Ham yourself a merry little Christmas

25 Dec 2008 | § 0 Johno

Chew on this, y'all. Tonight's menu:

Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze
Potatoes Anna
Maple-whipped winter squash
Pois au Provence (a pea and herb concoction of my own devise with lavender, fennel, thyme and sea salt)
American-style pasta salad with the mayo and boiled eggs

Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze (serves 2-4)
1 1-pound cured ham steak. A good one. Niman Ranch at the very minimum. None of that generic water-filled crap.
1 very hot skillet
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup pear and ginger marmelade
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons maple liqueur

But wait, John. Not everyone has pear and ginger marmelade and weird Canadian hooch lying about.... Not to worry! Lacking the marmelade and liqueur, substitute:
1 smallish pear, peeled, cored and finely diced
1/4 tsp grated fresh ginger or 1/4 tsp dried ginger
a trace each nutmeg, allspice, clove
1 tablespoon American whiskey (Bourbon or Tennessee)
1 tablespoon got-damned real maple syrup, grade B or A ONLY.

Film the very hot skillet with the oil. Place steak therein. Let get very brown and crusty in spots on both sides over medium to medium-high heat, about 7 minutes per side.

Remove steak from pan and set aside to cool. Add butter and once melted add either the marmelade and liqueur or the subsitutes. Scrape browned bits off bottom of pan as you go. If using the substitues, add a splash of water and let the pear cook for a few minutes until quite soft. If using the real deal, just heat through and pour over your steak. Serve and swoon.

Maple-whipped winter squash

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and diced into 1-inch dice
2 tablespoons butter
salt
pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
a few gratings (or 1 dash) nutmeg
2 tablespoons maple syrup, grade B or A

Steam the squash until tender. Mash and force through a food mill or fine-meshed strainer.
Stir in other ingredients, and charge $10 for a number 8 ice cream scoopful of the stuff. Seriously, this will knock the pants right off you.

Posted by Johno

on Thu 25 Dec 2008 | § 0

I Like This Album

17 Sep 2008 | § 2 Johno

Until you become a parent, you simply can't imagine the compromises you make without a thought to accommodate the needs of your children. Quite apart from the poop factor (in which the pre-kid categories of “no poop” and “poop” are joined by new states of being like “just a little poop,” “no visible poop,” and “I don’t smell anything, let’s make dinner”), all parts of your life are subtly altered in ways you don’t even notice until something throws the changes into stark relief.

Take music, for example.

My kid turned one year old this week, which means it's been a pretty cool year. He’s already musical, capable of banging a drum in time for up to five beats in a row or strumming my guitar with his little fist if I make a chord for him. That's wonderful, but it also means that he cares what noise is on the stereo. Therefore, anything that isn't kid-approved has for now mostly passed from my life.

The Boy's favorite music is metal (Iron Maiden, Amon Amarth, Metallica), bossa nova, and bluegrass, which mean's I'm an incredibly lucky person with an incredibly hip youngster. But his favorite favorite music is one specific lullaby album that he needs to hear every night at bedtime, and often at naptime too. Given that bedtime can ramify without warning from a fixed moment in time into an exhausting four-hour campaign of sorties, clever feints, temporary détentes, and diplomatic appeals to reason (lost, by the way, on the infant mind) which only through Herculean effort grinds toward a denouement in which our little angel drifts away to dreamland, sometimes that damn CD gets played straight through five or six times.

The upshot is, no matter how much NPR and jaded indie-rock I can cram during the daylight hours, the last twelve months of my musical life have been owned by “Dancing with Bears” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Which is why the latest release from the New England-based Midriff label has been so welcome. The 2006 release by their flagship band, The Beatings, titled Holding On To Hand Grenades, was my favorite album of that year, and several other Midriff releases have come close to that very high standard. Since Midriff is essentially “the Beatings and their friends and collaborators,” the various projects, side projects, solo releases and guest appearances add up to something like a white, postcollege Wu Tang Clan. Protect ya neck, New England!

The latest Midriff release is called The End of the New Country, and is attributed to a duo calling themselves Get Help. Get Help is a collaboration between Beatings guitarist and vocalist Tony Skalicky and New York musician Mike Ingenthron, who began writing songs together as a break from writing ad jingles. If Midriff has a GZA, it seems to be Skalicky, who has a very clear idea of what he wants his music to sound like and sticks to the plan like a pro.

