SethG

I didn't mean that no one's reading! I meant that the blog becomes an obsession-- despite its obvious lack of any importance whatsoever. We went to a playground yesterday and were immediately besieged by an apocalyptic swarm of those angry locusts. Their howling in the near distance was deafening. I'm not sure about this, but I thought I could smell them too. Nate was completely oblivious to these flying roaches in heat all around us, but after a while Leah got a little freaked out.

So I should have entitled this blog: The Three Faces of Red Meat. Or The Cow and I. We arrived to find that my mother had prepared a brisket for us to eat tonight. But first, breakfast. A bagel, with cream cheese (Philadelphia) and some lox. Lunch: a turkey sandwich with Swiss on Rye. Dinner, the brisket (oof) with carrots and potatoes. No photos, but tomorrow I may take some photos (and be able to post them) with the help of a surprise blog guest! Plus: will grandma babysit and allow Robin and Seth to go out to dinner???? Stay tuned! An aside: anybody see the NY Times article today about people who are obsessed with their blogs, even though nobody reads them? A little close to home for me. At least this week.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? She didn't much enjoy Grand Central. I thought she'd eat it up (I'm a sucker for great train stations), but she was a little cranky after the subway ride. She cheered up by lunchtime, though, and had a very nice time reorganizing our table's sugar bowl. Last night's dinner: nothing really. If you've ever tried to get two young children packed up and out of the house at bedtime, you might know the frenzy we experienced yesterday. We left about an hour later than we planned to, and all I managed to eat was what I snatched from Leah's dinner: some penne dressed with a dab of olive oil, a little baba ghanouj. On the road, Robin and I munched on the fig/anise bread, which was very good. The figs from Sahadi's were delicious. And we made great time: 3 hours and forty minutes door to door from Brooklyn to Gaithersburg, MD (almost beating our record time of three and a half hours flat), and I drove within the posted spped limit the whole way! I'm going to make coffee now. I'll try to post again later today.

Okay, breakfast today was: multiple cups of Moka and a slice of Pugliese with some butter. Then we went over to see the friends I mentioned before who just had a baby. We met the new arrival and gave them our other loaf of Pugliese. Then my wife went to work, and after I while I got my act together, gathered up Leah, and went to visit my wife at her office. I've been promising to bring Leah in for months, and today was our last chance before I return to work, so today we did it. (Nate stayed home with our babysitter.) Leah and I took the train to Grand Central, and I thought we might as well take a look around the Grand Central Market. This is an upscale food market with several different vendors. I never shop there, but Robin occasionally picks something up on her way home. It is quite expensive, but some of the vendors have very good stuff. Since we were there, I decided to check out Adriana's Caravan, which Bloviatrix mentioned above. This very compact shop sells all sorts of condiments and sauces from around the world (Ponzu, hot sauces, vinegars, whatever). They also have bakeware/serving dishes, and lots of other stuff I couldn't even see behind the counter. It isn't the kind of place in which one would want to browse, but if you need some fish sauce and don't have time to go to Chinatown, it's the place for you. Here's a shot of their hot sauce shelf: The Grand Central Market also has a Murray's Cheese Shop, which I assume is owned by the same folks who own the famous store in Greenwich Village by the same name. At Grand Central they have an impressive array of cheeses: And I bet the prices are higher than in the Village. If I were the perfect blogger, I would have contrived a way to link this tour somehow to my actual meals today, but since we're leaving town tonight, it just seemed like a waste to buy anything at the market. But I thought people who aren't from around here might like to see the photos. After Leah and I met up with Robin at her office, we went to lunch at Burger Heaven on 49th Street. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but as my burger arrived it occurred to me that we've been eating a LOT of red meat this week. Not typical for us. I ate my burger anyway. No need to put this one on the burger club's list. It was overcooked and underseasoned. And the fries could've been a lot hotter. But it tasted like good meat and it was a nice size burger. I also had a gargantuan Coca-Cola. I hope to post at least once more before we leave, about today's bread and whatever we do for dinner before we take off for my mother's house. I've tried to be quite talkative in my first three days, because you may just hear from me once a day for the rest of the week! My mother's connection is a dial-up.

