Category Archives: food and cooking

Old baker, fresh starter.

bread, food and cooking,

In the last year or so, I changed my mind about bread baking. I think it was in 2019 that I had decided not to bake bread — any more! Even though I’d been baking all kinds of yeast breads for most of my life. That was okay for a while, but recently, I realized it just didn’t feel right, to eliminate that art and craft entirely.

I planned to get back into making sourdough loaves, but week after week I never made time to assemble the ingredients for the “pre-ferment” that would collect wild yeasts from the air. Then when I was at my daughter Pippin’s earlier this month, I found that she had a good one going. She was happy to share it with me, so I moved half of her starter to a new quart jar and fed both jars a couple of times while I was there, and then brought the one home.

Today I used it to make a “sponge,” by combining one cup of the starter with two cups of water and three cups of (rye) flour. I will let that ferment for a couple of days and hope to bake just one loaf from it this week. Part of the reason I had given up bread baking was that I had too much bread to use or give away; the solution to that would be to make one loaf at a time — which I am certainly not accustomed to doing.

After I set the bowl of small sponge on the table, I went off to the church kitchen to help bake our special holy bread called prosphora. And today is my name day, on which I remember St. Joanna the Myrrhbearer. That’s three things that make me happy, and if I hadn’t been so busy about them, I might have figured out a way to tie the threads together for a blog post, the way I made a sponge out of several parts. If the bread turns out well, possibly it will be the unifying loaf.

2018

Existing in the middle is best.

food and cooking, poetry

THURSDAY

Because the most difficult part about making something, also the best,
Is existing in the middle,
Sustaining an act of radical imagination,
I simmered a broth: onion, lemon, a big handful of mint.

The phone rang. So with my left
Hand I answered it,
Sautéing the rice, then adding the broth
Slowly, one ladle at a time, with my right. What’s up?

The miracle of risotto, it’s easy to miss, is the moment when the husks dissolve,
Each grain of rice releasing its tiny explosion of starch.

If you take it off the heat just then, let it sit
While you shave the parmesan into paper-thin curls,
It will be perfectly creamy,
But will still have a bite.

There will be dishes to do,
The moon will rise,
And everyone you love will be safe.

-James Longenbach

 

 

Springtime garden soup.

food and cooking, my garden, , , ,

One night this week I had friends to dinner, and it was a lot of fun to plan the menu, which in this case included a soup course. I always intend to make cream of asparagus soup at least once in springtime, but don’t usually get to it, even though I harvest several pounds of that vegetable from my front yard plot for a few weeks running. Having someone to share it with gave me the added push.

So I used my own asparagus, and an equal amount of leeks from the store — just over a pound each, chopped. I sautéed them together in butter with fresh tarragon leaves, also from my garden. Just before everything started to brown, I removed the flower tips of the asparagus to a little bowl, and stirred in a couple of tablespoons of flour. I added a quart of chicken stock and cooked all of that together for 10-15 minutes, then used an immersion blender to make it smooth. Added salt and pepper to taste. After I’d ladled it into bowls I dropped a few of the reserved asparagus tips on top of each serving. We were all deep in conversation at that point so the thought of taking a picture of the lovely green soup never came into my head. (I also forgot that I’d planned to drizzle on a little cream.) But earlier I had noticed the beauty of the panful of chopped vegetables and leaves…

You will have to imagine the look of the creamy green soup.
We stopped talking and slurped it up joyfully.

Drinking the meadow with Heidi.

book characters, food and cooking, , , ,

Our women’s book group read Heidi recently, and then met on the patio at church one evening to talk about the book. There were ten or twelve of us, and we ate pizza and drank wine together, too. But before any of that, we were served fresh goat cheese made nearby, to connect us via our taste buds to our beloved protagonist; it put us in the right mood. And then — goat milk fresh from that morning! Some of our party didn’t want even a taste, so I drank a couple extra shot glasses myself. It tasted like a Swiss mountain meadow.

This reading of the book was for me by means of an audio recording, and I can’t remember the picture on the cover of the book we gave our daughter long ago, which she keeps. When I searched for a picture, I noticed the lack of depictions of Heidi as she is described in the story, with black hair. I guess illustrators (and movie directors, too) tend to think Swiss = blond.

I read that “thirteen English translations were done between 1882 and 1959” from the German of the original, and “about about 25 film or television productions of the original story have been made.” We talked a little in our gathering about the movies we have seen and how they aren’t faithful to the book, and typically leave out any reference to prayer.

In Switzerland tourists can visit Heidiland, where one of the associated villages was renamed “Heididorf.” I wonder if visitors there can drink fresh goat’s milk, from the morning’s milking? I bet at least one of my readers has that experience at your own kitchen table. Cheers!