What this means on vinyl (or in bits or scattered photons) is that like many other Midriff releases, Get Help drenches well-written songs and strong melodies in layers of fuzzy guitar and feedback which gradually build and ebb between enormous climaxes and quiet moments, a sound that is definitely, undeniably, refreshingly adult - not at all for little kids, and not at all like jingles.

Ok. I will admit, even without a kid in the picture this kind of stuff is like catnip to me. I can’t deny it. Give me some reverb, some layers of distorted guitars, and a slightly downcast lyric and I’ll go for it like a sucker. But – and this is important – at the end of the day, the songs need to be good. Without a great song, pretty sounds are just pretty, and the bloom quickly comes off the rose. That’s the story of dozens, if not hundreds, of albums that have crossed my path in the last two decades, and you probably haven’t heard of any of them.

Luckily, at least half of the songs on The End of the New Country (due out October 14) are very good indeed, with Skalicky’s brittle baritone voice (which resembles a cross between Ian Thomas of Joy Division, British folk icon Richard Thompson, and Jimmy Buffett) and Ingenthron’s lighter voice cutting through the sumptuous bed of dissonance and soaring overtones that is one of the Midriff label’s trademark sounds. The musical DNA is Sonic Youth, Morphine and My Bloody Valentine, but Skalicky and Ingenthron manage to invoke the sounds of their influences without becoming a thin imitation of them. (Does the fact that all the comparisons I can draw with Get Help are a decade or more old say something about them, or about me?)

But I did say “half.” One weakness many musicians have in common is an attenuated ability to self-edit. Call me old fashioned, but it's usually a mistake to assume that just because a CD can hold 74 minutes of music, it therefore should. That’s so wrong. An album takes as long as it takes -- and that time is generally under twelve songs and 45 minutes. Ask the Ramones; given half an hour, six microphones, and four chords you can make an all-time classic.

In the case of The End of the New Country, the album opens and closes extremely well, but the sheer number of songs on the record (fifteen), and a tendency toward sedate tempos and plush guitars means that the middle sags somewhat and some gems get buried. "Traveler's Shave Kit," which opens the record, and "Growing Circles" which closes it, are good enough to amount to statements of purpose. However, apart from the excellent title song I find myself hard pressed to identify standout songs when playing the record straight through.

Take for example “The Town Fires,” which is the twelfth song on the album. It’s a quiet and understated song that in the context of the album fails to stand out. But when it emerges in a random playlist it turns out to be a very welcome, winsome, and lovely three minutes of music. I guess too much of a good thing amounts to too much of a good thing.

The End of the New Country is a jumbled and slightly messy project with stretches of real beauty, strong melodies and sumptuous production. But on the songs that aren't standouts, the production is merely soothing rather than dramatic. This record is worth buying, ripping, and then making your own ten-song version out of the raw materials presented. Most importantly for me, this album does include at least ten very good songs that provide an alluring and mature break from lullabys and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Previously published on Blogcritics

Posted by Johno

on Wed 17 Sep 2008 | § 2

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

17 Sep 2008 | § 2 Johno

Let's just pretend it hasn't been a year since I last posted.

So anyway, I've gone buck-nutty this summer making up salads, some of which are even delicious. Here are two.

Carrot and red cabbage slaw with toasted fennel

1 small head red cabbage, cut into eights and finely shredded
4-5 medium carrots, grated
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup white balsamic or white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 tablespoon honey
salt
black pepper

Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Place the fennel seeds in the skillet and toss over low heat until they darken slightly and you can smell them.

Remove immediately to a spice grinder and pulverize.

In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, oil, fennel, ginger, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk vigorously to combine and let stand for 10-15 minutes.

In a large bowl, pour the dressing over the carrots and cabbage and toss well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. This salad is DOPE, yo, and excellent with pork or steaky-type fish.

Variation 1 - carrot and fennel slaw with orange dressing

Grated carrots
Finely shaved fennel bulb
Dry-toasted fennel seeds
Orange juice
Vegetable oil
White balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar
Golden raisins
salt
and maybe a splash of Grand Mariner or Cointreau

Posted by Johno

on Wed 17 Sep 2008 | § 2

Everyone Get Baked!!!!

