Principia Cerealis

In my infinite wisdom, I decided it was time again to derive a recipe by first principles. This time: breakfast cereal. I thought this would be a non-trivial undertaking, and my first experiment has reinforced that notion. Though, the non-trivial bit is not what I expected. My first desire was to make, roughly, Captain Crunch (or one of its more natural cousins: Panda Puffs and Peanut Butter Puffins). That seemed difficult as I would be playing around not only with flour ratios, but also with peanut butter ratios. Better to stick to something even simpler - Barbara's Shredded Oats (Cinnamon). Here is what I ended up with; it looks atrocious and tastes edible.

My process was to start with the ingredients on the box - this reduced down to, roughly, five parts: flour, liquid sweetener, flavoring, leavening, and processed food stuff (preservatives, coloring, etc). I didn't need the last one, as I don't intend on putting this stuff in boxes and shipping it across the country. To begin with, I measured out 50g of flour and added what I thought were good amounts of the other dry ingredients, giving me the following base:

Flour: 50g whole wheat flour
Flavor: 2g salt, 2g cinnamon
Leavening: 2g baking soda

You'll note an immediate disparity here between my base recipe and that on the box - I am using whole wheat flour, not oat flour. This was a rash decision, prompted by the grocer being closed and my desire to start the process that very night, and one I hope to rectify with the next batch. Ignoring that and moving forward, I separated this into two piles - one of ~23g and one of ~33g. I added several ingredients to these:

	23g batch	33g batch
Liquid sweetner	5g molasses	3g molasses
Liquid	15g water	15g water
Extra flour	5g whole wheat flour

Note the extra flour - I poured in too much molasses and tried to recover. The consistency of the 23g batch (which ended up at about 0.8 liquid) was sticky and hard to work with, while the 33g batch (about 0.6 liquid) only came together after hand-kneading with wet hands, which most likely bumped the liquid ratio to around 0.7.

I pressed the two batches into rectangles a cm or less thick, coated them in cinnamon, and cut them into cereal-sized pieces. These were placed in a 350 degree oven for, roughly 35 minutes. The next morning, there was no obvious difference between the two different batches other than the shape.

My tasting notes are rough, but go something like:

• wow this is bitter but hey it is edible.
• oh, it looks nothing like cereal and has the consistency of a dog biscuit." (don't ask how I know what a dog biscuit feels like when chewed)
• salty salty salty aftertaste
• no notable sweetness; hard to tell if the bitterness has erased it or it simply isn't present

Based on those, the plan for next time is a multi-pronged attack with a roughly 1 : 0.7 flour to liquid ratio. Firstly, no molasses. Honey instead. Whole wheat flour + molasses + cinnamon is far too much bitter. Secondly, the switch to oat flour which seems most prevalent in cereal brands. Thirdly, instead of pressing it flat and cutting it, I think I will press it flat, lightly bake it, then cut it in half and layer it, as cutting it into squares when double-layered should add a bit of air inside and hopefully get me closer to cereal (or far away from dog biscuit).

Crackly Coffee Shortbread

My drip coffee ritual is now a common occurrence during the work week, thanks to a generous coworkers gifting of an electric burr grinder to the kitchen area. This also means that a dwindling bag of beans, not quite sufficient to brew a cup, has become something of an issue. I think I've got a solution to that, though. Adding to my long list of shortbread recipes is this one, a pleasantly crunchy, caffeine-spiked addition to any breakfast, snack, or tea time. The amount of beans I used was essentially a random guess that turned out to work quite well; the vanilla amount less so. The butter, sugar, vanilla, and coffee stage of the recipe smelled like heaven, but adding the flour muted the vanilla and baking it seems to have eradicated it completely. I'd recommend playing around with the vanilla amounts to try and preserve that flavor.

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Crackly Coffee Shortbread

Makes ~12 cookies

1 cup flour

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp roasted whole coffee beans, plus extra for garnish

1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl. If you don't cream them and instead just mix them, you will get a denser cookie. With a mortar and pestle, grind down the coffee beans to a size bigger than granulated sugar (if you like crunch) or finer (if you don't). Incorporate the coffee and vanilla into the mixing bowl. Add flour and mix until the dough goes back to being a dough, not a bunch of clumps of butter and flour. You may need to "knead" the dough a little by hand if mixing via spoon.

Take a portion of dough about the size of my thumb, or about 1/12th of the dough, and roll into a ball. Flatten between palms of hands and place on a baking sheet. Garnish each cookie with a bean or two (optional) and maybe a fancy design (also optional). Turn oven to 350 and while that is heating, place the cookies in the fridge (not optional in the slightest). After no less than 10 minutes in the fridge, and if the oven is heated, bake for 22 minutes or until the edges have taken a very light browning.

