New Rules

There is a new rule in our household, and it is as follows: frozen cubes of Greek yogurt must always be on hand, especially in the summer, for blending up with fruit and/or chocolate whenever we might fancy a tasty cool treat.  We've been considering this new rule for a few months now, ever since someone at work gave us a recipe that instructed to spoon Greek yogurt into an ice cube tray and freeze it, then blend it with some banana and peanut butter, then sprinkle chocolate chips on top.  We got as far as the frozen yogurt cubes, then learned that the blender had died of old age, and so the cubes stayed in their little baggies in the freezer for weeks on end.

But now we have a shiny new food processor, the one that whipped up my potatoes, processed the tomato sauce I'll tell you about in a bit, and in the future may even provide black bean burgers, hummus, or pesto.  So the other night it occurred to us to finally take out those yogurt cubes and blend them with the extra goo from a kind of failed fruit leather attempt (it didn't dry evenly; it's too crispy on the edges and too soft in the middle, still tastes good but it's just not right).  I don't have pictures of any of this, it was just too exciting to stop and get the camera.  In our eagerness, we did probably almost break the food processor, since the yogurt cubes were pretty big and, well, frozen.  And we didn't consider that since they lived in the freezer for such a long time, they might just taste like it.  The other things that have been living in the freezer for a while include a few bags of scraps ready for compost, which I haven't gotten around to dropping off at the farmers' market (how unproductive of me!), an opened box of soft pretzel bites, and some sliced bananas that maybe a while ago we were planning on using for something.  Who knows.

So the other night we enjoyed strawberry banana frozen yogurt with chocolate syrup drizzled on top, and aside from the slight freezer taste, it was excellent.  Now we have a new rule about always having frozen yogurt forever.  The new rule also stipulates that the yogurt must not be frozen for more than two or three weeks, and that it could perhaps sometimes be vanilla flavored, for a little extra sweetness, and maybe the cubes should be a little smaller next time, and we should take them out of the freezer about fifteen minutes before we plan to blend it all up, so that nothing gets broken.

Because if my food processor is broken, how will I ever make tomato sauce the right consistency for dehydrating into Tomato Sauce Leather?

You may be able to tell from the pictures that this is one of the messier projects I've been working on lately.  I added a can of whole peeled tomatoes to my sauce (here is the recipe that inspired me, but I used one can whole and one can crushed), and as I "shredded" them with my fingers, as instructed, juices and seeds spurted across the kitchen, all over the stove and behind it, and of course all over me.  Then, as it began to heat up, a giant sauce bubble exploded and burned my hand, and the smaller bubbles were splashing onto everything within a three foot radius.  It was terrible.  The simmering sauce was destroying my kitchen.  I needed to construct something to protect the stove and innocent bystanders:

So innovative, I know.  Anyway it's way less expensive than something like this, and though it isn't as cute, I think it was probably more effective than these, since the point is for more steam to escape, rather than collect and condense on the lid.  Surely all the kitchens of yore must have had some sort of apparatus for guarding against splatters, but not even an apparatus, just a cylinder, or something more cone shaped, sloping outwards, tall and wide to catch all the debris from bubble explosions great and small.  But all of my different searches online turned up the screens or the lid holders, no cylinders.  "Sauce guard," "pot protector," "splatter guard," everything.  I was on my own.

Speaking of the kitchens of yore, isn't your grandmother supposed to teach you how to make sauce?  I guess she would if you asked her, I mean, she wouldn't force you, and maybe it's just if you're Italian, which I'm not.  But I have lived with an Italian for several years now.  He has not taught me how to make sauce, but he did offer some helpful tips: dump in a bunch of water, then simmer your sauce forever, or until it reaches your desired thickness.  On the topic of adding sugar, he shrugged his shoulders.  When I asked him to have a taste and judge the salt content, he said, "You put carrots and celery?  Huh."  It needed more salt.

