New Bread Recipe

No Knead Cheese & Herb Bread

I have not been baking bread lately because I can get such excellent bread at the General Bakeshop in Brewster and, if I'm in town on a Sunday morning, the She-Wolf Bakery.

 

However, someone give me a recipe for No Knead Cheese & Herb Bread, which uses the no-knead technique made famous by Jim Lahey in My Bread. This is so much easier than the levain bread technique that I just went and did it.

 

The bread incorporates 1-1/2 cups of cheddar cheese (I used finely shredded Sargento sharp cheddar from the supermarket), 1 cup (!) of chopped chives and 3 tablespoons of finely chopped thyme. The only thing that takes any time is chopping the herbs. Apart from that it's just waiting for the bread (without the fillings) to rise, folding in the fillings and baking in a preheated dutch oven. 

 

Here you can see the cheese and herbs that infuse this bread.

 

Cheese & Herb Bread crumb

 A delicious and beautiful loaf!

 

Bobby Jay

Starting 2023 Right -- With a Capon

I have not posted much for the last couple of years, feeling a bit paralyzed by the COVID crisis, although I suffered only a minor case in early 2022. No, it was the first year of forced cooking all the time that kind of knocked a lot of the joy out of food. The second year was much better, with restaurants open and many dinners out with friends.

But this year I hope to do better and am starting early with my capon dinner in Paris the other night.

The French love to eat capons (chapons) for Christmas and New Year's dinners. I tried to make one a few years ago and it was a disaster. I think the problem was my lack of mastery over my oven. This year I decided to try again, and had a great success. Here's how I did it.

I checked Jacques Pépin's Essential Pépin and found a recipe for capon with Armagnac mushroom and cream sauce. Then I ordered a capon from our very good local butcher in Paris. Is this not gorgeous?

Uncooked capon

The butcher told me to simply cook the capon, which weighed 3-1/2 kilos (nearly 8 pounds) for 3 hours at 170 degrees celsius (355 farenheit), starting with the bird in a cold oven. Jacques' instructions were slightly different but I went with the butcher's. My only embellishment was to cook it breast up for the first hour, breast down for the second hour, and finally breast up for the third hour. It came out perfectly, with crispy skin and tender, moist and flavorful meat.

Roasted capon

For sauce I used Jacques' recipe, boiling lots of mushrooms of many varieties in chicken stock and vermouth, then adding cream, Armagnac and a cornstarch slurry at the end, then boiling it briefly. The sauce was delicious, a perfect accompaniment for the capon.

As you can see, I was crowned  LE ROI DU CHAPON by our New Year's guests.

Le Roi du Chapon

Happy New Year!

Bobby Jay

Le Pavillon, Another Daniel Boulud Success

We have recently dined at Daniel Boulud's new restaurant, le Pavillon, which is in 1 Vanderbilt, first for our 47th anniversary and then to celebrated Joan's and a friend's birthdays. Two great meals.

The menu is unusually inviting. We found it very difficult to choose among the five or so offerings in each category (hot starters, cold starters, sea entrees and land entrees), although the dessert selection was a bit more normal.

Every dish that I have had has been beautiful and delicious, from the black bass to the poached lobster in bourride, the raw hamachi and the celebratory desserts, all of which are pictured below.

Black bass

Raw hamachi

Poached lobster in bourride

Celebratory desserts

Cheese plate

The space is also very well done. While the restaurant is located in a very tall atrium, clever floating ceilings and the use of impressive plantings make the space inviting and even intimate. 

Daniel Boulud is a great chef but, more unusually, a great restauranteur.  His places are all different and most are among our go-to restaurants, from Daniel (special occasions only), to Cafe Boulud, Bar Boulud and Boulud Sud, and now le Pavillon.

I can't recommend le Pavillon highly enough.

Bobby Jay

A Somewhat Exotic Meal

My friend Nancy asked if she could cook with me sometime, and last night we finally did it.

