Last day of June

Here we are on a hot day in the last handful of hours of June.  And I'm in the kitchen dealing with a hot oven, and hot water, too, as I wash up each dish and pan and utensil one by one as I use them.  

Today I have multiple batches of chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough already made and chilling in the fridge.  And I have made multiple batches of yellow cake batter (see the pic above).  To start the day I realized I didn't have sour cream, even though I was certain that I had some in yesterday's groceries.  So I rushed out to the store, got some, along with a container of ice cream (for the hot day, of course), and then went home.  When I arrived and put the sour cream in the fridge I found I actually had a container in there already.  While at the store, I saw cake flour on the shelf as I passed it, and thought about getting some, but realized I already had some at home.  You see, I keep extra containers of everything so that I never run out.  So in my flour cannister was cake flour, and I had an extra box in the pantry.  Or so I thought!  When I started setting up ingredients to make cake batters, I realized I only had a small amount of cake flour in the cannister and none in the pantry.  How that happened, I do not know.  But I had to go out to the store again for cake flour.  At least that time when I got back, I didn't find that I actually had a box in the pantry.  

I always keep extra bags and boxes of everything:  flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, bread flour, eggs.  You name it.... I have extras.  Well, at least most of the time; apparently, not today. 

This week's chocolate chip peanut butter cookies are being developed as a special request from son-in-law Zak.  And the yellow cake is for son Ben.  I will spend the next few days working on them and tweaking and adjusting until they are ready to be added to the full menu.  I'm working from past recipes I've already used, so it's more a process of refining than of discovery.

Tune in to the next blog post here to see how this month of working on new menu additions is going.

Try to stay cool, everyone!  And have a great start to July!

Summer cooking and cinnamon toast

It's Sunday, June 26.  In two days, I begin my mid-summer teaching break -- almost five weeks during which all my students are on break, and piano lessons are put on the back burner.  And that means I'm ready to do a lot of cooking.  

First, though, is this week's menu:  chocolate mousse, and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.  Next week, you will have a chance to order eggnog and also something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time:  vanilla poppy seed muffins with lemon streusel.  

During July, I will be cooking lots and lots, so I hope the weather is not too hot because cooking in a hot kitchen during a hot summer day just makes it all seem even hotter.  But no matter whether it's a hot July or a cool July, I have a lots of things I am looking forward to working on in the kitchen.  That means I'll be sampling lots of different things, so my meals will consist of little bits of things rather than full courses during many days of the month.

In the middle of all this cooking and baking, there will be some simple pleasures as well.  One of my favorite simple pleasures is a slice of brioche toasted just right, spread with a liberal amount of Plugra butter, sprinkled with a light dusting of sugar and topped off with an aromatic cinnamon.  Cinnamon toast is such a simple little thing but so enjoyable.  And I often indulge in it while also working on much more complex foods.   

I like to keep a lot of simple foods around: fresh cut fruit, boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, bowls of berries, sliced cheese, and bowls of my favorite corn flakes or cinnamon spice oatmeal.  I love having these simple things around because they are perfect for filling a moment in a busy schedule that needs filling due to a little bit of hunger or the simple need to have something delicious to munch on.

And when I cook, I do a lot of munching on things like these simple foods as well as samples of everything I'm making in the kitchen on that particular day.

OK, enough rambling.  Today's post is not very substantive or memorable, perhaps, but I enjoy sometimes just rambling on about simple things just as I love eating my simple foods.    

A week off

As we head to the final weekend in June, I'm going to take the weekend off.  Sorry to say there will be no food this weekend.

But next weekend is chocolate mousse and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.

As we head into the final days of June, I'm preparing for a period of more than a month with no teaching.  And the plan is for me to use all that free time for making food, trying new recipes, doing updates to my recipe database, and other related activities.  

I hope to completely finish the initial entry of all remaining recipes into my database and then begin proofreading everything.  Once it's done, I will have everything organized and in a format that will be very convenient and very efficient.  I was hoping to have it done a couple months ago, but to be honest, it's not that much fun to update.  I don't feel much reward from doing it.  But I will feel reward from getting it done.  And that's one of the most important things I want to get done during the month of July.  After that, as new recipes are added, it will be easy to maintain.  It's typesetting all the existing recipes in this new format that is time-consuming and brain-numbing.

In addition to the database updates, I have several foods I'm working on as special requests from different people.  These include a sandwich with sauce, a strawberry cream cake, a yellow cake, macarons, a new ice cream, and a new cookie.  Plus I want to work on cinnamon rolls which I have been promising everyone for a long time, and also buns for sloppy joes and other sandwiches.  And let's not forget the continued work on something I've already started -- a pasta meat sauce.

