Brioche (or as I call it "Butter Bread")

For a birthday or a Christmas or the like my dear friend Kishpike gifted me I'm Just Here For More Food by Alton Brown. I've been very lazy in my baking, so I've only now really taken this book to heart. As the book itself will tell you, it's not so much a collection of recipes as a home learning course on why things happen in baking.

The chapter on "The Straight Dough Method" deals with the transformation of the pizza dough recipe into a brioche recipe. I'll be honest, I've never had brioche before and embarrassed myself in front of my barista by pronouncing it "bree o ch" instead of "breeosh". In my defense, I didn't know if it was Italian or French.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that there are two sticks of butter in two loaves of bread. I've also learned that I require a better bench proofing stage (I need a warmer than room temperature space for my dough to rise in the pan and the "warm" setting on my oven is too warm) and that I have to remember that my oven runs hot.

The thing about brioche is that you have to integrate plastic but unmelted butter into a fully developed dough. Betsy (my stand mixer) worried me a time or two as the very thick dough threatened to stall my bread hook and cause my work bowl to jump out of its nest. After a little of the butter worked its way into the dough things got less exciting.



I made some soup to go with the bread (I think originally it was supposed to be in the opposite order of importance) and it made a sound meal. The soup was my usual chicken sausage, potato, kale mess.

All in all, I'd say that my technique is still lacking, but I'm learning, and at this point that's the important part.

Soup what nourishes the soul

Or is just plain tasty.

Ah, my gentle readers, I'm such a negligent writer. I don't blame you if you seek comfort in the blog of another. But know that I am always thinking of you.

This soup was what happened when I went shopping for Italian chicken sausage at the Korean market. I ended up with chicken thigh.

For the soup, I slowly cooked half a large onion in a decent pat of butter. I cut two chicken thighs into bite size pieces and coated them in flour laced with salt and pepper. I added that to the pot, and cut my two red potatoes into chunks. Before adding the potatoes I deglazed the fond (the bits of flour and fat that had carmelized on the bottom of the pot) with a splash of cream sherry which I had looted from my former roommate's liquor supplies (Thanks Ellen!). The potatoes went in and I simmered it with enough chicken stock to cover until they were soft. I had already cleaned and stemmed perhaps half a bunch of kale. I tore it into bite size pieces as I threw it into the pot. This is perhaps the tastiest soup I have ever made. The perfect thing after tromping about in the rain.

The Boyfriend and I ended up finishing it off that night, so I'm planning on making another pot of it tonight. I often have problems making the same dish from scratch two nights in a row, but you have to understand how delicious this soup is. I recommend it to people who have the ingredients and enjoy delicious things.

That's the long and the short of it for this post, my gentle readers. I hope you have some delicious soup after your own trudgings through autumn.

Congee

I managed to burn my right thumb and index finger while making this.

Actually, I burnt them while trying to hard boil quail eggs (told you you'd hear from them again), so my hand isn't feeling too nice while I type this.

Congee is basically rice soup from what I can understand. I had accidentally made too much rice a day or two ago, and had a lot of mushrooms and such in the fridge, so I figured it might be a good time to try it out.

I put the rice back in the cooker and added what looks like way too much water. Then I turned it on. While that was happening, I sliced some more shiitake mushrooms, along with the enokidake mushrooms. I also sliced up some more tofu. I let it all cook until the rice was very fat and the soup thick.

After serving it up in bowls, I threw a handful of spinach into each bowl and let the residual heat cook it down. I added soy sauce at the table.

This is apparently something you eat when you've got a cold and the like (congee in general, not specifically my mushroom enhanced version).

Even with the soy sauce, this tasted way too bland. I think next time I'll lace my cooking water with some kind of stock (chicken or the like) and see how that does.

The return of the camera!

So, as it turns out, my computer has a slot for ...macro(?) sd memory cards, so a lack of cords isn't going to keep me down anymore.



Basically, I've moved to the land of eternal rain. It has rained (off and on) for the past five days. This has kicked in a need for soup. Tomato, specifically, and that's not happening without some kind of grilled cheese.



The soup is just a can of something semi-organic (any soup that doesn't have corn syrup in it immediately gets two more points). I think it's Campbell's "Harvest Select" or something. It's not bad with some generous pepper grinds and a little rosemary sprinkled into the pot.

The sandwich is Monterrey Jack (cheese melted in the microwave for speed and not burning bread) with pastrami and baby spinach. I also rubbed the inside slices (the ones not covered in cheese) with a apple cider vinaigrette that has garlicky overtones. I think it might've over powered the pastrami's flavor, but it didn't make any overt clashes.

