Life

Torta di Castagne

Chestnuts are in season! Actually, you can make this chestnut cake anytime, as I used frozen chestnuts and I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. They are much easier to use as they come already peeled. But, regardeless of the availability of chestnuts, only in autumn can one truly enjoy this cake. It's a traditional pastry from the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, at least according to the book we got the recipe from: Le Ricette Regionali Italiane, which we mentioned in this post. Try it, it's got a very delicate flavour, very elegant, and it looks like that as well:



The ingredients are:

• 400 g of frozen, peeled chestnuts, boiled in water with a bit of salt and passed through a food mill
  
• 100 g of almonds ground in a food processor to a coarse flour
• 200 g of sugar
• 100 g of unsalted butter at room temperature
  
• 4 eggs
• 1 lemon
• 1tbs of flour

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until creamy. Add the butter and the zest of the lemon. Blend well. Next, fold in the chestnut puree and the almond flour. Beat the eggwhites to a peak and fold into the chestnut mixture. Butter a pie dish, mine was 25 cm in diameter and about 4 cm deep, flour it, and add the mixture. Bake in the middle rack of an 180C oven for about 35 minutes.

Sourdough Variations

I can't stop baking bread using the no-knead technique and sourdough as the leavening agent. The basic recipe is described here, but I've already tried a few variations. The last one was quite sucessful: instead of 4 ounces of whole wheat flour, add 2 ounces of whole rye flour and 2 ounces of rolled oats. Add also a tablespoon of rosemary, and instead of using cornmeal to prevent the dough from sticking to the tea towel during the last proofing stage, I use rolled oats also. It's funny how the rolled oats disappear during the fermentation process, as you cannot see them in the finished loaf. I regret the lack of pictures, and a way of communicating the lovely rosemary smell that baking one of these breads produces...

Edit: Another variation and pictures. Add 1 cup of raisins instead of the one tablespoon of rosemary. Outstanding is the word:




Edit: Or add 3 1/2 tsp of quinoa, 3 1/2 tsp of millet and the same amount of flax seeds. Use flax seeds to prevent the dough from sticking to the tea towel.

Aubergine Lasagna

For me, there are always two (related) issues to consider when baking lasagna: how much sauce to make, and how large a baking dish to use. That's why, when preparing this one, I took careful notes of all the process. This recipe serves 4 people, with plenty of leftovers. Here it goes.

For the tomato sauce:

• four 800g (net weight) tins of whole tomatoes, packed in juice
  
• 2 large onions, diced
  
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 dried thai chillies, minced
  
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and olive oil

This takes awhile to cook, and can be prepared in advance, so start early. In a large pot, heat some olive oil. When it's hot, add the bay leafs, garlic and chillies. When the garilc is golden, add the onions and fry slowly until golden. Then, start addind the tomatoes and the packing juice. Add the tomatoes one by one, crushing them with your hands and making sure you discard any hard bits. Bring the sauce to a boil, add some salt and perhaps a bit more olive oil. Bring the heat to its lowest setting and let the sauce simmer for as long as you can. Say, an hour. Stir the sauce frequently to prevent burning.


The aubergine:

Get 2 kilos of aubergine - perhaps 5 medium ones - wash them, dry them, and cut the tops. Slice them lenghtwise into 1cm thick slices. Frying them is a mess. They soak a lot of oil and then you need to let them drain overnight. And the resulting lasagna is always too oily. Here's a better solution: arrange the aubergine slices on a silicone mat and drizzle a bit of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Put the silicone mat in a 180C oven, middle rack, heat from top and bottom, fan on. Once the upper side begins to gain some colour, turn the slices, season with salt and pepper, and drizzle a bit more olive oil. When they are soft and cooked through, move them to a bowl that you then cover with a plate so that the aubergine sweats and softens a bit more. You will have to do this in several batches as the slices cannot overlap.

Assembling the lasagna and baking it.

You will need

• 500g of lasagna sheets - the pre-cooked kind works really well
• 2 mozzarella balls, thinly sliced
  
• 2 cups of grated parmesan, the best quality you can afford
• one 13x9x2 inch Pyrex baking dish

Start by spreading a thin layer of sauce on the baking dish. Then, a layer of lasagna sheets, making sure they overlap a bit. More sauce, a layer of aubergine slices, followed by the mozzarella. Sauce, lasagna sheets, sauce, more aubergine, sauce, lasagna sheets and finish with a layer of sauce. Sprinkle the parmesan on top and on to the middle rack of the oven it goes. Set it at 180C, firstly with the heat coming only from below, and then after 20 minutes or so switch to top and bottom heat. The lasagna should be ready in 30-35 minutes. Let it rest for 15 minutes or so before serving: it's really hot and the flavours need to meld.

The mozzarella is clearly optional. You may or may not enjoy its presence. You can also sprinkle parmigiano between some of the layers, but for that you need quite a bit more cheese.

