Category: Instruction

Stir-Fry Success

The key to a great stir-fry lies in a few ground rules.

Number One: Don’t even think of turning on the heat and pulling out your wok if all your veggies and proteins aren’t prepped.

Number Two: Rely on a quick marinade to make proteins sing.

Number Three: Stir-fry pork, beef, chicken, seafood or tofu after you have stir-fried your perfectly chopped veggies. Keep the two separately stir-fried and mix it all together at the finale.

What makes stir-fried veggies so deliciously tender-crisp? Even size. Chop each carrot into a match-stick or uber-thin slice, preferably on a slant. Cut every broccoli or cauliflower floret as if identical. Shave off slices of Napa, green or purple cabbage.

If cutting veg isn’t your thing, you can go for bigger pieces, just make sure they are all the same size to ensure even cooking. Onions, bell peppers and bok choy stems stir-fry effortlessly if cut into equal-sized quarters or eighths. Green onions taste great cut into two-inch pieces. So do leeks. Green beans, snow and snap peas simply need stems removed.

Whether it is tofu, ground pork or sliced beef, all will taste better if they are marinated in soy and sherry for at least 10 minutes. I keep half pound portions of pork tenderloin, flank steak or boneless chicken thighs tucked away in my freezer. All are easier to slice thinly when partially frozen and can defrost fully while marinating.

A tablespoon of corn starch in a marinade will help thicken a stir-fry’s essential sauce. Nobody likes an oily stir-fry yet many stir-fry beginners add too much oil to the equation. The trick is to heat a dry wok on high heat (preferably gas) add oil (preferably a neutral organic one) and swirl it around to cover the wok’s sides, then start tossing in ingredients, very quickly.

Said ingredients must be ready within reach from the stovetop, including water or stock, essential for steaming vegetables once the wok gets dry, a phenom that happens within the first few minutes of your average stir-fry. Splash in half a cup of water or stock, put the lid on and let your stir-fry cook itself, gradually adding veggies starting with the longest-to-cook ones.

Seasoning is essential to taste and rare is the stir-fry in my kitchen that doesn’t contain freshly grated ginger and garlic. Because they are grated and cook in an instant, these seasonings can be added into the protein’s marinade or tossed in at the very beginning, stir-fried for just a few seconds before adding longer-cooking, bigger pieces of veggies such as onion, cabbage, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy stems, Gai lan stems, chayote or kohlrabi.

The last thing I might throw into a stir-fry is sliced leaves, bean sprouts, snow peas or freshly chopped herbs. In the case of this recipe, I tossed in whole basil leaves just before sliding the entire event on to a big white platter.

Stir-Fried Pork with Peppers and Black Bean Sauce

Serve this on steamed rice or noodles.

1/2 lb/200g pork tenderloin, thinly sliced against the grain (or firm tofu)

1 Tbsp corn starch

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp cooking sherry or wine

1/2 tsp sambal oelek *optional

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1/2 tsp granulated sugar

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup neutral oil, divided in half

1-inch knob ginger, peeled and finely grated

2 cloves garlic, finely grated

1/4 cup fermented black beans or 1 tbsp Lee Kum Kee black bean and garlic sauce

4 green onions, sliced into 2 inch pieces

1 small red onion, cut into eighths

2 bell peppers, thinly sliced

2 cups green beans, topped and tailed

1/2 cup water

8 leaves fresh basil or mint

In a medium bowl, combine sliced pork and corn starch. Add soy, sherry, sambal oelek, sesame oil, sugar, black pepper and set aside to marinate at least 10 minutes.

Heat wok on high. Add 2 tbsp oil and swirl around the sides. With a large Chinese spatula/shovel stir-fry ginger and garlic for 30 seconds, add black beans, green onions, red onion, bell peppers and green beans. Stir and cook until wok gets dry, add water, drizzling around the sides of the hot wok, stir until combined. Put the wok lid on. Wait until veggies are tender crisp, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer to platter.

Return the same wok to high heat, add remaining 2 tbsp of oil, swirl around sides. Add marinated pork or tofu, stir fry until golden brown, adding a tablespoon or more of water or stock if wok gets dry. Add reserved vegetables and fresh basil or mint. Stir to combine. Transfer to platter and serve immediately.

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Making Gnocchi with the boss

It’s a cold winter night in Toronto.  I’m about to  drive over to Rocca’s for dinner, but text her first.

“Get three to four medium at No Frills,” she instructs.  We need Yukon golds.     

When I arrive, their house oozes Puglian warmth.  Randy says “You don’t have to knock” and Rocca calls from upstairs, saying “Do you want some slippers?’  

