Dough Whisperer

When the time came this week to prepare the second batch of Russian tea biscuits, my confidence was up as I basked in the glow of batch #1 success.

So I doled out a little of this, measured out a little of that, and sifted my way into a dough ball.

But something was amiss. My hands told me the dough offered way too much give and my head told me not to reach for the flour.

If this was a batch of chili, spice it up and we'll call it a day. But when a Crisco and oil pastry dough is deviating from your hopes and expectations, finding a solution can get quite sticky.

With batch #2, it would be with strategy and moderate manual finessing that would turn this ball into a baked good.

Avoiding a full fledged flour intervention, I nudged the tender dough into a rectangle. While holding my breath, fillings were spread and sprinkled, and all was gently rolled up into a log. Amazed at the tenacity of this tender log, I knew it would cave in if taken to the knife.

In this desperate time where no more measuring was to be done, I opted to give the log a little talking to.

"Firm up," I urged the dough.

10 freezing minutes later, the dough emerged from its frosty time out. Having gained some resilience, slices were carefully made and into the oven it went.

Batch #2 was not as attractive and consistent as batch #1, but the Russian tea biscuits tasted great nonetheless.

And by batch #3, I was fluent in dough speak.

Be Well.

At the Improv

The normal shopping and cooking routines of the weekend were thrown a tad off course with the arrival of the holidays.

Saturday and Sunday were spent eating good food prepared by others, visiting with family and friends, and dipping apples in honey to usher in a new year.

So when the beginning of the week quickly arrived, I had no homemade bread to creatively incorporate into Wednesday night's dinner, no banana muffins to grab for a quick breakfast, and no Sunday black beans to smash for a Thursday burrito.

Improv cooking would definitely be on the menu this week.

Breakfast at the improv: yogurt, French couscous, walnuts, and agave syrup. Reminiscent of a rice pudding, this dish is where the creamy meets the crunchy and chewy. An improvised breakfast of champions.

Lunch at the improv: a bread salad with chickpeas and grated carrots was tossed in an apple cider yogurt dressing. That foccacia from one week ago was still going strong in fridge storage and made scrumptious croutons. . . TGFF! The one thing I did prep on Sunday, homemade hummus (chickpeas in disguise), was dolloped on top.

Dinner at the improv began at 7:17pm. First I scoured the fridge and pantry, lining up proteins, grains, basic veggies, and savory spices on the counter. The onion, garlic scape pesto, corn, Israeli couscous, eggs, and Monterey Jack cheese made the team on Monday night. For this hodge podge Israeli couscous and egg dish, it would be up to the food, and not myself, to be scrambling to make us dinner.

Kudos to Israeli couscous for providing good starchy satisfaction and structure to an egg based dish. If you are craving an essence of pasta, but don't want the whole bowl of linguine, Israeli couscous is a good way to go.

Using what's on hand, combining ingredients for savory satisfaction, enticing the sense of umami, and including ingredients across the nutrition spectrum, are what my improv act has been about this week.

With time, the tasting of different ingredients over and over again fosters imagination and cultivates the curiosity of "what could be" when ingredients are combined in creative ways.

Sometimes ingredient combos work and sometimes they don't. That's what being at the improv is all about.

Be Well.

Day Old Bread

Friday afternoon began with 2 loaves of homemade bread.

After assembling a batch of challah dough and leaving it for an hour in an oiled bowl, I peeked under the moist towel and had one of those "mmmmmm. . . is that going to rise?" moments. Another 30 minutes went by and no sign of puff.

So, as my bread neuroses continued to rise and the dough did not (be advised, watching a bowl of dough does not make it rise), I decided to turn to my old faithful: foccacia. Mix the yeast in water and sugar, wait, add the rest of the liquids, and add in the flour and salt.

After the foccacia backup bread was left in the bowl to rise, things quickly changed course. Maybe the challah was jealous, maybe it was the competition, but whatever the reason, that challah dough began to rise. And rise. And rise. Then the foccacia joined in. This was a dough drag race if I'd ever seen one.

