how to start

I want to post pictures of my food experiments in addition to an occasional rant or rave from all corners of my existence. I have one small counter in my current kitchen, and an incomplete but growing collection of things to help me cook/bake. I'm untrained, but I am not bad at following a recipe. I try to take a good photo of whatever it is that comes out, but this is not always successful with my camera.

I'm not, in any way shape or form, a professional, as evidenced in all of my failed experiments. They might taste good, but they're ugly. Or they might look good, and taste ugly. Sometimes though, they taste good & look great!

So, as my inaugural blog post, I'll talk about the cheesecake and bread I made this weekend, and post some pictures & dig up the links or rewrite the recipes out, as I did adjust them slightly to my budgetary & taste requirements.

Cheesecake
One of my favorite foods. A diner staple, whether with a mound of jelly smothered strawberries, or just plain with an extra side of whipped cream, I ate a lot of it in high school. This fell off a bit after I moved to college & didn't have a diner in walking distance. I had the pleasure of being introduced to a delicious mascarpone cheesecake that my stepmother would whip up. My dad brought over her recipe on a trip back from England, that or she served it in the restaurant she ran a few nights a week. It was similar to a cream cheese based cheesecake, and my memory is fuzzy on the details, other than my mother thought it was silly to spend so much on mascarpone when you could just by the Philadelphia cream cheese and use the recipe on the box. I was insistent on being a food snob when I was 13, which my mother probably saw through but did an excellent job trying to appease. She's a good mother, my mom. She even got us a Brita filter.

But enough of my family history. On a trolling spree to find something to read in French on a regular basis, I found a food blog with a recipe calling for St. Moret cheese, which didn't really seem worth looking for in the States because it would be ridiculously expensive, and a cheesecake is going to taste good if you put the right amount of the good stuff in. So I bought nearly 3 pounds of mascarpone and cream cheese to make the bulk of the filling. It's a lot of cheese, and it's really fun putting through the blender. I bought a huge chunk of chocolate from Whole Foods, which I found a bit sweet ("68% cocoa solids"), but my boyfriend assured me it was dark enough. On a side note, he's an excellent sous chef. He did a great job stirring the chocolate while it melted. Thanks! The chocolate mix half went back in the blender, and I had a lovely surprise when the rest of the chocolate chunk I decided to melt fell into my bowl and sprayed everything (including my hair, face, shirt) with cheesecake filling. Then, I dropped the chocolate stirring spoon, which also splattered, but not on my hair, face & shirt. I mopped on Sunday, it's all cleaned up.

I'll mention too that it took 5 eggs. I should have known that this thing would be huge, but I have a set of 6 mini tart tins, so I have a huge amount of leftover cheesecake at home, which we'll be eating for days to come.

The crust was incredibly easy to make. The particular recipe reduced graham crackers to dog biscuits, but really, they aren't that bad. Plus, finding fancy pants Belgian cookies was not going to happen, given how much I'd spent on the 3 pounds of cheese already. It would have been another store to go to, and I was already carrying what felt like over 20 pounds of groceries in one bag. I used graham crackers. And walnuts! I don't think it really changed the taste, but I probably didn't use enough. Maybe next time I'll try pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds for a bit different of a taste. I did put a bit of ground ginger in the crumbs, so there's a bit of a kick (I know I should be using fresh, but too lazy for now...). The butter wasn't quite doing the trick on keeping it together, so I added a squeeze of honey. It's still super crumbly, but it's a tasty crust.

I over chocolated the mix, so I ended up with not really marble cheesecake, more like chocolate cheesecake with some white bits (I imagined people thinking, "Did you even attempt to mix it, lady?" "Have you ever heard of marble cake, jerk?" Ok, this didn't happen, but it would have if I were on tv). It's kind of marbled, but the big version was mostly chocolate, and all delicious.

Since I usually don't make huge amounts of dessert for just the two of us, I should disclose that the big guy came with us to a Labor Day party, and was a success. It wasn't finished (there was competition from a pear tart!), but I did get compliments on the taste, texture, chocolateyness, and cheescakiness. I knew it tasted good, so ha. Success.

The small and large format after spending 1h45 in a 250 degree oven.

B is for Bread, Bold, Butter, blah, blah blah...

In addition to the cheesecake, I made a loaf of bread. Hoorah, bread! I like to make my own because generally it is heartier and tastier than the fluffy sliced stuff, and I can't bear to part with $3 dollars for a "baguette." Really, it's just long bread, not that good, you did something wrong bakers. So I'm happy to buy my ingredients and make my healthy, delicious, I know all the ingredients & take responsibility when it's bad, bread.

I was using the same recipe throughout the winter, which I got from a vegetarian cookbook I found at Strand last year. I wasn't always pleased with the recipe, but I think maybe the ingredients are a little off in terms of measurments. The first time I made it, it was lacking salt, and I played around with salt, yeast & whole wheat / white flour combinations. It just never stayed together.

So I went in search of a sandwich bread recipe on the internet, and found the "basic" recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart on here: http://www.bakingandbooks.com/2007/09/22/simplicity-48-hours-in-the-making/. I was intrigued the first time by the word biga, which is fun to say and even more fun to make. This bread takes forever and you need to have some time aside to make sure you get the timing right. I put the biga & the soaker together on Friday afternoon and then brought the biga to room temperature while I prepared the cheesecake.

Baking bread in any kind of heat is one of the silly things I do to ensure that I have something tasty during the week. Have you ever kneaded dough for more than 2 minutes while the oven is on and there's not much of a breeze? I put a fan on facing me, so it wasn't so bad. I think what makes artisanal bread so tasty is the sweat that goes into it. Gross.

Hanging out, waiting to rise.

The dough did an excellent job rising in the heat and then took the normal amount of time to cook.

I find this bread is at its best right out of the oven, but it keeps fairly well. There's just something about a fresh baked loaf of whole wheat bread with butter or cheese that's so comforting, even in a summery hot apartment.

And that is all for now. Making a savory mushroom cake tomorrow* from the Cakes de Sophie recipe book Matthew brought me as an I'm-back-from-France-for-good-finally-sorry present. And remaking some bread for this week. Yum.

*This part was actually written on September 12, but I was too busy to post the rest of this until the afternoon.