WEEKEND IN THE KITCHEN::Research and Good Food

Saturday was off to a slow start. The sun made an appearance as I sat at the kitchen table with my black baking/cooking journal and my iPad. With pen poised and ready, I Googled "Neapolitan cuisine". Wikipedia is a great resource for providing background information on recipe basics and techniques. I scrolled down to the "Pasta dishes" section and decided on pasta e patate, a variation of the Croatian staple of pasta with beans. I jotted down some ingredients, worked through the techniques of putting it all together, but it wasn't until Sunday that I was able to make it.

The usual Saturday morning scones was pushed off to Sunday morning. So, after a simple breakfast of coffee, bread, butter, sour cherry jam, almond butter, and honey (we all like different toppings on our bread), I started with the Neapolitan pizza dough. Four ingredients consisting of Caputo flour, yeast, salt, and water. No oil, no sugar, nothing but those four ingredients. With the low yeast to flour ratio, the rise was slow and the result was a delicious thin, chewy dough.

This time I decided to make one pizza solely for the kids and another for us two adults instead of the usual splitting the toppings down the middle and waiting on the second pizza to finish baking. Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that I prefer my original method as I do not have to wait for "our" pizza to finish its 6 minutes of baking on the stone (on the convection setting). The toppings included olive oil, Greek feta, and Kalamata olives for the kids and the same for us - with the addition of chopped garlic, fresh thyme, and red peppers - topped with crushed Urfa and Aleppo peppers.

Along with the pizza, I made a vegetable soup with onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, fresh campari tomatoes, celery, carrots, celery root, fresh thyme sprigs, salt, and pepper. The vegetables were passed through a sieve and the flavorful liquid was returned to the stove to be cooked with acini di pepe. My middle daughter calls this "punkte soup" - "punkte" meaning "dot" in German. The girls had requested the soup. The boy wanted no part of it. I'm hoping his taste buds get a bit more adventurous soon. He cannot survive on almond butter, honey, bread, and desserts alone (though he thinks he can).

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the longer days of sunlight starting next week is to be able to photograph my finished dishes before the sunlight dissipates. Although my husband keeps reminding me that my digital camera is able to shoot far beyond my usual ISO of 400 or lower, I cannot help but remember Bryan Peterson telling us that he rarely shoots over ISO 200 - even at night. That means a tripod with a long exposure. For now, I prefer using the light I have and not spending too much time processing the RAW images.

Sunday morning scones. I had written a recipe for banana oat chocolate scones the previous weekend but never got around to making them. This weekend I decided to change the recipe to a simple oat chocolate scone using chopped Valrhona chocolate.

"These taste good", my husband commented, "...but you already know that." Actually I didn't but was glad when I tasted them again yesterday. I had saved a few for the kids' school lunches and for a midday indulgence with a strong cup of Turkish coffee after I dropped off the younger two at school. Treasured quiet time. I almost believe they tasted better the second day. Almost.

Since my husband had a flight in the early evening, I started on the cake in the hopes of being able to have time to sit at the Sunday dinner table for a slice of cake before he leaves. That was the intention. The reality was that I packed up almost a quarter of the cake for him to take on his trip. Sunday dinner would have to wait until next weekend.

Though I had several options for a cake, I revisited the orange poppyseed kuchen I had made in Berlin, paying attention to the notes I'd written - add more buttermilk, more poppyseeds, and a few other adjustments. Besides baking it in a 12-cup bundt pan as opposed to a 9-inch springform pan (which would have been a better choice), the results were better than expected. I loved the bursts of poppy seeds with every forkful and the bright orange zest speckled throughout.

My summer in Berlin was filled with cake experiments using baker's math and batter cake formulas. Baker's percentage is a great method that's allowed me develop a myriad of cake recipes with ease. Since all of the ingredients are percentages of the weight of flour in a recipe, one can easily scale from a 9" springform pan to a larger or smaller one. The other formulas I used were ones for batter cakes which I'll mention in another post.

With the cake cooling, it was time to make the pasta and potatoes dish. It might seem a strange combination to some but the technique reminded me of a risotto - only with potatoes. The white wine and fresh mini San Marzano tomatoes (grown in Marfa, Texas) combined into a spectacular bowl of Neapolitan delight. The only change for next time is to cook the pasta 5 minutes less. It should not be al dente rather cooked through, but not mushy.

Despite the fact that the weekend was rushed and we didn't get to sit at the Sunday table, we enjoyed good food on a fairly warm pre-Spring weekend.

The kids found the scones delectable, taking note of my having added chocolate for them. Overall, I savored the time I had to research and write recipes this weekend - something I look forward to doing on a peaceful Sunday morning while the kids are still asleep.

Homemade Pizza

There is something to be said about making pizza from scratch...starting with the pizza dough and ending with your choice of fresh toppings. Over five years ago, I purchased a pizza cookbook entitiled "Pizza: Any Way You Slice It" by Charles and Michele Scicolone. I was looking for a pizza dough recipe that was similar to the ones we had while on vacation in Croatia - a thin, chewy, and soft crust. The very first recipe in this book entitled "neopolitan-style pizza dough" proved to be the one I would use over and over again. It uses a combination of cake and all-purpose flours for a softer texture and is fairly simple to make. The time it takes to make the dough includes 15 minutes of gathering the ingredients and kneading the dough plus the proofing (rising) time of 3 hours.   

After you mix together the ingredients, the mass looks as in the above photograph. Ten minutes later, the ball of flour, yeast, and salt looks smooth and round (below photograph) and is ready to proof (rise).

Pizza dough after 10 minutes of kneading

I place the dough in a glass bowl that's been coated with olive oil, cover it with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel, and place the bowl in an unheated oven on my broken pizza stone with the oven lamp turned on. I find that the heat from the lamp provides a perfect warm environment for the dough to rise. I set the timer to 90 minutes and then wait until the timer goes off.            

Pizza dough prior to the first 90 minutes of proofing.       

Pizza dough after the first 90 minutes of proofing.

As soon as the timer sounds, I take out the dough and quickly form it into two balls of dough and place both pieces on a wooden pizza peel dusted with flour. I cover it once again with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and set the timer for another 90 minutes.    

Dough formed into two rounds and ready for the second proof.In the meantime, I gather my ingredients for the toppings. I prefer simple and fresh with little or no cheese, feta being the cheese of choice.

Toppings start with extra virgin olive oil and fresh thyme leaves.I then place chopped garlic, sliced tomatoes (in this case, a medley of baby tomatoes), sprinkle coarse sea salt, and add sliced green bell peppers and sliced Kalamata olives. Crumble some feta cheese on top and sprinkle everything with another one or two tablespoons of olive oil. Place in a preheated 550 degree oven (on the convection setting so that the air circulates) on a pizza stone for about 8 minutes or until the edges are light brown.

Pizza before 8 minutes of convection baking at 550 degrees on a hot pizza stone.

 Enjoy!