This is the recipe I use, based on the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated.

Ingredients

• 1 14 oz can chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• tahini
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed or minced
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• the juice of one lemon
• 1/4 cup water

Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, and water together in a small bowl.  Drain the beans and put them into a food processor along with the garlic, cumin, and salt.  Pulse them a few times until you’ve converted them to a very thick paste.  Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the beans that are stuck to the sides.  Add a few big spoonfuls of tahini – you’re looking for around 1/4 cup, but you don’t need to be precise.  Now, turn the machine on and slowly pour in the lemon juice mixture.  Once it’s all added, stop the processor, scrape down the sides again, turn on the processor, and leave it running for a minute.

Transfer the hummus to a serving dish, and, if you want, sprinkle some paprika (or smoked paprika) over the top, and finish with some olive oil.  We have found pita chips to be a much more convenient way to eat hummus than regular pita bread.

I’ve been intrigued by the idea of pressure cooking for some time now, but have been unwilling to spend the money on one until I’d tried some recipes.  Recently, a friend loaned us her pressure cooker, and tonight, I finally got to take it for a spin.  If you’ve ever used one, then you won’t be surprised to hear me say that I was amazed at the results this thing can produce in so short a time.  To get these kinds of results using traditional methods like braising or roasting would require hours, but tonight, in 30 minutes, we had fork tender meat that was falling off of the bone, and deeply flavored.

Ingredients

2 lbs beef short ribs – the meatiest and most lean you can find

1 lb small yukon gold or red potatoes

8 dried shiitake mushrooms, stem removed, caps broken in half

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

3 garlic cloves, peeled

2 sprigs of fresh tyme

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 1/2 tsp tomato paste

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup water

This recipe begins by searing the ribs in oil over high heat right in the cooker until they have a rich brown crust on the outside.  Due to the size of the pan, we had to do this in two batches, and while it would have been quicker to do this in a larger, separate pan, it’s essential do do this in the cooker.  The juices from the meat brown on the bottom of the pan, creating what the cooking world calls fond, which is full of complex and savory flavors brought about by a chemical reaction called the Maillard reaction.

Once the meat has been seared, pour out most of the fat, and return the pan to medium heat.  Here, I modified the recipe by adding the tomato paste and cooking it for a minute to develop more fond.  Tomatoes, when cooked (also through the Maillard reaction), release flavor compounds called glutamates, which contribute more deep, savory notes.

Next, pour in the wine and water, then stir and scrape away at the fond to dissolve it into the liquid.  Add the remaining ingredients, then top with the ribs and potatoes.  Cook according to the pressure cooker’s instructions for 30 minutes.  At this point, I modified the recipe further by removing the cooked food to a dish in a warm oven, and boiling the liquid until it had reduced and thickened slightly.

My favorite preparation is simple and straightforward.

Note: My wife took my camera with her on her trip, so the photos in this post were taken with my phone, so please excuse the quality.

Begin by bashing up a big handful of fresh herbs (rosemary is best, but this time, I only had thyme), 3 fat cloves of garlic, and some salt in a mortar and pestle.  There are lots of other things you can add here: lemon zest, coriander seed, mint, and cumin seeds are all good (though I wouldn’t mix cumin with rosemary or mint).

If you’re using rosemary, it’s helpful to chop it up a little bit first.  Also, in addition to adding flavor, the salt helps to pulverize the herbs and garlic by acting as an abrasive.

Next, grind in a generous helping of black pepper, and then pour in enough olive oil to make a slush.  Now rub the marinade on all sides of some thick chops, then let them rest in the fridge for several hours – though they’ll still be good if you don’t have time for this.

Get a grill or grill pan nice and hot.  You want instant sizzling when the chops hit the hot bars.  To me, the charred marks left by the grill are essential for good flavor, so leave them long enough to get a good sear, but beyond that is up to you.  Lamb, unlike beef, retains a good amount of moisture even when cooked to medium, but personally, I like it more on the rare side.

Once they come off of the grill, squeeze a lemon over them and let them rest for a few minutes.  This is essential when cooking nearly all meats and poultry.  The protein strands in the meat have pulled tight during the cooking, and if you cut into the meat too early, a good deal of the juices will be squeezed out.  As the meat rests after cooking, the strands of protein relax, and the juices will remain in the meat.

