Norm Matthews

Through the KC Star newspaper I have been getting free NYT recipes. Yesterday was one titled American Itallian Meatballs. It had ricotta and Romano cheese as well as parsley, garlic and egg. Cherlie said it was good but liked our regular recipe better. I made two loaves of French bread this morning. One went to make garlic toast for today and plans for tomorrow is to use the other to make Bahn Mi sandwiches.

@Tropicalsenior I enjoyed the first video a lot. What I liked the most was number 7 "Sourdough should" Like people telling you what sour should be or else it isn't "real" sourdough. I think @MaryIsobel should watch it too as it addresses "my sourdough died" as probably a mistaken diagnosis of the reality of the sourdough condition. The one on preferments left me more confused about what it is and if it ever isn't something, if you know what I mean. I want to keep the bake wth Jack so I can watch the other episodes..

@Tropicalsenior Thank you. I will look at the videos later today

My son and I went to a Cuban restauant a couple days ago. He wanted to order a Creole Lobster dish for us to share but changed his mind when he found out it was $60.00. He ordered a Cuban sandwich and I ordeered aa appitizer of three empanadas. We shared both. While we were waiting, he looked up the lobster recipe on his phone and asked me if I could make it with lobster and shrimp. I said I would and made it yesterday

@Tropicalsenior Wow! Your breads look very good. I have not been able to get good slash marks on my only-sourdough starter breads. I did not know the term was preferment. I just called it aged yeast. A long time ago I read that commercial yeast cannot reproduce itself as the hybrid it was made, and will revert back to wild yeast if kept alive by repeated feedings. I don't know if that is as true with newer instant yeast or not. When someone gets some sourdough starter from me, I tell them "it's not a pet, it's ok if it dies. It isn't hard to start another one. I have not been in touch with other sourdough bakers before now. I didn't realize there are so many of us. Up to now it has just been trial and error for me.

@ElsieDKAF used those measurements by volume. I used those too until last month when I visited more recent sites to get some different recipes. They say to use equal parts by weight and those measures by volume are fairly equal by weight. ( I don't imagine a pioneer woman in a sod hut on the prairie used a scale to get weight exactly down to the gram) I like the consistency of that mix better. The flour depends on your taste. AlaMoi used buckwheat. That sounds good. I tend to use all purpose flour because it is neutral compared to others and you can use other flours in your recipe with it if you want something different. I did use instant or rapid rise yeast but now I am trying to develop my skills to handle making more varied recipes using just the starter. In the future, if I need to make bread for an occasion and i absolutely need it done it a couple of hours, I will use the recipe with instant yeast added. I use the starter for the taste and the yeast for dependability. Come to think of it, the two new recipes I tried, used starter and used baking soda and baking powder for the levening. Isn't that more or less the same thing?

@haresfur and others, I did not expect people to want to copy me. I expected a heated discussion calling me names and decrying my methods. I have read that some bakers age their yeast on a regular basis. It gives the bread it makes a more complex flavor. It is not real sourdough but to me it does resemble sourdough very much. I did not mention the details of aging yeast but you should use 1 cup of dechlorinated water at room temperature, 1 1/2 cup flour and 2 tsp. yeast. Every day pour out half and add back the amount of water and flour you discarded, and in three or four days you will have yeast aged enough to use in a sourdough recipe. If you use just flour and water, without yeast, it will start to ferment on its own from natural wild yeast that is present everywhere, in about a week or two and you will have real sourdough starter. Using commercial yeast is a quck start way and some people will tell you it isn't real sourdough but I can't tell much, if any difference and using it with the addition of store-bought yeast will give you a good tasting loaf of bread and be more predictable. @Maison Rustique The first sourdough I got in the mail was dehydrated and it revived well. If you did not use high heat to dry it, it should revive and be as good as before. I kept it alive for sevral years and refrigerated without feeding it very often it when I did not plan to use it again for a while. You can also freeze sourdough starter. Just don't get it hot.

Not copper. The bread pan have is steel. The pictured one was from King Arthur, but I bet you can find one on Amazon for less

@ElsieD Maybe you could try the recipe called King Arthur Flour Rustic Sourdough Bread. It is very reliable and I didn't attempt to keep sourdough going in the last year. What I did was to mix equal amounts of water and flour with a two teaspoons of commercial yeast, feed it for two or three days then use that "aged yeast" in place of actual sourdough in the recipe. It makes good bread. I bake mine on a double French loaf pan and brush them with egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds just before they ot into the oven.PS that recipe also uses store bought yeast to assure a quick and good rise without relying on the sourdough or aged yeast for anything but flavor.

Thank you. Your post made me realize that I forgot to post the recipes for today on the blog. They are there now.