Sourdough (No-Knead) Bread

If you read the It has arrived! post, you know that I have received some dry sourdough starter in the mail. I couldn't wait to bake some bread with it. I did, and here's how it looked like:


Bread making is a complicated business, and sourdough bread making is probably even more so, because of the issue of keeping a sourdough culture alive, feeding it, preparing a portion for baking etc. Then there's the no-knead technique, which apparently started with the NY Times publishing a recipe for bread that required no kneading and produced a perfect loaf of bread. Since then, and it wasn't long ago, there are many no-knead enthusiasts, and plenty of variations around that theme.

I am going to produce here an account as accurate as possible of how I managed to bake the loaf of bread pictured above, so that I can refer to it whenever I want to bake more. It takes planning ahead because of the long fermentation times.

The actual recipe I used came from the site Breadtopia.com, which you can get here, with video instructions and all; plenty of advice on how to handle sourdough starter was collected on the Carl Griffith 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Page (Edit 20/10/2024: this old link does not work anymore: Carl Griffith Sourdough Page.) I will be assuming that you have an active sourdough culture in your fridge, which may not be in a very good shape.

Day 1 - Producing one cup of active starter

Put one tsp of your sourdough culture in a clear glass jar. Add one tbs of warm water and one tbs of flour. Mix with a wooden chopstick, put the lid on loosely and let rest in a warm place. When that develops some bubbles, add 1/4 cup of warm water and 1/4 cup of flour. You want a thick batter. Mix well and set aside until it bubbles up. Then add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water. Once this ferments, we have one cup of active sourdough stater to use in the recipe. We only use 1/2 cup, I added the other 1/2 cup to the culture I have in the fridge, throwing away an equivalent amount before adding this starter.

I used mineral water because my tap water has plenty of chlorine in it and that is particularly bad for developing an active culture. Avoiding metal utensils seems to be a good idea also. The time between the feedings will depend on many factors. I think it's safe to start one day in the morning to obtain the full cup of active starter the next morning.

Day 2 - Making the dough

I assembled the dough at 7pm and let it ferment until the next morning. Over-proofing seems to be a factor, so if one cannot bake the next morning it may be a good idea to let the dough ferment in the fridge. Mine took about 14 hours to fully rise. Had I not been able to continue the process at the end of the 14 hours, it is possible that I would not have obtained good results, again according to what I have read.

To form the dough, mix together

• 4 oz (115g) of whole wheat flour
  
• 12 oz (340g) of all-purpose white flour (bread flour is better)
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

in a glass or porcelain bowl. Then dissolve 1/2 cup of active starter in 1 1/2 cup of mineral water. Pour that into the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. My understanding is that the dough should be wet, but one may need to add a bit more flour to get to the right consistency. I had to. You should be able to knead it a couple of times, but not be able to knead it like you would a normal bread dough. I tried to achieve the consistency of the batter you can see in the video.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise overnight. The recipe calls for 18 hours; mine at the end of 14 hours was very much risen and ready for the next step.

Day 3 - Baking the bread

The dough is going to look very bubbly, and it will be very wet and difficult to handle. Dust the countertop with flour, and dump the dough on it. Dust your fingers also and the top of the dough. Spread it with your fingers until you are able to fold it in thirds and then in half. Check the video. Cover it with plastic and let it rest for 15 minutes or so.

After that time, one must grab the dough and shape it into a rough ball. This again is not easy because the dough is wet and sticky. Dust your hands with flour, and the dough also. Put this on top of a tea towel sprinkled with cornmeal and cover it with another tea towel. Let it rise for about 2 hours. If you lightly stick your finger in the dough, it should not spring back immediately.

Heat the oven to 240C with a Le Creuset cast iron pot, lid on, inside. Mine is size 26, holding 5 1/2 US qt, and worked well for this recipe. I'd like to see what happens with a smaller one, though. When the oven is hot, gently put the dough inside the pot, put the lid on, and let it bake for 20-25 minutes. The heat should come from top and bottom, but do not have the fan on.

After the 25 minutes period, open the oven and remove the lid from the pot. Turn the heat down to 220 C, and bake for 10 minutes more. These times may need adjustments depending on how wet the dough is and, of course, on your oven.

Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack before slicing.

The Kitchen Diaries

Everytime I make a recipe from one of the cookbooks we own, and we enjoy the result, I mark the corresponding page with an index Post-it marker. Some books end up having a lot more markers than others, but the winner is clearly The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater.

The idea behind the book is very clever, and I suppose it was this precise book that prompted us to start our own food diary. Nigel is a brilliant food writer, it is amazing how he can write about food in a such simple yet utterly cativating way. And the recipes work, one after the other. He clearly writes as a home cook to home cooks, and not as chef to amateur cooks.

This time it was "A frosted marmelade cake" and "Pork ribs with honey and anise". Here's a (not particulary flattering) picture of the ribs:

Busy III

Well, this is bound to keep us busy for a few years to come...