Search for wild mushroom

I begun love affair with mushroom since hiking in the mountain. Taking picture while they were sprung from the bottom of tree trunk is challenging, specially tiny mushroom that love shades and limited light. I found collecting wild mushroom very fun to do. Few can be eaten, others were poisonous that can be lethal. Wild mushroom as always lot more flavour and nicer texture when it cooked.

Last week we walked to the Half Moon Beach, unwittingly found these beautiful button mushroom. We followed the equitarian route and spot some in hiding among the grass. Some in good condition, but most being knocked out either by horses or insects. In California there are report of people died eating wild mushroom. So be careful.

This week we'd like to grow shitake mushroom at our home. Well, we experimenting how to make our gourmet food source. We bought the kit from Fungi Perfecti. I will post some development in the future.

Winter Apple and Berries Crumble

Since winter did not get away for sometimes soon, I decided to treat myself with traditional apple crumble. I had lovely joyride 37 miles with Bianchi Bike on New Year Day, and back home with these simple and rewarding desert. Very easy to make.

The best ingredients is sour or cooking apple. I choose Granny Smith which somehow appear in supermarket beginning January. I love the texture, slightly harder and last longer. For calories conscious I did not put too much sugar but compensate with butter.


Ingredients

Base:
4 large cooking apple or 6-8 small (peeled and seed out)
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs cinnamon powder
2 cups of mixed berries (in this recipe blueberry and blackberry)

Crumble:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup traditional oats
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
10 tbs butter

Cut apple in chunks, stew in a pan with sugar and cinnamon about roughly 5-6 minutes at low temperature. Stir occasionally and let the apple softened but not too much. When it done pour into glass/ceramic to cool down. Add the berries and stir roughly. (if you using frozen berries, add it when apples still on the pan. The heat will melt straight away without over cooking it).

Put oven on 375F for preheating. In the bowl add the crumble ingredients and mixed with hand until create crumbly consistency. Do not over do it otherwise the butter melt quickly. It doesn't matter if cannot cover all the grains.

Pour the crumble on top of apple and berries then bake about 45-60 minutes or until the crumble looks brownies. The berries will try to escape, probably best to put some addition plate on the second rack below the pie dish.

Served warm with custard or cold with ice cream.

Thursday with Dorie: Banana Loaf

Well, I did not joint the Tuesday With Dorie (TWD) dedicated to Dorie Greenspan's recipe book. But to my delight, I have been using her book to learn very basic recipe for first timer.

This is second time I made marble cake based on Black and White Banana Loaf. The result was mixed, but it getting better. I used plaintain rather banana which give texture, but lose some delicate smoothie taste. Plaintain also did not have some of water content, made the dough slightly stiff. On the book said 1/2 cup of whole milk but I brave myself only using 1/4 cup reduced fat milk to achieve ideal mix.

Chocolate here from Lindt dark chocolate. It taste bitter but strong color, enrich the loaf into pure pleasure. I thought the cake just speak itself without any 'playing around'. I did not put anything such as nuts or shredded coconut. Yum...I am having a piece with delicate Yorkshire tea.

Stollen: I am eating Jesus's blanket

The story about this bread is mesmerizing me. It's been told that a Prince in Saxon Kingdom (near Germany) wrote to the Pope to add butter on this seasonal festive bread. Until five Popes died then Pope Innocent VIII gave permission to allow the Prince and family added 'secret ingredients' that make this bread taste lovely.

In contemporary era, the bread become a symbol of Christmas specially the city of Dresden. I don't really know why it said like Jesus's blanket. Probably because the sugary powder reflect the white celebration.

This is second time I made Stollen from Peter Reinhart book Bread Baker Apprentice. I found the recipe is easy to follow which only takes 4 hours (oh yeah...most of recipe on those book takes hours or days). Last week I went down to City of Berkeley and bought a piece of Stollen from local bakery. It turned out not so nice, then I decided to challenge myself.

I did two portion of the recipe, using about 2/3 active dry yeast. I was using some tropical dry fruits to add the blitz, including golden raisins. In recipe said to add marzipan in the middle to enrich the ingredients. Since I am using flip method to create the shape, I decided to use almond puree.

I followed closely on the direction including resting time for 10 minutes after mix which gave dough time to rest. Also to train my hands, I managed to knead 6 minutes rather than 2 minutes on the machine.

Overall, the Stollen taste so good that we already eaten half. We loves the texture, not too sweet but the taste came from the dry fruits and almond, perfect as a company with tea or coffee.

Recipe in web version can be see at CookingRoute

Lenox Almond Biscotti : remembering Julia

For the joy of French’s memory, I went cinema to Julie & Julia. I was expecting some fresh air, good laugh and warm-hearted. Indeed the movie showed most of those, which make foodie like me in happy tears. Well, food just the background but the story about the journey of two women, did inspire me, by Julia and Julie for their own time tunnel.

I grew fondness of French baking not trough Julia Child, but merely from contemporary Dorie Greenspan. Dorie worked for Julia during PBS’s Baking with Julia, wrote a book to accompany the program. I haven’t dared to start ‘proper’ Cordon Bleu regime to build my baking skill. For the confidence side, Julia might say, “Never apologized.”

Since I killed cable subscription, I became involve in most PBS cooking such Jacques Pepin –who turned out to be Julia’s friends. I found him very forgiving, clear description and very technical. Somehow he reminded me with father in law in the kitchen. They are extraordinary, with passion of making food looks simple and doable.


