Videos

Here are a couple great videos I came across on youtube today.  I've watched a bunch and these ones are really good!

Tartine Starter

So I've been baking bread for a few months now and have used various sites and books for assistance.  A couple good books are The Bread Bakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, and Rustic Italian Food by Marc Vetri.  Both books are great but Rheinhart's is completely focused on bread.  Recently I picked up another book called Tartine Bread.  This book is by Chad Robertson who is the owner and baker of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco CA.  There are also some great videos on youtube of Chad and his renowned bread.  Anyway the book is great and has step by step instructions on how to come close to making the kind of bread that Chad does at Tartine.  The first step, and the one I'm documenting with this post is the wild yeast starter.

A bread starter is like a little dough that you make the night before (usually) and let ferment until you add it in when making your bread dough the next day.  The idea is that it adds flavor, and because it is already pre-fermented it gives the dough a boost when it comes to the rising process.  Most standard starters like poolish, biga, pate fermentee use yeast water and flour to get the starter well, started.  A wild yeast starter is only water and flour, about equal parts, mixed together and left to sit and ferment.  The idea is that the wild yeasts that are in the air at all times come together in the flour/water paste and naturally ferment.  This is how sourdough is made.  I'm no expert at this so this is just the process to my understanding if there is anyone who wants to correct me feel free to leave a comment.

Robertson recommends half all purpose flour and half whole wheat mixed together in a small container, covered and left in a shady place for two to three days until you can see bubble forming and a dark crust has formed on the top of the mixture.  A clear container works best, as you can see if the bubbles are forming or not.  I used a small wonton soup container from take-out Chinese.  Here's what the starter looked like after three days.

The smell is strong like stinky cheese.  Pull back the crust and discard, then discard more leaving about 20% of the starter. 

At this point mix in equal parts flour (half whole wheat half AP) and water and mix.  I used 2/3 cup for each.  This is what is referred to as "feeding" your starter.  One the starter is mixed to a smooth paste again, cover and let sit for another day till it is time to feed again.

For more information about wild yeasts and fermentation check out Sandor Katz's book Wild Fermentation, there's a ton of information on the subject and not just for bread.  Thanks, and check back for more posts on the progress of this starter!

Bresaola Done

Well, the Bresaola has finished and it was a relatively quick hanging time.  The bresaola went into the cure 12/13/12 weighing in at 2636.5 grams and came out of the cure 12/16/12 weighing in at 2047 grams, a total loss of 589.5 grams, about 22% loss before being hung.

I took the bresaola out and cut into it 1/5/13, it hung for 20 days.  When I weighed it on the fifth it was 1710 grams, an additional loss of 337g.  Total loss was 926.5 grams.  For most cured meats the desired loss is around 30%, for this bresaola 30% loss would have been a loss of 791g. As you can see it lost a good amount more of water weight.

For the record, I didn't use any mold cultures or try to hang any salami that already had mold on it in my chamber, any mold is naturally occurring.  I would like to mention however that most of that nice white mold didn't start to appear until after I installed a small fan in the side of the fridge.  The fan was one I ordered from amazon that is designed to cool down large entertainment units.

The good thing about this installation is that it blows fresh air (from my basement) into the fridge instead of putting a fan inside the fridge that would just blow around the humid air.  There is some cheesecloth stretched over the front, on the inside of the fridge as a filter.

Here's what the bresaola looked like once it was cut into to.

As for taste, unfortunately I forgot to rub in any aromatics before I stuffed it in the beef bung, and once it was in there I didn't feel like starting over.  The taste is pretty salty, chef Cicala at Le Virtú in south Philly said that the saltiness will lessen the longer I let it hang, so I think next time I'm going to let the next one hang for at least a month- month and a half.  Another thing that seems to affect the taste and mouth feel is the thickness of the slice.  Hand slicing is pretty difficult to get an even, paper thin slice, actually for me it proved impossible. That being said I think a meat slicer is going to have to be a future investment.  Other than that the taste is distinctly beefy and a little sweet, with a softness in the center.  I decided to feature it in an arugula salad, here is a pic of the finished result.

Lamb Ragu with Gnocchi from scatch

Well I've been wanting to try a rich ragu for a while now and what better time than during the cold months of winter.  A ragu is basically a rich meat sauce made for pasta.  The meat is cooked in liquid for several hours until it is fork tender and has married into the sauce.  Some people make this in a roasting pan and put it in the oven.  For this recipe I used a stock pot and cooked it on the stove top.

I bought a boneless leg of lamb and cut away three pounds.

Next get your stock pot nice and hot, you're going to get a nice sear on the outside of your meat.  I coated the bottom of the pot with oil, I used canola because unlike olive, it has a relatively high smoking point.

You only want to cook the pieces of meat until they have browned, about 6-7 minutes on each side.  Once this is accomplished I removed the meat and put in the veg that I wanted.  In this case I used 2.5 red onions .5 sweet potato,  and 5 cloves garlic minced.  Saute these ingredients till tender and onions are translucent.  Then I added in some aromatics, a couple sprigs of rosemary and a few sage leaves and added the meat back in.

This recipe is sort of a culmination of several versions I was able to find on the internet and cookbooks.  Most of the recipe's called for carrot but I wanted to try it with the sweet potato instead to give it a little more starch and sweetness.  Also the aromatics are up to you, I also saw some recipe's that used basil which I think would taste great as well.

Next step add in the wine which acts like a braising liquid.  I used 2.5 cups red table wine and reduced that by half before adding the tomato's.  The tomato's are Contadina San Marzano whole canned tomato's.  To me (as well as many other people) San Marzano give a great rich and sweet taste.  I removed these from their cans, squeezed the whole tomato's in my hand, leaving the most of the juice in the can and measured out about 40 ounces.  Add these to the pot and let all ingredients simmer for several hours.  Basically what you're doing is letting all the water in your ingredients to escape via vapor (steam), what happens is that you are left with more solids in all your ingredients and more concentrated flavor as well as a thicker sauce.  Here is what the pot looked like after the first hour

And after another 2 - 2.5 hours.

You can see how the color has become nice and red and that all the liquid has considerably reduced.  Lets not forget that nice chunk of lamb that was unbelievably tender.

I served this over a bowl of gnocchi that I made from scratch.  Here is a picture of the end result.  More on how to make the gnocchi in the next post, until then!

You can see how much the color changed and got even darker after I married the sauce and gnocchi with some oil and butter in the fry pan.