Math Party

So, one of the perks of living at the new place is that I was folded into a group of fantastic people who have just begun getting together for dinner parties. All of them are grad students except me; most of them are involved in heartier fields than mine--math and health care--so in my head I've started calling them math parties.

So, we are hosting the math party tonight and in honor of said party, I made bread and pie.





The bread is from our dear friend Jim Lahey. It's the recipe for Stirato, or essentially, an Italian baguette.

I love baking bread, and my fall-back method for the last year has been the five-minutes a day way, but I just don't have space in the fridge, or the stomach, to keep around six loaves worth of dough. Those recipes make a LOT of (perfect, beautiful, artisan) dough.

Enter Jim Lahey, who uses the overnight rise method as well, but only one or two loaves' worth. And this fancy "bake in a pot" idea.

I don't have a cast iron pot, so I had to make a few adjustments, but I'd have to say that I am quite pleased with the results.

Stirato
Loosely adapted from Jim Lahey's recipe

3 cups all purpose flour plus extra flour for dusting (the Lahey recipe calls for bread flour, but alas, I am out)
1 1/4 tsp. table salt
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups of cool water

Stir together the flour, salt, and yeast. Add water and mix with a wooden spoon until a wet, sticky dough comes together. Cover and refrigerate for 12 hours. Remove from the fridge and let rise for an additional 2 to 3 hours, until the dough is room temp and the surface is dotted with bubbles. The dough should have doubled.

Dust a work surface with flour. Scrape the dough out with your wet hand or a spatula. Dust the dough with flour and nudge it into a rectangle, roughly 8 by 10 inches. Lift one long side of the rectangle and fold it over to the center. Then fold in the other side (like folding a letter to go into an envelope). Cut this "envelope" into two equal pieces.

This is incredibly difficult, because the dough is extra sticky and wet, still. I kept adding more and more flour to the work surface, but I didn't want to really knead any into the dough. Because it might break the gluten strands? Or something? I don't know. Just note that this step is quite messy.

Dust the two loaves with a little more flour and then cover with a tea towel to rise for 30 more minutes. You know they're done when you can poke a finger into the dough and the impression stays. If the dough bounces back, let the bread rise 15 more minutes.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise (aka, right after you cover the loaves), preheat the oven to 475 degrees and put the pizza stone on the middle rack.

After 30 minutes (I suppose you should check the oven temp to make sure it's exact--I don't have an oven thermometer yet, so I don't do that. But you should.), carefully transfer ONE loaf to the pizza stone. Stretch it out so that it vaguely resembles a baguette shape. From the photos, you can tell how well that didn't work for me the first time. Whatever.

Cover it with an inverted 9 x 13 METAL pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the bread and let it bake for 5 to 10 more minutes. Repeat with the other loaf. Cool on a wire rack before serving.


Pretty. Ugly. Or at least, one is distinctly more baguette-looking.

Pie recipe to come. Happy party.

Summer Herb Pesto

I may be the only person I know who cannot grow mint.

Mint, hardy herb though it is, is one plant that I cannot keep alive. I don't know how, considering that it runs rampant through most people's gardens--in my father's backyard, it just keeps growing and growing, despite numerous attempts at cutting it back and transplanting it other places. It just keeps thriving.

Not so at my house. Mandy and Dan gave me a mint plant that I promptly killed within a week, even though it was treated with the same loving care that all my other living plants receive.



However, with the addition of a back porch in my life, I thought I'd give herb growing another go. So far, it has been a successful venture. So successful, in fact, that if I don't use up some of this oregano it's threatening to take over the window box. Thus, pesto.

This pesto combines a bunch of herbs--not just basil. And I subbed in walnuts for pine nuts, because they were what I had on hand. The method is loosely based on Heidi Swanson's post on how to make pesto like an Italian grandmother, though after another look at her photos, mine is decidedly more "rustic"-looking. I don't think the pasta salad will suffer.

Summer Herb Pesto

1/2 cup each fresh oregano, basil, parsley, spinach, walnuts
3 cloves garlic
a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Heidi recommends using a mezzaluna, which is a half-moon shaped pizza cutter. I chopped everything by hand. It didn't take terribly long--I had slightly under a cup of pesto in about twenty minutes--from picking the herbs to packaging the pesto.

Quite simply, just chop everything. I started with the garlic first, and then added in the parsley leaves. Once I had a sizeable pile on the cutting board, I scraped it into a bowl and chopped some more ingredients. I did the walnuts last, but I don't see a strong reason for that. I think the chop, scrape, chop method lets the different sizes of the herbs come through, rather than pulverizing them into uniformity in the food processor.

Once everything is chopped, make a little cake of the herbs (I "caked" my pesto into the bottom of a small container) and then drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil on top--just enough to cover it.

I added salt and pepper to the ingredients list but I didn't add any into mine. Add both to taste. Store the fresh pesto in the fridge for about a week--or freeze it in an ice cube container for future use.

Freedom radishes

The first time I ate a radish was maybe only eighteen months ago.



I was at a cringe-worthy work gathering. Someone in my department had decided that the four of us communications kiddos should get together and watch the movie Office Space while snacking and relaxing on a Saturday evening. And, though I have seen that movie more times than I care to admit (and I don't want to see it too much, because it is just like my life sometimes), and because you can't really say no to a work "social event," I had to bedgrudgingly show my face. But at this party, there was a silver lining--a delightful spread of crudites, which included the lowly radish.

I was astonished. I had no idea that this beautiful, red-and-white slice was all crispy and peppery-delicious. I had no clue that biting into a radish created such a satisfying crunch. No one told me how my salads could benefit from the cheery and healthy addition of these little red bulbs. Later, I sang the praises of this humble root to my mother for much too long, before she finally shut me up by saying that the reason why I had never eaten a radish is because she would not tolerate them. Would not have them in her home.

Oh.

Well, anyway, I liked them. And I am forever changed and since then have been happily crunching radishes every chance I can get.

But I bought a TON of them at the farmer's market. A TON. And I was just getting tired of slicing them and dunking them in hummus. So I pickled them instead.

This is the first time I've pickled anything, so that in itself is quite exciting. It also means I had no idea HOW SMELLY the kitchen would get. Very, very smelly. But the vinegar-y brine odor is dissipating slowly, thanks to the intricate system of fans placed strategically throughout the house.



This is the brine. I had to adjust the amounts because I had a full jar to fill with radishes and not nearly enough brine the first go round. So this recipe actually makes more brine than you need.



Picked Radishes
cobbled together from several cookbooks

1 bunch radishes
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black peppercorns
1 dried bay leaf
1/2 tsp. dried mustard seed

Rinse the radishes and then slices them as thinly as you can. Use a mandoline if you have one. Put the sliced radishes in the jar you'll use for pickling and then put the jar in the fridge.

Mix together the other ingredients and heat over medium heat, occasionally stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool for about five minutes.

Get the radishes out of the fridge and then pour the brine over the radishes.



Let the jar cool on the counter for about twenty minutes before covering it and putting it back in the refrigerator. Let the radishes pickle at least overnight before eating. They should last around a week or so.

Ta da! That's all.

Please note that this recipe made extra brine. To use up the rest of it, I ended up pickling a red onion. We'll see how that tastes tomorrow.

Also, happy fourth. I have to be up early tomorrow, so I'm hoping the sound of fireworks will die down any minute now. Also, hey, these radishes might be perfect on top of a big, fat veggie burger. With some feta cheese and spinach and tomato. Welp, I know what I'm bringing to the picnic at my dad's house tomorrow.

Goodnight.