We were only four, so I tried not to go crazy. Just some spreads, soup, a main and dessert.

I love to share the method and quasi-recipe for my ricotta, sun-dried tomato and lemon zest spread, so that was one of the hors d'oeuvres. The other was more exotic, muhammara, a walnut and roasted pepper dip from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean. Both easy and delicious, served on crispy chips that I make from soft wheat tortillas.

Ricotta and sun-dried tomato spread; muhammara

Dinner started with tanabour, an Armenian barley and yogurt soup, using the recipe from Cook's Illustrated, September-October 2021. Tartness supplied by the yogurt and chewiness from the pearled barley, a nice combination.

Tanabour yogurt and barley soup

For the main, I made the same Palestinian upside down chicken, from the Milk Street Cookbook, that I made at Passover (see earlier post). A wonderful confection of chicken thighs, cauliflower florets, eggplant and abundant middle-eastern spices.

Palestinian upside-down chicken

For dessert I made my blueberry (and raspberry) tart from Food52 Genius, but since Nance was interested in working with puff pastry, I made a puff pastry crust rather than the ususal pâte sucrée. It came out great this way, and is even easier to make.

Blueberry and raspberry tart with puff pastry shell

It's fun to cook with friends

Bobby Jay

Macarons 2022

I generally make macarons when Joan is exhibiting at an art fair, to give to customers and dealer colleagues. Not that the other dealers don't like me, but they REALLY like my macarons. Of course, there were no art fairs for a couple of years due to the pandemic, but this year's Winter Show went forward, albeit in Spring.

So back to macaron-making, too. This year I invited my friend Odette to join me in my macaron manufacture, as she has been asking me for years to help when I next made them. It was fun having the company, and the extra pair of hands was very helpful.

We made Pierre Hermé's marvelous macarons mutines, from his cleverly named book Macaron. Probably the best translation of mutine is mischievous, although it literally means rebellious; in any event I am not sure why this name.

The macarons have lots of coconut, in the shell and, combined with good chocolate and cream, in the ganache. Lord, they are good.

Macarons mutines

 We had some pastry left after making the boxes, so made two giant 2-1/2" plus) ones, one for each of us.

Jumbo macaron mutine

 Nice to have art fairs back, and nice to oblige our friends.

 Bobby Jay

Belated Passover Post

As was the case before the pandemic, I made the family seder this year. Pestilence and illness reduced our company to ten, and no one was able to bring matzoh ball soup.

We had lots of hors d'oeuvres. There was Michael Solomonov's fantastic smooth tahini from Zahav,

Michael Solomonov's hummus

my own ricotta, sun-dried tomato and lemon zest spread, gefilte fish bites made from Citarella's excellent fish, with homemade horseradish from America's Test Kitchen's DIY, bar nuts from The Union Square Cookbook and tuna tapenade from Joel Robuchon's The Complete Robuchon.

For matzoh ball soup, I went to Friedman's, a quite good Jewish deli/restaurant with numerous branches around the city. I was thrilled to find a sufficient quantity of soup, but really disappointed when I tasted it.. Weak, salty, with not great matzoh balls. I doctored it as best I could be cooking it with some chopped parsnips, dill and parsley, but to little avail. It was barely adequate.

The first main course was Palestinian upside-down chicken  (maqlubeh), in which chicken thighs are cooked with cauliflower florets, eggplant slices, tons of spices and basmati rice and almonds, which are supposed to crisp up like Persian rice. (Recipe courtesy of The Milk Street Cookbook.) It was delicious! Although I didn't get a photo, I have stolen a photo from my dinner of May 31, 2017, which will be covered subsequently.

Palestinian upside-down chicken

The second was a pretty classic seven-hour lleg of amb, with the principal recipe from Bones, by Jennifer McLagan, but with the addition of anchovies, rosemary in garlic in finger-sized holes, as suggested by Simon Hopkinson in his lovely Roast Chicken and Other Stories. Absolutely perfect, without the dryness this dish is prone to.