12 Jan 2008 | § 7 Johno

I have broken my embarrassing six-month bloggy hiatus (self-imposed due to infant, my job, and my other job, plus the realization that nobody in the world gives a rats' red ass about my "learned" opinions on world affairs) to tell y'all this: I'm famous!

Or at least notable.

Ahhhh, hell with it. This week's edition of the Basic Brewing Radio podcast features a 40-minute interview with yours truly, expanding ya'll's consciousnesses on the topic of capturing, keeping, and working with wild yeast and wild yeast sourdough bread. The brewing connection to baking being, obviously, ancient and fundamental. And delicious.

I might be a fraud, but I'm a very convincing fraud. Download, listen, and learn.

Posted by Johno

on Sat 12 Jan 2008 | § 7

Fetch Me Some Damn Free Skynyrd!

31 Oct 2007 | § 5 Johno

Yesterday, Buckethead emailed me a link to an article in that there Wired publication, about how the future of recorded music is... vinyl, which is gonna come back big.

Bucket commented at the time, "the idea that vinyl could make a real comeback seems absurd, but there it is in print, on the internet, so it must be true."

Ah, so pretty and so very naive.

Here's the deal.

What's a "real" comeback? Honestly. Vinyl isn't dead, and it's not dying, but it's not exactly picking itself up off the canvas and taking another bite out of Evander Holyfield, either.

The future of music recorded on physical media is this: it is going to slowly dwindle into a niche pursuit like the model train industry, or home brewing or whatnot. A hard core of hobbyists and aficionados will favor the sonic quality of analog or of audiophile digital over the portability and convenience of commercial digital, and by doing so keep vinyl and probably tape "alive" for decades to come. There's already thousands of independent used record stores around, and unless they are legislated out of existence by aggressive copyright law reform (a real possibility), they'll still be there a hundred years from now, a little run down, a little tattered, but crammed with more 12-inchers than Tiffani Towers. On the same page, there's hundreds of little local labels out there run by kids with Chuck T's and sideburns pressing small runs of vinyl (both 7'' and 12'') of their releases - sometimes as the only medium the album comes out in. It's art!

But a "real" comeback, that's more than a piss in a rainstorm? Impossible. The music business, no matter how it diminishes, measures its revenues in hundreds of millions of dollars. Vinyl doesn't need a lot to stay on life support, but no way it's going to *ever* be the domain of anyone but music nerds ever again. Music is a convenience nowadays, a *utility* like water or electricity or internet access, especially to the all-powerful demographic of people under 25. These days normal people don't have solar panels on their house, they don't carry a bucket to the well when they want a drink, and they sure as hell don't walk over to the turntable when the side ends. What's a "side?"

In fact, as we just saw with the new Radiohead release, habits form fast. The album was free if you didn't want to pay for it, available for download right there on the internet, and still many thousands of Radiohead fans went to Bittorent to pull it down illegally rather than visiting the official site, where it was right there for the taking. There was literally nothing standing in the way of getting the album for free and totally legally on the internet, and people still stole it (from the point of view of copyright law), only because they were in the habit of going to bittorrent and stealing music. Why? Because that's where music comes from! Flip this switch, the light comes on! Turn the tap, water comes out!

The lessons to take away from this?

That the modern major labels and the larger indies have doomed themselves to a slow and painful decline by giving their fans (and an entire generation of new ones) eight years in which to get used to getting music off the internet for free from places that don't pay copyright fees of any kind. Yep - music's a utility now, and the companies that make the most high-profile music have no way of controlling or monetizing that fact.

That vinyl will do just fine, if by "just fine" you mean "out there if you want to find it, and isn't that quaint."

And that the future of music belongs, as always, to people with Chuck Taylors and interesting sideburns.

Posted by Johno

on Wed 31 Oct 2007 | § 5

Women and Children First!

20 Oct 2007 | § 0 Johno

Everyone off the train! It's gonna crash and burn!!

BoingBoing made my morning today by linking to this incredible metaphorical trainwreck that happened last week at a Van Halen concert in North Carolina.

Y'see, the recorded backing synth track that starts "Jump," their concert finale, was played back at the wrong speed - not just at the wrong pitch, but in between pitches, so no matter how hard Eddie tries to find a key to play in that works with the disaster in progress, he can't.

