L'Éternelle Baguette

The best baguette I’ve ever had was by no surprise, one I had in Paris. It’s all true what people say about their bread it’s not just bread, it’s art. For years I’ve dreamed of finding a baguette that came close to the ones I had from a little shop in the Maris Arrondissement;  soft and airy on the outside and crunchy and yet at the same time chewy on the outside. The closest  duplication I could find are the ones from Acme bakery in The San Francisco Bay Area. I was determined to steal their recipe and tracked down a relatively similar guide. Unfortunately, that recipe  took two days to make, clocking in at about about 16 hours! After making that baguette I thought that it was pretty damn good but there’s no way I’m going to waste two days of my precious life making it again. The solution, spend one day making the long version which gave me three loafs and then using the third load as a starter for the next baguette. This will save you three hours! By the time you repeat this technique: make the dough, put some aside and use it to make the next round, by the 5th time the baguette is so perfect you won’t believe it’s coming out of your kitchen instead of a boulanger in Paris!

Prep Time: First time around, 8 hours 30 minutes. After that, 1 hour 25 minutes! And 4 hours to keep them coming.

Ingredients:

Organic all purpose flour. Use the best flour you can find, it does make a difference!

Two jars with lids 

Active dry yeast

Warm water

Salt

Sugar

2 Jars with lids

Spray bottle

Cookie sheet or pizza stone

Instructions

1   In bowl mix 1 tablespoon yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 cup of warm water. Let sit until foamy yeast water.

2 Remove 1 tablespoon of yeast water from bowl and put in jar #1

3 Remove 1 tablespoon of yeast water from bowl and put in jar #2  (this is for future baguettes).

4 In bowl,  add 3/4 cup of flour and teaspoon of salt this is going to be called your old dough.

5 In each jar, mix 1 cup of flour with 2/3 cup of warm water, cover jars with lid. These a called your poolish or starters.

6  Place Jar #1 in warm place. Store jar #2 in fridge for however long you want until you are ready to make another baguette. The longer the poolish sits, the more complex the flavor (but don’t let it sit around and get moldy, that’s too much character).

7 Knead your old dough for 5 minutes, added flour only to keep it from sticking to your hand.

8 Put old dough in a warm place and cover.

9 Let old dough and one of the poolish jars  sit  and rise  for around for 3 hours.

10 After three hours, mix  poolish with 3/4 cup of hot water 

11 Break up old dough

12  Mix 2 1/4 cup of flour, 1 tablespoon of yeast, poolish, 2 teaspoon of salt,  1 tablespoon of sugar, and old dough

13 Knead for 10 minutes. Should look like oblex when stretched

14 Put dough in a bowl and cover bowel with a damp towel and rise in warm place 3 hours. For the first hour, every 20 minutes, lift some dough from the bottom of the ball and fold it over the top as if you were putting the dough to bed and pulling a blanket over it.

15 Cut  dough into into 3 parts. 

16 Fold corners into the centers, turn upside down and push dough around with your palms until it forms balls.

17 Put two dough balls (we’ll call them dough balls #2, and #3) in Tupperware and place in fridge. #1 will be used to make today’s baguette,  #2 can be used for another baguette if you cover it for about an hour to warm up. #3 will be used as old dough to keep future baguettes coming.

18 Cover and  let the  today’s (#1) baguette dough ball rise for 30 min (longer if you took it out of fridge)

19 Pat down

21 Flatten shapes  into long rectangles using your palms

22 Fold top end into the center long ways. Use your palm to seal the center line.

23 Rotate and fold in half long ways and flatten the ends with your palm to seal.

24 Using your finger tips and thumbs ( not your palms!) roll the shapes into a baguette shape that will fit in your largest cookie sheet or pizza stone (if you make it too skinny, your gonna make bread sticks). Put the dough on parchment paper or thin wood slabs. This will be used for you to roll the dough onto the oven.

25 Cover and let dough rise for 30 min while you preheat the  oven to 450°.

26 Put a  cookie sheet or pizza stone in the oven and let it heat up.

27 Uncover dough and cut 45° slits in it. 

28 Transfer dough to the oven and spray dough and sheet or stone with water.

Bake for 15 minutes and then spray baguette again. Bake for 10 more  minutes, or until  golden brown. Remove them from the oven and cool them on a rack.

For Future Baguette…

The next time you make a baguette, take dough ball  #2 out of fridge, follow steps 18 to 28.