Sorry I'm late today, everybody. Q & A: Hathor: you dimple just by poking your fingers into the dough. It is fun. My son is too young to get involved with the bread, but I usually give my daughter her own piece of dough to knead with me, so she can join in too. NeroW: I could post an "adapted" version of Carol Field's recipe, couldn't I? I don't want to violate the copyright laws. This Pugliese isn't really much different from many rustic Italian breads. The main characteristics include a preferment for flavor and very wet final dough, which produces big holes. NeroW's comment reminds me that I have failed to mention what I've been drinking during this blog. (Now why would a comment by NeroW remind me of drinking?) If you wish to go back, during the prep and consumption of most dinners on this thread I have been drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The one exception was Monday night, when we drank the remainder of the bottle of wine that was used in the cooking. It was a cheap Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (sp?). It tasted better with the meat than by itself. And no, Nero, my blog isn't better than yours; and as I mentioned, I really liked Heather's blog about dealing with the elements. Docsconz/Pan: I can't see much of any Italian remnant in Crown Heights today, although there may be a deli or two. I bet Park Slope has changed a lot since the early 1980s-- I never saw it until the early 1990s, and since then it has stayed very much the same. The fringe areas around it have changed dramatically, however, in the last five years. DoverCanyon: the fig/anise bread isn't mine, but Nancy Silverton's. I've never made it before, but I have high hopes. She has such good taste.

Dinner. In reality, I had two dinners. First, when Leah ate (before Robin got home), I scammed a couple ravioli and some orange wedges from her. She didn't mind. And I had some Pugliese. Later, I had dinner with Robin. We had short rib, of course, and I wish I snapped a pic because tonight's meal was much nicer than last night's. This time I made a celery root puree instead of potatoes. And I pan braised some asparagus (once again from the greenmarket) in butter. So good. Supermarket asparagus is quite good right now, but the asparagus from the greenmarket is still strikingly better. And I had some more of that same ice cream. Goodnight, see you tomorrow!

Bread for today: Pugliese. This is a typical Italian bread in that the dough is very wet, making it difficult to shape and handle. These types of doughs form big, relatively squat loaves that are wider than they are high. The crumbs are moist and full of large, irregular holes. Here you can see the loaves almost done proofing and almost too big for my half-sheet pan: Right before baking, the dough is dimpled to keep the top from separating from the rest of the dough and ballooning upward. In order to fit both loaves on one shelf, I sort of nudged the loaves into ovals as I dimpled: Then came the baking. End result, good stuff: This bread has considerably more depth of flavor than yesterday's durum loaf, probably due to its slow three hour initial rise. The biga also had an additional day of fermentation in the fridge, which helped too I'm sure. I'm using the dried figs I bought yesterday for a fig/anise bread. I've already mixed the dough. It's rising in the fridge for a bake tomorrow.

I agree. Ugly crap. I disagree. I have some quibbles with the design, but overall I think it's pretty good. Have you guys been there? It's a very inviting space (outside and in). Maybe it's just the novelty of it, but the benches are really drawing people to just come and hang out. That may seem like nothing much, but consider how many modern designs fail at such a goal. And the kids love the fountain and the big steps. The fountain is pure kitsch, sure, but if you don't find it appealing you've got no kid left in you.

I just had a few dates and a microwaved :shame: cup of Moka.

No-- I never heard of them before. I just looked at their website, and it appears they are in Grand Central Terminal. They moved to Atlantic Ave when they left this neighborhood. I thought the GCT branch was a second outpost, but maybe they closed the Bklyn location. I just called them. They closed their Brooklyn location four years ago. That's too bad. I was excited there for a minute. For lunch, I ate the tiny bit of tuna salad that remained from Sunday night. Then I had a little more baba ghanouj, with pita bread. Then I had a couple pepperoncini. But I knew I was just avoiding the inevitable: RADISH GREENS. First, I had the radishes. I left them whole as Fergus suggests, although I shaved off parts where I just couldn't get the dirt off. Then I slathered on some good butter and salt, and hey! Those were pretty good! I don't mind radishes in the first place, but I couldn't really wrap my mind around how they'd taste with butter. News flash: everything tastes good with butter. And salt. So there you are. And the greens were pretty good too. I sliced a young onion (all of these things came from the Saturday greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn), sprinkled the slices on top of the greens, made up a simple mustard vinaigrette, and dug in. The leaves have substance to them; they're a little heavy. But the flavor is good. A good green flavor, not particularly bitter. I may have it again tomorrow.