You can't have a seder without haroset, great on its own but also on matzoh with lots of extreme horseradish: the famous Hillel sandwich. As always, I made two kinds First, figs, date, and apples and walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds, from Judith Nathan's Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Food in France. My second was a Syrian-style dried apricot and pistachio puree that I got from Jennifer Abadi's blog, Too Good to Pass Over. Both incredibly simple and tasty.

Finally, dessert. Ginger molasses cake from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert, in homage to my late mother, who adored this cake and anything else with huge quantities of ginger. And my fresh blueberry tart (to which I add raspberries from Rose Levy Beranbaum, by way of Food52 Genius Recipes, always a hit.

Blueberry and raspberry tart

Ginger molasses cake

For post-dessert, assorted brownies and cookies made by Vicki and homemade chocolate covered matzos from Rebecca.

All in all, it was quite a feast!

Bobby Jay

Back to bread baking

Olive and walnut sourdough bread

I haven’t been making bread for nearly 18 months due to our having to move out of our apartment for four months while renovations were being done, and then our having bought a country home where we spend weekends. I have missed the thrill of home bread-baking so decided to resume, finding a new schedule that avoids weekend preparation.

I bought a lovely new book called Upper Crust: Homemade Bread the French Way, by Marie-Laure Fréchet, and thought this might offer some new opportunities; after all -- France and bread. Maybe it’s me, but my first two tries at a “tourte de meule,” a pretty basic white whole wheat sourdough, were abject failures. Lead weights, useful as a stone for olympic curling , but not fit to eat.

Pretty, but inedible tourte de meule

So I returned to my tried and true sourdough walnut and olive bread for which a use a hybrid of ????‘S levain method, as described in Chad Robertson’s brilliant Tartine Bread, and the sourdough method published by King Arthur Flour Company. Wow, nailed it the first time!

And when I sliced it several hours later, it did not disappoint: salty with a nice texture and an unctuous mouth feel.

I haven't given up on the French method book yet, but I'll try to combine the author's ideas with techniques that I know work for me.

Bobby Jay

La Rôtisserie de l"Argent: The best oeuf mayonnaise in the world

I haven't posted lately due to a sort of paralysis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. While I continued to cook, and to read about and study cooking, someohow the zest was not there as in normal times. Perhaps because I had to cook, all the time, and was unable to mix it up with dining out at our normal haunts. Particularly difficult was not getting to Paris for nearly two years. 

However . . . we did get to Paris for a few days in December, before the raging Omicron virus spooked us and caused us to leave early. Still, before we left we were able to return to one of our favorite restaurants, La Rôtisserie d'Argent (formerly Rôtisserie du Beaujolais), and found it better than ever. They have gradually raised the level of the cuisine over the years to much better than very good bistro food to quite elegant, while maintaining the casual, friendly atmosphere that has prevailed there for decades.

In two visits, one with a friend, we sampled quite a few of the restaurant's dishes -- duck several ways, pork, salad and dessert -- and all were excellent. But for me the highlight was their oeuf mayonnaise, which I had both nights and which had recently won the Championnat du Monde de l'Oeuf Mayonnaise, sponsored, of course, by the Association de Sauvegarde de l'Oeuf Mayonnaise. Only in France, the land of AAAAA andouilette (which carries the certification of the Association Amicale des Amateurs de l'Andouillette Authentique) and other organizations watching over the most traditional French foods, including cheeses and cassoulet.

What's so great about La Rôtisserie's oeuf mayo? Everything. Look at it:

 

Oeuf mayonnaise at La Rôtisserie d'Argent

perfect texture, a yolk that straddles the middle ground between hard- and medium-boiled, a yielding white, a wonderful mayonnaise with just a hint of cumin, mustard seeds cooked in a lovely balsamic vinegar and twigs of thyme, all bundled up in a glorious package.

