Guacamole 1: "Best Guacamole You Will Ever Have"

We have at least three different ways of making Guacamole. We were first exposed to this particular Guacamole when attending a tequila tasting dinner hosted by Kahn's, a local adult beverage superstore. The Guacamole had rich and complex flavor and was completely green and silky smooth. It was missing the common addition of chunks of tomato. The taste was limey but we were assured that it came from tomatillos, not citrus. The key to the flavor apparently was to roast all of the peppers and tomatillos before adding them to the avocado.

We filed this fact away for future reference agreeing to try it the next time we had a craving for guacamole (which is quite frequently). However, before we had the chance to try our own version, I stumbled across the recipe from the mouth of the chef himself, in our local newspaper. You see, someone else at the dinner had loved the guacamole, gotten the recipe, and sent it into the newspaper. And there it was printed, a blurb about the chef, and the dinner, and a recipe titled 'Best Guacamole You Will Ever Have'.

We have made this version of Guacamole several times. It is the most complicated version we make, but also amazingly delicious. I won't say it is the 'Best Guacamole You Will Ever Have' because I have learned which Guacamole is preferred is very mood dependent. This Guacamole does have the benefit of keeping very well, better than those that use lime or salsa to help keep the avocado fresh. It does not go off color, get a funny texture, or lose the freshness of its flavor when made in advance. Which, if your making dip for a party, or a Tequila tasting dinner, is a huge advantage.

Best Guacamole You Will Ever Have

4 tomatillos, peeled and washed
2 peeled cloves of garlic (or more!)
3 to 5 Serrano peppers
2 tablespoons water
3 avacados
1 onion, diced
1 cup cilantro, chopped
~2 Tablespoons water
Salt and Pepper to taste


I have written about tomatillos before, but I have recently discovered these very versatile and very tasty tomato relatives. You can find them in most produce sections next to the tomatoes and avocados. They come with a husk on them that needs to be removed. They will be sticky but a wash in some warm water and a little bit of dish soap will help. They have a light citrus flavor and can help to thicken up sauces.

For the peppers, I do not always use serranos. They are good but can be difficult to find, at least in Indianapolis. A combination of fresh jalapenos and pablanos also works well. Adjust the number of peppers to how spicy you want your dish. I have added dried cayenne peppers to give it a little extra kick.

Take your tomatillos, choice of peppers, and peeled garlics and place them in a pan. Put your oven on broil and the oven rack in the top third of the oven. Put your pan in the oven and keep an eye on it. The skins of the vegetables will start to turn brown, dry out, and finally blacken. Rotate the vegetables with tongs and try to get all sides roasted and blackened.

Once the veggies are roasted place them all in a food processor or blender and add about 2 tablespoons of water (you may need more if using a blender). Blend or process until combined. I like mine smooth, but if you prefer more pepper chunks then blend accordingly.

Dice your onion and cilantro. The cilantro can be to taste. I think 1 cup is spot on, but if really like, or do not like cilantro then increase or decrease as desired.

De-pit avocados and spoon out flesh into a bowl. Add the blended or processed mixture to the bowl and use a fork to combine. Mash the pieces of avocado with the tines of the fork and mix until smooth. Mix in the onion and cilantro and season with salt and pepper. Adding enough salt is critical to drawing out all of the complex flavors in the dish, so do not be too shy. Usually I add around 2 teaspoons of salt to this dish.

This guacamole can be served immediately, or refrigerated. It may seem somewhat runny if served immediately. However, there is a pectin like substance in tomatillos that will thicken it up if it is allowed to sit and chill for a bit.

At some point I will write about the other guacamole variations that commonly make appearances in my kitchen. This one is great for parties. As we eat guacamole for a quick no cook dinner this recipe does not get made as often as other options. However, it is delicious and worthy of the title of the "Best Guacamole You Will Ever Have".

Grill-Smoked Turkey

For the last three years Dennis and I have had a turkey cooking and eating party in the early fall on a day that was not Thanksgiving. We're always busy on Thanksgiving with various commitments to relatives and turkey is really too tasty to just be resigned to being a holiday meal. I am not usually the one that grills the turkeys, so while I am aware of the process I am relying heavily on Dennis for the details.

The first year, soon after we purchased our new charcoal grill, (Dennis would tell you that gas grills are not really grills, but cheating) we brined and cooked a turkey for a long time at a low temperature. I don't think we intentionally cooked it at a low temperature, but we had just purchased our grill and did not quite have all of the quirks worked out. As it was cooking we added hickory chips that had been soaked in a cheap bottle of red wine to the coals. This produced a flavorful smoke. The turkey turned out moist and smoky. It had a beautiful pink smoke ring just inside the skin when we finally carved it. Dennis and I disagree if this turkey is grilled or smoked. Sometimes we compromise and call it 'groked'. Regardless of what you want to call it, grill-smoked turkey is definitely worth the trouble.

The second year we decided to branch out. We had both always wanted to deep fat fry a turkey and it happened that Dennis' uncle owned a turkey fryer or two. So we soaked a turkey in brine again, tracked down 5 gallons of peanut oil, made extra sure the turkey wasn't still frozen (apparently explosions happen if you try to fry a frozen or partially frozen turkey), and fried it. We managed to avoid any mishaps with hot oil and about an hour after dropping our turkey into the fryer we had a crisp and delicious fried turkey.

We thought about it for a while, and decided we liked grill-smoked turkey better than fried turkey. So this fall when our turkey event came around again we brined another turkey, soaked more hickory chips in cheap wine, followed some instructions indicating that our grill should be hotter and produced another delicious bird. While it was ready much more quickly when cooked at a higher temperature Dennis thinks it was better when it was cooked at a lower temperature. The longer cooking time at a lower temperature gives the turkey a smokier flavor.

The essentials: The Turkey

Any Turkey will work; do not pick one that is too large for your grill. I would suggest for grilling not to buy one of the 20 lb giant birds that are available around Thanksgiving. The turkey we cooked this last time was a heritage breed turkey that my sister had bought from a local farmer. While I love buying local the real advantage to this comes in the first step when you brine the turkey.

Most birds from industrial farms that you would pick up at the supermarket come injected with a saline solution. So, not only are you paying by the pound for salt water that is injected into the bird before you even get your hands on it, but that saline solution will work to prevent flavors from your own brine from working their way into the bird. Now, we have brined and grill-smoked both an industrial saline injected and a local heritage bird, and they were both good, but I recommend trying to find a non saline injected turkey as it will improve its ability to absorb flavor from the brine.

What's a brine?

