vengroff
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Posts posted by vengroff
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I originally had a table on the 29th and got squeezed out by the cancellation. But I subsequently got ahold of a single seat reservation at the bar. Since the person I was going with couldn't make the Monday date it worked out just fine. I'm not sure who else will be at the bar tonight, but I tend to meet interesting foodies there whenver I go.
I'll post a report afterwards.
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Those pastries look beautiful... the photo of that pain chocolate cross-section is mouth watering.
Thanks jrt. You're not alone. Those and the palmiers were the biggest hits.
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The second batch included the chocolate ones. Here are some of them, just out of the oven.
Unfortunately, I placed some of the pain chocolate just a tad too close together. I had to pull them apart, which left me with some unbrowned ragged edges, like the one on the top right.
The ones that were properly spaced came out fine, though. Like this guy
The croissants came out similarly.
I may have mached the edges a bit too much when cutting them, because the layers were not externally visible, but they were there in the inside. I'll have to work on that. I may also have let some of the fat melt as things got just a tad warmer than I wanted during one of the folding steps.
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I didn't get a whole lot of shots of the prep phase or the folding process, but I have a few of the croissants at the proofing stage.
This is what they look like when they have just been shaped and egg washed and are starting to proof. The egg wash tends to absorb during proofing, and so they get a second egg wash just before they go in the oven.
Here's a batch of eight, just at the beginning of the proofing phase.
That parchment paper is a lifesaver when it comes to cleanup time. For the croissants its not so bad, but for the palmiers, forget it.
Finally, here are the same eight just out of the oven. I don't have a shot of them after proofing, but they are closer to the final size than the original size.
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Here's another cross section, this time the pain chocolate. This were hands down my favorite of the bunch. Next time I'll make more of these and less plain croissants. Not that the plain croissants were bad or anything...
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Next up, the palmiers I made from the rest of the puff pastry. I misspoke in my last post when I said I had no pre-bake shots of the puff pastry. I don't have one of the turnovers, but I do have one of a palmier.
Once you've made the puff pastry, palmiers are dead easy. Just some sugar and another book fold like you've been doing all along and you are good to go.
The amazing thing is how they puff sideways in the oven. A cold boring little slice of dough like this one
becomes one of these crispy carmelized little cookies.
You kind of take it on faith that all those layers are in there somewhere after the repeated turning. It's great to see the payoff when they actually puff out.
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I don't have any pre-bake shots of the puff pastry, but I got a few shots of the cherry turnovers that illustrate the decent performance I got out of it. I was worried I would have problems because I let things get a little too warm during the second turn, but it worked out reasonably well in the end.
First, here's the plate top down.
And now, the goods up close. I think the filling leakage has to result in a deduction of technical points, but on the other hand that little hint of what's inside can be quite alluring.
The previous shot and this one both also show the glossy surface I got from a wash of cream and a sprinkling of sugar just before they went in the oven.
More bubbling layers. I was worried about steam generation given the lower moisture butter, but at a 1:1 butter to flour ratio things bubbled up nicely. In fact, when I opened the oven for a quick inspection I found it completely full of steam. Some of the bubbles between layers can be seen along this edge.
Finally, here's a cross section right through one of the fat bing cherries in the filling. They were quite good for canned. I strained them, reduced the juice down with some additional sugar and just a tiny bit of corn starch to thicken it up.
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Here's an overview of what I made, pastrywise.
In the center are pain chocolate. Clockwise from the upper left under the glass we have cherry turnovers, brioche a tete, palmiers, and finally croissant at the lower left.
Three doughs were involved, a traditional laminted yeasted dough for the croissants and pain chocolate, a blitz puff pastry for the turnovers and palmiers, and a rich brioche for the brioche a tete. The recipes are adapted from Chef Gabe at Culinary Communion. The main change was that I bumped up the butter in the laminated doughs to account for the lower moisture content of the Plugra I was using.
Here are some photos of the individual presentations. I'll get into some close ups and behind the scenes shots in later posts.
Croissants
Pain Chocolate
Cherry Turnovers
Palmiers
Brioche
Stay tuned, there's more to come...