Someone might say, "Can't you just get any old recipe and use that?" (for the pasta meat sauce, for example) -- but the answer is a resounding, "No!"  I experiment, I tweak, I adjust, I test, I test some more, and finally I end up with a recipe that I've made my own, one that has certain qualities in the finished product that I love.  It certainly takes time, but it's worth it.  When it's done and added to the full menu, the recipe has been tested and sampled, and the printed copy has notations I've added regarding the technical procedure for making it in addition to how to prepare certain ingredients.  Everything is written so that not only are the proper ingredients in very specific quantities detailed but also how to mix or fold, how long to let it sit, what kind of baking vessel to use, etc.

So July will be a vacation month, but a busy vacation month.  And that sounds fine to me.

A hot week ahead

 

Summer is here.  Today is going to be hot and steamy.  The entire week ahead will be hot and steamy.  Perfect for staying indoors and making cold foods.

This next weekend, the weekly menu is comprised of blueberry cinnamon snack cake, and also farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.  The blueberry cake is such a pleasant relaxed dessert.  I eat it plain, with whipped cream, accompanied by a glass of milk, or anything else that comes to mind.  It goes with so many things.  And it's not overly sweet so you can eat a lot.  The pasta salad is a cold pasta salad.  And it's perfect for a hot day.  It has something from every food group in it, so it's a complete meal.  And it's incredibly delicious.  

For the following weekend, I have just set the menu with chocolate mousse, and also almond snack cakes with blueberries and cream.  

Today as I write this post, it's almost 10:00 AM here in Kansas City.  I've already done things I wanted to do outside today, getting them done early to beat the heat.  And I'm in for the day now.  Part of my day is going to be dedicated to reviewing my list of items that I want to tweak and add to the full menu. Another very fun part of my day is going to be dedicated to perusing recipes and brainstorming foods, specifically things that are new that I've never seen before.

I love going through recipes in books or online and coming across one and it hits me:  "I have to make that!"  Of course, that increases my list of new recipes I want to try, and I will probably never come to the end of that list.  There are simply too many great foods to experience.  I have many passions, as people who know me will attest.  And with each one of those, I could immerse myself in them for the next 60 years and still not learn everything I want to learn.  And that's perfect.

Ok.  On to the rest of my day now.  Time to get a cold glass of milk and take a look at some recipes.

Small vs. big

 

Blueberry cinnamon snack cake is on the menu for next weekend.  My last post talked about the choices I made regarding blueberries for this cake.  Today something else is on my mind which is also connected to this cake:  small vs. big.

Sometimes I will experiment with a recipe to see what kind of size options I have.  When I was preparing to add this snack cake to the full menu long ago, I thought about what sizes I wanted to offer.  Certainly, a full-sized 9-inch diameter cake was going to be one of the options.  But I also wanted to offer smaller sizes.  I experimented with different sizes and even with loaves.  But in each case, the finished cake wasn't quite the same as the original full-sized cake.  There was something slightly different in how it baked which altered the texture enough that I noticed it.  And adjusting baking times didn't eliminate that difference.  I like the full-sized version a lot so I wasn't about to accept something that was even a little less good just because I wanted to offer a smaller size.  This is why both a full-sized cake and also individual slices are on the full menu -- slices instead of a small version. 

I find this fascinating.  The same cake, the same batter, the same recipe, but a different result depending on what size baking option is used.  This doesn't occur with my Swedish visiting cake.  The 4-inch size and the full 8-inch size are identical.  (Note:  The full-sized Swedish visiting cake is not on the full menu, but I make in on request sometimes.) Brownies?  No difference.  But there are some things for which it seems that the final size affects the final baked result in a way that is easy to discern.  Why is that exactly?

I haven't made a list of items where this happens, but perhaps over time I will start keeping track.  I am always interested in trying to answer these sorts of questions.

That's all for today.  Have a great day and a great weekend.  

Cookies and cakes and salad

It's early June and the weather is mild.  Summer hasn't officially started and won't start for several days, but it certainly seems like we are in for a mild summer over the next few months.  Of course, that could change with one big week of intense heat.  If that happens, I'll make lots of ice cream, and smoothies, and slushes, and even some soda syrups to add to tonic water, club soda or seltzer.

This coming weekend, we have Swedish visiting cakes and Swedish oatmeal cookies on the menu.  These oatmeal cookies are a bit different from what one usually thinks of with an oatmeal cookie.  Trust me, though, they are really good.  And they have little tiny chocolate chips in them which are an added special touch.