For Eternal Baguettes…

 Take the jar of poolish and dough ball #3 and follow steps to 9 to 28.  Remember to always save extra dough balls just to use as old dough and you can keep this going forever as long as you replenish the poolish  when it runs out. The more you keep using the old dough to make future loafs, the flavor will get better and the inside fluffier

Mumbo Gumbo

Everybody love Gumbo but not everyone can eat it. Like vegetarians, because of all of the meat and people who are gluten free because of the flour in it. Well, I can't help the vegan and the vegetarians but I do have a substitute for the flour part. This gumbo is better the second day, especially if you heat it up and then add the shrimp. I've also uploaded a special how to video in my messy kitchen.

Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo

1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/2 cup all purpose flour (or gluten free flour) 4 celery stalks, coarsely chopped 2 medium onions, coarsely chopped 2 green bell peppers, chopped 2 bay leaves 2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons dried oregano, crumbled 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1  can of whole tomatoes, 28 oz, preferably unsalted with basil 2 1/2 cups chicken broth 2 1/2 cups shrimp broth* 1 pound smoked andouille pork or chicken sausage, halved lengthwise, sliced 1/4 inch thick 2 pounds uncooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (use the peels to make shrimp broth) Freshly cooked long-grain rice or quinoa Gumbo flié *Shrimp broth Shrimp shells 1 tbsp lemon juice 5 thyme stalks Peel shrimp, place shells in a sauce pan, cover with water. Add thyme leaves, lemon juice. Bring to simmer. Cook for 10 minutes until you get all of the flavor out of those shells and into the broth. Shrimp broth can be saved  in same the way I save chicken broth: freeze and thaw in microwave when needed. Gumbo The sausages can be par-cooked in oil or cooked in the gumbo for a spicier flavor. Heat oil heavy large Dutch oven over high heat until almost smoking. Add flour and stir until dark red-brown, about 8 minutes. Immediately add celery, onions and bell peppers. Cook 5 minutes, stirring and scraping bottom of pan often. Mix in bay leaves, salt, oregano and cayenne. Add  broths, canned tomatoes and sausage. Boil 15 minutes. Break up tomatoes as you cook. This part can all be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill. Bring to simmer before continuing. Add shrimp and gumbo filé and simmer until just cooked through, about 3 minutes. Mound rice or quinoa in soup bowls. Ladle gumbo over.  That's all, A

   

Poulet Aux Quarante Gousses D'Ail

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic

In the Provence region of France, garlic is called the poor man's truffle. Well, there's nothing poor about the taste of this dish. It's easy and so succulent. The meat just slides off the bones and the roasted garlic flavor induces you into a French coma. I changed the original recipe of this dish, published in France the Beautiful cookbook, (one of the best cookbook series ever) and added some potatoes to the pot. They absorb all of the chicken and garlic flavor and turn into creamy tasty little morsels. So good, they're almost deadly.

Large enameled pot, big enough to hold the chicken. I use one made by Lodge

1 Chicken, about 3-4 pounds (1.75 kg)

4 sprigs thyme

4 sprigs rosemary

4 sprigs sage

2 celery stalks with their leaves

4 sprigs parsley

40 cloves of fresh, young garlic, unpeeled (to be quite honest, I sometimes use even more)

3 tablespoons of olive oil

freshly ground pepper

2-3 russet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 inch cubes. I rarely ever peel my potatoes, even when I make fries I the earthiness of  the skins.

For serving: 

Toasted slices of country bread. I like to use a baguette or even an ciabatta

Preheat oven to 400˚F (200 C˚)

Sprinkle the chicken inside and out with salt.

Stuff the chicken with half of the herbs, half of the celery and 4 garlic cloves.

Place the remaining herbs in the pot along with the potato cubes

Add oil, salt, pepper  and the remaining garlic cloves

Roll the chicken in the pot so that the sides are coated with oil. Place the chicken on top to the potato mixture, it's okay to have things on the side of the chicken also.

Cover the pot and bake for 1 hour 45 minutes.

Transfer the cooked chicken to a serving platter and surround it with the garlic cloves and the potatoes.

Skim the fat from the juices in the pot. I do this by pouring the juices into a glass measuring cup, waiting until the oil rises to the top and then using a turkey baster to remove the good stuff from the bottom of the cup and transferring that to a sauce boat.