I thought I had been making sourdough bread for around forty years. I thought. Maybe I was fooling myself. The recipe was called King Arthur Flour Rustic Sourdough bread. It says it is sourdough bread and it is from King Arthur Flour for goodness sake. But here is the the problem. The ingredients are sourdough starter, flour, water, salt, and sugar and yeast. Yes store bought yeast. I read somewhere years ago that you can make sourdough starter using store bought yeast because it is a hybrid and cannot reproduce itself in its hybrid form but will revert back to its original wild yeast form. I had heard that when commercial bakeries made sourdough, they used the starter for flavor and regular yeast for dependability. Now I don't know if that is still true today as it might have been a while ago before fast rising yeast was developed. I found conflicting opinions on whether or not that is cheating. If I have sinned, forgive me. I want start doing more stuff with my sourdough starter besides the same loaf I have made since forever. It was easy, dependable and everyone, I mean everyone likes it. Now that sourdough has become popular, there is more information about it out there and also the recipes are easier to find. So I started fermenting flour and water to get 100% wild yeast. I made three starters. One with whole wheat flour, one with AP flour and one with rye flour. They all started and I grew them all for a while. I ended up keeping the rye starter but have been feeding it with AP flour since then, so now it is just white flour starter. In the pictures, the round loaf and the French bread loaf are the same sourdough recipes I have always used but without any yeast other that what was grown in the new starter. The recipe is one cup starter, 1 1/2 C. water, 2 teaspoons saltr, 1 Tablespoon sugar and about 5 cups of bread flour. I say about because, since everything else was measured by volume, 5 cups isn't always exactly enough. This time the dough was a little wetter and stickier than normal which means it had higher hydration and so the air bubbles are a little bigger than before. The round loaf was baked in a preheated cast iron Dutch oven. The recipes for the sourdough apple fritter bread and the sour dough pancakes with the notes and that came with them are at my blog. I am not sure I am allowed to post them here. I think the fritter bread would be improved with the addition of chopped pecans. The blog address is at the bottom of the page. I welcome your thought and comments.

I was going to make these chicken thighs with a garllic and lime butter sauce, but I opened the package as I was getting ready to make it, I discovered that I was given boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead so I had to change plans. Both recipes are together on my blog. This one needed a crispy skin and we had it with baby bok choy, snow peas and rice. The other one was sauteed with wine and vegetables.

We had Arroz con Pollo for dinner. Charlie loves anything with chicken and rice.

@rotuts Thanks again. If I ever see it again I certainly will. I don't see flat iron steaks very much any more and they are good too.

@rotuts Thanks for the info. I do not remember if it looked like that and can't tell from the pictures but it was very tender except for one area so they probably were blade steaks. It can be hard for me to tell which steaks cut from the chuck can be good or tough and even harder when the butcher gives them some fanciful name.

Steak, Salad and Sourdough and Taylor Swift The grocery had these little steaks. They callled them patio steaks. I don't know what that is so I marinated them just to hedge against them not being tasty. They were good. They each were under $3.00. Taylor Swift lives part time in Kansas City now so she appears in the newspaper occasionally. Sometime around her engagement announcement, it was mentione that she was really into baking with sourdough. A few days later, there was an interview with a guy who teaches sourdough classes. I have been making sourdough French bread for 40 years and haven't been much interested in experimenting with different recipes, like cinnamon rolls. Anyway, the guy said baking bread in a Dutch oven was important. I looked into it and found that putting it in a preheated Dutch oven will seal it in so the moisture is trapped around the bread and the steam will enhance the rise. Another article had a recipe that was very much like mine except it used a little more water and used diastic malt powder. Malt powder is also supposed to help the yeast and gives a nice golden brown to the crust. I tried it with my Dutch oven and it was a little too small. The top of the bread rose to touch the top of the oven and it got too brown. There was very little rise outside the oven and there wasn't much today when I tried again with a new Dutch oven. I am guessing something happened to the yeast when our refrigerator stopped working and we had go get new one. By the way, when I ordered the diastic malt powder, spell check changed it to diabetic. This time the bread turned out well. Charlie even had seconds.

The Korean grocery store has beef and pork already cut up and ready to take home and marinate but they also have beef short ribs not only cut up but in a marinade ready to take home and grill. We had not tired them before today and they were good. The little BBQ was going to be too small and converting the smoker is a chore. the clean-up is too. I got a cheap charcoal grill at Walmart yesterday and set it up for today. In a couple of weeks, Charlie is having a couple over for some of my smoked meat and wants to include some Korean food, so I knew that I'd need a separate grill then, because I can't use my smoker for smoking and grilling at the same time.

The second day of his soft food diet was chicken thighs baked with peaches, basil, dry sherry, garlic and fresh ginger. I didn't post the recipe on my blog because both of us agreed that is wasn't worth making again.

Thank you. Italian Wedding Soup ranks high with me too. If gumbo qualifies to be called a soup, then it's my favorite.

Charlie had dental work yesterday and the dentist put him on a soft food diet for the next couple of weeks. I decided to make Italian Wedding Soup for dinner. It isn't something you might think of making in the middle of August but the meat balls are small and soft, plus It's nutritional and tasty.