Did my sauce even compare to that of his childhood?  Would the grandmothers approve?  Shrug.  I did add a little raw sugar, but I don't think that my taste is refined enough to tell the difference.  All I know is that I thought the sauce was damn good.  I would totally eat it on my pasta all the time, which is what we're going to do on the trail, since I dehydrated all of it.  I really want to share my recipe, but again, it does not involve very precise measurements, and I can't figure out how to make it a link that you click on, so that it's not taking up space in this post.  Oh, this complicated blogging stuff!  Maybe I say something like, leave a comment if you'd like the recipe?  I should be encouraging people besides my mom to leave comments, shouldn't I?  Someday I'll figure this out...

And I take back all of the mean stuff I said about the internet (well, some of it, anyway).  The internet is a great resource for finding out whether or not you should add sugar to your sauce, and of course for finding a sauce recipe in the first place, if you don't have an Italian grandmother and your live-in Italian wants you to figure it out for yourself.  Like the other night when I made beef stroganoff, yelling the whole time, "This is all wrong!  You have to help me!  I need you to cut my mushrooms!  I have no idea what I'm doing!"  He just reassured me that I was probably doing fine, and he wouldn't cut up my mushrooms because he had been cutting stuff up at work all day.  When I finally got everything simmering in the broth, I realized I hadn't even started the water for the egg noodles.  What a disaster!

But that's the point.  It was somewhat of a disaster, but eventually I got it all together and it came out great (I used way less sour cream than that recipe calls for).  Now I have the experience of beef stroganoff stored in my head and in my hands, which means next time I'll glance at a recipe to remind myself of the basics, but now I know what consistency to shoot for with the sauce, and what the meat looks like when it's done, and that my knife skills are not so good, so I need to prep all my vegetables before starting to saute anything.  Frantically chopping mushrooms while the onions turn brown is dangerous.  You should probably never be frantically doing anything with a giant chef's knife.

So with the help of the internet, and the help (by not helping) of my fiance who has always done most of the cooking, I was able to make a kick-ass meal and some kick ass sauce.  I guess I just have to use the internet sparingly, and combine it with my own knowledge and experience to make kick-ass stuff.  It's basically the same as looking through your grandmother's recipe box, it just doesn't have that personal touch.  You're still going to alter the recipe to your own specifications, and you're still going to screw up once in a while.  And when you have a problem that neither the internet or the grandmas have a solution for, you're going to have to just use your head:

Which I think I'm pretty good at.  If I do say so myself.

Fluffy Buns: Know your Dough

The internet is making us stupid.  We all know this.  It's not just because we spend precious hours rotting our brains by watching funny cat videos and scrolling through novelty Twitter accounts and Facebook pictures of other people's vacations.  It's because we just don't need to remember things anymore.  If you want to know about astronomy or history or techniques of frying an egg, you just type it into Google, and chances are you won't even have to finish the phrase.  Among the first that come up when you type "how to" are "tie a tie," "make french toast," and "boil eggs."

This reminds me of something I learned in school, yes, school, which is a place where I went for a while and afterward they gave me this thing...

...which actually I'm quite proud of.  Anyway one day in a class called "Can Poetry Save the Earth: Ways of Reading in Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics," I learned about a legend of the Egyptian king Thamus: when the god Thoth offered the gift of writing for Thamus to give to his people, claiming it would improve their memories and make them wiser, the king rejected the gift, insisting it would do the opposite:

If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

Socrates uses this to illustrate his criticisms of writing in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus.  If these ancient philosophers were around today, surely they would be arguing against Wikipedia and WebMD, which allow us to lose touch with our memories--no need to recall what we discussed in history class, we can just type it into the search bar--and our bodies--don't need to listen to what your body wants, the internet will tell you what supplements to swallow and all the things that are going to kill you, like gluten and egg yolks.

But if you are going to eat the deadly bread and eggs, it's not like you have to remember how to make french toast.  You just type it in and do exactly what the page says.  You don't have to internalize the process, to really know what the egg-soaked bread is supposed to feel like in your hands, to keep the heat down a little lower because last time you burned your hand or set off the smoke alarm, to put cinnamon in your egg goo because you know it will taste pretty bland if you don't; it's easier to just follow someone else's instructions.  You don't need to remember from within yourself how to make french toast.