A brine is like a marinade. It is a salt water solution infused with herbs, spices, and flavorings, in which you soak the turkey for several hours. Brines used to be much more in fashion, however, as salt has become something that many people are trying to get out for their diets most people now avoid them. However, they are the best way to ensure that a large roast (or turkey) absorbs the wanted flavors, and remains moist throughout the long cooking process. Brines will overwhelm smaller cuts of meat, but they are ideal when roasting or grill-smoking something large. Today, as most people won't soak their turkeys in a salty water solution prior to cooking the industrially farmed turkey's (and other large cuts of meat) come pre-brined and injected with saline solution. To find a turkey without saline solution look for ‘water added’ on the packaging, if water has been added then the turkey has been injected.

BRINE:

The recipe is a modification of Alton Brown’s brines for a fried turkey and a roasted turkey. The website where the original grill-smoked or grill roasted/smoked modification was posted is discontinued but we think we have captured the essentials in this entry.

When we brine we usually start the night before we are planning on cooking. The turkey needs to be thawed out at this point, so if frozen make sure you move it to the refrigerator 2 to 3 days ahead of time.

To make the brine:

1 cup Kosher Salt
1 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock (can use bullion or bullion paste)
1 tablespoon black peppercorns (or more!)
1 1/2 teaspoon allspice berries (or more!)
1 1/2 teaspoon candied ginger (or more!)
1+ gallon heavily iced water for topping up

Add everything except the iced water to a large pot and bring to boil. This will help to dissolve the salt and sugar and the bullion or bullion paste if used. It will also start to bring out the essential oils and flavors in the spices. Once the solution has boiled and everything is dissolved, set aside and let to cool. If you don’t have time to wait, put your pot in the kitchen sink and surround it with cold water and if desired, ice. Stir the pot until the contents cool down to room temperature.

For brining we use a medium cooler. Place the turkey in the cooler breast side down. A 14 to 15 lb turkey is a tight fit. Pour the cooled salt solution over the turkey and then add another gallon heavily iced water. The resulting brine water should be very cold, if it is not frigid then add more ice. Remember, your turkey needs to sit in this for hours, so to prevent bacterial growth it needs to be at least as cold as the fridge (38°). Once the turkey and brine are in the cooler close the cooler and let soak for at least 4 and up to 16 hours. We prefer our turkey soaked as long as possible, and we have yet to have a turkey or roast turn out too salty from brining. While the bird is soaking, make certain to turn it at least once to get full coverage with the brine. If you are worried that the brine is too warm at any point you can add more ice.

The morning you are planning on grilling, set a stick of butter out on the counter (we’ll get to the butter later). Also, start the hickory chips (or other work chips) soaking in a cheap bottle of red wine; when I know we are going to be grill-smoking I always try to pick up a bottle of $2 chuck from Trader Joe's. The wood chips are essential to a good smoky flavor, and soaking them in wine accomplishes two things. First, you never want to put dry wood chips on to the charcoal, you want smoke not fire. And second, it makes the smoke even more flavorful.

About 30 minutes to an hour before your ready to start grilling remove the turkey from the brine, pat it dry, and set on the counter. It needs to come up to room temperature before the cooking starts. Once the turkey is on the counter some steps need to be taken to prepare it for the grill. First you need aromatics, second you need butter, and third you need to make a turkey breast plate.

Aromatics are things you stuff into the turkey’s cavity that help to give it more flavor and keep it moist from the inside out during the cooking process.

For the aromatics take:

1 sliced red apple
1/2 sliced onion
1 cinnamon stick

And heat with 1 cup of water in a microwave safe dish for five minutes. When done place these (careful they are hot!) in the cavity of the turkey with:

4 sprigs of rosemary
6 leaves of sage

If you are using dried spices then add a generous quantity (a couple of tablespoons) of dried rosemary and sage to the water before you microwave the onion and apple. Remember aromatics can be anything you want, so if you would like to add an orange, two onions, and celery then feel free to experiment. The flavors they produce on the turkey are subtle and will not over power it. The above mix has worked very well for us, though I will admit my ‘sprigs of rosemary’ are usually more like branches, and my leaves of sage are usually more like sprigs. I tend to think most recipes always need a bit more flavor.

Once you have your aromatics in the turkey cavity then it is time to channel your inner Paula Deen and get all buttered up. Literally. Take a stick of soft room temperature butter and generously rub the turkey all over with it, bottom to top, underneath, around the legs and wings, even inside the cavity. This will use most of your stick of butter, and the rest will probably be stuck to your hands. Unless you are talented at starting the faucet with your teeth, it’s a good idea to have a helper so you don’t get turkey butter all over the kitchen when you try to wash up.


Next, make your turkey breast plate:

This requires a square of aluminum foil and some creativity. The result is usually a triangular wedge that covers the breast side of the turkey. Take your aluminum foil and fold and fit it to your turkey’s particular size and shape. It needs to fit well, and wedge under the legs so it doesn’t just fall off at whim. Your turkey is going to start out on the grill breast side down, and then be flipped. This contraption is to protect his sensitive side from getting too dried out during the remaining cooking process.

Cooking a turkey can be a bit of a logistics problem for a charcoal grill. The size of the bird means it has a long roasting time and for charcoal this means you are going to have to heat up more and add it during the cooking time. You will have to figure out a way to preheat and add charcoal to the grill either with the bird still on it, or by removing the bird. Be sure to figure this out before you get started so you don’t end up with a hot charcoal disaster. Luckily for us, we have a large grill where we have the real estate to move the bird to one side to refill the charcoal and we have our old grill to get the charcoal started.

Before putting the turkey on get your grill as hot as you can. You want to sear the turkey and then let the temperature reduce to around 300 for the remainder of the cooking process. Our grill has built in thermometers and we heat it up to around 500 degrees. We try to let the temperature peak before adding the turkey, as if it is still climbing the breasts of the bird can dry out quite a bit. For a turkey you’ll want to use indirect heat for grilling, so move the charcoal to the sides of the grill area so there are no coals directly underneath where you will place the bird. Once your grill temperature has peaked add a couple of pieces of drip-dried wine-soaked hickory chips and place the turkey on the grill breast side down. To drip dry the chips stack them a couple of pieces high in the wine before your ready to start grilling, and add the ones on top to the charcoal first.

Close the grill and disturb as little as possible. Let the temperature reduce to about 300 degrees. Add more charcoal as needed to maintain the grill temperature and add more hickory chips as needed to maintain the smoke. The grill should not emit smoke like a forest fire, you do not need neighbors calling the fire department, but a steady waft of smoke is ideal. If your grill is smoking too much try moving the chips to a cooler spot of coals, or allowing them to soak and drip dry for a bit longer. Both chips that are too wet and too dry will cause an undesirable amount of smoke.