It wasn't too long that I realized 2 large loaves of bread would decorate our table that night.

And decorate they did. The regal, glossy, deep brown, 16-inch braided challah sat side by side with the rounded, golden, salt topped, steamy foccacia. A Jewish Italian bread feast.

And then came the leftovers.

Since family was visiting for the weekend and many more meals were to be made, this was my chance to turn my bread into something else over the course of the weekend (and possibly to save time cooking). Time to make lemonade.

Nothing too creative came of the challah actually. While I could have created stuffed french toast with sweet ricotta or a savory bread pudding. the challah toasted with butter was our simple and heavenly morning mainstay.

Sunday afternoon lunch with the leftover foccacia was a different story. Cut into cubes, toasted with olive oil on the stove top, and tossed with chopped fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, rice vinegar, salt, and pepper, this lunch for 4 was prepped in 20 minutes flat. We were salivating before, during, and after our meal. Had my dry white beans been cooked, they would have been tossed in for the protein.

And Sunday night was the pizza feast. The dough, prepped Saturday evening, in between family conversations and playing Boggle, was formed into 8 discs and par baked for Sunday night pizza with the fam. The pizza was so good, no leftovers remained.

A wonderful weekend and the bread saw us through.

Know Preservations

The long holiday weekend brought an end to my summer of preservation procrastination.

Early Saturday morning, while standing in a Warrier I Yoga pose, I swear I heard a voice tell me "preserve something already, it's September for goodness sakes!"

Needless to say, the weekend is over, and corn, tomatoes, and basil are all hibernating in their own little places in my kitchen.

At the market, tomato seconds were $1.50 a pound! My husband sliced up those puppies and we stuck them in the dehydrator. Dehydrating was pretty hands off. Except for rotating the dehydrating trays, it was a low maintenance food project.

(I encourage everyone take a BIG bite of a dehydrated tomato and have a camera close by when you do. You'll want to capture the look on your face)

While my hubs was tending to the toms, I was busy at the food processor batching up pesto. Basil, parm, garlic, olive oil, salt, and toasted sunflower seeds. 2 cookie scoops of pesto went into muffin tins for freezing. A nice substantial pesto clump, and enough for 3 months worth if we used one per week! Perfect for pizza, soups, sauces, smashed potatoes, risotto, the list goes on.

And then there was the corn. Blanched, cooled, cut off the cob, and frozen. 3 bags. The naked cobs went back into the liquid from which they were cooked, destined to become the flavor infuser of corn stock. Into the pot they went, and away boiled the water. Boiled down to half it's volume. That's the kind of kitchen work I like. . . walk away and let it do it's thing. The stock is in the fridge right now, gearing up for hibernation tomorrow.

All of these preservation projects in one weekend. It was productive, it was work, and in January, it will be delicious.

Be Well.

A Fruitful Day

Welcome to The Red Lentil blogpost and into my kitchen and garden! It is my hope that the food stories I will share from my daily life will bring learning, laughing, and salivating to yours.

Today was the clean out the fridge day- blech. Not the most enjoyable thing to do but by Wednesday I'll be glad it was done. In retrospect, I am convinced the act of cleaning the fridge created good fruit karma for the day. Because right at 2pm the doorbell rang and it was my neighbor with a bag full of yellow tomatoes! I scored some of them and they are now happily sitting, perched in the window sill next two two red ones we'd just plucked from our tomato plant.

Since my fruit karma seemed to be faring well, I pulled out a MAMMOTH zucchini from the fridge, also a gift provided to us. Shred, shred, shred went the food processor.

And last but not least, the third and final fruit gift, a bag of cute green apples from the tree of my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, were cooked down in a pot into a sweet mesh of mush. One tupperware container frozen and one standing by in the CLEAN fridge.

All of these fruit gifts and so many recipe ideas. Apple zucchini muffins, zucchini potato patties, and tomato corn salad, to name a few.

And tomorrow, it's off to the farmer's market. . . in search of more fruit.

Be Well.