I did the baking on a 12″ x 12″ x 0.25″ piece of steel that I’ve seasoned. I preheated the oven to 500°F and let it soak heat for about 20 minutes longer and then put the pizza in. Getting it off the make-shift peel was a little rough but other than that it was ok. The broiler wouldn’t come on which says to me the top of the oven was hotter than 525°F. Still, after 6 minutes and change the bottom was not very brown and the edges, cheese, and pepperoni weren’t either. It tasted great but I think I can do better next time. I guess I’ll do it again tomorrow since I have five more dough balls.
It My birthday was a little while back and we ate at El Alma which is a fancier
restaurant from the El Chile people. I had duck mole enchiladas and they were
very good. The mole was a pasilla mole and was a little less sweet than what
you usually find around here and was noticeably spicy but not irritatingly so.
It is beer season. We went to the annual Texas Craft Brewer’s Festival. The
weather was much better this year in that it was about 10 degrees cooler and
overcast. It drizzled a little but did not actually rain.
The samples I had at the event were:
No Label: Forbidden Lavender Wit,
Texas Ale Project: 100 Million Angels Singing
Adelbert’s: Vintage Monks
Real Ale: Scots Gone Wild
Real Ale: Barrel Aged Blakkr
Texian: 1824
Saint Arnold: Divine Reserve #14
Grapevine: Lakefire
The Flying Saucer BeerFeast is October 25th and we’re going to that too. That
has been fun in years past but has always had some black mark on it for one
reason or another. The first year I went it poured rain for about an hour
turning the grounds into a muddy mess, for example.
Then, to top all that off Bill and I have started our fourth, and most
ambitious beer to date. It is a mini-mash version of “w00tstout“.
It has an astonishing amount of
sugar in it putting the Original Gravity at 1.108. If it ferments properly it
will be 13% when done. We took a very small sample from the fermenter last
weekend for measurement and tasting and the gravity is already down to about
1.035 after two weeks in primary and it tastes good but very alcoholic. I used
the phrase “Jet Fuel” to describe it. In addition to all of the various sugars
it was mashed with 8oz of toasted pecans, has 3oz of unsweet cocoa in it and
will be “barrel aged” in secondary by putting in 2oz of bourbon soaked medium+
toast oak cubes.
In addition to beer, it is also decorative gourd season. There are so many
good pumpkin recipes on the internet and I want to try them all but they’re
basically all terrible for you.
I have started with pumpkin ice cream. Ice cream has become much easier now
that I’ve learned to make the custard in the sous vide bath instead of trying
to temper egg yolks with hot cream like some kind of barbarian. I looked up
like 6 different ice cream base recipes and averaged them all out and the
added the pumpkin specific pieces. I came up with this:
1 2/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 egg yolks
1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cups dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp Grand Marnier
It ended up very custardy. A bit too thick. I think one less egg yolk and
equal cream:milk ratio would be more ideal. It’s very tasty though. One pint
has some home made brownie chunks in it. Another pint has crystallized ginger
and the last pint is just pumpkin.
The next thing is to make another batch of coffee ice cream and I’m
experimenting with making some Earl Grey tea ice cream also.is beer season.
Three varieties of kimchi and Moroccan preserved lemons
I have tried my hand at making kimchi. It’s pretty easy to find recipes for it on the internet which is in direct opposition to how hard it has been to just buy some. Some friends said there’s a local company that sells it at the various farmer’s markets around town and gave me a bite which was very tasty. But I digress. I tried to make kimchi.
I decided to make a few different kinds: The typical cabbage, for which the recipe called for a two pound head of Napa cabbage. Some cucumber because I like the cucumber kimchi at Korea House. Brussels sprouts kimchi because they are basically tiny cabbages and people on the internet claimed to have done it.
It took about an hour to get all the greens washed, cut up and brined on the first evening. The next evening I started around 5:30 and finished around 8:30. It’s fairly time consuming. I think, if this works out and I don’t give myself botulism, future attempts might be a little more volume. The kimchi spice / sauce / whatever isn’t too bad but it is messy and requires both fish sauce (smells like cat food to me) and little salted, fermented tiny shrimps. I used gloves to mix and can everything even though the directions said to use your hands.
