, and better understand why they do the things they do. I am excited to experiment with some of the techniques I picked up, and to repeat some of the things that I would never have tried on my own otherwise. It was a great experience, and I am very happy that I did it. I'd suggest the week to anyone with the time and inclination, and will likely look into some of the other classes (bread baking, I'm looking at you.)

Pastry Camp - Day Four

Since day three was about preparing a lot of parts of products, day four was all about finishing those up. The morning demo covered a lot of smallish things, and since very little oven time was needed folks seemed to all attack them in different orders.

We started out by preparing Passion Fruit Creme Brulee, since they had to cook the longest and were likely to have the most oven contention (only one deck oven was set for this, so only three could bake them at once.) This was a pretty easy mixture of eggs, sugar and creme, which got baked in dishes in a water bath. The chef warned us that if we didn't mix the sugar into the eggs (but rather just dumped it in and left it in a lump) then it can actually cause some of the protein to coagulate. A good tip, and I'll be more careful in the future when I am mixing these particular ingredients. This was placed in the fridge overnight and will get bruleed tomorrow.

We then made a chocolate custard to fill our small tart shells. This was pretty similar to the lemon curd in process. We had to give a few of our shells foil collars, since we had been a bit over-aggressive when pressing the dough into the rings and left some holes behind. The other shells mocked them relentlessly. This was baked in the deck oven until almost set and then once cooled decorated with the nougatine crisp from yesterday. The demo tarts were delicious, with a great bitterness balanced by just enough sweetness. We had a ton of nougatine crisp leftover, so we broke that up and brought it home to have just as candy. We also had some leftover chocolate custard mixture, which we froze and brought home. This is actually perfect, because we also have some spare dough in the freezer for making tart shells. Problem, meet solution. Delicious, delicious solution.

The earl grey ganache was next deployed in filling our macarons and as truffles. Some folks had had issues with their ganache, so the intern Laura (not to be confused with the chef Laura) had made some flavored with Darjeeling so we'd have spare. While our ganache was good, we decided to leave a few macarons for the darjeeling so we could sample another flavor. Here I will admit that I am fully converted to the piping bag. We filled many, many macarons in not a lot of time since we could easily and quickly pipe filling onto them. These got smooshed together into little sandwiches and packed away. Since my partner is staying at a hotel, I ended up with way more than half so I sense another delivery to work coming up.

The truffles were pretty easy to make. These were rolled ones, so we didn't need any special molds for them. We piped little marble sized dollops of the ganache and chilled them in the fridge until they stiffened up. We then rolled them between gloved hands and let them chill again (again to stiffen.) From here they got two thin coats of chocolate and a dusting of cocoa powder. Let me tell you, these suckers are something I will make again. The earl grey ganache was good but subtle in the macarons, but in the truffles it was miraculous. The flavor of the tea really came through, but melded so well with the chocolate of the ganache and the thin shell.

The second demo was to show us ice creams and sorbets (which only got demoed since it'd be hard to take home.) They approach this in an even more scientific way than other foods, and thus have recipes that perfectly balance solids versus liquids, water versus fat, etc. They use a stabilizer to help control the ice crystal formation some, and I may actually look it up online to help keep my ice creams smoother at home.

The last thing of the day was to make caramels or chocolate caramels (each table did one or the other.) Both followed similar patterns, and diverged just in what got mixed in in the end. Though I make toffee at christmas, that involves heating sugar with a fair amount of liquid and fat from the get go. For these, we heated just sugar and glucose (think corn syrup) until it was way on the brown side of golden brown (she warned us that she was going to make us take it past where we were comfortable.) Then you whisk in butter and cream (carefully) and heat and whisk even more, until you get the right temperature and consistency. At this point we added melted chocolate and brought it back to temperature, then poured it into a prepared pan. That will set and cool overnight, then we'll cut and wrap it tomorrow.

We also got back the meringues that we made on the first day, and used the 'petals' to decorate our lemon tarts. We were given some bags, boxes, and ribbons to put the remaining meringues, nougatine crisp, and truffles into. We had an incredible amount of food to bring home today, and it's pretty overwhelming. I asked the chef (who had been through the full program) what one does when they get this much candy and sweets every week. She said that you become your doorman's favorite person, your dry cleaner's favorite person, your friends' best friend, etc. Because we spent so much of the day finishing up the products that we had started on previous days, I could really feel the finality of the impending program end. We have one day left, and I am quite sad that it's coming to a close. I've really had a blast.

Pastry Camp - Day Three

I am learning to love the piping bag. When I came to the demo at the school, I was struck with how much they (over)used the piping bag. It seemed like anytime they wanted to put something somewhere, they would pipe it. Now that I have used it a bit more, I am seeing the wisdom of this -- It's a really easy way to portion things cleanly and quickly.

Today's first demo featured the bulk of the products for the day, with macarons being the day's big challenge (more on that later.) Only making lemon curd and filling the lemon tarts was set for later, and even that was optional (it could be pushed to the next day.) Because the macaron recipe made a large number and needed the smaller convection oven, we did them in shifts (this time working backwards from table nine so they weren't always at the end.)