After one hour of time roasting breast side down it is time to turn the turkey over. Rotate and turn the bird so that if the breast faced down and closest to the front of the grill before, it is now face up and at the back of the grill. This is the same thing as a 'flip', but trying to flip a turkey typically isn't very easy to do in one motion. After repositioning the bird, equip the turkey breastplate over the breast area to prevent it from drying out. Add some more wood chips, and charcoal if needed and maintain the temperature at around 300⁰. Cook the turkey to around 155⁰, we find our digital meat thermometer with a metal lead very useful for cooking large roasts and birds on the grill. Depending on the size of your bird and the heat of your grill the cooking process can take from 2 to 4 hours.

Take the turkey off the grill and let sit 10 to 15 minutes loosely covered with aluminum foil before carving. Grill-smoked turkey is a real hit and as you can see the bird manages to disappear in large part before a snapshot can be taken. The leftovers are great in sandwiches, salads, pot pies, etc. If you have a grill I highly recommend giving this a try. Dennis says it’s not as complicated as it sounds and is really jut brine, prep, grill, eat. But if you don't have a grill, or do not feel confident enough to give this a try let me know. Maybe you can make it to our next grill-smoked turkey event!

Seafood Rigatoni with Basil

When not from The Fiddlehead Cookbook, I find that majority of recipes I try and like come from Bon Appetit magazine. On epicurious.com most of these recipes are searchable and at some point I realized that most of recipes saved to my online recipe box originally appeared in the magazine. This discovery necessitated buying a subscription and sometime early last spring I started receiving my monthly installment.

I have not kept track of how many recipes I have made from the magazines I have received. In some sense it is better just to have the internet search function on hand because at least for me, when I want to cook, I either have something on hand that I need to use or I want to make something specific.

With a magazine you never know what you are going to get. I have very much enjoyed receiving it every month, and I have gotten a lot of new ideas from what I have read . However, there was one particular month that we made several recipes out of. The September, 2010 edition of Bon Appetit included Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach (delicious, we learned it can be made in a microwave, and its a great way to eat veggies for breakfast), Mushroom Meatloaf with Mushroom Gravy, and Rigatoni with Shrimp, Calamari and Basil. All of these recipes were worth making and inspire me to do more than just let the pictures in my monthly Bon Appetit make me hungry.

The Seafood Rigatoni was part of the magazines restaurant edition and comes from a 'glitzy and expensive' restaurant called Marea in Central Park South, New York City. The printed recipe looked easy and delicious, and I happened to have some frozen shrimp and a bag of frozen mixed seafood (which included calamari). If you enjoy seafood this is worth giving a try and it happens to have one of my favorite ingredients in it: leeks.

If you have never used leeks in cooking you are missing out. This is one thing I have decided I have to figure out how to grow because they can be very difficult and/or expensive to find at super markets. I am convinced they just manage to make dishes delicious. Everything I have ever made with them has gone onto my 'must make again' list. They are somewhat like a large green onion, or a weird garlic/onion love child. When you cook with them you use only the white and light green parts but the way they are constructed makes finding all of the light green parts like unwrapping a present. I am convinced that the tops of the leeks would be great to add to a broth for flavor, even if they are too tough to eat; someday I will need to try that.

Ingredients:
1 lb uncooked raw large (or medium) shrimp, peeled and deveined (most frozen shrimp from the grocery store come like this)
14 oz. cleaned calamari or seafood mix (I used the mixed frozen seafood from Trader Joe's) If you don't like calamari you could ad additional shrimp or substitute with another seafood option i.e scallops
12 oz. Rigatoni Pasta, for this recipe make sure to invest in high quality pasta
6 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 cups thinly sliced leeks (white and pale green parts only; about 3 large. If you are confused about how to use a leek try this)
3 large garlic cloves (or more!), thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon (or more!) crushed dried red pepper
1 8 oz. bottle of clam juice-- this can be found with the canned seafood at the supermarket
1/3 cup(or more!) frozen peas thawed
4 Tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup + finely grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil

The recipe suggests that you take 1/2 your shrimp and 1/2 of your calamari and/or sea food mix and set it aside in the bowl. Take the remaining shrimp and calamari and dice or put through a food processor until finely chopped. Place the finely chopped mixture in a second bowl.

Cook Rigatoni in a large pot of boiling water until al dente. When done drain the pasta and return the drained noodles to their pot. The next steps do not take too long so they should be able to be completed while the pasta is cooking.

While pasta is cooking heat 5 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large skilled over medium-high. When the pan is hot add leeks, garlic, and crushed red pepper. I love my food with extra garlic and spice so I almost always double recipes garlic and pepper suggestions.

Saute these ingredients until the leeks are tender. This will not take more than 5 minutes. Make sure to stir as they cook so they do not stick to the bottom.

To the leeks add the chopped or food processed seafood and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the clam juice and the peas and cook for an additional 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in 3 Tablespoons of butter, season with salt and pepper, and cover and set aside.

Add 1 Tablespoon of oil and 1 Tablespoon of butter to a skilled. Heat over medium high until butter is melted. Add the remaining shrimp and cook 2 minutes then add the calamari or seafood mix and cook until the seafood just turns opaque. Seafood is a bit tricky to cook because you know when its done when its color changes. It happens very quickly and the only way to tell is that the seafood suddenly doesn't glisten or look raw any more. It will not taste horrible if overcooked, however, the texture does become chewy. When seafood is done take off heat and set aside.

Add chopped shrimp/seafood mix to drained pasta noodles with 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese and 1/2 cup basil.

Divide pasta into bowls, top with seafood. Sprinkle remaining grated cheese and basil on top.

This recipe serves four and, as it is seafood, it is not as good when reheated. The shrimp tends to get tough. Regardless, it is delicious so if there are leftovers there will be little complaining. When we made it we really enjoyed it, and enjoyed the leftovers. I was suspicious about the frozen peas but they were great. I ended up added more than the called for 1/3 cup. My one addition would be to add about 1/2 cup of cream to the chopped seafood sauce. The recipe already has 10 Tablespoons of oil or butter in it, so there is no pretending it is low calorie. I figure one might as well do a thing properly. I like my pasta sauces just a bit creamy and I would enjoy this addition.

One of the things I loved about this recipe is that for something that looks so fancy it is easy to make... As long as you have a food processor. I do not have one, and hand mincing seafood was an experience. This is a great meal for seafood loving company or for a special weeknight treat.

Spicy Peanut Pasta

I am not sure if this blog and my backlog of yet to be written about meals accurately reflect my meat eating tendencies. I do eat meat. However, it seems that most of what I have written about or put on the 'to write about list' since starting this project are vegetarian or vegan meals. Perhaps I am subconsciously self-conscious about my meat eating tenancies, or am trying to present a that I consume a more healthful diet in this public forum. However, I believe this to be unlikely as I have a planned forthcoming post on doughnuts. I think the most likely explanations are that I am very conscious of other peoples eating habits, so when I find good vegetarian or vegan recipes I always make sure to note them down. Also, of the recipes I make over and over again, the ones that I really look forward to are vegan or vegetarian. These recipes are in some sense my comfort food, more so than pot roast or roasted chicken. I suspect that once I get through writing up my favorites carnivorous dishes may make more frequent appearances.