It’s now been about three days. The jars have been living in a styrofoam cooler in the kitchen for both temperature regulation and smell containment. It does smell, not super strongly but even with the rings tightened some fermentation gas and odor has been escaping and the house has an odd smell. That’s a bit of a problem but my hope is that it’ll calm down a bit and things will go back to normal. It’s really only noticeable when you first walk in.
Today I checked in on them and their lids were tightly domed. That means pressure so I loosened the rings and they all released a fair amount of gas. The two completely full cabbage kimchi jars actually bubbled when I released the pressure which was interesting. I believe that is actually a good sign. Internet estimates say it should be edible this evening but it will be better in a week and will reach it’s flavor peak at around three to four weeks.
The Moroccan preserved lemons won’t be ready for a month. I should probably write packing dates on all of these things huh?
This is adapted from the Modernist Cuisine Coffee Creme Brulee recipe and from various ice cream recipes from the internet that are all basically the same with small variations in quantities.
Coffee Infused Cream
8 oz whole, dark roast coffee beans
16 fl oz Heavy Cream
8 fl oz Whole Milk
Combine in a container you can close and store in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, remove the coffee beans from the cream.
Notes on this step:
I used a mesh strainer and a funnel. I imagine a coffee filter would be a mess
and is totally overkill since you have whole beans not ground beans.
I have a 32oz bottle and it doesn’t quite hold all of the milk during the
infusion step because the beans take up a lot of space. I just top it up after
the beans are removed. Final weight of the cream was ~720g after bean removal
and top up.
Coffee Custard
6 egg yolks
2/3rds cup sugar
Coffee cream from above
Whisk 6 egg yolks until lightened in color.
Add sugar and cream and mix thorougly so sugar is disolved and mixture is
homogeneous.
Put custard base in vacuum bags / ziploc bags.
Sous vide at 176ºF (80.6ºC) for 1 hour.
Remove cooked custard bags from bath and refrigerate until cold or over night.
Notes on this step: Whisking eggs took me about 5 minutes in the mixer.
We are making a custard here. The sous vide method is nice because you don’t
have to worry about your cream being too hot and curdling the egg yolk or
straining out little bits of curdled egg. Making a custard is something I am
bad at. If you don’t have an sous vide machine or immersion circulator
whatever you can make this custard the traditional way.
That would look like this:
Warm cream in a sauce pan and dissolve sugar into it.
Let cream cool to below 180ºF (82ºC). This is the temp that curdles egg yolk.
Whisk egg yolks until lightened in color.
Slowly add cream to egg yolks while stirring constantly. Which is to say,
“temper” the yolks with the warm cream.
Return to sauce pan and raise to ~175ºF (80ºC). The custard should “coat the
back of a spoon” which is nice and all but do yourself a favor and stir it
constantly and use a thermometer. If you get over about 180ºF you’ll be
enjoying scrambled ice cream.
Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a cold bowl / container.
Refrigerate until cold.
Coffee Ice Cream:
Coffee Custard from above.
Finely ground coffee (optional)
Vanilla Extract (optional)
Prepare ice cream churn according to directions.
Churn until the ice cream has the consistency of soft-serve. Times vary.
Move ice cream to freezer to finish. Roughly 3 hours.
Notes on this step: If you want little flecks of coffee so people get a hint of what’s in it and
the color is a little more coffee-like you can add a small amount of finely
ground coffee.
A small amount of vanilla extract might be nice here too. Add vanilla after
all of the cooking because vanilla flavor is mostly volatile organics that can
evaporate or degrade when you cook. Might as well get as much flavor from that
extract as we can. Probably not more than 1/4 teaspoon.
My churn seems to take longer than expected and this is a small batch in the
churn which doesn’t help. Mine took almost an hour to freeze and probably
could have gone another 20 minutes. A little longer in the churn can help the
post-freezer texture.
There was a lunar eclipse last night and I took some not great pictures. This is a direct consequence of my not having a zoom or telephoto lens. My longest is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 which is on an APS-C crop so it’s more like an 80mm in big-boy cameras.
The telescope does a decent job of looking at things like the moon and the larger planets but mars was just an indistinct bright spot even though it is very close right now. I could have gone to the 8mm objective but a) that’s not a very good lens and b) the amount of shaking makes it hard to see anything anyway. Maybe some day I’ll get a better scope but I just don’t use the one I have enough to really justify it.