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Brunch and an easter egg hunt/cat chase with our 3 year old niece. I plan to attempt croissants, and I'll make some brioche as well. We'll have smoked salmon and eggs, with additional sides to be determined by what looks good at the market tomorrow.
So this ended up turning into a mini Iron Chef challenge with the featured ingredient being PLUGRA BUTTER!
I went through two pounds of the stuff, and made croissants, pain chocolate, brioche, cherry turnovers, and palmiers. It's all out of the oven in advance of the guests arriving, which is a record for me. Pictures to follow later in the day.
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Anyone know the name of the baker at Cafe Besalu?
James Miller
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For us non-subscribers, when does this hit the newstands. Didn't see it when I checked this morning.
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Brunch and an easter egg hunt/cat chase with our 3 year old niece. I plan to attempt croissants, and I'll make some brioche as well. We'll have smoked salmon and eggs, with additional sides to be determined by what looks good at the market tomorrow.
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I agree with Bruce. If you make plans to go to a small place like Harvest Vine that does not take reservations, you are putting yourself at the mercy of a very unpredicatable waiting process. You may get a table in 30 minutes or it may take 2 hours. Diners lingering over coffee is just one of many factors that can influence how long the wait is on any given night. If you are not prepared to deal with that level of unpredictability, then you should make a reservation to dine somewhere else. Or go early on a weeknight, when they usually have open tables with no wait.
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If there is a particular product you are looking for, you can search for it via their website here: http://www.liq.wa.gov/services/brandsearch.asp
I find it to be an invaluable tool.
-Robert
I looked for a couple of moderately obscure items and found them, but when I checked store availability it said 6th and Lenora only. So as a retail consumer I guess I'm just out of luck.
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I should have said more about what I did with the non-sponge part of the dough. My instructor's recipe calls for creaming the butter, then mixing in the sugar and salt, and then 1/3 of the eggs. This is followed by 1/3 of the flour, 1/3 more of the eggs, 1/3 more of the flour, 1/3 more of the eggs, and then the final 1/3 of the flour. In between additions, the dough is mixed on medium speed until fully combined. This gets some, but perhaps not all the development of artisanbaker's method. The picture above is after all the eggs and flour have gone in, but the sponge has not been added. The flour I used was 11.5% gluten.
As far as portioning, I used 35g (total for the single piece that become the head and body) for an 8cm diameter mold. This is a lot less than the 50g + 10g in the recipe on the link. What size pan is that for?
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Since it's more about baking than the specific class I took last month, I'll repost the images here. These are brioche I made at home after taking a class at the Culiary Communion in West Seattle.
The process began the night before. The first step was to make the sponge from warm milk, yeast, and flour. Here's how it looks after about 30 minutes of fermenting.
The rest of the dough, consisting of butter, eggs, sugar, salt, and more flour is mixed seperately. Here it is just before addition of the sponge. It's already soft and wet, and the sponge will make it more so.
After mixing in the sponge, the dough has to ferment for an hour. Here it is before fermenting
And here it is after fermenting, in the same bowl
From there it was into the fridge to cool, firm up, and expand just a bit more overnight. Fast forward to this morning and the shaping. I don't have pictures of the process itself, since I only have two hands. Basically one forms a ball as if for a roll, then rolls a pinch into in so that you have the main body and the head formed, and connected by a thin strand of dough. Then you flatten the body, push a hole with your finger, stretch it open a pit and then pass the head up through it from below. The two piecese never seperate. Here's what they look like immediately after shaping.
Once shaped they are given an egg wash and them left to proof at room temperature for about an hour. Here they are just washed and starting to proof.
Now fully proofed they are ready for the oven
Twenty minutes later they are golden brown on the outside and creamy yellow on the inside.
Just in time for brunch.
As far as what might have gone wrong with yours, I'm wondering about whether or how long you proofed them in the pans before baking. In my case it was about an hour, at which point they nearly filled the pans. Not only were they larger, but they had come up to room temperature.
I shaped the dough when it was very cold from the fridge. I couldn't have done it at room temperature because the dough was so soft and wet.
I may make these again next weekend. If I do I'll make an effort to get some photos of the shaping technique.