One of my favorite all time vegetarian recipes is Spicy Peanut Pasta. The first time I had this recipe I was living with my sister and we spent a good amount of time debating over the strangeness of pasta with spicy peanut sauce, then just as much time trying to find the soba noodles, and finally almost gave up in the time consuming process of vegetable chopping. The result was delicious to the point of going back for thirds. And, I believe the first time we made it I got a stomach ache from eating too many vegetables-- how often does that happen?

Since that first meal, Spicy Peanut Pasta has been on my 'must cook again' list. It is something that gets made whenever it seems I am going to overwhelmed by my produce drawer. The recipe calls for specific vegetables, but the real keys are the peanut sauce and the soba noodles. Any veggies that are on hand can be substituted, and the recipe is very generous when it comes to guessing on quantities. I think I often have double the recommended amount of veggies and it always turned out delicious.

This is a great dish to make for company that does not eat meat and could also have chicken or pork added if meat was felt to be essential. I have added tofu to it before, but if a vegetarian meat option was wanted I would recommend seitan as it holds up better and would be delicious with spicy peanut sauce. The only difficult part about this recipe is the vegetable chopping, so unless you have a real love for your chef knife and want to get rid of some negative emotions by thinly slicing onions I suggest you do not cook this recipe alone. Of course, you could always purchase frozen chopped veggies and get out of the most time consuming part. Like my recipe for Sourdough French Bread, and many other of my favorite recipes (yet to be written about) the recipe for Spicy Peanut comes from The Fiddlehead Cookbook page 128.


For the Hot Peanut Sauce (above cookbook page 223)

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup oriental sesame oil
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar (or substitute apple cider vinegar)
1 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger (I always at least double this, ginger is delicious)
1 Tablespoon mince fresh garlic 3 to 4 large cloves (again I always at least double the garlic)
1 Tablespoon (or more!) finely chopped green onions (use the white and green parts)
1 Tablespoon (or more!) oriental hot oil -- hot oil can be found in most international food aisles in major grocery stores or at your friendly Asian Market
1 Tablespoon (or more!) chopped fresh cilantro

In a large bowl by hand, or with a mixer, whip together all ingredients until creamy in appearance.

You are now done with the spicy peanut sauce. You can set it aside in a bowl, or refrigerate for later use.

As you can see, I like my spicy peanut sauce with extra flavorings. This has always come out well for me and, at least with this pasta, it has never been overwhelming. The cookbook indicates that this sauce can be used for stir fried veggies, chicken, pork or noodles. So there may be some cases where you want to stick to the quantities suggested by the recipe so as not to overwhelm your dish. However, for spicy peanut pasta you can at least double all of garlic/ginger/etc. without worrying about having a sauce with too much flavor.


For the Spicy Peanut Pasta:

You can slice all of the veggies early and put in a large bowl in the fridge until you are ready to cook them. All veggies should be sliced lengthwise or on a diagonal so they mix in with the noodles easily. To think of it another way, the veggies should be sliced so that they could be eaten with chop sticks. To prevent slices of green pepper, carrot, or zucchini from getting too long they can be cut in half or thirds or thinly sliced on the diagonal. The careful chopping does increase the prep time for this recipe but I have tried it with normal chopped or diced veggies and I definitely think it is worth putting forth the chopping effort.

Thinly slice
2 cups - at least one large- onion (any color) sliced from tip to stem
1 1/2 cups -1 to 2- bell peppers (any color) sliced as above
1 to 1 1/2 cups carrots sliced as above
1 to 1 1/2 cups zucchini sliced as above
1 to 1 1/2 cups broccoli florets and thinly sliced trimmed stems
1 small eggplant peeled and cut into cubes (about 2 to 3 cups)

As stated earlier this recipe is forgiving. The above calls for around 9 cups of veggies. If you happen to have 12 cups of veggies, peas instead of green peppers, or hate broccoli just substitute and go for it. Spicy Peanut sauce is delicious on everything. If you have 6 cups of vegetables just add a few extra noodles or reduce the amount of liquid added at the end.

One thing that I think is important in this recipe is the eggplant. I didn't used to like eggplant but it is very good in this recipe. If possible, I would recommend getting smaller chinese or thai eggplants, or making this with freshly picked eggplants in the summer-- the giant woody eggplants you find at most supermarkets are not nearly as delicious. For more on eggplants look up Alton Brown's eggplant Good Eats episode. After some wonderful eggplant experiences I am fully convinced that the reason most people don't like eggplants is that they have not eaten good ones.

When everything is chopped bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook in boiling water 1 lb Buckwheat Soba Noodles to al dente. These noodles cook fast, so be careful to not over cook. You can find Buckwheat Soba at an Asian Grocery or, if your supermarket has a good selection, in the international aisle. They apparently are superior to wheat noodles in terms of nutrition and are delicious and worth going through the trouble to find for this recipe. I have substituted normal pasta before and was not as happy with the result. When noodles have cooked to al dente drain them, rinse briefly with cold water and set aside.

While your noodle water is heating in a another large wok or pot heat up 2 Tablespoons of oil (look at the quantity of veggies you have and try to find a pot that you fit all of them in). Once oil is hot add veggies. Stir veggies to evenly coat with oil and cook in a very hot pan or wok for about 2 minutes. Cover with a lid and cook 2 minutes more. Veggies should be softened but still crisp. If your adding any meat (precook meat), tofu, or seitan add at this point to heat through.

To the veggies add the Hot Peanut Sauce and at least 1/2 cup of coconut milk. Coconut milk can be found in a can in the international section of most grocery stores. I usually just add the entire can, but if you have not chopped up as many veggies just start with 1/2 cup. You can always add more later. Mix the veggies until combined with peanut sauce and coconut milk. Add the cooked noodles and toss until combined. Add more coconut milk if desired.

Serve with sliced green onions, chopped cocktail peanuts, and chopped cilantro as garnishes. I always like to add Sriracha as I love my food spicy.


This dish makes a ton, so make it for a crowd or plan on freezing some for later. It is great as leftovers and thaws and heats up well. Last time I had so many veggies that we froze some for later and had a weeks worth of leftovers for lunch. I will offer the warning that veggies paired with buckwheat noodles and coated with peanut sauce come close to being addictive. Though this dish is relatively healthy it is so tasty that you may have the strange experience of a veggie based caloric binge.

Alternative Enchiladas

What to do with a pound of tomatillos?