Serve the chicken hot, accompanied by its sauce and toasted slices of bread. Each diner crushes the garlic to remove the skin and spreads the garlic onto a slice of bread.

Like I said, so good.

Enjoy, A

Christmas at the Café

It's Christmas time in Alex's Cafe. To get you into the spirit, I have two treats. The worlds best gluten free cookies and an creamy delight of a drink I call Bog.

Bog with The World's Best Gluten Free Cookies

Bog

My Wife laughs at me when I drink these but I'll take it as long as I can drink this at Christmas time to take the edge off.

Baileys & Cream Liquor (or a cheaper counterfeit version)

Egg nog

Whipped cream (optional)

Pour into glass. Ratios depend on your taste.
Top with whipped cream.

Enjoy.

World's Best Gluten Free Cookies

There are many ways that these cookies can be made. I like to have them more cake-like, but, with a slight adjustment,  you can make them chewy and flatter.

1/2 Stick of butter

1/3 cup of vegetable oil

1 Teaspoon of vanilla

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup of sugar.

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/4 cup of flaxx flour (for cake-like cookies) 1/2 cup for chewy and flatter cookies

1 3/4 cup of brown rice flour (for cake-like cookies) 1 cup for chewy and flatter cookies

1/2 cup of chopped nuts (or more)

1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips (or more)

1/2 cup dried fruit (optional)

Peheat oven to 350˚

Soften the butter in a microwave and use electric mixer to blend with vegetable oil, vanilla  and egg.

Mix in baking soda and salt.

Mix in sugars

Hand stir in the flours

Hand stir in the chocolate chips and any other enhancements.

Drop rounded teaspoons onto an ungreased cookie sheet, at least 2" apart.

Bake until light brown for no more than 8 minutes  (or to your preferred texture) 

Cool slightly before removing them from cookie sheet and place on cooling rack or in your mouth if you're impatient.

Enjoy, A

Breakfast Sushi with Sake Mimosas

Some things seem like a good idea at the time. Breakfast Sushi was one of those things I was thinking about for years. The original concept was actually going to be called: "Redneck Sushi"because I wanted to make a low-brow version of sushi. Instead of raw fish, this was going to have ingredients like Spam™, KFC™ and grits. I modified this into Breakfast Sushi. Instead of using rice, I used grits. The filling is eggs prepared omelet style (minus the cheese) and some cooked sausage. All ingredients were wrapped in seaweed. In retrospect, bacon would have been a better filling as well as sticking to rice instead of grits. It wasn't that it was horrible, it was just weird. Out of the 4 tasters, 1 spat it out and the other 3 ate it but thought 1 was enough. The drink of choice was a sake mimosa. One part Sake, one part fresh squeezed orange juice. This I would actually make again. the only complaint I have for this one is that it seem to pack too much of a wallop for so early in the morning. Perhaps under the right setting with the right dish, this could be salvaged.

Enjoy, A

BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE, EVER!

Okay, best chocolate cake, ever is a bold statement. But, I have to say, I've made this cake three different times, screwed up at different points while making it and yet, it's always been a big hit. Even after left in the refrigerator for a week, getting egg yolks into the egg whites, over-cooking and forgetting to line the spring-form pan with wax paper for easy removal. The best thing about this cake is that it looks like it's going to be heavy and dense but it's actually light and airy. It's fun to see the expressions on your guests' faces when they take a bite and realize this.

The only prerequisite I will suggest to you before making this cake, is to have some experience making a souffle. A souffle, to me is the essential dish that separates cooks from chefs. If you can't make a souffle, then this dish may be a little foreign to you. If you have, then all you have to think about is that this is a chocolate souffle that's fallen. The most important thing I have found when making souffles is that you have to have everything laid out and ready to go. There is no time to be fumbling around the kitchen looking for an ingredient. Timing is everything! Scared yet? Good.

There is an orange sauce that you are supposed to make with this. But It really doesn't add anything to the flavor. Matter of fact, I found it kind of distracting. Instead, I suggest whipped cream, preferably some that you whip up yourself with some heavy cream and a little sugar.

Chocolate Cloud Cake

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter. That's right, two freaking sticks!

9 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

6 eggs

2/3 cup of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Cream of tartar (optional). Some say this stuff keeps your eggs fluffy.

Supplies:

Two large bowls

Electric beater

Oven proof pan to hold water

Springform pan. This will not work without one of these pans.