 No wonder it was declared the best in the world! 

Oeuf mayo may not be the height of gastronomy, but there is something about being in Paris, partaking of a perfectly rendered French classic dish, that never gets old.

Bobby Jay

First Downtown Shopping in 15 Months: A Thrill

Having been fully vaccinated for eleven weeks, I finally got up the courage to take the subway today, which I had been avoiding for hard-to-define emotional reasons. My first outing took me to my favorite shopping destinations, Kalustyan's and Eataly, and I found both to be nearly the same as in pre-pandemic times. As you can see, I had pretty nice results at both places.

At Kalustyans, I was able to replenish certain spices, replacing the mediocre sumac, za'atar and cumin powder that I bought at the supermarkets with real, intense, fresh versions. And also to restock some favorites: Indian snacks, nougat, homemade preserved lemons, mango chutney and ginger pickle. Also good-quality staples like Tellicherry peppercorns, Persian pistachios and course polenta.

My haul from Kalustyan's

At Eataly, too, I returned to some old favorites.  My favorite Sicilian mandranova olive oil, porchetta, 24-month old Friulian prosciutto, Salvatore's smoked ricotta, wonderful artisanal pasta, excellent Italian jarred tuna, an interesting chocolate bar and some heirloom tomatoes.

Old favorites at Eataly

Although this was an ordinary expedition, these days ordinary is thrilling, and I had a great time. I look forward to more wonderful, normal outings in the weeks and months ahead. 

Bobby Jay

Matzoh!

I haven't posted in forever, because I've been cooking so often that I want to be done with it. I have continued to make sourdough bread about once a week, but no exciting new discoveries. Until now.

Having had some time on my hands yesterday, with guests coming for dinner tonight, I decided to bake matzohs. Searching my cookbooks with eatyourbooks.com, I came upon a recipe for Mediterranean Matzohs in Rose Levy Baranbaum's The Bread Bible.  (Rosemary and a little olive oil make them Mediterranean, I guess.) Not hard to do, and came out looking very artisanal and tasting quite good. 

Bobby Jay

Bread Baking in Strange Times (Pain de mic) - Part II

As the pandemic has proceeded, I have continued to bake bread until recently, when Joan and I vacated our apartment to permit some fairly extensive renovations to proceed.

My last post ended with my Tartine/King Arthur Olive bread of June 19. But I have persevered, and present, in excruciating detail probably, my results of the summer.

 On June 25, I made walnut bread, using Tartine's proportions and techniques with King Arthur's sourdough method. A tasty,  beautifully risen loaf.

Tartine/King Arthur walnut loaf

 I repeated this, again to good effect, on July 2.

Tartine/King Arthur walnut loaf

Then I went back to the olive loaf that had been so successful in June. Still delicious.

Tartine/King Arthur olive bread

Next I thought I'd be clever and do a hazelnut bread instead of walnut. It was OK but not a rich or interesting as the walnut, even though I added a tablespoon of hazelnut oil.

Tartine/King Arthur/ Bobby Jay hazelnut bread

Next I discovered the perfect bread: olive walnut bread using Tartine's proportions and technique with King Arthur's easier method. I made this bread twice, on July 27 and August 2. It is salty, olive-y, nutty and rich, all at the same time. As good as any bread I have eaten!

Tartine/King Arthur olive walnut bread July 27, 2020

 

 

 

 

Tartine/King Arthur olive walnut bread August 2, 2020

Next, I went back to an old favorite on August 8: sesame bread, again using the Tartine formula and the King Arthur method. A beautiful loaf with lots of sesame taste, almost as good as She-Wolf Bakery's version.

Tartine/King Arthur sesame bread

Then I bought a new book: New World Sourdough, by Bryan Ford. A fun read, with a lot of interesting breads from South America. I decided to make his "toasty seed sour," which contains sesame seeds, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and rolled oats. I used a hybrid of Ford's method and King Arthur's and got a good, but not great, loaf. I found the many seeds not to product distinctive flavors, just a nice seedy mix.