That was the problem I was faced with. I get vegetables delivered every two weeks, and while I can modify my order online, this particular week I had forgotten to look to see what was coming. Thus, I ended up with the unexpected pound of tomatillos. Now, I may have taken the tomatillos if I had take the time to look, but I would have been planning recipes ahead of time. As it was I was sitting there with my bag of tomatillos completely stumped as to what to do with them.


When life gives you tomatillos make salsa verde?


As stated in my Carnitas post, I do not really have roots in Mexican cooking. Soft shell tacos were the limit of our home cooked Mexican food when I was a kid (other than those few times my sister experimented with refried beans and sopaipilla). I have since branched out to quesadilla and more recently tried the Carnitas and Refried Beans. But I had never made enchiladas, in fact, I had never had home cooked enchiladas and I had seldom eaten them at all as I do not enjoy those found at most Tex-Mex places. However, there was a recipe for enchiladas with Verde Sauce I'd been eying "The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen. A note on the cookbook, this is great for vegetarian and vegan cooking, and also just has delicious recipes in it. You can access it on Googlebooks though the page views are probably limited. If you can get it the enchilada recipe starts on page 141.

One of the things I love about Mollie Katzen's cookbooks is that she gives you choices. She doesn't write a recipe that you are expected to follow from start to finish, but more like pick and chose recipes. Want to make a quiche? Pick a crust, pick a filling, and make your custard. Quiche is go. It is the same concept with enchiladas, pick a sauce, pick a filling, decide about cheese. Enchiladas tally-ho!

The one slight problem I ran into was that the Salsa Verde recipe called for green tomatoes, and I happened to have tomatillos. I looked it up and it seems that most Salsa Verde recipes are made with tomatillos, so I just substituted. One pound of tomatillos is equal to 5 large green to tomatoes... right?

For Salsa Verde:

1 pound tomatillos (or 5 large green tomatoes), diced
1 cup minced onion (I used purple onion as I like its flavor better)
3 large cloves of garlic, minced (or more!)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup diced chilies (anaheim, pablano, jalapeno, or 1/2 cup canned diced green chilies-- I used a couple of jalapenos)
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne

Place all of these ingredients in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil (as I was using tomatillos which do not have as much liquid as tomatoes I had to add some water to this mix). Once boiling, lower heat, partially cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Set aside to cool.

Add
1/4 each minced fresh parsley, minced fresh basil, minced fresh cilantro, minced scallions/green onions (whites and greens)

This sauce can be left chunky or pureed in a blender or food processor. I found that using tomatillos I needed to add a bit extra water as they do not have as much liquid in them as tomatoes. I added water until my sauce looked saucy.

For the filling:

I made half recipes of two kinds of filling which created extra work, but we found as we were eating them that it was nice to have variety.

Filling 1: Avocado

Place in bowl:
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Add
2 medium sized avocados peeled, pitted and diced

Toss Avocados in lemon juice

Add to bowl
3 minced garlic cloves
3 to 6 finely minced scallions/green onions (whites and greens!)
1/2 cup minced fresh cilantro
1 medium ripe tomato diced
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cumin

Mix these ingredients gently with the diced Avocado and lemon juice and set aside


Filling 2: Zucchini and Pepper

Heat 1 Tbs of olive oil in large skillet

When hot add:

3/4 cup minced onion
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt

Sautee 8 to 10 minutes over medium heat until Onion is very soft.

Add
1 bell pepper (any color) minced
2-3 6 inch zucchini diced
3/4 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. dried basil
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
cayenne and black pepper to taste (I added about 1 tsp each)

Stir and cook another 8 to 10 minutes until zucchini and peppers are tender

Remove from heat and add

1 1/3 cups packed grated jack cheese

For the cheese I think this is optional. If you were making vegan enchiladas you could leave it out. I actually forgot to add it to mine until I had filled a couple of tortilla so I had some with and some without cheese and both were very good.


Once your sauce and filling is ready add enough sauce to just cover the bottom of to a shallow baking dish. Take a large pack of soft tortillas-- if needed heat them up briefly in a skillet, or soften with water if they are want to break-- and add about 1/4 cup of filling to each tortilla, roll it up and place it in a pan. When I did mine with 2 types of filling I alternated filling types so if you took 2 enchiladas you got one of each type.

Once your pan (or pans) are filled with enchiladas you can sprinkle cheese on top if you like, and then cover the tortilla with the rest of the sauce. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for about 30 minutes at 325.

This recipe made a lot of enchiladas. I ended up with two pans full but only enough sauce for one. I froze the second pan, and bought a jar of enchilada Verde sauce from the store for a easy and delicious home-made frozen dinner. I really liked having the two kinds of enchiladas, the avocado is easier to put together but for some reason is not as filling as the zucchini. If you like, you can add meat or meat substitutes to these fillings if you want to make the recipe more hearty.

Chilled Strawberry Tart

Last summer I decided that we needed strawberries at the house. I spend $10 and ordered 25 plants online. The first summer they were not supposed to fruit.

That summer we had enough strawberries that I was making shortcakes, pies, jam, and giving them away. It started to frost before it got too ridiculous. This summer I just stopped picking sometime in July. I had ripped volunteer strawberry plants out of my flower and gave them to friends until I was asked to stop. It is fall, and they are still fruiting. Strawberries in October is a bit ridiculous. Since I have just been leaving most of them in the flower bed I'm sure the slugs are very happy. I feel bad for being wasteful somedays, but there comes a day when you just can't eat (or pick) any more strawberries. I have gallons put away frozen to make smoothies or jam with, and I've eaten quite a few already this summer.

In July, at the end of the time I was bothering to pick the strawberries, I decided to make a pie that I had made once before. It is out of my first cook book. The one my mother gave me when I was 10. It is a tradition in the family to get a cookbook on your 10th birthday, and I still have mine, and still use it. The Strawberry Glace Pie in the 40th anniversary edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook is delicious, but something that I only reluctantly tried last summer.

You see, I had the impression that fruit pies should be cooked. I had a bad experience or two with a strawberry pies that just involved the pre-made shell, strawberry syrup, and tasteless monster berries. They were nasty, too sugary, and made me untrusting of uncooked fruit pies. However, when I was overwhelmed with strawberries last year I reluctantly tried this recipe. I had looked at it with suspicion two or three times before I decided to make it. But it turned out surprisingly good, and I committed to trying it again. With some modifications of course.

First, instead of using a standard crust, I use what I call a short bread crust. Basically you make a recipe of scotch short bread and press it into your pie plate. I tried this when trying to recreate the taste of some of the simple fruit tarts that you can get in France and I love it. I use it for fruit tarts that are not too sugary. Sometimes I make tarts with just a shortbread crust and some pears or plums tossed with cinnamon sugar and baked. It is delicious, very simple, and sets of the flavor the fruit beautifully.