This time, I had my lamb with potatoes, which had been cubed, steamed until just barely done, then pan fried in a generous amount of oil until they had gone crispy on the outside.  Honestly, it was a strange combination, but good nonetheless.  Lamb feels like it wants to go with spinach or some kind of white beans, like navy or garbanzo, or even couscous or polenta.

Why should you do it?  There are two big reasons: 1) it’s cheaper than buying bread that’s worth eating, and 2) you know and can pronounce all of the ingredients.  Most of what passes for “bread” on the grocery store shelves is loaded with artificial ingredients and preservatives.  Whole wheat bread is WORLDS better for you than that made with refined white flour, and bread that’s labeled as “whole wheat bread” frequently has quite a lot of regular flour in it; look at the ingredients and see if the first or second isn’t “wheat flour” as opposed to “whole wheat flour.”  This is lots better for you, and it’s not hard to do.

Recipe

Nuke 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of water, mixed together, for about a minute, so that it’s warm but nowhere near scalding, then stir in 2 tbsp honey or sugar and 5 tsp active dry yeast (not rapid rise) until everything is dissolved.  Let this mixture sit for about 5 minutes, until it’s starting to look foamy.

Pour this into the bowl of a mixer, if you’ll be using one, or just a large bowl if you plan on doing this by hand.  Whisk in 2 large eggs and 6 tbsp unsalted butter which has been brought to a soft room temperature.  Now add 6 cups of whole wheat flour and 2 tsp salt.  If you’re using a mixer, attach the dough hook and turn it on low.  If not, then lightly flour your counter top, mix everything together well, tip it out onto the counter and start kneading.

Either way, you may need to add some extra flour to keep it from sticking.  I had to had nearly a whole cup extra.  Keep adding and kneading, until you have a tacky, but not either too dry or too sticky, dough, which will take about 8 minutes.

Now transfer it to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave it in a warm place for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until it doubles in size and develops that great, bright scent of yeast.

Lightly butter 2 bread pans (5 x 9″ or so).  Punch the dough down and divide it in half.  Roll each half into a ball, and then flatten into a disk which has a diameter about equal to the length of your bread pan.

Fold a bit of the edge of the disk over and press it to seal.  Now fold a little bit of the folded part over and press to seal again.  Continue doing this until you have rolled the dough into a log.  Place this into one of the bread pans, seam side down, and then press it down into the bread pan.

Repeat with the other half of dough and cover the pans with a kitchen towel.  Place them in a warm spot for about 45 minutes, until the loaves have doubled in size.  Preheat an oven to 375 F and lightly dust the tops of the loaves with a little more flour.

Bake for 40-45 minutes.  A loaf that is done will sound hollow when you tap on the bottom of it.  Remove them from the pans and let them cool on a wire rack.  Technically speaking, you’re not supposed to cut into them until they’ve cooled, or they’ll dry out, but who can resist?

On Wheat Bread

Wheat bread doesn’t have the chewy texture that some white breads can have.  This texture is the result of strands of a protein called gluten, which develop during the kneading process.  Whole wheat contains the outer hull, or bran, of the wheat grain, and the ground up pieces of bran are like tiny knives that chop up the strands of gluten, keeping the bread from becoming chewy.  This is why regular flour is often mixed with whole wheat flour to make loaves that are labeled “wheat bread.”  It does contain some whole what, and it has more of that chewy texture that people love.

The bran, however, is what contains most of the nutrients and nearly all of the fiber.  When you take away the bran, you take away almost everything that makes wheat worth eating, from a health standpoint, and all you’re left with is mostly empty carbs, which is why white flour is often enriched by the addition of vitamins and minerals, but usually not fiber.  Still, enriched flour doesn’t provide all of the health benefits of whole wheat flour, not just because it’s missing fiber, (which plays a HUGE role in not only keeping you…ahem…regular, but healthy in general) but also because whole foods contain lots of micronutrients that we’re only just beginning to learn about.