No-- I never heard of them before. I just looked at their website, and it appears they are in Grand Central Terminal.

I forgot something again. Today I have also eaten one piece of chocolate. I visited Jacques Torres' chocolate shop late last week. It was something I've been meaning to do before I went back to work. I was just a little disappointed because I wanted to see one of his Pithiviers (almond cream surrounded by puff pastry), but they only sell them on Saturday. So I bought a mixture of dark and milk chocolates. The darks were for me, and the milks were for Robin, who prefers them for some strange reason. But she left this little heart, which has a passionfruit cream center, just sitting there for a few days now. So I gathered that she doesn't want it. At least, I sure hope she doesn't want it, because it's gone! Edit: I know what you're thinking, and you're right. I am one evil, bad, bad man.

Oops, we cross posted, Owen! See above.

Anyway, good morning everybody! This blog is supposed to be about what I'm EATING, right? So far today I've had: Three little cups of Moka. A couple cherries A bite of one strawberry. (These have just returned to the greenmarket, oh happy day. They're from NJ, and not yet the best, but they taste like strawberries and not like fiberboard so I'm thrilled.) And a slice of durum bread with some butter. (Somebody please explain to my why my corner grocery, which has nothing gourmet and is simply awful in most respects (except for the interesting carribean products mentioned above), carries Celles sur Belle butter? I can't account for it but it makes me happy.) The durum bread is holding up fine. I've kept it cut side down on the counter. The preferment (Biga) will make it stay fresh longer than a one-day loaf would. More to come. This blogging iss much harder than it looks! It takes forever.

You know, doc, I was planning on posting a pic of this shop I like on 7th Avenue in Park Slope called D'vine Taste. It's sort of a miniature Sahadi's; it's also owned by a Lebanese family. They couldn't be nicer, and if there's some spice they don't have, they'll get it for you in a day or two. I actually stopped by there yesterday but I forgot my camera! D'vine Taste might be the only store I'd care to highlight in Park Slope. For those who don't know, Park Slope is a beautiful neighborhood abutting Prospect Park (the Central Park of Brooklyn). It covers a large area, and its "environs" are ever-expanding as the surrounding fringes get more and more gentrified. Its commercial strip has been pretty much the same for a long time, and it is quite boring. Lots of muffin shops. If you want a muffin, come to Park Slope. I have never lived in Park Slope, but I've lived in two of its fringes. And the fringes are very interesting. This is the Brooklyn neighborhood thing I was thinking about yesterday. I used to live in what I thought of as "Gowanus," between Fourth and Fifth Avenue on St. Marks Place. Most people who move there today think of this area as Park Slope, but when I moved to New York thirteen years ago it was most emphatically NOT Park Slope. I don't know if it really had a name, but it was a sort of industrial no-man's land due to its proximity to a stinky industrial trench called the Gowanus Canal. The housing in the area was mostly filled with Latinos, and there was a decidedly Mexican aura about the area. This presence remains, despite the explosive gentrification that has filled Fifth Avenue with boutiques and restaurants. And it is expressed mostly through food, in the products that are available in the bodegas that sit on many of the corners. I'm very grateful for these bodegas, because you can't get Mexican stuff on Seventh Avenue, the main drag in Park Slope. If you need some anchos, or some tomatillos, or serrano peppers, forget it. There isn't a single store that carries them. But just walk two blocks to Fifth Ave, and you can get them literally on almost every corner! I now live in a different fringe, Prospect Heights, which is a real estate speculator's neighborhood. There didn't used to be any such place. It used to be Crown Heights, which still exists just to the east. But the racial/religious tension in Crown Heights in the late 1980s-ealry 1990s wasn't good for gentrification, hence the new neighborhood. (Actually, for all I know, the name change occurred before the whole Gavin Cato thing.) But anyway, this neighborhood, for whatever reason, has an African/Carribean history, and the place you really see it again is in the food. You wouldn't really know it but for the few Jerk Chicken restaurants on Washington Avenue, and the carribean tubers, plantains, salt cod, tripe, and goat meat that you see even in the corner supermarket. So the food is the thing that preserves the neighborhood identity, even in the midst of radical change. Hey doc, have you seen the facelift that's just been given to the Brooklyn museum (VERY close to where I live)?