Charlie frequently mentions a program that he enjoys about food history. He has asked me to look at some of the shows and make some of the recipes. I intend to do it but always forget. But the other day he sent me an email containing a program about one of Napoleon's favorite dishes. Chicken Marengo. The program said it remained popular in French cuisine after his death. We tried the recipe, and he said it was really good and it reminded him of Chicken Adobo. The sides we had with it, most probably, were not ever eaten with this meal in France..rice and corn. Thomas Jefferson tried to interest the French in corn when he was ambassador to France during George Washington's presidency and they were not interested in eating food meant for animals.

Last month Charlie said he wanted to invite people over for his birthday. We had it last Saturday. He asked for Korean food mostly but would like it if I cooked something in the smoker too. I got , some thin sliced shoulder for pork bulgogi, some thin sliced ribeye for beef bulgogi and marinated them for three days. I got a 4 or 5 pound shoulder roast for pulled pork. I told Charlie that I was going to smoke a shoulder roast because I thought people were getting a little tired of ribs. He said the only person tired of your ribs is you, everybody else will want you to make some, so I got a couple slabs or loin back ribs and smoked them as well. I didn't take very many pictures. I did take a picture of the pork roast and a couple pictures of how I converted the smoker for a large grilling area. I have grill grates that fit the smoker. They are ridged on one side and smooth on the other side. I've had them since before there were Blackstone grills. I use them when I need a large flat grilling surface. They were expensive. I probably could have bought a Blackstone for about what they cost. Anyway, sorry I didn't take many pictures. We had, besides the meats, two kinds of kimchi, rice, vinegar based coleslaw, BBQ beans, and hamburger buns so people who wanted, could make sandwiches with the pulled pork.

Getting ready for Charles birthday, I thought I would do a little make-ahead stuff and also cooked some St. Louis ribs today for our dinner.

What do CFS pros do? I have been trying to figure that one out since I found out Charlie was looking for one like his school cafeteria days. One of the things I have tried is giving an already tender cut of meat a pounding for texture then cooking. The breading stays on a little better if I make them ahead and let the coating set on in the fridge.

When I started teaching, I became friends with a teacher who became sort of a mentor in non school things. He made wine, smoked meats and threw great parties. One annual party was his birthday party and he smoked a whole pig for that occasion. About as often as not I was the bartender. At one party, I overheard two other teachers tell him that their years long quest was to find the restaurant that made the best Country Fried Steak. I can't describe what I thought about that but Don Quixote and Sanjo Panza who set out on a quests with little chance of reward came to mind. Now decades later my son has started that same search for the Chicken Fried Steak they had at the high school cafeteria and I am old enough to understand why people crave food they had while growing up. I found a reciipe that had the right taste but still something was not just right. Charlie found a school cafeteria cookbook with Country Fried Steak in it. The revelation was that instead of using a cheap, tough but tenderized piece of meat, they used seasoned ground beef pressed out on sheet pans and baked, then cut into individual sizes. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, dehydrated onions and some flour. I am baking hamburger paddies and then treating them like the recipe below. Probably the last thing to do is find the right thickness for the meat. So far it has been too thick for his liking, but otherwise it seemsllike we are on the right track. Chicken Fried Steak recipe from Threadgills - Recipe By : Threadgill's - The Cookbook ISBN 1-56352-277-2 Threadgill's meat seasoning mix 1/2 cup kosher salt 4 tablespoons black pepper 2 tablespoons white pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons granulated onion 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin 4 tablespoons granulated garlic 2 tablespoons paprika Mix ingredients well. Store in a glass jar or plastic container. Keep tightly sealed. Shake before each use to prevent settling. 8 6 ounce tenderized beef cutlets -- at room temperature 2 eggs 2 cups milk -- at room temperature 3 cups flour 2 teaspoons Threadgill's Meat Seasoning 2 cups frying oil -- preferably canola Whisk eggs and milk together in a bowl and set this egg wash aside. Combine the flour and meat seasoning in another bowl and set aside. Heat the oil in a heavy 14-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat to 350 degrees F. Use a 550 degree thermometer to check temperature. The oil should pop loudly when a drop of egg wash is dropped in. Dip each of the first 4 cutlets in the egg wash mixture. Dredge them in the flour, then dip them back into the egg wash, and very gently place them in the hot oil. As you carry them one at a time from the egg wash to the skillet, hold a plate under them to catch the dripping egg wash. There'll be a regular explosion of noisy oil a-popping. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until breading is set and golden brown. Gently turn them with a long-handled meat fork or long metal tongs. Be careful. Cook another 3 minutes. Carefully remove them from the skillet and drain on a platter lined with paper towels. Let oil reheat and repeat process for other 4 cutlets. Serve with White Cream Gravy and Mashed Potatoes.