Things are finally slowing down again, and so I hope to be making up for lost time here on this blog over the next few weeks.  The past several days have seen a return to more relaxed evenings and this evening was a good one.  We had snow again here in Houston, the third time this Winter, and while snow is always fun for me, it’s even more fun now that I have a young daughter, and I can enjoy it even more, vicariously, through her.  We went outside several times when it was falling particularly thickly, trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues.

Coming back into the house meant returning to the scent of the cookies that my wife and daughter were baking, a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies from Cook’s Illustrated‘s early days, way back in 1996.  We’ve been making this particular recipe almost since then and nothing else has come close.  They bake up with a warm, toffee-like flavor, slightly crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle.  CI came out with a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies last year, and we haven’t tried it yet, but their old recipe will be hard to beat.

Lunch was a simple pasta dish that used to be a staple at our house.  Not sure why it’s been so long since we made it.

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and throw in enough linguine or capellini (angel hair) for everyone.

While the water is coming to boil and the pasta is cooking, in a pan that is large enough to hold the pasta after you’ve cooked it…

warm a puddle of olive oil over medium low heat.  Don’t use “lite” olive oil.  You want something full and flavorful, and since it will provide the base for the sauce, you’ll need a good amount, more than just enough to barely cover the pan.

Add at least 1 clove garlic, crushed per person.  The heat needs to be low enough that you can barely see it simmering.  You don’t want it to turn brown on you.

Add at least 2 anchovies, along with 1 tsp fresh thyme and  a pinch of crushed red pepper per person.

In another pan, toast a big handful of fresh bread crumbs (yes, again, one handful per person) in some olive oil over medium heat.  I prefer to make the crumbs myself and leave some large-ish chunks of bread intact.  Salt them as you go, and once they’re crispy in spots, dump them onto a paper towel lined plate.

The anchovies should eventually, within five minutes or so, fall apart.  Once the pasta is done, drain it, throw it into the pan with the garlic and anchovies, and then squeeze over at least 1/2 lemon (for one or two people).  You’ll probably need some salt, too, in spite of the anchovies.  Toss it all together and taste it.  You’re looking for brightness from the lemon, a kick from the garlic, savor from the anchovies, a little heat from the pepper, and the warmth of thyme.  Squeeze in more lemon or add more salt as you need it.  Dish it up in shallow bowls and top with the toasted bread crumbs.

Dinner was crabcakes (from Mark Bittman’s The Minimalist Cooks Dinner) with red sauce and cole slaw (from Pepin’s Fast Food My Way).  We finished it all off with an Apricot Almond Pastry.

Heat the oven to 350 F.

Cut a few apricots (fresh or canned) into wedges – there’s no need to peel them.

Grind 3/4 cup almonds in a food processor, then combine these with 2 tbsp flour and 1/8 tsp baking powder.

Combine 1/4 cup sugar with 4 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temp.  Mix this with the almonds.

Beat 1 egg with 1/2 tsp almond extract, and then add this to the almonds.

Scrape the batter into an 8 or 9 inch pie dish or cake pan, which you have greased with butter, and then top with the apricot wedges.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry has risen and is heading toward a toasty brown.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.  I prefer it with ice cream.

It had become pretty cold out by the time I was putting the dessert in the oven, so we lit the fireplace for the first time this year.  It was a great way to finish off the day.

The cold blew in today, and we were wanting something warming and comforting to combat it, but were also feeling too tired to make anything very involved.  This is some seriously good stuff, even if you don’t think of yourself as being a fan of tofu, and it’s also seriously easy.

For 4 not huge servings:

cook 1/4 lb ground pork in a little oil over medium heat in a medium stock pot, until no longer pink.

add 1 tbsp grated ginger, 1 tbsp crushed garlic, and 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper.

Stir for about a minute, then add 1/4 cup sliced green onion and cook for a minute or so.

Pour in 1 cup chicken stock and add 1 lb medium hard tofu, cut into 1/2 inch cubes.

Once it’s hot, stir in 1/8 cup soy sauce.