Which is awesome. The Van Halen brothers are widely reputed to be world-class jerkholes, most recently proving this hypothesis by kicking founding bassist Michael Anthony out of the band in the press. That's right, Anthony found out on TV.

So, sit back and dig the horror as Van Halen do their best to carry on as the wheels come off.

[wik] And if you relish the gory technical details of what went wrong, here's an explanation.

Posted by Johno

on Sat 20 Oct 2007 | § 0

The Drunkening, part 18

19 Oct 2007 | § 0 Johno

Brew #18 - Beamish Genuine Dry Stout clone
(from a recipe in "Beer Captured" by Szamatulski and Szamatulski)

The wife requested a nice dry Irish stout in the mold of Guinness and Murphy's, so it is my duty to oblige.

13.5 oz roasted unmalted barley
6 oz black patent malt
8 oz flaked unmalted wheat
5 lbs light dry malt extract, 2 lbs Breiss, 3 lbs Muntons
1 oz Challenger hop pellets, 7.5% AAU, bittering
.4 oz Fuggles hop pellets, 3.8% AAU, bittering
.25 oz Fuggles hop pellets, flavor
1 Whirlfloc (Irish moss) tablet
White Labs WLP 0004, Irish Ale Yeast
1 Tablespoon 88% lactic acid, added at kegging.

The place I'm getting my grain from now doesn't grind to order (jerks!) so I crushed the grains using a cast iron pan and a sheet pan - which produced lots of dust which had to be filtered from the steeping water it was added to the kettle. Will this cause tannins to come through in the final beer? Sure hope not!

Steeped grains in 1 gal Market Basket spring water at 160 degrees. Sparged grain sack in kettle water at 180 degrees-ish.
Brought 2.5 gal approx Market Basket spring water to boil, added steeping water

Added malt extract and bittering hops at boil

Added whirlfloc and flavor hops at 0:45

Cooled pot in ice bath, combined with 2.3 gals (approx) chilled Poland Spring water. Pitched yeast at 74 degrees. Total volume about 5 1/4 gallons.

OG: 1.044, which means I got amazing efficiency out of my steeping grains. Huh.
Target FG: 1.009-1.010
Actual FG: 1.013, which is high. Maybe I just need to learn to read my hydrometer better, as the target OG was 1.041. Knock three points off each reading and I'm in the zone.

Fermentation proceeded at about 68-70 degrees, a little high for the yeast but I don't really have a choice. Racked to secondary after 8 days and held at 66-68 degrees.

Kegged after 1 month in secondary. Siponing went irritatingly, and I had to leave a good quart of beer in the bottom of the carboy. Final yield, about 4.75 gals.

Added 1 tablespoon of 88% food-grade lactic acid to keg. Force carbonated at 35 PSI.

Delicious stout. Lots of body, and though not milkshake-smooth it is well integrated. Aroma is of roasted barley (natch) and a whiff of malt. Flavor balances a drying roasted note with a malt backbone and just a touch of yeast character - some neutral esters and a touch of diacetyl (which is appropriate to the style). Bitterness is present but not too assertive, and the hop flavor is present but just sort of behind the scenes. The lactic acid added that Guinness tang and really brought everything together. Aftertaste is of roasted barley giving way to sweet malt and Fuggles hops, and a lingering bitterness. I could probably have stood to undershoot the bittering, but that's niggling on what has turned out to be a really good beer.

Posted by Johno

on Fri 19 Oct 2007 | § 0

The Second Week of Deer Camp is the Greatest Time of Year

19 Oct 2007 | § 1 Johno

Anyone else know that song?

I digress...

Last week the wife and I were out in the woods north of here, just south of the border with Cow Hampshire, hunkered down in a blind in the foggy morning dew. And just as the sun peeped up over the horizon, there he was! A magnificent specimen, just sauntering through the meadow before us without a care in the world, making for the Lego cache we'd placed.

Long story short, first day of the season and we bagged us a heckuva prize. Look at this pelt! Gorgeous! And the meat... I did a thigh roast with roasted pears, rosemary and a few juniper berries, and it was spectacular. I'm salting down the rest for winter tomorrow.

Just look at that pelt!!!

