It's a sign!

Yesterday my mother told me, out of the blue, to write stuff so that I can make money (yeah, very random). She said I must make it interesting so that other people will want to read it. If only it were so easy.

Homemade bread

I had been eager to try this famous no-knead bread that I first read about in Mark Bittman's weekly column in the NY Times, and now that I've tried it, I want to do it again! In the past, the idea of taking my frustrations out by punching dough seemed like a glamorous idea until I got tired of doing that halfway through. So I was very interested in this method where you just mix yeast, flour, and water together, let it sit for 12-18 hours, shape it, then let it rise again for 2 hours, then throw into a very hot, covered pan for less than an hour.

The results were pretty good (very crusty, with soft insides) but I think I need to practice it some more before I can say I mastered it. For one thing, I made a huge mess when I was trying to prepare the dough for the second rise. It was so sticky that I couldn't shape it at all and I think I handled it so much that it knocked some of the air out of it, leading to denser bread than I would have liked.

But overall, great bread (especially for a first try) for relatively little effort and extremely low cost. The leftovers were great toasted too. I sliced it thinly and topped it with some Japanese eggplant and minced meat from Deluxe in Ctown (courtesy of the 'rents) and it was like a fusion Asian bruschetta -- yummy!!


Needless to say, I would definitely try this recipe again and you can too:

No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1-1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours' rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1-1/4 tsp salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1-5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a a cotton towel (not terry cloth) [I used a Silpat instead] with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is OK. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1-1/2 pound loaf.
Recipe courtesy of The New York Times

Some things to keep in mind for next time -- I used a 7 qt. enamel cast iron pot, which led to a fairly flat and wide loaf. I would like to try our cast iron Dutch oven next (I think it is 5 qt. or so) so that I can get a higher loaf. Also, with the non-enamel cast iron pot, I don't have to worry about the handle being able to stand the high temperature. With the enamel pot, I had to unscrew the handle and substitute a metal cabinet door knob instead, which was a bit of a precarious situation (think scorching hot metal twirling and flapping around as you try to lift a heavy cover).

Groceries

OK, so we're probably the only New Yorkers who've never tried FreshDirect before. I have a thing about it being environmentally unsound (every little thing packed neatly in cardboard boxes with lots of packing material to protect it from damage). But with my laziness, I probably would have gone that route long ago if Dear didn't have a thing about touching the food before he buys it. I think he also enjoys food shopping, seeing all the things in person, thinking of the meal possibilities, comparing items. And checking out the weekly ads for each market (Stop N-Shop, Pathmark, Waldbaums, Key Food) is like a sport for him. Like his parents, they spend hours looking at each ad, circling items of interest (even if they have little intention of buying the item). When we were dating, he'd seem distracted on the phone and I'd ask him what he was doing. His response: I'm reading [with the unspoken implication of "I'm really reading the fine print found in the ads"]. And of course, every supermarket ad whore knows that the markets in Manhattan have different items in their circular than the ones in the outer boroughs so somehow or other his father would go to the Pathmark near his workplace to pick one up every week. This obsessive behavior leads his mother to tease his father by calling the ads "his girlfriend" since he spends so much time with these printed materials. Not that she is removed from this obsession. Every Saturday morning used to be this uninterrupted time of "relaxation" where the ads would be passed from one family member to the next. I admit, I too fell victim to this on occasion (it's a great time suck, much like surfing the 'Net) but I usually only look through the ones for stores that I know I will visit and I also prefer the more organized and pretty circulars (such as Target). (Un)fortunately, this activity has slowed a little since our building absconds all the delivered ads before tenants can get to them (they think it looks uncivilized or some snobby thing like that). So Dear has had to resort to viewing the ads online, even though "it's just not the same." I prefer this method better though since he's forced to make a list and I don't have to shuffle through all the pages to remember what to get.

Anyway, this post has totally not turned out the way I thought because I really wanted to find out options for carrying groceries (not a worry for you FreshDirect folks). We recently decided to do the environment a favor by bringing along a few canvas bags with us (plus we have overflowing bags of plastic bags and don't need anymore). I think it works out pretty well except for when we have really heavy stuff (or we forget the bags at home). It is especially a pain to get from the car to the apartment. Things can get really heavy and so we also got an old granny cart (that is one piece of equipment that badly needs a re-design) which helps a lot. Unfortunately, even this so-called heavy-duty cart can't stand up to our burdens and it's on its last wheel, so to speak. We also had this portable folding hand truck that didn't last very long:
So, short of getting delivery or a donkey (not that pets are allowed), do we have any other options? How do you transport your groceries?

The half-anniversary

I can't believe it's almost been six months since we got married. We were reminded of this because the 10% off completion certificate from where we registered (Crate & Barrel, which mostly sucks for gift registries) expires at the 6-month mark. Well 6 months more or less because for some reason they decided to make the certificate expire 2 days before the full 6 months. So we went to C&B this past weekend and to our surprise, they let us return something we got for cash instead of giving us a gift card. We opted for the check since we still wouldn't have been able to get the item we really wanted, even with all the other gift cards we got. So C&B doesn't suck that much....

Frying fries

One big cooking production that I don't mind as much is making fries from scratch. A few weeks ago, we needed to use up the big bag of potatoes we bought and that were beginning to sprout, so I peeled them all (skinning a knuckle and fingernail in the process), Dear cut them into strips, and we fried everything in a cast iron pot.

Cut potatoes, draining before the fry

Potatoes in the oil, with a splatter screen over them to help with cleanup afterwards.

After the first fry, potatoes we put them on racks to drain the oil.

When fries drained, we transferred them to a bowl to cool down.

Fries, after the second fry

We fried the fries a second time to give them crispness (first fry was to cook the potatoes through). Then we sprinkled garlic salt over them -- so good! My mouth waters to think about it now.

Complete meal: fries, steak, and corn