Sometimes I want it to have more of a kick, and sometimes I want it to be more like soup, so I vary the amount of red pepper and stock.  I’d like to try making a variation using ground mushrooms – probably shiitake – in place of the pork.  Since mushrooms contain a fair amount of liquid, which will cook out of them, you’ll need more weight of mushrooms than of pork.  Try increasing it by 1/8 of a pound.  Serve with steamed rice, or even better, sticky rice, if you have some on hand.

There I said it.  Of course now I’ll never hear the end of it.  Some friends were picking on me recently because I drank a Pumpkin Spice Latte.  And then, serendipitously, one of the keynote speakers at a conference we were all attending suggested that everyone drink coffee instead of Pumpkin Spice Lattes as a way of saving more money so that we can give more to the needy.  You can imagine the hilarity that ensued.  I guess if you’re a man who lives in Houston and has a family, you have to assert your masculinity by staying out of the kitchen and drinking Cigarette Butt Beer or some other form of Not-Pumpkin Spice Latte.  But oh well.

Still, I really did make a plum pudding.  I’ve wanted to make one for years, and finally got around to it.  I’ve always enjoyed well-made fruitcakes, and mincemeat, and plum pudding comes across as a combination of the two.  I’m also intrigued by foods that have to age for a while and take time to mature – cheese, prosciutto, kimchee, cured salmon, sourdough bread starters.  This plum pudding needs to be aged for a month or two, and so by Christmas, it’ll be ready.

For the uninitiated, plum pudding 1) usually doesn’t have any plums in it, and 2) isn’t a pudding in the American sense.  It’s more like a very dense, very moist cake, full of dried fruits, booze (brandy and sherry), sugar, spices, eggs, butter, and just enough bread crumbs and flour to hold it all together.  Everything is mixed together, poured into a seriously greased bowl, covered with a tight fitting lid or a couple of layers of foil, the whole assembly lowered into a giant stock pot half filled with boiling water, and steamed for several hours.  It is aged for a while, and when it’s time to serve it, you steam it again for a few hours, flambe it by pouring flaming brandy over it, slice it into wedges, and serve it with a hard sauce – in this case an orange-mace hard sauce containing lots of butter, orange zest, sugar, brandy and mace.

It's not much to look at yet.

I’ll post a follow up after we’ve had it for our Christmas dinner, where the main course will be raw bear muscle, which I will have butchered myself, using my teeth, from a bear that died because I told it to.

P.S.  After my wife read this post, she expressed concern that my remarks about the remarks of the speaker at the conference could be taken as a flippant attitude toward the needy, so rather than accidentally encourage an uncaring attitude toward the poor, I want to take the time here, on a blog that celebrates food, to point out that it’s a blessing for us to be in a position to be able to choose not just when and how often we will eat, but what we will eat and how it will be prepared.  Most of the people on this planet don’t get to do that.  The conference I attended partners with two organizations which I encourage you to check out:  World Vision, and Compassion International.  Also, in light of this being a Christmas dessert, I would like to point you to two websites which have encouraged me and my family to change how we celebrate Christmas.

Advent Conspiracy

Buy Nothing Christmas.org

Autumn won’t officially arrive until the 22nd, but as I’ve always had a bit of a rebellious streak in me, and since my mind is already turning to Autumnal things in early September, and since I and my daughter both have the day off (and my wife being a stay at home mom), today seemed a good day to say farewell to summer and welcome the fall season.  As usual, the weather is stubbornly refusing to participate in our festival – the heat index today is forecast to be 102 – and it will continue to do so until sometime in October, when things will begin to cool off in earnest.  We certainly do not have fall color around here, and so in our house, the onset of Autumn is marked by the arrival of seasonal decorations, music, scents, and foods.

Breakfast

We started the day off with the best cinnamon rolls that have ever been made in this house, a recipe that we discovered last week on Cook’s Country TV.  From start to finish, these rolls will require 4 hours of your time, but they are well worth every minute.  The dough is soft and melting, the cinnamon filling cooking to a slightly chewy crispiness on the bottom, all accented by the slight tang of cream cheese frosting.