Bill and I made beer again. This one is a clone of Fuller’s London Pride which we are tentatively calling Austin Smug. The final gravity ended up almost 10 points low (1.006 vs 1.015 target) and was only 12 points with the priming sugar in. We did see something interesting during the initial brew. We got a real, good cold break which was probably facilitated by adding a coagulant Austin Homebrew recommended. I have a video of the bits and pieces settling out. Sorry for the iphone quality video.
Finally, I got a second iSi cream whipper so I can make waffles and put whipped cream on them at the same time. But as a side benefit I also have some CO2 chargers now also so I made some carbonated grapes. I have a video of those too.
I’ve been clearing out my stock of to-be-baked things. I’ve canned four 16oz jars of pumpkin puree and one jar of sweet potato in preparation for fall event baking. Tonight I made four mini loaves of banana bread using the pan that mom gave me for my birthday. They turned out really good. The ceramic does a good job, I’m pleased.
banana bread
I also have been learning about how to make apple pie. There are a few articles on serious eats about how to select the right apples and how to make a good filling out of them and all of that. I wanted to try the filling out on its own so tonight I filled my miniature enameled cast iron dishes with sous vided apple filling and made tiny apple crumble. I only baked one and put the other three in the freezer because this stuff is supposed to freeze pretty well.
The plan is to make a real apple pie but I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t going to completely screw up the filling. I’m reasonably competent with the crust now.
Anyway, it came out and was delicious but I need to not leave the lid on while it’s baking or it doesn’t brown.
My sourdough starter has not been doing very well for the last couple of days. It’s supposed to be all foamy and alive and the best it manages to do is a few bubbles on the underside. It stopped smelling of vinegar but now it just doesn’t smell strongly at all. I’m going to keep feeding it but I don’t have a lot of hope at this point.
I made some pumpkin puree last night and did my first canning ever. It seems to have worked out ok. As far as I can tell the lids are sealed well and I have two 16oz jars full which is enough for two pies. But I also want to make pumpkin bread and pumpkin ice cream so I may have to do another batch. I suppose we’ll see.
I forgot to feed the starter this morning so it went 36 hours or so between feedings. That’s not the end of the world so I’m just continuing on. I’ve decided that it was maybe a little too wet so this feeding was 25g rye, 20g white flour, 45g water (back to 100% hydration) plus 20g starter.
I failed to ride my bike today but I did my PT homework and some laundry so I’m not a total failure. Also I met mom in San Marcos and we had coffee and made hotel reservations for the January trip and did a little shopping at the outlet mall. That’s it. Busy week at work this week probably. People are here from London and I’m supposed to be teaching someone how to use the software I’ve made.
I’ve been busy stocking my kitchen with silly things. I bought a cream whipper from iSi (pron. “Easy”). I got one that I can use with hot and cold preparations which will allow me to do things like custard foam / whips and so on. It’s very well made. One of the recipes on their website is Belgian waffles. However their recipe calls for a pre-made waffle mix plus wet ingredients and I ain’t about that so I just made the basic waffle recipe in The Joy of Cooking. They came out tasty but I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble to run them though the whipper. I’m thinking that in the future, it would be better to just do the yeast leavened waffles and change the butter ratio to try to get them to be a little more crispy. The whipper could then be used to make sweetened whipped cream to put on top instead of syrup which is pretty much what you’re supposed to do anyway. Also, I need a funnel for it because I got batter everywhere trying to fill the thing and I suspect that will not be the last time that happens trying to put stuff into the cannister.
Waffles!Done cooking. Look at the ring of browning. I know where the heating elements are now I suppose.Coffee brewing and waffle waffling.
The sourdough starter is a weird thing. I didn’t feed it last night. I’d like to get on a once per day schedule so I thought I’d see how it did. When I checked it last night it was a little bubbly but not as much even as the first day. This morning when I checked it it was fairly liquid and not really visibly bubbly at all. Upon opening it was less sour smelling and when I scooped out my reserve it had clearly been bubbly. I think this is the result of the additional hydration. Anyway, I fed it again this morning and I’m going to check on it at the two hour mark to see if I can smell the “sweet” smell that Robertson describes in his book. After that I suppose I need to get on with the rest of my day.
The waffle making takes a long time if you’re not in practice.
