Salad (and ribs)

Ed and I tend to read the same food blogs. It often means we'll see the same thing on a given day, and both want to make it. This is why we get along.  Anyway, we saw this, and both were like, let's have salad tonight.  We also had some ribs marinating, so Ed cooked those, too.  And then made us some sort of fruity cocktail drink with fancy ingredients from the distillery next door to his office. I definitely don't remember what was in the drink (possibly rum based? with a grapefruit slice?), and I don't remember how he cooked the ribs, but I made the salad, so I remember that part.

We wanted to add avocado, since it seemed like adding something green and creamy and delicious would go over well.  It did.  And the Boston lettuce was perfect, crunchy and sweet.  I don't remember what we did for a dressing, unfortunately, it may have just been some oil and lemon and salt, with the pepper sprinkled over the whole thing. The only problem was that the eggs were not quite soft-boiled, they were somewhere between hard and soft boiled.  Would have been better if we'd taken them out 3 minutes sooner.  Oh well, live and learn.  Regardless, this salad was delicious, and refreshing, and filling, and beautiful.  I recommend making it.  

Baguette rolls

We wanted to make some banh mi sandwiches the other day, but we were pretty low on any sorts of food stuffs.  Luckily, we're masters of cleaning-out-the-fridge sorts of meals, and ended up with a damn tasty sandwich.  I believe we had oyster mushrooms, cilantro, yellow pepper and some sort of spicy mayo on the sandwiches, and we made the bread relatively quickly. Total success. But, the bigger success was that I figured out a method (finally!) to get my bread to crust up like a proper baguette.  

I've noticed that the NYT no-knead bread has pretty much the awesomest crust ever, as well as the proper amount of holes on the inside.  I knew that given the short rise time and lazy knead time meant no big holes, but if we could just get a good crust... that might make it worthwhile.  The advantage of that NYT bread is that it's cooked in a dutch oven, so the steam from the dough itself makes a little steam bath for the bread inside of the dutch oven. So, I figured I'd try making my whole oven into a steam bath.  I started things at 500F, and then dropped the heat to 350, to properly cook the insides once the crust had done it's thing, and boy was this ever a success.  Try it for yourself - totally worth it!

Baguette Rolls

Start by making your bread dough. About 2C of warm water, a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of yeast. Add flour until it's paste-like, then add a spoonful of salt.  Maybe a splash of olive oil.  Add more flour until the dough is at a knead-able consistency. Knead for 5 minutes or so.

Go for a run.  (I believe in this case the rise time was ~1:15).

Come back, wash your hands (yes, you, you know you've been snot rocketing while running), and divide the dough into whatever size rolls you want. Put them into whatever shape you feel like. Preheat the oven to 500F, and put a pan full of water on the bottom shelf. Let that preheat and steam for 20min or so.  Then cut some gashes (crosses, slices, whatever, score the top) into each roll, put them on a pan (maybe grease the pan first, or put down cornmeal or something), and stick the rolls into the oven.

Cook at 500 for 10min or so, then without opening the oven, drop the heat to 350ish, and cook another 20-30min.  They're done when the bottom makes a hollow noise when you knock on it. They may look done sooner, since the tops will be golden brown and delicious thanks to the steam earlier than the insides are cooked, but go with the knocking test.  

Enjoy!

Rhubarb Tart

I saw this recipe on Epicurious the other day, and it looked so pretty that I wanted to try it.  I also liked what someone had suggested about some pastry cream underneath the rhubarb, so I figured I'd play around with a little frangipane underneath.  Total success, because the sweetness of the almond frangipane offset some of the tartness of the rhubarb. Though, testing the straight-rhubarb vs the frangipane, I sort of liked the tarter one.  Maybe you could make a less-sweet frangipane, but really, I hate to admit this... the epicurious recipe was best when left alone. Crazy!

You start with a sheet of puff pastry. Roll it out, and then layer on the rhubarb (over the frangipane, if you're using that).  For frangipane, I creamed 1/2 stick of butter with 1/4C of granulated sugar, dumped in one egg yolk and 1/2C almond flour, and a dash of almond extract and a pinch of salt. Should make a loose cookie dough consistency.  That was enough for half the puff pastry (which was half the box of puff pastry).  Do be sure to slice the rhubarb at an extreme angle, as the bigger your pieces of rhubarb, the prettier your tart. Also, try to remember to leave a little space between the pieces of rhubarb, so that the puff pastry gets a chance to puff.

The syrup was easy to make, and easy to apply. This was the first time I'd ever used my new pastry brush! Very fun.  Sort of. 

Anyway, after baking, brush on the reduced syrup, and then consume within the first half hour or so - I found that the next morning, while still delicious, the tart was a little soggier.

Tart with frangipane on the left, without on the right. Both delicious!