We started out with making Earl Grey Ganache, which was to fill the macarons and be rolled into truffles. We steeped the loose tea in cream and it smelled so amazing. I love earl grey, and am really looking forward to tasting this once it's worked into the final products. This was a fairly straightforward process, and involved getting things to proper temperature and mixing.

Ganache is an emulsion (fat suspended in water,) which means that it is prone to breaking. We hoped that someone's would break so that we could see the fix for it, and alas that someone was us. We cooled it too unevenly, so that when we mixed in the butter it ended up looking grainy. Not to worry, however, because fixing it just involved heating a tablespoon of cream and slowly whisking in the broken ganache (which I refered to as 'making chocolate vinagrette'.) It ended up glossy and smooth and ready to go for tomorrow's products. I learned later that two thirds of the class had theirs break, so I didn't feel so bad about it.

Next up was Nougatine Crisp, which would decorate the top of the chocolate tarts. This is a hard candy, similar to brittle but thinner and with some chocolate flavor. We heated it in a pan, mixed in some cocoa powder and almonds, and then baked it in the oven until it was at the right consitency. It's not too sweet and very brittle, without sticking in the teeth.

We baked and cooled our tart shells, since they would be accepting fillings that did not need extensive baking times. Again the chef had us push the limits of done-ness with these, taking them all the way to the brown side of golden brown. At the end of the baking we brushed the bottoms with a little egg yolk and baked for an extra minute or two, which will help seal the bottom and prevent it from getting soggy when the custard hits it. I am hoping that this works, because the tart shells looked gorgeous and had a wonderful, toasty aroma.

The last thing we had to do before we took our turn for macarons was cut the Pate d Fruit from yesterday. There is a fancy device for this named a guitar, which is a frame holding a series of guitar strings in place, hinged over a slotted board. One places the candy on the board and draws the strings through to cut it. When we got to the guitar, however, I noticed that one string was pretty loose. Since I wanted nice, square candies (ever the perfectionist) I asked the chef if it was easy to tighten. Sadly, while doing so she snapped the bolt holding the string. Back to the drawing board for us. We ended up putting off the cutting until after the macarons, since the guitar needed extra tools to fix.

At this point, we took a break. The snack today was banana bread with banana butter, which was much better than it sounds written. We chatted about the beignets (how we all just had to finish them last night since they wouldn't keep) and other delights from the previous day. Everyone had nothing but raves for all the products we had created so far.

Back in the kitchen, we attacked our macarons. These are fussy, fussy fellows. For starters, the almond flour and sugar need to be left out for a day or more to dry out or the final product will not form a good shell. You then make a very rough dough with that and some egg white. At the same time, you make an italian meringue, which involves cooking sugar with a little water to the correct temperature and then whipping it into half beaten egg whites. I had tried making nougat once in the past, and when adding a similar mixture to my kitchen aid had managed to get some on the whisk, turning it into a very fast moving paddle which sent partially mixed candy everywhere. Thankfully, I avoided that this time thanks to the awesome demo of how to do it properly (when it says to drizzle down the side of the bowl, drizzle down the side of the bowl.)

With these two mixtures done, we gently combined them and then mixed until just the right texture. Mixing either too much or too little will result in macarons with cracked shells. This mixture is then put into a piping bag (of course) and piped into small circles. I have to say, it was here that I really grew to love the piping bag. We filled two and a half full sheet trays with quarter sized dollops of dough in several minutes, with almost no mess or spilling. After a few iffy dollops, I caught my stride and ended up very happy with my piping; I may get used to this after all. Once piped, the dough needs to sit out for ten minutes to help dry out the surface (again, it's all about the shell here) before going into the convection oven (a regular oven won't, that's right, develop the shell enough.)

If you have not commited any serious misteps to this point, what you will see come out of the oven is pretty amazing. Beautifully smooth domed tops, with a rough bit of dough peeking out from underneath. While not all of ours were perfectly smooth or round, the bulk of them were gorgeous. We had a few mutants near the edge that got smooshed into the side of the pan, so we tested these for taste -- they were richly chocolatey, but not overwhelming. Overall I am very excited to try them with the ganache filling.

We had just enough time before the second demo to cut and roll our pate d fruit. The guitar was back up, so we converted our sheet into little squares, which we rolled in sugar. These were flavored with passion fruit and apricot, and were delicious. It's a little bit like eating jelly (though more set-up in texture) but if you can get past that, excellent. These freeze well, and seem like a good way to preserve some of the spring berries for a fall treat. I can also see making some with pomegranate or orange and cranberry to send with our holiday cookies.

With the day almost over, we got a quick demo of making the lemon curd and filling the shells. This process went smoothly for us, though pressing the final curd through a sieve (to remove any lumps from egg or gelatin) did take a while. The tarts baked for just a few minutes to set up the centers, then went into the fridge overnight. They look great, and tomorrow we'll be decorating them with some of the meringue shapes from Monday.

Overall, it was another very busy day. This one had much more precision timing and temperature control, and I really enjoyed the challenge of it. I am particularly proud of the macarons, since there are so very many ways to go wrong and ours came out so well. I'm excited to finish those tomorrow, though I'm very sad that the week is over halfway done.