Beef in pastry, chicken pie, split tin, cottage loaf... I don't know you, binkyboots, but I'd say you must be in the U.K.! And it sounds like you might be familiar with the Elizabeth David book I mentioned above. What is Italian chestnut honey? That sounds great. (And I hope your solid food situation is only temporary.)

I would, but she won't be home from the hospital until late tonight! I'll save some to bring over if she wants some, though. We'll probably go over there once or twice and make them dinner in the next few weeks, after the respective parents' visits are over. (And $2.49 a pound? I wish I'd acquired the short ribs that cheaply.)

That cranberry walnut bread is good-- I made some a couple months ago. I'm going to be out of town this weekend, so it's unlikely I'll join you (though not totally out of the question). But it's a good choice!

Dumb double post.

Criticism? Those are beautiful! I think separation like that can be a sign of underproofing. Or is it overproofing? By the way, I was hoping this thread would disappear because I said something the other day that was total horseshit. I don't know what I was thinking. That Bertolli method is what the French call a levain method. In this method, you hold over dough from your last wild-yeast loaf to be a starter for your next loaf. The levain may last a couple days but you don't want to keep it longer than that without feeding it. The levain is really very similar to a liquid starter-- it's just firmer. And a firmer starter generally yields bread that is less sour, or so people say. The fact that it is used quickly also contributes to its mildness. This mildness is preferred by the French. Now, I misused the term pate fermentee the other day. I think this really only applies to breads made with commercial yeast. A piece of fully developed dough is held back from a batch of bread dough, and used in the next batch. This "old dough" will give the next batch of bread a slightly more complex flavor, but it won't equal the complexity that you'd find in bread with a wild yeast starter. I have seen recipes for pate fermentee bread which suggest that pate fermentee may be stored for a month in the freezer. But what do I know anyway?

Oops, one other thing: You know, nessa, I believe I've used that "cold oven" technique. I know it was in Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery, and I think it was her version of the cottage loaf. It worked fine for that bread, but I think if you want a crisp, brown, rustic crust you want high heat right away on your dough. With wild yeast, too, you want that blast of heat for good oven spring. I think that technique might be the cause of some of your trouble.

This is such a great collection of ideas for my new pot! Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I'll be using any of them during this blog, since I went with the short ribs tonight. There's still plenty of that for tomorrow night, and then the next day we travel to Maryland, where, to be frank, the food we'll eat may be more entertaining to read about than to experience. We'll see. The short ribs came out great. I used one of the trillion recipes for short ribs on Epicurious.com. I selected a recipe solely because it called for a pot of the right size. Basically the short ribs were browned, a mirepoix was then softened, and it was all simmered for a few hours in red wine and beef stock. Then some baby carrots and black olives were added near the end. The recipe called for mashers but I made buttered sauteed potatoes instead: I'm not sure the picture does it justice. The weather worked out okay, too. It cooled off nicely. I'd love to break bread with you sometime, Bloviatrix, but I'm afraid I already gave away the second durum loaf. A couple of our closest friends live just two blocks from us; we give them a lot of bread. They just had a baby yesterday, actually, and the husband came over after he got back from the hospital this evening, had some short ribs with us and took home a loaf. Okay, that's it for me today. Oh, I just ate a bowl of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge while writing this. Edit: and thanks for all the compliments on the bread.