For the short bread crust:

3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups all purpose flour (I substitute all or half wheat without a problem, it gives a nuttier flavor)

Depending on the size of your pie plate you may not need all of this, however, it is shortbread after all, so if you have extra you can freeze it for the next time, or roll it into cookies.

Chop your butter into cubes and place in a bowl. Cut in the sugar with a pastry blender. If you do not have a pastry blender use a couple of knives. The sugar and butter should be well mixed and the butter pieces should be about the size of peas. Add two cups flour and mix together. Try not to over mix as flour toughens when mixed to much. If needed, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of softened or melted butter to get the dough to come together. When it is together start pressing into the pie or tart plate. I always do the sides first. I take a little chunk of dough press it along the side so it covers completely and sticks out the top a bit. When I'm done with the sides I press what I need into the bottom. If you have extra dough, freeze or roll it out, cut into desirable shapes and place on a cookie sheet. Bake both your tart shell and any shortbread pieces at 350 for 20 minutes.

Once your crust is prepared place it in the refrigerator.

Take 1 1/2 quarts (6 cups) strawberries (note last time I only used 4 and this worked fine-- but I was using a small pie plate) wash them, take of the stems, and slice them in half. When all of your strawberries are halved take some and mash them. You need 1 cup of mashed strawberries.

In a medium sized sauce pan mix 1 cup (or less) sugar and 3 Tablespoons cornstarch. I always think this recipe is too sweet so I like too cut back on sugar.

Add 1/2 cup water and mix. Once combined Add mashed strawberries. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils. Boil and stir 1 minute. Set aside to cool.

Soften in the microwave 3 oz of cream cheese or plain goat cheese (I have used both, I liked goat better but the recipe calls for cream cheese). And once softened whip it up in a bowl until spreadable. Spread this on the bottom of the crust in your pie plate.

Distribute the remaining strawberries over the goat cheese. Pour your strawberry sauce over the top of your strawberry and goat/cream cheese tart and wiggle the pie plate around to make sure the sauce is evenly distributed. Place in the refrigerator and chill until set up. This will take at least 3 hours and is better left longer.

I was surprised the first time I made this how well the flavors went together. This last time I made it I was not as impressed, though others who ate it had no complaints. But I had recently found a delicious recipe for an uncooked blueberry pie that I had made a couple times. The strawberry pie does not come close to the blueberry one. Next time I make this I am going to follow the recipe for the blueberry pie, but use strawberries (and goat cheese as I like that touch). I'll let you know how it goes.

A Meal All Grilled

Grilling is something we absolutely love to do. We have a huge charcoal grill with Cast Iron grill surfaces that we got a few years back on an extra special 'Get this out of our store now!' sale at the end of the summer. Dennis and I always have a head to head about the terms 'Grilling' and 'Barbecuing' to him barbecue is a slow cooking process utilizing sauce. To me, who grew up on the west coast, a Grill is a Barbecue and the two terms are interchangeable.

One problem with grilling is that it always seems like such a waste of energy when you heat up all of your charcoal, merely to grill some steaks, or burgers or kebabs. Usually there is plenty of heat left over to grill your sides and even your desert as well. In the summer this will keeps the kitchen cool since you're not cooking anything inside.

For this meal we had:
1 12 oz. Rib Eye, split in two --Bargain shopper that I am I found a very nice natural beef Rib Eye on special

We coated the steak with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt and pepper. Keeping it simple is in my opinion the key to a good grilled steak.

We sliced a fennel bulb, zucchini, and yellow squash and tossed with about one tablespoon of olive oil and one tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled with salt. We have one of those vegetable grill pans that has holes in the middle, and it works fantastically for grilled veggies.

Once the charcoal was ready and the grill was hot (ours has a thermometer on it and we usually let it get to about 400 degrees before grilling) we put the vegetables out. In this case, they are going to take longer than the steaks. Leave the veggies to sit for about 20 minutes and then put the steak on directly over the coals. Use direct, not indirect heat. You will want to get a nice sear. In order to do so, do not move the steak other than flipping it over; which should only be done once. Close the grill and after 4 to 5 minutes (depending on the thickness of your steak, the heat of the grill, and how rare you want your meat) flip the steak and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes on the other side.

To check for doneness you can use a meat thermometer (Med. Rare is 130 degrees in the middle) or you can poke the steak with your finger or tongs. The more done it is the less give it will have. To get a feel for it just remember what the steak felt like when raw. Well done will be quite stiff, Med. Rare will still be soft, but not squishy. If you under cook your steak you can always put it back on, but you cannot undo an over done steak.

Once the steak is done, place it on a plate, loosely cover with aluminum foil, and let it sit for at least five minutes before eating. The reason for letting the meat sit rather than eating immediately is to let the edges of the meat to solidify and hold the juices in. Depending upon the thickness of your steaks, this could take longer or shorter. However, the same logic can be applied towards any non-ground grilled meat. A trick to improve this resting period is to place a smaller plate upside down on a larger plate and put the steaks on top of that. This allows the juices that drip out run away from the steaks. This helps the crust form quicker as well as preventing the steaks from sitting in their own juices, which saps more juice out of the steaks. As with the resting process, this can be applied towards other grilled meats as well.

The veggies should be getting close to done by the time the steak is ready. So you are almost ready to eat. I miss-lead a bit in the title, because I did sauté some mushrooms and add a bit of wine and cream to them and we poured them over the steak. Just chop up your mushrooms (usually 8 oz.), heat some butter or olive oil in a pan until hot, sauté the mushrooms and sprinkle with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. When they are soft and have lost some of their mushroom juices add 1/2 cup wine and bring to a boil. Then slowly add in 1/4 cup cream and simmer until the sauce thickens. This is delicious over steaks.

The simple meal of grilled steaks and veggies with the mushroom sauce was delicious. Afterward, we followed it up with a grilled desert. This is something that Dennis has done several times and is a great way to use peaches if you have bought a few too many of them and are getting a bit sick of just eating them. The original recipe for these is from epicurious.com and can be found here: Grilled Brown-Sugar Peaches with White Chocolate. I have made it with white chocolate, and while it is good I have a grudge against white chocolate because it pretends that it is chocolate when it is not. Our modification uses real dark chocolate.

Our recipe modification:

2 peaches cut in half

Mix 2 tablespoons melted butter with 1 tablespoon brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. Add the peach halves and toss to coat them in mixture.

Place the peaches on the grill flat side down for about one minute, until they heat up and start to brown.

Flip the peaches and fill with:

2 Tablespoons (or more) finely chopped dark chocolate
Any extra sugar mixture

Grill until the chocolate starts to melt. (About 1 minute)

Eat as is, or serve with ice cream, whipping cream, chocolate sauce or other toppings. The last time we made this I got a little crazy with the desert and served with ice cream, chocolate sauce, and fresh blackberries. It was a bit over the top, but delicious.

