Chris Hennes

Very appropriate here in Oklahoma, anyway!

I recently made a video about Cassandra Reeder's recipe for Turkish delight in her cookbook "The Geeky Chef Cookbook." It met with mixed reviews here at the library (see reaction shots in the video...) -- it is a gelatin-based recipe which gives something more like a rose-flavored Jello than the more candy-like texture I associate with Turkish delight.

In the non-sparkling realm, I also picked up a bottle of Ensédune Cabernet Franc. I wasn't all that impressed with this bottle, it felt a little "generic white" to me. Some light berry notes, some light floral notes, but mostly not that interesting. Fortunately, the environs made up for it (we stayed the night at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma... what passes for an exciting vacation in 2020).

Yes, it was indeed the Gruet that I was thinking of, my local store even had it chilled: It's quite dry, with good mineral character and minimal fruit. I think it was $16 at my local store, and I've run across it at restaurants in this part of the country in the sub-$40 range, so I think it's a really excellent value if you are looking for fizz.

The label isn't ringing any bells, but it's pretty generic. A search doesn't yield any other promising results, so I'd guess that's the one I'm remembering.

I seem to recall a sparkling brut rosé out of New Mexico that I've enjoyed several times in the past. Gruet, maybe? I'll have to check to see if my local wine shop has it.

No, just a normal propane model.

113 grams

I'm making another cooking video, this time about a chocolate cake from The Geeky Chef Cookbook. And the frosting recipe is basically garbage: 1 stick of butter to 165 grams (1 3/4 cups!!!!) of cocoa powder. So in the video I need to say something along the lines of "A normal frosting recipe has more like XX cocoa powder per stick of butter." So can I get a quick spot-check here? For your preferred cocoa-powder-based frosting recipe, how much cocoa powder per stick of butter? I don't actually know how much I added in the end, the cameras were rolling so I just added cocoa and sugar until it tasted good!

I was looking for something with a good mineral character that I hadn't had in a long time (if ever... I don't know if I've had the Château Vitallis), and wound up with this: It was a little more full-bodied that I normally seek in a "summer white" but overall it was delicious.

A couple of nights ago I had planned on making pizza, but sort of switched tack midstream, and wound up with... whatever this thing is. A pizza crust with hummus, feta, and olives and some olive oil. That batch of hummus turned out really well (it's flavored with cured sumac), so overall the creation was pretty tasty.

This is the first batch of dough I've made with the Caputo (red bag) -- up to this point I'd just been using the King Arthur I normally use for bread. Alas, I also used cornmeal to prevent sticking (I normally just use flour), so that's one variable too many: the crust was certainly decent, but I need to practice with it a bit to get it dialed in, I think. Toppings are just low-moisture mozzarella, basil, and whole grape tomatoes blitzed in the food processor with some salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

I'm back to playing around with grilling technique. On this one I hit the top with a Searzall after putting the toppings on. Overall I think it's a good strategy.

Yeah, I think I'll stick with something along the lines of a Sauv Blanc for this first meeting. I like them dry and minerally: I might use this "meeting" as an opportunity to try something I haven't had before, so it's time to read some shelf tags...

It probably won't solve your underlying problem, but check that spelling: it's one "g" and two "r"s. Siegerrebe. No hits here at my usual wine store.

This does sound fun - I'm in favor of weeknights, and while I like asynchronous discussion here in a topic, I could do Zoom instead if that's the way it rolls. It's tough to work across a lot of timezones, though.

This week's baking project at work was Soylent Green, from Cassandra Reeder's book The Geeky Chef. The book is a lot of fun, but I have to say that the crackers got sort of mixed reviews. Must have been missing an ingredient...

The grains are cooked as normal, then pressure-cooked (typically in a canning jar) along with a small amount of sugar, butter, and baking soda. This causes the grains to caramelize (well, "Maillardize" I guess, if that's a word...). One of my favorite inclusions is pressure-caramelized rye berries, but I've done it to many different grains to good effect.

Obviously along the same lines as the pastrami on rye I posted about a couple of weeks ago, here is homemade Wagyu short rib pastrami, juniper sauerkraut, and mustard, on the Modernist Bread pretzel rolls I made yesterday. I toasted the split roll in butter and then heated the pastrami and kraut through, served hot. Phenomenal.

Chokecherries have only been mentioned a few times here over the years: every now and again someone casually mentions a chokecherry syrup, or wine, or jelly, or sauce. There's even a mention of a chokecherry grenadine. I'm on the hunt for chokecherry recipes in general, but especially those that might follow a different path than what seems to be the most common "basically syrup" approach. I've gleaned a bit of inspiration from @gfron1's Acorns and Cattails (maybe riffing on his pate de fruit), but I'm wondering about any potential savory or savory-ish applications. Or unusual things: pickles, hot sauce, etc. Has anyone played around with these things? I've got a dozen or so bushes behind the library I work at.

Pretzels: Alternate Shapes Today's project was to experiment with the alternative shape ideas Volume 5 has for pretzels. I made one of each, plus a couple of normal pretzel-shaped pretzels. Overall I thought the braided one was the most successful, but truth be told I'm partial to the more traditional pretzel shape if you're not trying to use it as a bun or something. These are the Modernist pretzels, with the post-bake lye dip.

Isn't that exactly what adding ingredients is supposed to do? Take a dish that needs "something else" and adds that "something"?

Tonight's pizza is a bechamel sauce with spinach, mozzarella di bufala, and ricotta. A bit of redemption after last night's sad attempt, this was delicious. The spinach was sauteed and then tossed with black pepper and red pepper flakes. The bechamel is the Modernist recipe.

I'm just a bit under 5", which is pretty close to my oven's "sweet spot" as calculated by Modernist Cuisine.

So basically, they had outsourced the cookbook to someone and didn't bother to make sure anyone had secured the rights to anything at all. Good thing they don't print the things! It's a lot easier to take down a PDF file than recall a bunch of boxes loaded with copyright violations.