Cookin By The Book

Doing something new - following a recipe. To the letter. Well, minus E's dislike of spicy things. We cooked some Baingan Bharta last night. A dish we originally ordered because, honestly, we were too immature to not order a dish that sounded like an XXX version of a sitcom that doesn't exist. A dish we were surprised to find looked like cat vomit, but tasted nothing of the sort. Not that I would know, but if cat vomit tasted as good as the dish we had you can't really blame cats for eating it. The original plan was to make ratatouille, like in the movie of the same, but the grocer only supplied giant eggplant so it wouldn't be as pleasing to the eye. Hence, cat vomit. Obviously.

The recipe involved cooking with yogurt, something we swore would never be done again. There have been some spectacular fails of meals involving that ingredient. But it seemed to work out fine; I think because we used plain yogurt, not greek, and we cooked it at a high temperature for ten minutes. The only modification we made to the recipe was removal of the jalapeno and the addition of some cayenne pepper. We used two small heirlooms, one red and one green, for the tomato portion. They barely colored the dish. It still looks like vomit. But quite tasty.

Brussels Burgers

This past weekend I went on a quick climbing trip to Bishop; the climbing, weather, scenery, and company were all grand. The food... well, I guess I am spoiled. Bishop has enough coffee shops that I have a favorite one but the other meal options were very much not the urban fare to which I have become accustomed. There were many sandwiches and heavier foods, the veggie options being somewhat sparse. Far too lazy to cook the night I got back (hello burrito), I rectified matters the next night with what might be considered a veggie slam dunk. I've made bean burgers in the past, though the emphasis has always been on the beans. Not this time, though that did lead to issues.

A mostly-bean patty is easy; mashed beans stick together rather well. A patty which is half shredded veggies needs a little more coaxing. Even more so, in fact, than I could provide. I ended up with a few chicken nugget-sized patties but mostly got a hash of sorts. I would recommend either caving and using an egg for binding, upping the flax seed and water content, or trying something with more cornmeal and water. Possibly even using the liquid from the canned beans.

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Brussels Burgers on Sweet Potato "Buns"

Makes maybe 10 patties (serves 3ish)

1 sweet potato

1 can garbonzo beans (15 oz, I think ~2 cups?)

~8 brussels sprouts (an equal volume to the beans)

2 shallots

4-6 button mushrooms

2 tbsp cornmeal + extra

2 tbsp water

1 tbsp flax seed

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp cumin

salt

olive oil

Preheat oven to 350. Slice the sweet potato into thin, circular pieces. Toss them in a small amount of olive oil and salt. Put the slices on a baking sheet and place in the oven. Coarsely chop the shallots and put them in a large frying pan over medium with a dash of oil. Shred/dice the brussels and add them to the pan after the shallot has softened with a splash of oil. Stir every minute or so, and dice the mushrooms. After the brussels have softened, add the diced mushrooms and sesame oil to the pan and cook for another 5 minutes.

This should take under 20 minutes; at the 20 minute mark, flip all the sweet potato slices over and put them back in the oven. Empty the beans into a bowl and mash them into a paste; add enough of the pan contents so that it is 50/50 beans/not beans. Add in the cornmeal, water, flax seed, soy sauce, pepper, and cumin; stir to evenly distribute everything.

You'll want to take out the sweet potatoes 10-15 minutes after you flip them (depending on thickness), so that might be during the next stage. Just shut off the oven and leave them in if it is.

Heat the large pan from before with a nice amount of oil over medium high. Put a layer of cornmeal on a plate and take slightly-larger-than-golfball bits out of the mixture, shape into patties, and coat with cornmeal. Cook them for about 5 minutes, flip them, and cook them for a few minutes longer (enough to make both sides brown and somewhat crispy).

Serve on potato buns with any extra brussels mixture as a side. It shouldn't need ketchup, but some people are weird.

Sesame Spelt Bread

Back to non-failing bread, and it feels pretty good. This is after my no-rise bagels (dead yeast) and my no-rise mini baguettes (too much salt). Now, there is definitely one are where this recipe could be improved and a large avenue for experimentation. But - still good, still workable. Not a complete failure. The recipe is based off of the 50% whole wheat rustic from Artisan Breads Everyday, but contains a few tweaks. The goal was to create something like a pain au levain, without all that starter business. (Not that I'm against starters; one should be starting up this weekend).

It wasn't perfect, but it was close. The bread was a bit too much like a honey whole-wheat sandwich loaf than I would have liked. That is, it was soft but not airy, and excelled at soaking up honey (and, presumably, pbj if I had it handy). The spelt gave it a nice nutty flavor; I don't think the sesame seeds did anything besides poke out of the crust like sailors bobbing in the waters near a shipwreck. The biggest issue was definitely the texture, which was caused by my inclusion of olive oil in the recipe. I would cut it in half as an experiment; removing it entirely would likely prove drastically dry. Walnuts would also have been a great addition to this loaf, though I did not have them handy.