Crepes au chocolat

One of the things that always impresses me most about France is the crepe stands.

Wandering the streets? Doing some sight seeing? Hungry? It doesn't seem to matter where you are, there is someone close by selling crepes out of a traveling food cart or little hole-in-the-wall cafe. You can get them filled with anything you want. Formage? Oeufs? Nutella? Chocolat? You name it, they have it; and,while savory crepes are a nice treat, my favorite has always been crepes au chocolat.

The reason I always found the crepe stands so impressive is that it seems like such a mysterious process to make a crepe. From an American perspective they are a foreign dish, and not just foreign but French. Thus must be very difficult to cook. And something so clearly complex is not what you would expect to be vended out of a street cart. The secret is that most classic french dishes are painfully easy to make, and crepes au chocolate are only a few minutes and a hot pan away.

From: The 1000 Best Recipes (a cook book Dennis bought before I knew him and still comes in quite handy)

For the sauce:

1/4 cup butter
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup brown sugar

Put in pan on medium heat and mix until butter is melted and ingredients are combined. Add slowly-

1 1/4 cup whipping cream (you could use milk, but if you do add some plain or vanilla yogurt for thickness)

Stir the mixture until it comes to a boil. You now have a delicious sauce that is great on crepes or ice cream, or anything else you might need a homemade chocolate sauce for. Keep the sauce warm while you make the crepes.

For the crepes:

This crepe recipe can be made and served with anything, if your doing desert crepes (like this recipe) you can add a teaspoon of sugar--though it's not called for in the recipe. You can fill them with jam (we had the leftovers with jam for breakfast) or sprinkle them with sugar. Or if you want savory crepes you can add a bit of salt, and some chopped herbs to the batter and serve the crepes with cheese, roasted veggie, chicken, or mushroom filling. The possibilities for crepes are endless. I read somewhere recently that almost every culture has a pancake (meaning a flat bread cooked on a stove or open fire that you put toppings on or in). The Mexican version is tortilla, and like tortilla, crepes can be filled with just about anything.

Combine:
3 eggs
1 cup milk
3/4 cup water

Once this is relatively well mixed (it does not have to be uniform, its alright if there are still some eggy bits) then put 2 cups of flour in a separate bowl and hollow out a hole or well in the middle. Pour your egg mixture into the well and then gradually stir with a spoon or whisk. This is the trickiest part of crepes, you want to get the ingredients combined without beating too much as beating develops the gluten in the flour. This is good for bread, but bad for crepes. Your crepes will still taste good if this happens, they will just be chewier.

Once your batter is smooth carefully stir in 1/4 cup of melted butter.

Heat up an 8 inch non stick skillet or crepe pan and grease it lightly with butter. When the pan is hot (to check flick a drop of water on the pan, if it sizzles, its hot) pour 1/4 cup of crepe batter into the pan. Pick the pan up and swirl the mixture around to coat the surface evenly like you would an omelet. You should be cooking the crepes on medium low to medium heat, depending on your stove. When the edges of the crepes start to curl up and the surface no longer looks wet then take a large spatula and carefully work it under to flip the crepe. They are very thin so it is necessary to be gentle with them. Cook the crepe on the other side just briefly (usually about 45 seconds) until browned. When done place it on a plate, you can stack the crepes up as you cook, but place a piece of wax paper or plastic wrap between them to keep them from sticking to each other.

When done take a crepe, spread some chocolate sauce on it, fold the crepe it into quarters, and pour, per the recipe, 'a generous amount' of chocolate sauce on top. You can sprinkle with powdered sugar, add whipped cream, or a scoop of ice cream to the top. Eat. Enjoy.

In case your still skeptical and think that crepes are difficult I'll have you know that this last time, when these pictures were taken I did not actually make the crepes au chocolat. Dennis did. And its not that he is incompetent in the kitchen--far from it. But he is slightly traumatized by anything that looks like a pancake (he had too eat too many of them as a kid) and much more comfortable grilling or cooking in the manly realms of meat. Now, he had just watched Alton Brown's Good Eats episode 'Crepe Expectations', but one night when I asked him to make desert, he pulled out one of his old cookbooks, found this recipe, and made delicious crepes au chocolate.

Sourdough French Bread

I made my first loaf of bread when I was a freshman in high school for a project on Taoism, somehow I connected the whole process of bread making to Taoist philosophy (don't ask me how, I really don't remember). And then the class got to eat my assignment. I think I got an A.

Making bread is something that many people no longer think about as it is so easy to purchase. But the standard loaf of sandwich bread barely qualifies as bread (see the continuous bread making tract on this Encyclopedia Britannica article). The process of fermentation that in traditional bread can take a couple hours is sped up to as little as 30 seconds with machinery and chemical additives. The soft spongy bread that you get from the local super market has none of the texture or flavor developed over millennia of bread baking experiments. However, that taste you get from a classic bakery loaf can be reproduced in the kitchen, though getting the right crunchiness on the crust can be difficult because it is difficult to reproduce the conditions of the a good bakeries moisture controlled oven.

My family has a tradition of making bread. My Grandfather loved to make bread, including sourdough bread, and it seemed there would always be some fresh on hand when we visited. My mother made a lot of bread until she had three kids, by the time I was growing up homemade bread was an occasional treat. My father apparently used to make bread. Though I have never tasted it I have heard famed stories of the beer bread he made in college. So bread making may be something that I am just predisposed to by nature, and nurture. It is absolutely something I love to do.

I almost never buy bread. I do have a loaf of sandwich bread in my freezer downstairs right now that I had a 'free' coupon for. It is nice occasionally to have a loaf of pre-sliced, toaster sized, slices. Normally, the only time I buy bread is if I am making sandwiches for a day of hiking. Its not that homemade bread doesn't make good sandwiches--it does, and I often make sandwiches with it at home-- but that as I do not have a slicer or a great bread knife my slices of homemade bread end often end up a bit lopsided and shed crumbs (though unsliced homemade bread seems to keep better, I have never had a moldy loaf). In certain circumstances, there are advantages to spongy, soft, mass produced bread. However, for all other occasions I prefer to make my own -- and I do not have a bread maker.

This may be more practical for me because we do not actually eat much bread. When I have a baking day (sometimes I make up to four kinds of bread in a day-- which could be 12 loaves), I wrap all but one loaf up in freezer paper, and do not bake again for months. The majority of what I make gets taken to get-togethers where my fresh baked (just out of the freezer) bread is always a hit. But it is always wonderful to have a chunk of flavorful crusty bread with a fresh made soup or stew, and because of my bread making habit (...addiction?) I almost always have a loaf or two on hand.