I just now selected and posted the menu for the following weekend.  It will be blueberry cinnamon snack cake and farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.

When I first developed the blueberry cinnamon snack cake, I had to decide first of all whether to use wild blueberries or regular domesticated blueberries.  I chose wild.  They are smaller and they have less water in them.  Then I had to decide how I was going to incorporate them.  If you put cold blueberries in a cake, that brings down the temperature of the batter and makes getting a thorough bake much more difficult.  So I began to also make sure my blueberries were not just at room temperature but actually warmer than that, courtesy of a quick stint in the microwave.  After warming in the microwave, they tend to release a little juice.  So I spread them out on paper towels and cover them with more paper towels and gently roll them around until there is no liquid.  This "no juice" is an important thing because I don't like my blueberry snack cake to be blue!  I want no juice mixing in with that batter.  That also means that the mixing process has to be gentle so that none of the blueberries are damaged because that would cause them to release juice.  Is there sometimes a little juice that is let out?  Yes!  No matter how hard one can try, there are always times when things don't come out exactly as hoped.

But in the end, hopefully I have a non-blue cake with lots of wild blueberries in it.

The pasta salad is one of my favorite things to have in warm weather.  It is a cold salad.  And I spent a lot of time working out the balance of flavors until I had just what I wanted.  A bowl of this salad is an entire meal and perfect to have on a warm summer evening.

So take a look and order what seems interesting and delicious to you.

And in the meantime, have a great week!

Bread and tomatoes and other stuff

Here we are at the end of May.  Surprisingly here in Kansas City, we've not had much heat yet.  In fact, the first days of June later this week are forecast to be quite mild.  With the rainy spring we've had, gardens and landscaping all over the city are healthy and vigorous.  It seems we have a mild summer ahead of us.  At least that's how I read it based on my experience and history here in Kansas City.  We might roast once in a while in July and August.  But after such a mild time heading up to the summer season, it won't be too hard to get through any roasting days.

This next weekend we have honey oatmeal bread and roasted tomatoes on the menu.  They are a great combination.  I don't meant necessarily that they are meant to be eaten together literally.  But they do pair well, so maybe if you order both, you can make a nice meal out of them.  The honey oatmeal bread is a real addictive favorite of mine.  Once I slice into a loaf, I go back again and again as long as it lasts, until the last slice is gone.  I love this bread.  And the tomatoes are so healthy and flavorful that they are hard to resist as well.

The following weekend I have Swedish visiting cakes on the menu again since a few people didn't get a chance to get some in the last couple days.  I'm also making extras just in case.  And keeping with the Swedish theme, I also put Swedish oatmeal cookies on the menu.

Once we get to July, I will be doing more cooking than usual.  For the entire month, I have no teaching obligations.  I have many things on my list that I want to experiment with.  Sometimes I make such a list in response to requests from eaters here.  Sometimes it is spawned as a result of leafing through recipes in various sources, online and otherwise.  Sometimes it just comes because I find myself craving something or inspired to make something.  

When I'm cooking, no matter what I'm cooking, no matter how much I'm cooking, I taste everything.  Certainly it's a good idea to eat a cookie from a batch that I'm sending out the door to someone.  I always want to taste test to make sure that it's a good batch.  As long as I'm not distracted by something while I'm cooking (which might lead to a mistake I make), it comes out as expected.  But I like to be certain anyway.

Sometimes when I'm cooking, I taste one thing and it makes think of another thing and then a combination of things.  Pretty soon, I'm writing down the ideas.  Sometimes I get to those ideas right away, but most of the time they go on a list of things to experiment with at a future time.  Well, July coming up is a future time that will be devoted to whittling down this list.  I'm looking forward to it very much.  You'll be able to read all about it here. 

Here are the next menu offerings

 

I have just posted the updated menus for the next two weekends.

First up for the last weekend of May, we have triple chocolate sablés and Swedish visiting cakes.  For the first weekend in June, I am pairing up honey oatmeal bread and slow-roasted tomatoes.  

I got groceries yesterday.  It was one of those days where I just bought the things I really needed ... except at the very last minute, I decided I really wanted some crackers and cheese.  I was suddenly craving them.  And as I looked at the list of groceries I had put together, I figured it was so completely healthy in its entirety, with virtually nothing that could be labeled junk food ... well, I thought, "Why not?"

But I have to admit that even though I love cheeses, I was not really in the mood for cheese per se.  Actually I wanted a can of cheese spread.  I know, I know .... I know what you must be thinking.  But once in a while I'm in the mood for something from my childhood.  And I remember chicken-flavored crackers and spray cheese from my early years, and sometimes I like to indulge that memory.