These biscotti just another sample of over-expected. I found the recipe very easy and straightforward, but turned out to be lots messy than usual. The dough seemed too short, in resulted just crumbly. Through TWD, more people found similar difficulties. Dough became to runny, taking extra time to bake and shape not easy to work with. I followed all the steps in moderate, while reducing sugar contents is more likely give an impact of workability while whisking eggs, sugar and butter might the key. It needs slightly longer to let expand and bind the dry ingredients.

I added dry cherry which is my favorite because of sourness. Some people suggested to bake in higher temperature at first 15-20 minutes then reduce into 350F second bake. Also leave the dough at fridge for 1-2hours will make easy to split into two or three dough. As Julia said to never apologized, I guarantee that this biscotti taste like heaven.


Recipe can found here or here. This site is a brilliant step by step of making biscotti with pictures!

Being fresh & salsa

Mexican food became our weekly menu since we lives in California. Fragrance of cilantro leaves, smoothness of avocado and striking hot of chillies bound me with this land. California always known for great community of mexican. We inherited their passion of fresh ingredients, prepare with labor of love and of course starchy tortilla chips.

I visited Crate&Barrel yesterday and found Molcajete -stone grinder on sale. Once I tried to buy similar grinder from Java, then it was to heavy that excess my baggage allowance. The grinder quite similar, but molcajete has three legs. Javanese grinder tends to be wide and no leg with shallow surfaces. Mexican uses most for making dipping, while Javanese uses for sambals.

This summer my tiny garden prove itself to make guacamole. Well, I don't have big garden but just enough to produce tomatoes, lemons, serrano chillies. These recipe taken from simplyrecipe and mango salsa is just modification.

Perfect Guacamole


1 ripe avocado
1 serrano chillies
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lime
sprinkle salt
some fresh grated pepper
1/2 ripe tomatoes, seeded and pulp removed, finely chopped

Direction :

• Cut avocado, mash in mixing bowl using fork.
• Added chopped onion, cilantro, lime/lemob, salt and pepper.
• Keep the chopped tomatoes separated.
• Cover with plastic wrap on the surface of guacamole to prevent oxidation from the air reaching it. Refrigerate until ready.
• Just before serving, add the tomatoes.
• Serves with tortilla chips

Mango Salsa

1/2 ripe mango, cubed
some chopped sweet pepper
1/2 serrano chilli
1 tablespoon fresh lime/lemon
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves
2 tablespoon of grape fruit
salt & pepper

Mixed all ingredients and leave it chill at least half an hour before serves. It can be eat as dipping with tortilla chips or adding sour for meal.

Bread Baking with Pizza Napoletana

A day when I bought a book from Peter Reinhart : Bread Baker Apprentice, I realized that bread baking is not an easy task. The book is excellent, full of detail how to create best bread through fermentation stages. But it takes most of the recipe several hours to days to actually produce beautiful handmade bread.

We've been tried several recipes, but the easiest and worthiest is Pizza Dough Napoletana. Even though the whole process is quite tasking, I began to understand the essential of baking bread. It must be patient and follow the instruction strictly. It could be hard for beginner like me, but in the end it was a rewarding, a nice piece of bread with lovely smell filling in your kitchen. It was worth for every minutes you've spent.

We loves pizza so much, so we decided to try create our own pizza dough, putting the topping as our preferences. For trial we've using different flour from whole wheat, all purposes into bread flour. The regime was detail but make sense in many form of food science. The flour should be chilled first to let it not so fast react when mixed with yeast. It's all about chemistry and math. (It does as the book excerpt the formula into baker's percentages)

The size of dough is about right for two. The recipe let us to divide into six dough that can be frozen until 3 month. (It's rare to reach that time limit, always less than two months because we are pizza mania). To thaw and let the yeast back to life only need a day in the fridge, and two hour in room temperature. The last batch we did with bread flour made the dough more spongy, increasing size in significant amount. It also create crispier crust with lovely bubble of air.

Other key feature on pizza making is the stone bread at high temperature oven. (Peter suggested 500-550F which done by stone to distribute the heat evenly ). We've experimenting all sort of combination of topping, but turned out the Anchovies and smoked salmon with green pesto is the best one.


Anchovies and Smoked Salmon Pizza

Ingredients
1 Pizza dough Napoletana from Peter Reinhart's (recipe here at Heidi Swanson, let two hours in room temperature if the batch fresh or thaw a day before in refrigerator.
Olive oil for spraying
All purpose Flour for dusting
Semolina for layering on the stone

Topping :
2 tablespoon of green pesto, fresh on olive
two big flanks of smoked salmon, we uses most Scottish one
couple tablespoon anchovies
sun dried tomatoes chunks
handful of green olives
1 cup fresh mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
Note : use most of topping with oil based rather brines as water usually seep into the dough, it will finished with no solid bread surface.

• Punch the pizza dough to reduce the air, then start stretching (follow the instruction from the recipe). If you facing hole or very thin layer, do it again once until you get the nice even thickness. Do not let hole as it tends ruin the topping and whole performance.
• Spread the green pesto on top of dough, followed by salmon and anchovies. Filling the gap with cheeses and olives.
• Slide the pizza onto the oven using pizza peels with semolina flour on the base. Bake for 2 minutes then rotate to another 5-8 minutes. (the pre-heat should be done half an hour before or more to let the stone ready).
• Let it rest for 1-2 minutes then cut, ready to serve.