To me bread has always been a mystery. Like beer and wine it is a process of fermentation. While I understand the science behind how the process works, I wonder at what magic people thought had occurred when they observed their first leavened dough and tasted the results. The bread of the ancients was a result of time (and good bread still is). At some point someone left a dough ball out too long and natural yeast collected in the dough, consuming the sugars from the wheat and any sugar additives and producing CO2. During the kneading or making of the dough the gluten proteins in the wheat become 'developed' (or aligned), giving the bread dough its elasticity, and this in effect trapped the CO2 air bubbles in the gluten structure causing the bread to rise. Bread can still be made this way (in fact I have some four/water mixture (sponge) sitting out collecting natural yeasts right now) but it is most common now to use commercially available yeast, or a sourdough starter.

Of the breads I make this Sourdough French Bread is one of my most frequent repeats and like many of my favorite bread recipes (or recipes in general) come from the Fiddlehead Cookbook. This cookbook is available for limited page views on Googlebooks and it seems you never know what pages you will be able to access and which you will not. It can also of course be purchased online or ordered from your local bookstore. This cookbook is an amazing collection of recipes from what once was the best restaurant in Juneau, Alaska. The restaurant is no more, but the cookbook lives on and contains everything from comfort foods to chocolate mousse and is new agey, down-to-earth, and gourmet all at the same time. If Googlebooks will open it for you the recipe for sourdough french bread starts on page 150.

There are two ways to make this recipe, you can use a little extra yeast and mix up a bread sponge(flour, and water to give your yeast a head start) the night before, or, you can just rely on your sourdough starter. Usually I forgo the sponge step, though it does make a good bread. It seems that the longer your yeast is allowed to ferment the tastier your bread is. If you want to do the sponge method then get out your sourdough starter the night before baking day. Take out 1/4 cup starter and place in a good sized mixing bowl. Add 1 cup unbleached flour and 1 cup warm water (not hot, hot water will kill yeast) and let sit overnight. Feed your starter pot and put it back in the fridge. The next day your sponge should be bubbly and about twice the size it was the night before.

If you want to skip making the sponge just take your sourdough starter out of the fridge, give it a stir, and let sit over night (or if your making bread in the afternoon take it out in the morning and let it sit through the day). You can stir in a little (1/4 cup) flour to the starter to help wake up the yeast. If you forget to take it out to warm up beforehand, no worries, it will just take your bread a little longer to rise.

When ready to start bread making take 1 3/4 cups of starter out of your starter pot and place in a bowl (feed pot and put away) or use your pre-made bread sponge.

If you would like to add extra commercial yeast (you do not have to do this but can rely on the sourdough starter alone, however, the yeast will help insure you have a successful loaf of bread) mix 1 teaspoon dry yeast with 1/4 cup warm water and 1 teaspoon honey (or other sugar). Let this sit for 5 minutes, it should be bubbly and smell 'yeasty'.

To the yeast and water mixture, add:
your bread starter (either from the sponge, or from 1 3/4 cups of straight sourdough starter)
1 teaspoon salt (for flavor but salt also makes the gluten in the bread stronger)
2 cups white flour (if you want to be healthy use whole wheat white-which is finely ground wholewheat flour made from albino wheat grains)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour

Stir all of these ingredients together, they should come together to form a ball of dough. If the dough is still too sticky, knead in more flour. Once you have a nice ball of dough that has enough flour in in that you can handle it without your hand sinking into the mess then sprinkle flour on a spot on a clean counter, take the dough out, and knead the dough for 10 minutes.

To knead press the dough flat with the palm of your hands, fold it over on itself, and repeat--changing the direction you fold it every so often. 10 minutes will feel like a long time... usually my triceps are sore and I feel like I've gotten quite the work out, especially when its a baking day and I am making three or four different kinds of bread. I tell myself that all of the work that goes into kneading the bread means that I can eat more of it without feeling guilty.

(There are no-knead recipes out there, which come out delicious, and I have experimented but so far I haven't quite gotten it to work yet with this recipe.)

If you happen to have a large Kitchen Aid or other large mixer this process will speed up (note a small hand mixer will not work for bread making), put the dough hook on and mix all the ingredients (on low). While mixing add flour, small amounts at a time until the dough sticks to the dough hook and pulls away from the sides, keep mixing (on low to med low) for another 5 minutes.

Once the bread is kneaded into a nice firm dough ball, and the dough springs back lightly when touched then set it in a well oiled bowl, cover with a kitchen towel and let sit to rise. A warm draft free place is best-- when I was a kid we used to go set the bread in the furnace room-- in my kitchen the bowl usually stays on top of the oven. You let the bread rise until it is double in bulk, depending on what method you used this can take varying amount of times. If you used a sponge and added extra yeast it will take about an hour (unless your house is really cold) if you used your starter only it will take about 2 hours. Once it is double in bulk, punch it down. You can let it rise again if you like. This will improve the texture and flavor of your bread and will take half the time as the first rise. If you are making a straight sourdough bread without extra yeast I would recommend just using a longer first rise and skipping the second rise. When I do a double rise without extra yeast sometimes I end up with a flat loaf.

Once your bread has risen once (or twice) to double its size and been punched down break it into loafs. The recipe above says it makes one loaf, but it is a big loaf. Usually I divide it in half and shape it by hand in to whatever I desire. You can roll the dough out with a rolling pin into a rectangle (or pat it out) and then make a tight dough roll to get a more uniform loaf. Set your loaf (or loaves) onto cookie sheet or baking stone that is sprinkled with cornmeal, cover, and let rise again until doubled. This will take about 30 minutes this time, sometimes longer if are using all sourdough. When doubled whisk together 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of water, cut diagonal hashes in the top of the loaves of bread to allow to rise more in the oven, and then brush the egg wash over the top of the bread (skip this if cooking vegan and just brush with some oil). This will help to brown the loaves and make them shiny, if you would like, sprinkle the loaves with poppy seeds or sesame seeds after the egg wash.

Your oven should be at 400 degrees, add a dish with some water in it to the oven to increase the moisture content of the air (while this is not as effective as the steam in a real bakery oven it will help). If you would like, spritz loaves with some white vinegar using a spray bottle, I have not done this before (though I plan to try) but I have heard it helps with the crust. Place the tray with the loaves on a rack in the middle of the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. Your loaf is done when it is browned on top and sounds hollow when tapped. Take out and let cool. Eat. Enjoy.

On a side note, this bread makes fantastic French Bread (Eggy Bread) for breakfast.

Bread making may seem awfully complicated, but there is actually very little active time involved in the process. It is usually something I do when I know I am going to be around the house for a day. Other than the kneading all that is required is to set a timer to remind myself to go check on various rising stages, or to get it out of the oven. I find the process soothing, and I find kneading bread a great way to deal with stress.