Posted by Johno

on Fri 19 Oct 2007 | § 1

Carnival of the Recipes #161

28 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

The Carnival of the Recipes, cocktail party edition, is now up!

I wish I’d’a remembered to submit something. I have some good cocktail recipes.

Posted by Johno

on Fri 28 Sep 2007 | § 0

Trafficking in Your Baby

21 Sep 2007 | § 2 Johno

What the crying hell is wrong with England?

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of “emotional abuse”, even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.

Social services’ recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

Hexham children’s services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services’ request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

And we’re all worried about al Qaeda. How droll.

Posted by Johno

on Fri 21 Sep 2007 | § 2

Galileo Would Totally S*** a Brick

21 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

So, humanity has been working on making things fly like insects and birds for - what? - millennia? And working toward that endeavor seriously since Galileo.

It’s a crazy dream of humanity for thousands and thousands of years, and now I see the damn solution to the problem - a toy that mimics the flight of a dragonfly - on a commercial on a basic cable station during, appropriately enough, an airing of the new series of Doctor Who.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is here.

Posted by Johno

on Fri 21 Sep 2007 | § 0

Death Takes a Holiday

20 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

The New York Times has a remarkable story this week about a photo album that came out of Auschwitz, with an accompanying slideshow that's incredibly arresting. You see, rather than the usual deeply upsetting images of skeletonesque inmates suffering untold miseries, they're pictures of their captors and executioners at rest and play, frolicking, hanging out, mugging for the camera, generally behaving like any people taking a break from the rigors of a job well done would. Except that the same day the pictures were taken, these well-rested and attractive people committed incredibly depraved acts against other humans. In these images, even Dr. Joseph Mengele seems like a shrimpy nebbish, with barely a hint of the maggots roiling behind his smiling eyes.

There's one woman in the pictures, who appears a few times. She's clearly a camp administrator of some kind, and she's young, fresh, and pretty. She's clearly vivacious and strong-willed; it's easy to be attracted to this face from more than sixty years ago and imagine a friendship or a friendly beer. And then I realize that behind that smile and those pretty eyes is a mind completely and totally at ease with sorting families into keepers and corpses every single day, and I want to puke myself dry.

Thank the deity of your choice that such an artifact exists, and is in the hands of the National Holocaust Museum. For the danger, as we all know intellectually but tend to forget in our guts, is not from overt acts of monstrousness, but in the workaday -- yes -- banality of evil.

Posted by Johno

on Thu 20 Sep 2007 | § 0

Bread Pr0ns

15 Sep 2007 | § 2 Johno

So, now that I have the flamejob for this:

I did this:

From right to left that's two pain levain batards, two sourdough boules, and a part-rye part whole-wheat sourdough miche of my own design - about eleven pounds of lovely bread I turned out of my oven today. This was probably the best day of baking I've ever had.

In the background, you can see Herman, my stout and doughty sourdough culture, his billions of yeasts and bacteria toiling away happily on a fresh feeding.

I have a nice little life going here. Better not blink.

Posted by Johno

on Sat 15 Sep 2007 | § 2

Anna, damn 'er!

13 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

Anadama bread is a traditional coastal New England bread with molasses and cornmeal that makes excellent toast and incredible peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The original recipe, so the legend goes, comes from a Rockport, Massachusetts man (up the coast on Cape Ann, next to Gloucester where they're all gruff fisherman) whose wife ran off and left him with nothing in the house but cornmeal, molasses, and flour. He baked all these into a loaf and named it "Anna, damn 'er." History is silent on whether Anna deserved this infamy.

I have been making Anadama bread for years, from recipes by James Beard and Peter Reinhardt, but since I have had some time off recently caring for an infant, I've gone back to the drawing board, refined the basic formula into by far the best version I have ever tasted, and am now ready to pass it along to you, you lucky dog.

My basic innovations are to use a somewhat higher proportion of cornmeal and molasses than I've seen elsewhere, to add a little (optional) whole wheat flour for nutrition and complexity, and to use a two-starter method to build the dough rather than the traditional straight method.

The extra molasses and cornmeal (which is really pushing the limit for what this formula can take and still rise well) give the bread a distinctively "Anadama" character which I like a lot. For the same reason, I also prefer to use blackstrap molasses, the darkest, most intensely flavored molasses out there. It just tastes better in this bread, though you may certainly use dark or golden molasses if that's what you have around.