Bryan Ford "toasty seed sour"

Enough experimentation: I determined to bake bread for our cousins, whom we were going to meet in a park in Connecticut, as well as one for Joan and me, so I used the King Arthur method, but made with 1000 grams of flour rather than 600. I went to my tried and true olive walnut bread, and nailed it again on August 28:

Tartine/King Arthur olive walnut loaves

I returned to sesame on September 3, making my best ever version of this bread, again using a hybrid of Tartine's and King Arthur's methods. Light texture with seriously deep sesame taste.

Tartine/King Arthur sesame bread

For what I expected to be my last bread of the summer, I went to my absolute favorite one last time: olvie walnut bread. It did not disappoint.

Tartine/King Arthur olive walnut bread

 It turned out I was wrong, though, and was able to get in another bread before leaving our apartment. So I went with one of my favorite Tartine breads -- semolina with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds -- and tried using the King Arthur method. Oops! This was not a great success, as I did not make the proper adjustments for the trickier semolina flour. The taste was great, the crust was thick and dark, but the bread was too dense, almost like a dense cake.

Tartine/King Arthur semolina bread with 3 seeds

So that's it for my pandemic bread baking, at least until we get back into our apartment, Christmas at the earliest. In the meantime, I content myself with buying the truly superb breads made by Brooklyn's She-Wolf Bakery, which I find at the Sunday open air market surrounding the Museum of Natural History.

Bobby Jay

Bread Baking in Strange Times (Pain de mic)

Tartine/King Arthur Olive Loaf June 19, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the attendant lockdown, has been a crazy experience. I have been cooking almost every night, and we've been home for lunch, too, so in three months I have done nearly a year's cooking. Which I like and which keeps me sane.

Like many other people, I have been baking. Notwithstanding a few cakes and cookies, this means BREAD!

Luckily, since yeast was not available in the markets, I use levain (Tartine Bakery's version of sourdough) and a very slow-rising technique. King Arthur, my former go-to place for starter, was out, so I got starter from Breadtopia on line, and it is a very vibrant starter from the moment you get it. I feed it regularly, using the Tartine formula of 50/50 bread and whole wheat flours. And that's how I started my pandemic baking.

After She-Wolf Bakery came to the Upper West Side Sunday farmers' market, I virtually stopped baking bread, since there's was better and all I had to do was to pay for it. However, this changed when the pandemic arrived, and I decided to go back to baking my own.

To get my bread-baking chops going, I started with Tartine's

Basic country bread.

Country loaf April 3, 2020

More than once.

Country loaf April 7, 2020

Not surprisingly, the second effort was more successful.

Then I moved on to some of Tartine's more advanced breads:

Oat porridge bread:

Oat porridge bread April 13, 2020

A good-tasting, gorgeous bread, but heavy and a bit flat.

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds:

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds April 20, 2020

One of my all-time favorites, but a little flat. My technique was not quite there yet.

Country rye bread:

Country rye loaf April 26, 2020

Farro porridge bread:

Farro porridge bread May 1, 2020

Then back to my favorite

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds May 8, 2020

Success!

While wandering around on King Arthur's website, I came across a recipe for sourdough bread made in a way similar to Tartine's but with easier timing. You make the dough the night before (it has to rest and be folded once an hour for three hours before spending 8-48 hours in the fridge). On baking day, you just shape it, plop it into your covered iron bread baking pan (I use a Lodge Combo, as recommended by Tartine), wait three hours for it to come to room temperature and bake.

King Arthur's sourdough bread:

King Arthur's sourdough bread May 14, 2020

And it was good. Lighter than Tartine's and almost as tasty.

Now a detour. A high school friend's daughter, Beryl Forman, sent me the recipe for her well-publicized olive loaf.