She enters the kitchen and pulls out the pasta board.  It’s two feet by two feet, thick plywood with a lip that catches under the table.  Her father, or Nonno to the grandkids,  made it for her.  

Nonno will turn 95 next Sunday.  They want to celebrate at a restaurant but he asks  his daughters to make him cavatelli, his favourite pasta.

“Handmade pasta for 25 people,” says Rocca shaking her head and muttering Puglian swear words.     

But tonight, the pasta is gnocchi.

“I’ll get started while you have some wine and cheese,” says Rocca.

Randy is dangling a large breast and nipple from a string.  It’s a cheese called Caciocavallo and  the size of a small cantaloupe. 

“Our annual Father’s Day cheese,” he laughs, an impish grin spreading across his mug. I nibble on slices with baguette and knock back some Rosso while Rocca deftly peels the potatoes, cuts them into quarters and boils in salted water.

“I’ll demo the first batch, then it will be your turn,’” she announces. 

Oh boy.

She measures out two cups of organic, unbleached all-purpose flour and piles it on her papa’s pasta board. With a flick of her right hand, she swirls a hole in the middle, creating a powdery volcano waiting for liquid. I spoon chunks of hot, cooked potato into her ricer and she squeezes, mightily, creating a rainfall of potato strands. 

The essence of these gnocchi – hot steaming Yukon gold potatoes – slips and wafts through the kitchen air. We share a satisfied cooking smile.  Rocca taps a free run Omega 3 egg on a bowl’s edge and we both go “ahhh” over the yolk’s deep orange-ness. 

She sprinkles the flour and potato mound with salt.  I ask how much and she mutters “Normale”.  

She wields a bottle of olive oil and pours two large glugs into the mound, creating golden streaks and streams throughout. I ask how much and she shrugs her shoulders, too busy to fuss over measurements. 

Then she does something that makes this recipe writer crazy: she slides the beaten egg into an empty measuring cup and pours reserved (and cooled)  potato cooking water into it up to the one cup line. 

As I sigh in frustration, Rocca clutches a quarter dry measure and twice she scoops up egg and potato water mix sprinkling it over the potatoes, flour, salt and olive oil. Using her bare hands, she mushes it all together (I recommend a dough scraper). It doesn’t coalesce into a good clump so she adds another quarter cup of egg and potato water. In seconds, it transforms into a hot, soft dough, pliable and warm.  The perfect spot between sticky and dry. We cut off a half cup chunk and roll it into a snake, then cut of half-inch pieces she calls “chicklets”. 

“Do you want to cut chicklets or roll out the gnocchi?”  

While the former sounds easy, I know I need practice rolling. She has a small wooden board, the size of a large smartphone that is corduroy-ed, with narrow slits, and she demos how to roll a piece of gnocchi dough  along this surface. One deft move and “Voila!” it’s a cute little roll with ridges.

Fast forward 18 months. Rocca is at the gnocchi helm again, this time in the Cowichan Valley bossing David and me.  We stand at the counter each with a pile of PC “OO” (doppio zero)  flour before us. We blend in cooked and riced BC-grown yellow potatoes plus potato water mixed with egg. A soft, warm dough forms instantly and we knead it ever so briefly. We start to cut dough chunks, roll out dough snakes, cut into chicklets and press against the gnocchi board.  It takes a skillful hand but Rocca won’t do it.  She says “your job” and David and I steal competitive glances at each other’s work. 

We fill two baking trays with our ridged dumplings.  Rocca cooks them in hot boiling salted water, plunking them in and lifting them out with a slotted spoon, the second each gnocchi bobs to the surface indicating doneness. Cooked gnocchi slide into a bath of ice cubes and cold water in order to halt cooking. Later they are drained en masse and drizzled with lots of olive oil. Their final destination is a good sauce.

I happen to have one. Braised short ribs. 

In Duncan I am able to find huge, fat short ribs at Thrifty’s supermarket.  (In Toronto, I’d have to order them from a butcher since they never look this fat and ample in supermarket meat counters.) 

We heat up my sauce in a large deep skillet, add the gnocchi and warm everything gently while someone grates Parmigiano-Reggiano and finds our sacred, big jar of Puglian hot peppers in oil. 

Gnocchi is best served as a first course, or primi. It’s filling. Just two ladles full is ample for most. Rocca smiles in approval after she takes her first bite. The gnocchi are soft, delectable pillows bathed in an unctuous sauce, bedecked with parmesan. 

Rocca’s Gnocchi

 

While Rocca prefers the counter technique for creating the dough, you can also mix everything in a large bowl. If you don’t have a gnocchi board, Rocca says it’s ok to leave as half-inch chicklets simply cut from the rolled dough. 