The two starters, a soaker and a sponge, are here for several reasons. The cornmeal soaker softens up the grain, which means: more sugar is available for the yeast to feed on; the particles of meal are softer and less prone to cut into the bread's gluten structure, giving a lighter loaf; and the cornmeal cooks more completely in the oven. A sponge of some of the flour gives great depth of flavor, promotes the activity of enzymes that make the dough more elastic, and also lowers the pH of the dough slightly, which (probably, so the theory goes) helps to soften the bran in the whole wheat and therefore keeps the loaf lighter. Putting all this together may seem like a pain in the keister, but it really amounts to five minutes of work done over two days.

Soaker:

10 oz cornmeal
10 oz water, room temperature

Sponge:

8 oz (1 3/4 cups) all-purpose or bread flour (11% protein content minimum)
7 oz water, room temperature
1/2 tsp yeast

Main Dough:

8 oz (1 3/4 cups) all-purpose or bread flour (11% protein content minimum), plus more in reserve
6 oz (1 1/2 cups) whole wheat flour (or, 6 more ounces AP or bread flour)
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
.4 oz (1 1/2 tsp) salt
4.5 oz (1/3 cup) molasses, preferably blackstrap
1 oz (2 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature

(For the hardcore here's the baker's percentages):
Flour................. 100%
Water................ 77%
Yeast................. about 1.1%
Salt................... 1.8%
Cornmeal........... 45%
Molasses............ 20%
Unsalted Butter... 4.5%

1) The night before you bake, make your soaker: combine the cornmeal and water in a small bowl, mix well, and cover with plastic wrap. Alternatively, you can make a hot soaker on baking day: heat the water to about 130-140 degrees, combine cornmeal and water, mix well, cover, and let stand for 4 hours. The higher temperature seems to help the cornmeal take up the water more quickly, and may contribute to a softer dough.

2) The morning of baking day, make your sponge. Combine the flour, water and yeast in a large bowl, whisk or stir together vigorously for at least a minute, and let sit 3-4 hours or until nicely ripe. (Ripe means that the sponge is bubbly and domed, and just beginning to recede. You will know it's ready when it looks like a badlands landscape, with canals just beginning to form on the surface between islands of starter.)

3) Place the flour, yeast and salt for the main dough in a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, and whisk to combine. Add the soaker, the sponge, the molasses, and the butter.

4) Mix in stand mixer on low to medium speed for 6-8 minutes (using the paddle until things come together, and then switching to the dough hook), or, if kneading by hand, mix just until the ingredients are combined and then turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10-12 minutes. Add flour as necessary to make a smooth but somewhat tacky dough - it should clear the bowl but cling a little to a dry finger applied to the surface for a few seconds.

(This is a good opportunity to hone your skills working with a wonky dough - it tends to start off looking drier than it should, and then because of all the cornmeal cutting into the newly formed gluten, becomes rather unruly before turning into a smooth dough. You may need to add flour while you knead, but give it at least two minutes by machine or four by hand before adding flour a tablespoon at a time, to ensure you don't overdo it. )

5) Place kneaded dough in a lightly oiled large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place (80 degrees) for 90 minutes. Halfway through, give the dough a business-letter fold*.

6) Remove dough from bowl, divide into two equal pieces, and gently preshape**. Let rest covered for 15 minutes.

7) Preheat oven to 350.

8) Shape each piece into a freeform round or batard loaf, or shape and place in lightly oiled loaf pans. Proof 60-90 minutes or until nearly doubled.

9) Bake in oven for 40-50 minutes, turning halfway through. If you wish, you may steam the oven*** when you place the loaves to promote a better oven spring.

10) When the internal temperature is above 190 degrees, and the loaf is a nice dark golden brown on all sides, remove from oven. (Or, just give 'em the full 50 minutes if there's doubt.) Remove from pans, if used, and place on a rack to cool. Wait at least 1 hour before slicing!****

* A business-letter fold is a fancy way of punching down partially risen dough. The intended effects are two: to gently expel some of the gas that has begun to accumulate, and to line up the gluten structure of the dough to promote a good rise, a good shape, and an attractive loaf.