1) Put a roasting pan, 1/2 full of water in the bottom third of the oven. This keeps moisture in the cake. Preheat oven 325ºF.

2) Butter the sprngform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Butter the paper. The best way I have found to line the bottom is: Take off the bottom, lay it onto the paper and draw around the edge like a stencil. Cut out this shape and it gives a perfect fit to the bottom of the pan. Put pan back together before using (duh).

3) Slowly and lowly melt the butter and chocolate together in a heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring. Remove from heat.

4) Separate the eggs and whites into two large bowls. I found the best way to separate eggs is in your (clean) hands. passing the liquid, back and forth between hands and letting the whites slip between your fingers.

5) Beat together the yolks, 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

6) Clean the beaters

7) In other bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of cream of tartar (optional) until the eggs hold soft peaks. Gradually ad rest of sugar, beating until the whites hold stiff peaks.

8) Stir the warm chocolate into the bowl of egg yolk mix. Stir until well combined.

9) Stir 1/4 of the whipped egg whites into the chocolate egg mix until it's lightens.

10) Gradually FOLD, not stir the rest of the egg whites into the mix. Gently but thoroughly. Folding is a major part of keeping air in a souffle. It's done just like it's read.

11) Pour the batter into the springform pan and bake in the middle of the oven (do not put the sringform pan into the pan of water. I don't know why they had these in the original directions I read but it must have happened at least once.

12) Bake for at about 1 hour. Cake is done when a wooden tester skewer comes out with cumbs instead of liquid. Cracks will form on the top of cake. Do not panic. it's doing it's thing.

13) When done. Take out of oven and cool for 10 minutes. The cake will fall. Again, do not panic.

14) Run a thin knife around the cake's edge. Remove the sides of the pan (couldn't do that in a regular cake pan, eh?)

15) Let it cool for 30 minutes.

16) Turn cake over onto a plate. Remove the pan bottom and the parchment paper.Place another plate onto the (now, top) and flip it back over. The second plate will be your serving plate so you may want to make it fancy.

The cake can now be served with whipped cream, or wrapped in Saran Wrap™ and eaten later in the day, or place in the fridge, in Tupper Ware™ and served the next day (bring to room temperature.

Enjoy, A

Birthday Bistro Bash

For my wife's birthday, I was put in charge of making the birthday dinner. Of course there was no way in hell I was going to make meatballs and spaghetti for this special occasion. After all, for Christmas, I was given two restaurant hardcore porn cook books: Alinea by grant Achatz and Ad Hoc from Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame (another cookbook I also have). I thought about the menu for about a week, planning the starters to the desert. Even the wine list. Desert was done by my mother-in-law and was to be a delicious chocolate cheesecake. I paired it with a nice Port.

Whenever you do a fancy meal, the experts always say the same thing. For every fancy thing, you better have 2 simple things. Considering I wanted to to a 7 course meal (including desert) I would need 2 fancy things and by fancy I meant those dishes that kill your kitchen and take the entire day. To me, working on these is very invigorating and really sharpens the culinary brain. Even if it fails you can always say: "What did they expect, this is a French Laundry dish that usually cost $400."

Here was the final Menu, some recipes are provided:

Alex's Café Birthday dinner

Delle Venezie Pinot Grigio 2009

Pomme Frites (French fries) with Aioli

Clam on Nasturtium Leaf with Nasturtium Soup and Shallot Marmalade

Haricot Vert (Green Bean) Salad

Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel 2008

Parmesan Crisp with Goat Cheese Mousse

Mint Sorbet

Salmon with Mushrooms

Wellington Criolla Port

Chocolate cheesecake (Desert by Jackie Kinney)

Breakdown:

Delle Venezie Pinot Grigio 2009: I found this gigantic blue bottle at Tra

der Joe's that screamed birthday dinner all over it. Luckly it was good, not great but it did pair well with salads and in in this case the h

ome made

Pomme Frites (French fries) with Aioli.

To make good crispy fries remember to:

1) fry them

2)drain

3) Fry them again

AIoli

Lots of crushed garlic

olive oil

salt and pepper

lemon juice

1 egg

Mix together, salt and pepper to taste.