 

3-4    Yukon Gold or yellow-flesh potatoes, peeled and quartered

2 cups        flour, all-purpose or “00”

1 tsp sea salt 

1       egg

2 tbsp         extra virgin olive oil

 

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook potatoes until tender but not crumbling. Reserve a cup of cooking water before draining potatoes. Mound flour on the counter and create a well in the middle. Sprinkle over with salt.  Once the potato water has cooled enough not to cook the egg, crack the egg into a glass measuring jar and fill to one level cup with potato water.  Mix.  Place potatoes in a ricer (if you don’t have one, grate them) and drop potato shreds into the flour well. Pour over ½ cup of egg/potato water and olive oil and mix into a dough, using a scraper or a spatula. Add another ¼-1/2 cup of liquid if needed to create a soft pliable dough. Roll and form gnocchi.

 

Heat a large pot of salted water to boil, gently add gnocchi.  When gnocchi float to surface, remove with a slotted spoon and place directly in heated sauce or into an ice bath to cool.

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Mado’s Short Rib Pasta Sauce

 

Preheat oven to 350 F

 

3 tbsp olive oil

2 large cooking onions, chopped

2 large ribs celery, chopped

2 tsp dried thyme

Salt

 

Heat oil in large Dutch oven, cook onions, celery and dried thyme with salt until soft and caramelized, about 5 minutes.  Set aside.

 

Use the same pan to heat another 2 tbsp olive oil on high and brown

 

3 lbs short ribs (3-6 pieces)   

Seasoned with salt and pepper

 

This takes about 3 min per side, total about 12 min. Set aside

 

Deglaze pan with 1 cup red wine (Shiraz/Syrah) scraping up all browned bits. Add  sautéed onion mixture and  

 

Add

1/2 tsp dried chili pepper flakes

½ cup dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms, finely crumbled 

1 cup passata (pureed tomatoes, favourite brand is Mutti sold in tall glass jars) 

3 crushed garlic cloves

Handful basil leaves, chopped

1-3 tsp sea salt 

Lots of freshly cracked black pepper

Fill with water to just cover the ribs

 

Place a sheet of parchment over the surface, cover and bake at 350F for one hour, reduce to 325F and cook 2 more hours. Meat should be falling off the bones. Allow to cool (preferably overnight in the fridge). Skim fat. Remove bones and tendons. Shred meat gently.

Continue reading “Making Gnocchi with the boss” →

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Things I learned in KAF baking school, Part Two

Side-by-side taste testing is a gift.

On the last day, we taste a flight of varietals: five whole wheat baguettes, side-by-side. Our “control” baguette contains King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour and the others contain Salish Blue (a perennial wheat in development at the Bread Lab), Sprouted Skagit 1109, Cairn Spring Espresso T-185 and Cairn Spring Edison Unsifted. 

Newbie bakers rarely know the difference between all purpose and bread flour, let alone this wide range of locally-grown wheat varietals with alluring names.  We taste them straight-up without butter, observing crumb, inhaling aroma, analyzing crust and interior, making mindful, slow chews, ruminating on each variety. We dub this our “munch and think” session. One is Mr. Moist, the other Crispy Crust, another so very sweet. None of these baguettes has the loft and rise produced by 100% white bread flour, but all five excel in delivering a unique, wheaty flavour.  

Oh, The Baguette. This long, phallic, day-only-fresh loaf is the epitome of French bread baking and never ceases to send me into performance panic. Despite suffering years of bakers’ baguette trauma (BBT), I’m actually able to follow our instructor Jen’s shaping instruction. She demos once, twice, then for the final demo, she asks us to call out command steps for her to follow: “Place the dough good side down. Deflate. Letter fold, folding top then bottom. Observe the dough lip and seam. Use left hand to turn dough from the top of the lip over your thumb and tap closed with right palm. Repeat turn, twist and tap across the length of the dough. Turn the dough 180 degrees and pull the top side of dough to the table, pulling it over your left, lightly floured thumb and close with right palm tap. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Time to roll. Spread your floured fingers out wide and roll from the middle to the tips of your baguette. ”

Big breath. I return to my bench and practice. Four times. 

Two out of four ain’t bad, right? I’m hesitant to attach my initialized label to the underside of these horrendous duds. 

“There is no bread shame,” Jen assures, after a thoughtful examination of the first 20 baguettes that roll out of the oven. She is about to launch into a frank discussion of the flaws and achievements before her promising not to reveal anyone’s label.  

A tiny, terrified “Eeaak” issues forth,  en masse.