Here's how:

1) Using a bowl scraper, remove the dough from the rising bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Using the flats of your fingers, gently press down all over the dough to let some air out. Do not mash the edges, do not try to pop visible bubbles, and do not be forceful.

2) Gently pull the sides of the dough outward just a little so that the entire mass is an ovalish-rectanglish shape with the long sides going left to right.

3) With your hands, take the left side of the dough up and fold it about two-thirds of the way over the rest of the mass, as if you were folding a letter into thirds. Repeat with the right side, folding it all the way to the opposite edge. Do not press down to seal.

3a) In some very slack doughs - not this one - you may turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat this process before returning the dough to its bowl, to build additional strength.

4) Replace dough in bowl, folded side down, and cover once again with plastic wrap.

** To preshape a loaf is to take the ugly cut piece you have, and turn it into something orderly so that it will form a neater loaf that will rise and eat better.

1) Place the dough piece cut side up on a very lightly floured surface. Take the top edge and fold it toward the middle of the mass. With the heel of your hand, gently but firmly press it into place. Take the piece of edge that's at about 2:00 and repeat. Continue clockwise like this all the way around. When you are finished, the dough should be closer to round, and elastic enough to spring back just a little when you take your hand away.

2) Then, take the 12:00 and 6:00 edges and bring them toward each other. Press them together to gently seal. Repeat with the 3:00 and 6:00 edges. Repeat again in each direction. Alternatively, if you are expert at shaping round loaves, you can tighten the gluten on the "good" surface a bit using whatever method you prefer.

4) Finally, turn the preshaped piece of dough seam side down onto a lightly floured surface, cover with a bowl or plastic wrap and let rest for 15-20 minutes.

*** To steam an oven:

1) Place an old cast iron skillet or cake pan you never plan to use again on the floor of the oven, or on the lowest rack if using an electric oven. Preheat the oven with the pan inside.

2) When you place your loaves in the oven, carefully pour 1 cup of very hot or boiling water into the pan before you shut the oven door. Be careful! - steam burns are bad news.

If you are afraid of pouring water into your oven, you can use a few ice cubes instead, placing them in the pan when the loaf goes in, though this does rob the oven of a little heat. You can also use a spray bottle to mist the dough with water prior to going in the oven, and then spray the oven walls quickly with water at two-minute intervals for the first eight minutes or so of baking. This method also leads to great heat loss, so tack a few more minutes of baking time on the end.

Now... why steam your oven at all? Well, steam will keep the starches in the crust from gelatinizing (hardening) as quickly while the loaf undergoes its last speedy rise in the intense heat of the oven. For this recipe this is optional, but you will probably find you get a slightly better oven spring from steam.

**** Why wait until the bread is cool before slicing? Because bread isn't done baking until the loaf has come back down to almost room temperature. As the loaf cools, the internal structure is continuing to gelatinize (set and become edible) and flavor compounds are continuing to develop. This process doesn't fully run its course until the bread is nearly cool. The only bread you should eat hot is bad bread; good bread deserves good treatment and a full cooling before cutting.

Posted by Johno

on Thu 13 Sep 2007 | § 0

Carnival of the Recipes #159

12 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

The Carnival of the Recipes #159, with a Proustian In Search of Lost Time theme, is now up. Visit! Cook! Eat!

Posted by Johno

on Wed 12 Sep 2007 | § 0

Low Blows

12 Sep 2007 | § 1 Johno

There's two things that I am for sure: a rabid pro football fan (American style) and a bleeding heart pablum puker.

So, I've been growing increasingly concerned over the last few years as reports have surfaced of the extent and callousness of the NFL's disregard for on-field player injuries and for disabilities suffered by retired players. Now, I'm no idiot. I know coaches regularly put guys in numbed up against cracked ribs or a broken finger to finish a series or a game. It's football! But when you get beyond that, into the realm of doping up a lineman with a broken spine and sending him into the game, or letting your QB or running back play when he's been hit on the head so hard he's not sure of his name, the date, or which way is up, that's a different story. Then pro football with its pads and lucrative ad deals, devolves into mere crude bloodsport (rather than a bloodsport at a remove, which is so much more civilized and refined). My own New England Patriots and their coach Bill Belichick are reportedly among the worst offenders here, taking horrible and stupid risks with players' health that has cut many careers, and doubtless many lives, short.