Clam on Nasturtium Leaf with Nasturtium Soup and Shallot Marmalade:

This was kitchen killer #1. This dish came from Alinea. A restaurant in Chicago, famous for blending food science and sometimes, science fiction into a meal. There were at least 5 items to be made which were put onto a fork: Shallot marmalade, lemon pudding, clam, nasturtium leaf and flower, sitting over a bowl of nasturtium soup. Luckily we have lots of nasturtium around our house. The fork part took at least 4 hours for what would end up being just one bite!!! The soup was a total palate freak-out (to put it in G rated terms. At Alinea, they actually create their own dishes and silverware, just to highlight the dishes. I obviously didn't do that.

Haricot Vert (green bean) Salad:

My own invention and a simple one:

Blanched, cut up green beans

Salad greens

Gorgunzola cheese

Olive oil, infused with garlic and rosemary

mix

I chose a bottle of Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel 2008 to ease the meal into the heavier dishes. Cline is one of my top 5 wineries in Northern California if only because the staff is so friendly and the grounds are pretty.

Parmesan Crisp with Goat Cheese Mousse

This was a simple/hard recipe from the French Laundry.

The goat cheese mousse was whipped goat cheese and

cream with herbs. the Parmesan crisp were just baked mounds of shredded cheese. The hard part was forming the cooling cheese into little cone shapes which were filled with the cheese. I used egg cartons to let them form. The only regret I had about this dish is: Eat them within 15 minutes of creation! I found them a little chewy after sitting around too much, I felt this was a clunker in the meal.

Mint Sorbet

A palette cleanser. For the kid's sake, I heat the wine to remove the alcohol. I also didn't use an ice cream maker, I just froze it and crushed it with a fork occasionally.

Mint Sorbet


1 packed cup chopped mint leaves
2 cups water

1 1/2 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup sweet white wine

1/2 cup lemon juice

In medium saucepan over medium heat, bring the chopped mint, water, and sugar to a simmer. Cover the pan, lower the heat slightly, and cook for about 3 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and cool the mixture to room temperature. Stir in the white wine and lemon juice. Chill the mixture for 2 hours. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Salmon with Mushrooms

This was a home run. I don't think I took a very good photo of it, but trust me, it was restaurant level.

I had made this many times and is one of my wife's favorites. the original name was Salmon with Chanterelles. Chanterelles are $20

per pound mushrooms. I did it that way once and noticed no great improvement over oyster or even Shitake mushrooms. This time I used oyster mushrooms and I made the 1/2 cup of fish stock from scratch.

Fish stock:

Fish parts

Thyme

Put fish and thyme in pan, cover with water. Simmer until water taste, well, like fish stock!

Salmon with Oyster Mushrooms

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1/2 pound Oyster mushrooms, wiped clean and

halved

4 salmon filets (not frozen)

1/2 cup of white wine (use the one you're going to drink, later

1/2 cup of fish stock

1 small shallot,

peeled (duh) and chopped fine

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup of heavy

cream

1/2 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

Salt and fresh

ly ground

pepper

1 teaspoon of chopped, fresh chervil (or dry is fine)

Melt the butter in a large skillet with a tight fitting lid. Add the mushrooms and cook over low heat, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes or until they start to "sweat".

Remove the pan and reserve the mushrooms and juice separately. If, for some reason, you didn't get any juice from cooking the mushrooms, you can ad a little water to the pan and reserve that.

Place the salmon in the pan, making sure you don't have any overlap.

Pour the wine and stock over the fish (the liquid should about 3/4 of the fish. Cover with the chopped shallots and the mushroom juice.

Cover the pan with the lid and place over moderate heat for about 4 minutes. The salmon should be starting to cook but you do not want to cook it all the way. Put the rare salmon into a warmed oven. By the time you finish the rest of the meal, that thing will be perfectly cooked.

Return the pan to moderate heat and add the mushrooms. Cook uncovered for about 5 minuted or until the liquid is reduced by half.

Stir in the lemon juice, cream and mustard and cook until it's thick

Season with salt and pepper to your taste

Add chervil

Place the salmon on a platter, cover with sauce and mushrooms, garnish with chervil if desired.

Enjoy

Chocolate Cheese Cake by Chef Jackie, served with

Wellington Criolla Port

Wellington Criolla Port. Another favorite winery and one of the few in the States that I've seen make port.*

The guest enjoyed the meal, even the kids liked it and if you can get a kid to get pass meatballs and spaghetti, that's the ultimate compliment.

* This winery got bought out and is long gone. 😟

Cheers, Alex