“This snake swallowed a mouse,” she says pointing to my first try. “And this one, well…” She says something way less hurtful than my first baguette mentor did years ago when I was apprenticing at a downtown Toronto bakery.  

“Just stop, Madeleine,” he called out to me shaping at the bench, pointing to my disastrous results.“I can’t sell any of those!”  

Croissants are not easy.

In fact, I’d label them advanced with a capital A.

A truly delicious, flaky croissant requires three consecutive days of attention. It wants butter that contains even more fat than normal, demands lots of finicky measurements, and exponential folding. The goal is flaky, honeycomb layers totalling 54 –  if you get it right.   

I’m thrilled to find “Sprouted Wheat Croissants” in my red KAF folder, because I came to this course hoping for whole grain solutions to old school deliciousness. To make eight of these crispy morsels, we use 130 gm of sprouted wheat flour and 130 gm of all-purpose (King Arthur’s, of course). 

Croissant Day One, we make a simple yeasted, enriched dough and whack a 100 gram piece of unsalted, 85% fat European-style butter with a rolling pin into a thin, very pummeled five-and-a-half-inch square.  Day Two, we “lock in” our little square of chilled butter, sweetly swaddling it in the dough we made the day before. Then we get violent, methodically whacking, pounding and rolling our dough-butter combo into submission. We chill it, then whack and roll again several times. On Day Three, we roll out our sixth edition of an eight-by-16-inch rectangle, slice it into four equal parts, cutting each in half on the diagonal. Who says bread isn’t a science?

Like kids cut loose in a candy store, we adult learners happily fashion four crescent shapes and four pains au chocolat.  We each sign our name in black Sharpie pen on the parchment paper that holds our creations.  I swell with pride as I watch my croissant offspring enter KAF’s industrial convection oven, so big it can accommodate a six-foot-tall rack on wheels.  Butter aroma engulfs the room and the flaking begins. 

I post my baked beauties on Instagram and a follower asks, “Are these really yours?”

Even flour temperature matters.

“When a recipe says a pinch of yeast, what’s that mean?” instructor Geoffrey asks the class on Day One eliciting a dazed response.  

“I mean, do you want to use two fingers or threeto pinch with?” 

We respond with silence.  Just moments earlier our hallowed baking leader was talking about grams and the scientific accuracy of it all. Now we are pinching, for God’s sake. 

“If your kitchen is hot and humid, you will two finger pinch. But if the room temperature is moderate, go for three. Who can tell me why?” he asks.

One of the brighter lights among us chirps out, “The hotter the room, the faster the ferment.”

“Exactly,” says Geoffrey, “Temperature and time are two big tools for fermentation. Madeleine, I’ve put a thermometer on your bench and would like you to tell me our flour and pre-ferment temperatures.” 

Hands trembling, I insert the probe into the fluffy flour bin then into a silver bowl full of bubbling biga, calling out “66 and 66.5 F” to Geoffrey, who scribbles them on the whiteboard before us.  

At this juncture, my brain fizzles right out. Overloaded with data, my memory stick cannot download another formula or fraction. My screen goes blank during the full 10 minutes we devote to final dough temperature (78F is optimum) and how it can be controlled through a 1,000 – step equation to determine the temperature of water we use to make the initial dough.

Luckily, after days of deliberation, I get it. If we bakers can understand and compute all the variables: temperature, time, flour attributes, leavening strength and the list goes on… we can bake on a timetable producing consistent quality. As a home baker, albeit a serious one, the science of bread can only bolster the magic of my art. 

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KAF Spelt with Honey

Here’s an easy yeasted bread perfect for beginners. This dough is more forgiving if you are just learning to shape a boule or batard. Plus, spelt is an ancient grain with a nice, sweet nuttiness.  

600 g whole spelt flour

200 g unbleached bread flour

580 g water

2 g instant yeast

16 g salt

28 g honey

Scale flours, water and yeast in a mixing bowl, mix until just combined and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rest at room temperature for about 20 min.

Add honey and salt and mix 1-2 min or until the dough begins to develop strength. Cover and ferment for 2 hours, folding every 30 minutes.

On a lightly floured surface, shape into boules or batards an place in floured bannetons. Cover with shower caps and retard in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat Lodgepan combo cookers in oven at 500 F for 30 min.

Flip each loaf onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and score.

VERY carefully remove heated combo-cooker from oven, slide loaf on parchment paper into pan, close with lid and return to oven for 20 min. Reduce heat to 460 F, remove lids and bake until golden brown and crusty, 15-20 min.