The recipe gives instructions for making the rolls ahead of time, and they will be better if they spend a night in the fridge before you bake them, giving the yeast more time to flavor the dough.  I did, however, find that one hour, the time suggested in the recipe, wasn’t nearly enough time for them to rise sufficiently after taking them out of the fridge.  They had barely come to room temperature after one hour and were only showing the first signs of rising.  I put them in the oven on its proofing setting, and that sped things up considerably.

Lunch:  Goodbye Summer

Absolutely the only thing I like about summer in Houston, with the exception of the 4th of July, is the food, and if there’s a cooking method that belongs to summer, it’s grilling.  Today’s lunch was to be the last truly summery meal of the year, and few things say “summer” more than the mahogany, smoky, toffee exterior of barbecued chicken.

This was yet another recipe from Cook’s Country, one which we watched them prepare last Saturday on PBS, and it’s more a technique than a recipe.  Bullseye original is the recommended sauce for this preparation, and while the recipe gives instructions for doctoring it up to give it more of a homemade flair, being short on time and molasses, I opted to use it as is.  The results were great, and I found myself thinking that perhaps we could make this a couple more times this year.  Today we had it with baked beans, but a tangy, cold, crunchy cole slaw would have accompanied it better.

Appetizers

To tide us over between lunch and dinner, I broke out some olives, a loaf of bread, a bourguignon cheese, some green peppercorns, and some walnuts.  With it, we had a Torrontes Riserva from Finca El Origen.

Dinner: Hello Autumn

Autumn is a time to slow down and take your time, to relax and rest, and many of the foods we begin to eat now and through the winter reflect this.  Tonight we had smothered pork chops, a recipe that has become an Autumn staple at our house.  This is a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, one in which thin pork chops spend the better part of an hour braising in a deep, rich, onion gravy, thickened and flavored by a dark, toasty roux, until they have gone fork tender.  After eating it, you want to do nothing more than relax on the couch with a glass of dry red wine, if not just go straight to bed.

To contrast the rich savory flavors of the chops with their gravy, we had Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Maple, another Cook’s Illustrated recipe.  We needed something to drink with this that would stand up to the dark flavors of long cooked, silky meat, and so we had Finca El Origen’s Malbec.  An inexpensive bottle of wine, but up to the task, if you’re not feeling too particular.

Dessert

By now, we didn’t have much room left, but since today is a day to feast and enjoy, and tomorrow will be back to the normal routine, why not also have dessert?  A rustic apple tart, from Nigel Slater’s Appetite, my favorite cookbook ever.  The point of this dessert isn’t to look pretty.  The point is warm, melting, sweet-tart apples, their sugars gone to a sticky caramel, and tender, buttery crust.

I played George Winston’s Autumn as we ate, and soaked in the flavors and sounds that I haven’t experienced since last year.  We relaxed, we slowed down, and felt Autumn falling down around us.  Now I’m ready for bed.

This is an interesting salad dressing, in that if you use enough tomato, you don’t need any oil, because the addition of avocado gives it a velvety texture without the need of oil as an emulsifier.   Grilling the tomato adds some great dark undertones to balance the bright acidity of the tomato juice.

INGREDIENTS

A couple of handfuls of grape or cherry tomatoes or one medium large tomato

Half of an avocado, cut into small chunks

The juice of one lemon

1 garlic clove, minced or pressed

Grill the tomatoes over high heat, turning occasionally, until you’ve got some nice charred splotches and the tomatoes are softening.  The advantage of using small tomatoes is that you have more surface area next to the grill, and therefore more of that grilled flavor in the dressing.

Once the tomatoes are done, throw them into the blender, along with the lemon juice, garlic, and avocado.  Add a liberal amount of salt and freshly ground pepper, close the lid, and hit puree.  If the tomatoes have provided enough juice, the consistency should be similar to ranch dressing.  If there’s not enough liquid, add some olive oil, a little at a time, until you’ve got the right consistency. 

The last time I made this, we had some roasted Hatch chilis from the grocery store, since they are currently in season, so I threw one in, and it provided more toasty overtones along with a deep, green heat.  I also had cilantro on hand, and that went into the mix.  This time, I found that I needed some more liquid, and so I added some of the pickling juice from a bottle of green peppercorns, and its briny, peppery flavor went well with the grilled smokiness of the tomatoes.