Okay, my example is not that great.  But take bread.  Baking bread at home.  Not many people I know do it.  Because why spend hours making bread at home, bread that is going to go stale tomorrow probably, when you can go buy any variety your heart desires at the supermarket, and if you want something nice, go to that fancy bakery or the farmer's market.  See, it's the same thing with the seeds; making it yourself is special.  Kneading the dough with your hands, sprinkling on more flour or a little more water to get it to the consistency you want, not to mention knowing that you didn't put any chemical preservatives in it, which, alas, is why it won't last a whole week.  Making bread is something you really have to learn with your hands, not just with your brain and your words.

The recipe will tell you: one cup warm water, one package active dry yeast, however much salt, three cups flour.  And how long to knead it, and to let it rise until it is doubled in size, punch the dough, let it rise again, whatever.  But how to explain in words that perfect consistency, the point where you know you've added just enough flour even though it's not the amount the recipe said, where you know if you knead one more time you are just going to wreck it.  Is this what they talk about in culinary school?  How to feel your dough, listen to it, know it?

I'm not going to culinary school, no way, but I'm starting to know my dough.  I know why previous bread attempts have failed, and I know how to make the most of future dough experiments.  I feel this confident because I actually made the dough for some successful burger buns:

They came out soft and fluffy, just the way the bread that surrounds a nice juicy burger should be.  And I'm not going to tell you the recipe.  There are three reasons why I can't tell you: one, because I don't remember the exact measurements of the ingredients; two, because the words "soft, smooth dough" aren't adequate for telling you how that feels when you press it onto a lightly floured surface; and three, because I wasn't there for the dividing and the baking of these buns.  That task was carried out by my expert burger maker, who may or may not have ignored my anxious text messages while I was at work, away from my precious dough: "How is the dough??  Has it risen??" "Make sure to flatten the dough balls and then let them rise until they double again!" "Are they okay?" "How are they??"

They were fine.  He sprinkled corn meal over the baking sheet, flattened the dough balls and let them rise again, and baked them at a temperature which I forgot to specify.  And when I got home, there were beautiful soft fresh buns, just golden on top, so fluffy in the middle.  The perfect buns, from a dough that I kneaded with my own hands, from a recipe that I didn't exactly invent myself but altered as I pleased, because when you have a little bit of dough instinct, you can basically do what you want.

This is the recipe I had finally settled on, after clicking through a bunch of different pages, none of which instructed to proof the yeast.  I think I was drawn to this recipe because of the vagueness of the instructions: "Mix all of the dough ingredients...to make a soft, smooth dough."  Okay, sure.  So, I proofed my yeast in the one cup lukewarm water, but actually some of the water was half and half because I had seen a recipe that called for milk and I liked how that sounded, and the sugar, of course, mixed in there for the yeast to eat, but definitely not a quarter cup.  Who needs a quarter cup?  Once it was nice and foamy, I added the egg and salt and then the flour, a half cup at a time, and I don't remember if I counted.  I just know I definitely didn't get to three, and already my dough was too dry, and my heart sank; surely this dough would fail, like those other buns I tried, the dense ones where I didn't proof the yeast, and it was horrible because I could see the yeast granules still intact as I kneaded it, what was I thinking, I'll never be able to make good dough.  But I took a deep breath, sprinkled on some extra water, and soon I had what must have been the "soft, smooth dough" required for fluffy buns.  Oh, those magical fluffy buns!

So that's as close as I'm going to get to giving you a fluffy bun recipe.  I can't tell you how to do it, you just have to go for it.  You have to make some bad dough before you make some good. Then you'll learn from it, and you'll remember it, not just with your head but with your hands.  You'll rely not on recipes or "external marks," but on your "remembrance from within."  Your bread might not last a week, but try storing it in a paper bag, see if that helps.  Anyway, when it starts to get stale you can just make french toast with it--don't look up a recipe, just whisk up some eggs with some milk, sweeten it, dip the bread in, and slap it on a hot buttered skillet, I know you can remember that.  And remember, "soft, smooth dough" for those fluffy buns.  But you're not going to know it until you feel it--go ahead, get your hands doughy!

Next post: taste your dough.  (Or your sauce, or your chili.)  (And then dehydrate it.)