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Sesame Spelt Loaf

Makes 1 loaf

225g water

130g bread flour

130g whole wheat flour

20g spelt flour

20g sesame seeds

12g olive oil (halve this for a airier, less moist loaf)

5g salt

3g instant yeast

At least a night before you want to bake the bread, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. Add in the water and olive oil, and stir with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes to hydrate things, then stretch and fold 4 times with a 10 minute break between each. Place in a clean bowl, cover tightly, and place it in the fridge.

The day of baking remove the dough from the fridge 1.5 hours before you wish to put it in the oven and shape it however you like (it might actually make great rolls as-is, without cutting down the olive oil). Place it on a parchment-lined pan, cover it, and let it sit until baking time. Preheat oven to 500, put the bread in, lower to 450, and cook for ~35 minutes. Check and rotate the loaf at the 15 minute mark. It is done when it sounds hollow and the top is very hard.

Tomato-Radish Lentil 'lenta

In a shocking turn of events, the weather turned cold for the weekend. The (relative) heat of last week made cooking difficult, as did a rather packed schedule. I managed a round of bagels, on which the yeast did not activate. To follow that up, I cooked a dinner of which none of my photographs turned out. Cell phone camera, combined with low light, strikes again. But, I'll still provide the recipe because it was highly edible and a great foil for the cold weather. The dish was partially influenced by a brunch item at Gather - the lentil and polenta. It was a great breakfast food that I wanted to fashion as a dinner. I mostly failed, because I don't season things enough. More following of recipes may be in my future. So, yes, the flavor could stand to be improved but everything else about the dish was good. Have at it (or don't).

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Lentil 'lenta

Serves 2

1 standard size can of lentils or lentil soup

2/3 cup dry polenta

2 cups water

bunch of radishes (15 or so)

2 flavorful tomatoes

1 shallot

1 tbsp olive oil

spices other than what I used (cumin, dill, and cayenne) or in larger quantities

salt

(optionally) butter or cheese

So, lots of things going on at once with this recipe. Take 5 radishes and dice them, reserve a single radish, then slice the rest in half. Toss the halved radishes in the olive oil and salt, then place in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Once they are in the oven, dice the shallot and sautee it over medium until it has yellowed and lost some flavor. Cut the tomatoes into 6-8 slices each. Put one of them, as well as the diced radish, in with the shallot. Place the other tomato in a pot with the water and bring to boil while making sure the pan doesn't burn. You can, if you want, add some butter or cheese to the pot of water.

Once the water is boiling, add the polenta, reduce heat, and stir. Add the can of lentils to the frying pan, season it, then alternate between stirring the polenta and lentil mixture. You are aiming for a runny polenta mixture, which takes 5-10 minutes of cooking. This should be timed for the radishes coming out of the oven. Serve in a bowl with polenta put in first, the lentil mixture spooned into the center, and top with the baked radish. Slice the single, reserved radish for garnish.

First Attempts at Pizza

It was finally decided that pizza would be cooked for dinner. Discussed many a times, even enacted once at a cooking class for E's birthday last year, but not for friends. My local expensive yuppie grocery store recently began stocking tipo 00 flour, the kind (hypothetically) used by chefs in Neapolitan cooking for their famous pizzas. That is, assuming you buy tipo 00 bread flour and not pastry flour. My packaged contained, as you can see, many photos of bread. The protein content was listed as 3g for 30g of flour (10%+ protein is a good indicator) and listed its humidity as 15,50% (another good indicator that it is meant for bread).

So, we set to work preparing procuring ingredients and prepping dough. The Saturday farmers market seems to be lacking in Mozzarella; though it appears Californian producers exist, none was found for sale. We did manage the large, juicy heirloom tomatoes and some smaller green zebra ones, as well as fresh basil. Generally, a pretty poor haul but we also wanted simple pizzas. We also snagged dates, as all the delicious ones are finally back in season. Notably Barhi dates, both unripened and ripe. Do try the unripened if you can, for an interesting experience, but note it was something like eating waxy paper or really bad jicama. It is amazing they turn into the ripe version; if you let them get warm in the sun they explode in your mouth. Soft, sweet, utterly delicious. But not a pizza topping.

For the dough, we used a modified Reinhart recipe, leaving out the oil and honey, and substituting 100% tipo 00 flour. The recipe warned us that less water would be needed; I didn't really listen. The initial dough was almost a batter, like the mini baguettes I make so frequently. Good for those, not so great for a pizza crust (unless you want it misshapen and thick). Just for the hell of it, I took about 1/4 of the dough aside to see what it would be like as crust, then poured flour into the dough and mixed until it felt right. I ended up using ~20% more flour than the recipe called for. So, yes, tipo 00 needs much less water than you would expect. And it still wasn't really glutenizing all that well, likely due to a combination of being worked for too long a period and being mixed in stages.

The resulting pizzas were quite good, though I'm not sure the crust had anything to do with it. The first pizza (the last photo here) was under-cooked. Given that the oven seemed to top out at 500 degrees, the cooking time was extended from the recommended 5 minutes in to the 10-15 minute range. The best pizzas were ones with a crust that had just started to blister and brown, however long that may take in your oven.