Now, again, that's theoretically an uncomplicated matter of well-informed people making choices as adults to put themselves in harm's way. But the truth, naturally is not so neat. Via unfogged I have found a fascinating and dismaying article in Men's Journal about the shameful and shabby treatment of retired injured players at the hands of the NFLPA (the players' union), the league itself, and the various bodies set up to take care of retired players.

[wik] A final question: What sense could it possibly make to put a player who makes $6M a year, by contract, for multiple years, in harm's way unnecessarily? How is that good business? Your journeyman halfback plays on an injured knee, blows out his meniscus and his ACL or fractures his spine, and then collects the rest of his four-year contract from the sidelines, unable to do what he was hired to do but owed every penny of his salary. Wouldn't it make more rational sense to take better care of your players and try not to play them when injured, in an effort to preserve your investment in him? Hell, leaving aside the fact that this would be the decent thing to do, it's economically sensible!

Am I right? Am I right?

Posted by Johno

on Wed 12 Sep 2007 | § 1

Flame On!

11 Sep 2007 | § 2 Johno

It's been a long standing point of minor contention between myself and Goodwyfe Johno that for some reason she won't let me have a flamejob put on our Oldsmobile sedan. Says it's a frivolous waste of money... I guess I can see her point, but I have a hard time liking it.

But let nobody say she's not a good person: yesterday she found for me a guy who makes flamejob decals... for home stand mixers like my Kitchenaid Artisan 600! A silver-and-black flamejob diamond-plate pattern flamejob decal is on its way to my home as we speak, to give my Kitchenaid mixer at least 100 more horsepower of pure high-grade awesome. My mixer, when done, will look very much like this (except awesome silver on awesome red):

I love the internets.

Posted by Johno

on Tue 11 Sep 2007 | § 2

I Made This

11 Sep 2007 | § 4 Johno

Well... we did.

Linus John:

... and with a very sleep-deprived papa, enjoying the soothing tones of Cuban dance music played at deafening volume. Good kid. (Nota bene: even on no sleep with a new infant in the house, I still look at least 5-8 years younger than my actual age. Good genes, evidently!)

Posted by Johno

on Tue 11 Sep 2007 | § 4

Saved from certain doom

9 Sep 2007 | § 3 Johno

Thank Goodness that Patton put up that li'l thing about Romanian IRS scammers, because I was about to go nucular in an attempt to spark some posting around here.
Namely, I was going to challenge my fellow ministers to kick this off the front page as quickly as humanly possible:

Posted by Johno

on Sun 9 Sep 2007 | § 3

Hangover Food for Ambitious Drunkards

7 Sep 2007 | § 0 Johno

Heya kiddies, it's time for yet another installment of Johno's Hangover Food for Ambitious Drunkards! (I realize that this is the first time I've actually ever used that particular phrase, but look back through the extensive catalog of recipes I have posted to this site and you'll see that pretty much that's all I do.)

Check out these banana pancakes - I invented these this morning because I need potassium. And sleep. I need sleep. Y'see, I have a one week old infant in the house who's doing the usual sleep and eat and eliminate in no pattern around the clock whatsoever thing, and I've developed this persistent twitch in my left eyelid. Clearly a potassium deficiency, right? Right?

Anyway, these are incredibly delicious, like almost ridiculously good, and ridiculously easy to whip up on no notice.

Banana Pancakes
makes 4 big and thick pancakes, serving two. Doubles (or more) well.

1 cup (4.5 oz) white whole wheat* flour, or 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbsp melted butter
2 small or 1 large banana, mashed

Combine all dry ingredients and whisk together. Combine all liquid ingredients except banana and whisk together well. Add banana to liquid and whisk thoroughly again.

Pour liquid ingredients into dry and stir with a whisk ten times only - ten! only! to combine. Lumps are OK.

Cook in half-cup amounts on greased pan or griddle with surface temperature 350 degrees.

I repeat: these are CRAZY GOOD.

*King Arthur offers flour milled from white winter wheat, which lacks some of the bitterness and whole-wheat character of regular red whole wheat. This makes it much better for pastry applications where the nutrition and added flavor complexity of whole wheat flour is desired - cookies, pancakes, biscuits, waffles, and if you use some trickery, even pie crust.

Posted by Johno

on Fri 7 Sep 2007 | § 0