So there I was at the end of a day sitting in a chair in front of a good episode of a fun TV show, and groceries had been put away, and I had a box of crackers sitting next to me and a can of spray cheese in one hand and a mug of milk close by as well.  I was quite happy as I sprayed that first bit of cheese on that first cracker from the box.  It tasted fun.  It tasted yummy.  It wasn't gourmet.  It probably wasn't even cheese.  But it hit the spot at that moment in time.

I ate quite a few of those crackers and quite a lot of that spray cheese.  And then I ate some fresh fruit to give my body something a little healthier to work on.  But I don't regret the crackers and spray cheese one bit.   

Food is good for us, but I like to have fun with it, too.

Pasta meat sauce

 

This past weekend, as noted in a previous post, I made three separate pasta meat sauces.  I love doing comparison cooking -- making multiple batches of the same food with different recipes at the same time.  In this case, I worked with three significantly different meat sauce recipes with the hope of seeing a significant difference in the end result.

I cooked each of them identically, using the same stainless steel skillet, using the same type and amount of beef, and using the same order of ingredient addition, etc.  The differences were in the seasonings and in the amounts and types of tomatoes (crushed, diced, paste, etc.), and in other added ingredients such as onions and garlic or green bell peppers, etc.

I cooked them in as identical a fashion as I could.  And then each batch was set aside while I cooked pasta, specifically spaghetti.  Then I added the pasta to the three meat sauces and put them all in the fridge to chill until the next day.

I love to make spaghetti and meat sauce this way.  Chilling the pasta overnight in the sauce means some of the sauce is absorbed and I love that texture and flavor the next day when I pull it out and cook it again with another infusion of sauce in either a saucepan on the stovetop or in the oven.  This twice-cooked spaghetti is really hard to resist, at least for me.  I always prefer spaghetti prepared this way.

After the spaghetti with the sauce was cooked the second time, I added generous amounts of finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese.  Is is possible to add too much cheese to pasta?  I don't think so!

One of the sauces wasn't to my liking.  It didn't have a flavor balance that I was happy with, and it seemed to have an unusual taste that wasn't really working with the pasta and cheese, undoubtedly from the seasonings chosen.  But the other two were very good.  One was a little sweeter and milder, and the other was a little darker with a little heat.  I finished the sweeter sauce with pasta more quickly than I finished the darker one.  But both were very good.  And I'm going to have to try them again, maybe with an extra spice or two added just to see what happens.  

This means that I've had a lot of pasta this week.  But I didn't mind that at all.  It all made for good meals, even breakfast.  Did you ever have pasta for breakfast?  It's a great way to start the day, I assure you.

So in the next week, hopefully, I'll do another batch of these two sauces, maybe tweaked just a little bit, and I'll see what I think when comparing one to the other again.  

Some people like a sweeter pasta sauce, and some don't.  Anyone care to offer their opinion on that?  

No matter what, though, I'm looking forward to another round of twice-cooked spaghetti and perhaps I'll send some out to be taste-tested by some of the regular eaters here at Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

The week ahead

 

Good Sunday morning to everyone!

This morning here in Kansas City, we have a dark and stormy day ahead of us.  Weather radar shows lots of rain coming.  Clouds are dark, and thunder is rumbling.  I managed to get outside and do a few things before the storms got here.  Now it looks like I'll be inside for the rest of day.  (It's about 900 AM as I write this.)

This upcoming weekend's orders have been pushed back one week as I have some obligations at the end of this week.  The menu remains the same, yummy chocolate cookies and Swedish visiting cake.

Yesterday I made three different meat sauces for pasta.  All have beef, but they are all different.  Sometime today, I'll cook up a batch of pasta and test them all.  I've made sure not to eat breakfast so that I have room for all of that later today.  Of course, since I've skipped breakfast that also means I'll be hungry when I taste-test the sauces.  And we all know that everything tastes better when you're hungry.  Perhaps I'll have a small brunch so that my sense of taste is not too heavily influenced.

Later on this week, I'll do more tweaking and tasting and testing of at least one of these sauces if everything goes according to plan.  

I happened to read that today is a day to commemorate St. Isidore the Farm Laborer.  Isidore is the patron saint of farmers and rural communities, according to further reading, and was particularly noted for care for poor farm laborers of Spain and the animals of those farms.

When I think about how much work is done by those who labor in farms and fields across the world ... wow!  We don't often give thought to those who do this work, but we should.  

So eat a good meal and give thanks, silent or otherwise, for those who make the meal possible.