Beryl Forman's olive loat (modified) May 26, 2020

Beryl uses the regular oven with a few sprays of water, rather than the Dutch oven method, to keep the moisture level right, but I opted for a hybrid of the Tartine and King Arther methods. A very nice loaf but not as olive-y or salty as I would have liked.

Then back to Tartine. Yet another go at

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds:

Semolina bread with fennel, sesame and poppy seeds June 6, 2020

Now I determined to use Tartine's formula for olive bread, which uses more olives and in bigger pieces than Beryl's (two cups mixed green and black olives, quite coarsely chopped), but with the King Arthur sourdough method.

Tartine/King Arthur sourdough olive bread:

Tartine/King Arthur sourdough olive loaf June 13, 2020

It was great, lots of salty olive and olive oil taste with a lovely crumb. Just a tiny bit flat, though. So I tried again today, and nailed it! See the first picture at the top. And the recipe below.

Next I'm going to try the same thing but with toasted walnuts instead of olives. Will report back.

Bobby Jay
 

No-knead Sourdough [Olive] Bread

(King Arthur and Tartine for olives and/or walnuts

Make one big loaf
Ingredients		Directions
·       1 cup (227g) ripe (fed) sourdough starter ·       1 3/4 cups (397g) lukewarm water ·       5 cups (602g) King Bread Flour ·       1 tablespoon (18g) salt ·       Optional: 1 cup cured black and 1 cup green olives, coarsely chopped and/or chopped toasted walnuts ·       2 teaspoons diastatic malt powder, optional for a more golden color and stronger rise (I don’t use) Day 1 time 0:00 1       Weigh your flour; or measure it by gently spooning it into a cup, then sweeping off any excess. 2       Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl, or a large (6-quart) food-safe plastic bucket. 3       Mix and stir everything together to make a sticky, rough dough. If you have a stand mixer, beat at medium speed with the paddle attachment for 30 to 60 seconds. Or just stir with a big spoon or dough whisk until everything is combined. Day 1 time 0:00– 3:00 4       Leave the dough in the bucket or 6-quart bowl, cover it with the bucket’s lid or a piece of plastic wrap, and let rise for 1 hour. 5       Gently pick up the dough and fold it over on itself several times, cover it again, and let it rise for another hour. 6       Repeat step 5 and place bread in bucket/bowl  in the fridge for 8-48 hours		Day 2 time 0:00 7       When you're ready to make bread, turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface, and shape it into a rough ball. Leave the dough seam-side up, cover it, and let it rest on a floured surface for 15 minutes. Day 2 time 0:15 8       Next, shape the dough to fit the vessel in which you’ll bake it: a 13” log for a long covered baker, such as KAs glazed long covered baker; or a large boule (round) for a round baker or Dutch oven. Place the shaped dough into the lightly greased base of the baker and cover it with the lid. Let the loaf warm to room temperature and rise; this should take about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. It won't appear to rise upwards that much, but will relax and expand. Day 2 time 2:15 9       With a rack positioned in the middle, start preheating the oven to 500°F one hour before you’re ready to bake. Day 2 time 3:15 10     Just before baking, dust the loaf with a fine coat of flour and use a lame or a sharp knife to make one or several 1/2” deep slashes through its top surface. If you're baking a long loaf, one arched slash down the loaf lengthwise is nice, or if baking a round, a crosshatch or crisscross pattern works well. 11     Cover the baker with its lid and place it in the oven. Reduce the oven temperature to 450°F and bake the bread for 45 minutes. Day 2 time 4:00 12     Remove the cover of the baker and bake the bread for 10 to 15 minutes longer, until the bread is deep golden brown and crusty, and a digital thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf reads at least 210°F. Day 2 time 4:10-4:15 13     Remove the bread from the oven and transfer it to a rack to cool completely. VARIATION: ADD 2 CUPS COARSLEY CHOPPED GREEN AND CURED BLACK OLIVES AND/0R TOASTED WALNUTS AFER STEP 4.