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I'm thinking a bit further south and not quite so little.
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We ate at Crush Thursday night. When it comes to newly opened restaurants, I usually prefer to give them a month or so to iron out the kinks before I any really serious assesment. But in the case of Crush, I think it's safe to say that they hit the ground running. There is an air of casual self-confidence about the place that gives you the feeling they have been at this for years, not just two weeks.
Crush's two small dining rooms are quite stunning really, all dressed in modernist white on white. The curves of the Panton chairs are echoed in the undulating bar that seperates one dining room from the open kitchen. Waves of china that serve as bread plates sconces of multilayered translucent glass continue the motif. I might drop the dimmers a notch or two to show off the candles on each table, but other than that the rooms are very impressive.
We began with domestic paddlefish caviar and creme fraiche atop a trio of silver dollar potato pancakes. It's hard to go wrong with this classic combo. Our other starter was a grilled asparagus and goat cheese salad with assorted greens and toasted hazelnuts. It was topped with a pair of crisp salty prosciutto chips and dressed in balsamic vinegar.
We also started on a bottle of 2002 Chehalem Three Vineyards Pinot that we really enjoyed. Crush's stemware is Reidel across the board, and the wine was priced reasonably. I hate to harp on a certain little place down on 12th, but if Crush can run a wine program this way, why can't you?
For one of our mains, we had the lamb chops, tongue in cheek, with broad white beans and brocolli rabe. The tounge in cheek of this dish dish is quite literally that of the lamb, braised and tossed with the beans and rabe. The mixture forms the base on top of which a pair of medium rare double cut chops are crossed. The paried cuts and preparations made for a very interesting dish. All together it ends up being a sizeable portion, more than I expect from a restaurant of this genre, but that said I still found myself finishing it.
The other main dish we tried was braised short ribs with Oregon truffles, gnocci, and baby carrots. The earthy aroma of truffles filled the air even before our waiter placed the dish on the table. The reduction sauce was full and complex, down to the fine dice of smokey bacon that was at its base. The short ribs themselves were fork tender without falling apart into a mush, which is just how I like them. Again the portions was large, so much so that half of it turned into a very satisfying lunch the next day.
Four or five cheeses are offered, each paired with fruit or similar accompaniment. I had Pierre Robert with a spiced red wine jelly. For dessert, we had a trio of rustic doughnuts--cake beignets is really the best description I have for them--with a spoon of jam and a demitasse of espresso dipping sauce.
The restaurant was about half full when we were there, which is respectable given the triple whammy of being new, competing with 25 for $25, and being located on a relatively obscure stretch of Madison midway between the commercial heart of Capitol Hill and the cluster of established restaurants deeper in Madison Valley. But I see good things ahead for this place. The neighborhood is poised to blossom, and they are have ambitious, but measured plans for expansion. These include al fresco dining in the back yard this summer, and the addition of an upstairs dining room in the fall. I wish them the best of luck and enthusiastically welcome them to the neighborhood.
Pricing details: starters $5-18, entrees $15-25, desserts $7, wine $25-100 with a sweet spot around $40-50.
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When baking I always look for recipies that specify salt (and other dry ingredients) by weight rather than volume. If you weigh the salt you get the same amount of NaCl in your recipe regardless of the size and shape of the grains. Unless the salt is exceptionally coarse it tends to all disolve in the course of ordinary mixing.
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Vengroff, your brioche is beautiful. The dough looks so golden - is that a trick of the light, or was it really that color? And your description of forming the tete is hilarious - basically, brioche a tete has its head up its ass? I can't wait to try that at home!
Thanks.
The images are very close to the actual color. They were only very lightly photoshoped for levels and contrast. All tha butter and eggs lead to a very rich golden dough. As for the shaping techniquge, I never though of it in exactly your terms, but basically you are right.
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Mr. Toast, for the Camembert what did you do to keep the humidity are the requisite high level for aging? I'd love to attempt to make some, but the critical need for very careful temperature and humidty control has dissuaded me from trying.
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I was pleasantly surprised the one time I ate at Oceanaire. At first I didn't understand the place, and then I realized that they are trying to cater to two different audiences, and are rare in the sense that I think they do a good job of serving both.