I think next time I'll grill the sandwich, then open it and press the baby spinach into it. It wilted much more quickly than I had anticipated.

The problem I have with the George Foremen grill is that it doesn't have an adjustable thermostat. You could do some very fun things with it if you could control the temperature.

I would expect more soups from me in the future.

If you have a good tomato soup recipe, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Soup, soup, soup, soup

I love soup. When I am sick, I want nothing else (except maybe some lemony, honeyed tea, but never soup and tea together).



This was a variation on a Cream, Kale, and Chicken Sausage soup. It was supposed to be Tomato, Kale and Chicken Sausage soup. But you see that distinct lack of green in those handsome soup bowls? That was my forgetting about the kale part.

To make this soup, you cut some red potatoes into slices, and you fry them with thin slices of onion and garlic until just about tender. Then, you squeeze some chicken sausages out of their casings and into little balls. Then you fry them up. Toss in a bay leaf. Then you add about four cups of chicken broth, and a can of diced tomatoes. If I had been paying attention, I would have added some kale at the very end (carefully removing the leaves from the stringy stems and tearing them into very small pieces). Add a little black pepper, and some bread and you've got a delightful meal. Don't forget to fish the bay leaf out.

Since that makes a pretty big pot of soup, I added some kale to it this morning and ate it for breakfast with the last of a multi grain baguette. Who can argue against its goodness?

I know some people who are displeased with having potatoes in with the vegetables, and then having bread on the side. A double starch combination that seems unhealthy. To those, I acknowledge their correct nutritional analysis. I also remember that need a textural counterpoint against brothy soup, something dry to keep the submerged foods from becoming monotonous.

In any event, soup is delicious.

Egg Drop Soup, Egg flower soup, Egg dropping flowers soup?

To quote a commercial, I love eggs. I mean, it seems like most fields of study have some kind of reverence for them. Biology is pretty obvious, Christian faith uses it as an example of the improbability of being three in one, and if there is chef who doesn't love what miracles eggs can perform then they are probably one of those poor Vegan chefs (so hard to be Vegan!)



In any event, I finally found a video recipe for egg drop soup that showed that vital step of adding egg to soup. Most recipes basically say "Add beaten egg to soup" and that's it. With runnyrunny999's video I got to see that the soup wasn't boiling at all (not even a bare simmer). This may seem obvious to you. It wasn't to me.

I really enjoy Runny's videos. He just seems like such a sincere guy, you know? Plus, his recipes usually turn out pretty tasty and you can usually find all the ingredients fairly easily. Give his other videos a look, they're pretty funny.



So, chicken broth, beaten egg slowly poured into very hot but not boiling broth, and some scallions made a very plain jane but delicious egg flower soup which went nicely with the rice I made.

What "well duh" cooking experiences have you had?

oh yeah... updating!

So, I have been drawing comics, I just haven't been cleaning up/scanning them, so that explains their absence.

I have, however, become the proud owner of a brand new, pitch black, multi speed immersion blender. It's just been soup city baby!

See, the beauty of the immersion blender is that you can get thick creamy soups without adding actual cream. I've made a batch of butternut squash soup that I wouldn't have made otherwise (adding boiling soup ladle by ladle into the standing blender? That's way too time consuming and messy). I will say however, that I need to become the owner of a splatter guard. I saw Alton Brown (Aruten samaaaaaaaa!) make one out of a frisbee into which he had drilled a hole with a slit to allow the blender inside.

Here's a recipe without a comic (yet?)

Butternut Squash soup

tools:

baking sheet
soup pot
blender (I like immersion, but you can make do with a standing blender)
spoon
basting brush (they make them out of silicone now, so they're easy to wash)

ingredients:

1 butternut squash
3 to 4 cups chicken broth
1 tsp nutmeg (fresh ground if you've got it)
salt (if your broth isn't salty enough)
melted butter/oil for baking

Preheat the oven to 350 F
Cut the squash in half. Be careful because it will fight you, and it's a knife fight.
Scrape out seeds (if you're adventurous you can clean and bake them for an edible garnish)
Put the squash onto the baking sheet.
Brush the squash with the melted butter.
Bake for approximately one hour or until tender

When the squash is tender, scoop out the meat and place into the pot. (If you wait a few minutes for the squash to cool, this step is much easier).
Add the chicken broth to the squash. Reserve about a cup.
Turn your burner to medium high heat.
Add tsp of nutmeg.
Cook squash until mushy.
Take the blender to it.
If the consistency is too thick, add more broth and stir.
If the consistency is just right, congratulations, you have butternut squash soup.


I like it with chicken and steamed brussel sprouts.