Raccoon and Lobster

I saw this recipe on Steamy Kitchen a while ago and it was one of the main things that inspired me to buy a mandoline. The recipe itself is simple enough, but the presentation is gorgeous and sometimes food just tastes better with a little bit of flash. Not being one to leave well enough alone, I jazzed it up a little, the basic recipe is just potatoes, salt, and butter. I drizzled the potatoes with garlic-infused olive oil and layered in some slices of gruyère. Unfortunately, all that time in the oven caused the gruyère to separate, so next time I will be adding the cheese after it comes out of the oven. A light sprinkling of herbs would also be nice for future attempts. There are a lot of ways you can play with this recipe, and being such a big fan of potatoes, I will probably try them all eventually. Since you have to cut the potatoes into bricks before you slice them, you will also have ready made chunks for breakfast potatoes the next morning. Or mashed potatoes. Or potato salad. It’s twice the potato-y goodness.

Potato Dominoes adapated from Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way

4 large baking potatoes
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
salt
2-3 ounces gruyère cheese

Preheat your oven to 400°F. In a small bowl, combine the garlic and the olive oil and set aside. Trim the potatoes until you have a long rectangular box, roughly the size of a stick of butter. Using the mandoline, slice the sticks into thin cards, about 1/8 inch thick. Jaden at Steamy Kitchen sliced her potatoes a little thinner than that, and they look extra fancy. Toss the cards with salt and roughly stack them again into rows in a baking pan. Keep the stacks a little loose and leave them a little disheveled so they cook through and brown unevenly on the edges.

Drizzle the potatoes with the garlicky olive oil (I left the actual garlic out for presentation’s sake). When I made this, I sliced the cheese using the mandoline and buried the slices between sheets of potatoes. They blend in so perfectly they’re almost impossible to see but the effect was a little ruined by the cheese separating during the cooking. Far better, I think, to simply keep the slices and scatter them on top of the potatoes when they come out of the oven and form a cheesy layer on top of the crunchy browned edges.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and the center is tender when jabbed with a skewer or fork. Serve immediately.

On Monday evening, UPS delivered the patio chairs that we finally got around to ordering. Naturally, it rained all day Tuesday and Wednesday and it’s still damn and wet out today.

Although not a native Californian, I have apparently lived here for too long, as I immediately fell into a melancholia that did not lift until the sun reappeared today. I was not alone in this. Traffic jams were abundant, people fled the streets and the dogs steadfastly refused to go to the bathroom lest a single droplet of water moisten their pretty little heads.

Yes. This dog.

And this dog.

Afraid of the mild drizzle that plagued Southern California for over 48 hours.

In fact, I had an idea for a post about how bizarre and inconsistent their attitudes were towards water but I was feeling too bleh to actually finish it.

It was only the guilt of posting a double-down challenge last week for Couch-to-5k that persuaded me to leave the house and complete my jog.

Therefore it should come as no surprise that my culinary escapades have been less than spectacular of late. The vast majority of what I consumed would be more accurately termed “calories” than actual food. It was only with a fair bit of luck that I was able to make an actual meal, and even then, it was only the second time I made it that I was able to get a decent picture so I could blog about it.

This is not the prettiest pasta in the world, but it’s pretty fast to put together if you know the steps, and it’s delicious and filling and great for a rainy day. I’ve been meaning to make this for a while because Bridget ranked it among her top ten recipes for 2008 and she knows her way around a kitchen. I happened to have walnuts leftover from the cookie swap and an overgrown basil plant in the front yard so I managed to overcome the desire to dump some sauce from a jar on top of some pasta and actually made a meal.

Salmon Pesto Pasta adapted from The Way the Cookie Crumbles
These quantities are approximate and you have a ton of wiggle room

Pesto

¼ heaping cup walnuts, toasted
10 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
2 cups packed fresh basil
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
copious amounts of parmesan cheese

Toast the garlic in a small skillet over medium heat until fragrant and cloves just begin to soften, about 7 minutes. I like to cheat and toast the walnuts in the same pan to speed things up. Walnut pieces take about 4-5 minutes to toast so wait the appropriate amount of time and just add the walnuts in. Peel the garlic and add it to a food processor along with the toasted walnuts. Pulse until finely chopped. Bruise the basil leaves and toss them in along with the oil and salt. Process until you achieve a …well, pesto-like consistency. Mix in the cheese and add more salt as needed.

Pasta

8 ounces pasta
12 ounces salmon
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 ounces heavy cream
½ cup pesto
grated parmesan cheese

Everyone knows how to cook pasta right? As you’re waiting for that to happen, season the salmon with salt, pepper, lemon zest, and olive oil. Lay it skin side down a baking pan lined with aluminum foil and broil about 8 minutes or until flesh is firm and no long translucent. Sprinkle the salmon with the lemon juice and use a fork to flake it into bite sized chunks.

By this time the pasta should be done, so drain it and set it aside. Pour the heavy cream into an empty pot until heated and then add in the cooked pasta. When the cream starts to coat the pasta, add the pesto and stir until combined. Add the salmon to the mixture, stir, and remove from heat. Top liberally with more parmesan cheese and serve warm.

Nancy Silverton’s Rosemary Olive Oil loaf. Recipe here.

Probably my best attempt so far. Nicely swollen, open crumb, no failures to speak of.

Albuquerque Hilton restaurant, take note. This is what real bread looks like.

Even though the proofing process did not go as planned and the resulting loaf was a lot denser than it should have been, the flavor of this bread was great. La Brea Bakery’s rosemary olive oil loaf was always a favorite of ours so making it at home was a no-brainer.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread
makes two 1.5lb boules

Day 1

18 oz water 70ºF
12½ oz sourdough starter
½ cup wheat germ
34oz white bread flour
3½ teaspoons sea salt
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
4 tablespoons olive oil

Combine water, starter, wheat germ and flour and let rest for 20 minutes. Add salt and and knead for 5 minutes, then add rosemary and olive oil and knead an additional 5 more minutes. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rest until double, 3-4 hours.

Turn out onto a floured surface, cut into 2 pieces, gently deflate, tuck under edges, cover and let rest for 15 minutes. Shape into boules and place into cloth lined bowls or proofing baskets if you have them (Clearly I need some!). Cover and let proof at room temperature until it rises about an inch, 1.5 to 2 hours.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap again and refrigerate for 8-12 hours, or a max of 24 hours.

Day 2

Remove dough and let it warm up to 58ºF, about 2-2.5 hours. This is the point where the boyfriend turned on the broiler and accidentally baked half of the loaf onto the proofing cloth.

I was able to pry most of the cold dough off and reform the boule and put it in to bake as soon as the oven had heated up to the requisite 500ºF. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty good for so much mishandling. The final proof not going as planned meant that the crumb was a lot denser than it should have been and it was a heavy loaf, but the flavor was good and the crust came out very well.

Bake for 40-45 minutes at 450º.

Submitted to Yeaspotting

The second loaf, which should have been the flagship of this batch did not have the excuse of an accidental half-baking, but I absentmindedly popped it into the oven without scoring it at all, and so two enormous air bubbles formed almost immediately and the rest of the loaf laid there like a flat, sad, sack.

Belated scoring was not enough to revive it and to add insult to injury, the largest air bubble began to brown and then blackened as it got so close to the oven walls. Not a banner day for bread baking.

The true failure crumb in a sadness loaf:

Update:

Pictures of a much improved loaf from a later batch