On the one hand, there is the crowd that expects to be very well fed at this price point. I mean big guys still take a doggie bag home kind of well fed. Their apps, some of the mains, and certainly all the sides I saw were huge--towers of shellfish on ice, big hunks of simply grilled halibut and swordfish, mountains of fries, and platters of asparagus with hollandaise. It's like a solid midwestern-style steakhouse, just nix the steak and add fish instead.
On the other hand, there are a handful of more carefully crafted dishes, and certainly some wines, that appeal to those looking for something a little more interesting, a little less straightforward, in their dining experience. The truffled cod crosparantoux described sounds like one of them. The Portugese seafood stew is another. When someone at my table ordered it, the waiter explained the dish to make sure we understood it was tomato based, because a lot of people in Seattle aren't interested in that. Having had similar dishes elsewhere, we explained that we understood and wanted to try it. The seafood in the stew was all perfectly cooked, which isn't the easiest thing to do given the different cooking times required of different components, and the sauce had a nice spicy zing. It was well executed, and certainly satisfying.
I would certainly go again, perhaps saving it specifically for a group of mixed tastes and appetites. If half your crowd would be uncomfortable at Lark or Union and the other half would be aghast at Ruth's Chris, head for Oceanaire. I'm not sure where else in Seattle would do a better job in such circumstances.
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I've been watching their progress as I live nearby. I'm looking forward to giving them a try. There's a cluster of decent competition just a few blocks down the hill, but that may also help them out with passing traffic.
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The recipe cards are copyrighted by Culinary Communion, so I shouldn't post it here without their permission. But if you email them they might be able to help you out. Or if you take a class and ask nicely I bet they'd through a copy of the recipe in with the ones for whatever class you took.
Cooks and Books Visiting Chef Dinners
in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Dining
Posted
Thanks for the great summary, Really Nice.
Don't forget the gougeres with the hors d'œuvres course. I love gougeres. I also thought it was really clever to start with them and end with the profiteroles. They were like matching bookends to the meal.
I really enjoyed the rabbit terrine. Rarely has anything that shared a plate with Armandino's cured meats ever stood up to their quality, but this rabbit did. I think they nailed it on both the taste and the texture. Any coarser grind would have felt rustic, and smoother too refined for bistro dining. This managed to bring together a bit of both in one beautiful pink bacon-wrapped loaf. One of my fellow diners mentioned that he could really eat a lot of the rabbit. I would have to agree. If I had a loaf at home it would disappear quickly, whether I had guests or not.
The soup was my second favorite course. It was so much lighter and fresher than its appearance suggested. It looked like split pea soup but had a grassy aroma and a light fluffy texture. Swirling in the creme fraice gave it just the tart little counterpoint it needed. Jeff Cerciello said he never decants soups, but he got a real kick out of seeing the whole meal served in more formal surroundings than normal.
I agree the portions were large, especially the steak. Plus the fact that the first two courses were really three courses each made for a huge meal. I expected a lot, but not quite this much. Luckily I had only had a cup of soup for lunch so I was prepared. The only thing that really felt excessive to me was the egg on the asparagus. There was just so much of it, especially after the, admitedly very enjoyable, Russian eggs two courses earlier.
I don't remember the specific wines so much as I remember the experience of enjoying each with the course it came with. The only exception was the first course, which presented a pretty unique challenge. Charcuiterie, oysters, and a zippy lentil salad are tough to match with one wine. I was happy to consume my glass with the oysters and let the other two dishes stand on their own.
Ethan and his crew did a fantastic job putting the meal together. The execution was really flawless across the board. They closed down the kitchen the day before and spent the whole time gathering and prepping ingredients for the meal.
One other interesting thing I found out was that most of this book tour consists of appearances at bookstores and interviews at local radio stations. There are only a couple of meals like this on the tour. We were lucky to have one of them here.
Thanks to Thomas and Jeff for joining us, Judy and Kim for arranging the event, Hans for brilliantly managing his way through a difficult reservation and cancellation process, Michelle for taking such good care of us, and the entire Union team for a truly remarkable evening.