Heather, are you volunteering for another shot at the blog? (I enjoyed your hurricane blog, by the way.) Suzanne, I think you and I are talking about the same shop. And I forgot to mention: yep, the avatar's a chayote. Edit: and the picture's mine. I don't know that book, fifi. Do they play with chayotes? There were a number of things running through my mind as I took a liesurely bus ride back from the butcher this morning, but in the rush of the rest of the day I've forgotten most of them. Remind me to tell you something I was going to say about Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods. But for now, here's my durum bread dough, just shaped: This recipe's a little strange, because Carol Field has you slash the dough right after you shape it, rather than right before you bake it. Then she has you proof it (rise again) on a floured board, with the slash down: I thought it was strange, but I did what I was told. Then, when you're ready to bake, you flip the loaves over and slide 'em onto your baking stone, and shazam! These breads have more durum flour than I'd really want. Durum flour is made from very hard durum wheat. It has a lot of protein. It rises well but it gives a relatively tight crumb (the holes are on the small side). It has a pleasant golden color, but you see the color and you can't help but expect a moist, eggy sort of texture. And it isn't. It's a lean bread. Still, it's good. The rise is dramatic. I'll report on dinner later.

Okay, moving on. This morning I went out to get short ribs, and since I was going to a butcher on Smith Street in Brooklyn, I decided to take you to one of my favorite places in New York City: Sahadi's. This store has been owned by the same Lebanese family for at least a generation. It isn't the size of Zabar's or Fairway, but it packs in a lot of good stuff, including so-so cheeses and pates, pretty good olives, a very good selection of nuts, dried fruits and coffees, and a wonderful selection of freshly made middle eastern foods. Unfortunately, I'm too timid to take many pictures in the store, but here's one showing a part of the nuts/candy area with the coffee zone visible behind it: And here's a slightly blurry view over the olive zone, towards the bins with the loose grains (bulghur, semolina, rices, polentas) and the spices behind: There's a few other rooms I failed to photograph. Today I was mostly grazing, but I wanted some stuff for lunch. So I got some baba ganouj, some pepperoncini peppers, and a bunch of small spanakopeta (filo pastries surrounding spinach). I also got a bunch of dried figs, some yummy sweet dried dates, a pound of Kenya AA coffee, and some dried Herbs de Provence. Then I went to the butcher, which is called Los Paisanos Meat Inc., on Smith Street. This place is too expensive, but I love it. They have Prime beef, they always have shanks or trotters or whatever you want, they are a longstanding institution that keeps the area's Latino roots alive, and they talk to half the customers in Spanish. They have an ad which states "We Specialize in Whole Pigs." Then I took the bus home, and had lunch: some baba ganouj, spanakopeta, and pepperoncini: And some yummy dates for dessert. Then mixed up the dough for some durum bread (pics to follow), and ran out the door to meet my babysitter and my daughter at the playground next to her school. Oy! I have more to report, but I'll be back later to do it.

Okay, questions and answers: Hathor: I'm saying if you use American recipes, use AP flour. You'll get the right results, which will be good, but maybe not quite French, bread. nessa: I hesitate to offer a bread advice clinic, because I'm still so new to this myself. The real experts around here are Jack Lang (Jackal10) and his evil transatlantic tenor twin Sam Kinsey (slkinsey). But I'd say if your crust is too thick, that usually means the bead was cooked too long. I usually get pretty good crusts if I preheat the oven to fifty degrees higher than it should be. Then I pour some boiling (or just hot) water into a broiler pan on the oven floor just after I put in the loaves, plus I give a few sprays with the plant sprayer in the first few minutes of baking. Then I turn the oven down to the proper temp. You lose a lot of heat when you open the door, and if the first several minutes are too cool in your oven, the spraying won't help you. Of course, if your bread isn't rising all bets are off on the crust. Get it rising first. And here I can only counsel patience. I failed several times to revive a starter because I tried to use it as soon as I saw some bubbles. With some experience, you get a feel for when your starter is actually ready, and you want to wait until it's good and active. If I haven't used mine in more than three days, it usually needs a couple days of feeding. And don't give up based on a rye bread failure. Rye flour is very easy to overknead. If you go slightly too far, you lose the structure forever. I don't even have the beginnings of a feel for rye bread myself. Bloviatrix: I've never made Pugliese! I make Ciabatta a lot. I'll make Pugliese tomorrow using Carol Fields' recipe. It doesn't call for sesame seeds, but I don't see why not.