 

 

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Baking at King Arthur Flour, Part 1: The things I learned in baking school

A scraper is your best friend, especially if you have two

First, we bakers need a white, plastic scraper with King Arthur Flour’s logo embossed on the surface. It’s light and flexible, a strong yet perfectly calibrated plastic that bends in the grip while its curved edge scrapes clean each bowl of messy dough we mix. We find it tucked inside our red recipe folders, compliments of KAF. My bench partner leans over and whispers, “Complimentary now, huh? I think I stole one before. Can’t bake without it.”

Instructor Geoffrey intones, “Dough is always sticky” and demos a clean scrape, lifting a mass of Multigrain with Biga dough in big chunks to the bench (a.k.a. our working surface). Once this dough hits the wooden bench it does exactly as expected. It sticks.

Enter scraper number two. It’s a big piece of stainless steel with a wooden handle and a straight, six-inch edge, sharp and strong enough to cut bulk mounds of dough in clean strokes or measure rolled-out rectangles of dough to the required specs. Better still, it cleans off that ever-present mixture of flour and water that accumulates on our wooden benches incessantly.  Wet dough leaves scat. We bakers obsessively scrape it away (following the wood’s grain if your bench partner suggests). If time permits, we use it to scrape clean our white plastic scraper, too.

IMG_3535
A docker has nothing to do with boats.

A mysterious tool is on display at the front of the classroom. We are watching Geoffrey demonstrate “Caraway Rye Crisps”. It’s our first baking venture on Day One of the KAF course and Geoffrey doesn’t touch the docker, leaving me curious. I drag this massive white roller flecked with nails across a sheet of freshly rolled-out cracker dough. Instantly, this torture device tears my carefully rolled out dough into shreds.  I opt to make lavash and use a fork to finish the work

Dough has muscle.

According to Jen, our Day Four instructor, dough muscle can vary in strength from loosey-goosey to weightlifter tight.  Day Four happened to be Halloween and Jen is dramatically dressed as a pre-Industrial baker in a floor length dress and apron, her long hair wrapped beneath a layered scarf. Jen points to her clenched fist and dabs the pad below her thumb.

“That’s firm,” she says authoritatively.

“But this,” she says pointing to her flabby underarm muscle that’s impossible to see under the billowing waves of her costume’s fabric, “is absolutely not!”

Geoffrey’s approach to dough muscle did not include his or anybody else’s body parts.

Pushing a bowl full of dough towards us, he says “touch it, feel it.”  After another mix, he beckons again “touch it, feel it.” He chants these four words like a mantra all through the course.

“Touch it, feel it,” after a proof. “Touch it, feel it,” after a pre-shape.  We dip thumbs and forefingers into every mass of gunky dough he offers, pulling messy strands, pinching and prodding, disgusted by the gummy residue that clings like glue to our nails and knuckles.

“Dry, never water-wash your gooey hands,” instructs Geoffrey as he dunks his fingers into a nearby bin of flour, a cloud of flour lifting up. He pulls them out slowly, and methodically rubs off all the gnarly bits into a waste-bin below. He waves his dry, but still visibly floury and crusty hands in our direction and chuckles.

“That’s a bakers’ patina.”

Baker's Patina

Dough texture – and dough muscle – changes all baking day long.  Once fermented or proofed, we poke it again to test strength. Geoffrey calls this “the doorbell ring.” Depending on the bread type, we see that poke spring right back up, leave a deep indent, or something in between.

A baker’s touch is as vital as a tasting spoon, worth every sticky, messy, floury imprint it makes on our minds.

Scale it and tare it.

Baking relies on precision. Flour measured by volume (with measuring spoons or cups) is not recommended. Our individual baking stations are each supplied with a big black scale. Geoffrey says he prefers metric since “the math is easier and grams are more precise.” Bakers are constantly making computations, whether it is tripling a recipe or cutting an industrial mix into one-fortieth of its original size. Those 16 Imperial ounces in a pound just add confusion to the tally.

We start every recipe by measuring out all our ingredients on the scale.KAF Day Four

“The tare button is our best friend,” instructs Geoffrey. “Or it can be the opposite.” As soon as we put an empty mixing bowl on the scale, we tare and the screen returns to zero. We spoon in all-purpose flour and tare. We add rye and tare. We rely on the tare button to refresh the screen and weigh each ingredient separately, but if you inadvertently tare mid-stream, or worse still, your scale times out and goes blank, you can find yourself looking at a huge bowlful of  ingredients containing, God forbid, an unmeasured ingredient that can ruin the whole lot.

Scaling liquids is also tricky. The numbers on a scale just can’t keep up with a fast pour. Better to measure liquids separately and slowly. Scaling gooey blobs of honey or molasses is terminally slow and messy. Handy trick? Use an oiled spoon and honey or molasses slides off effortlessly. Worse still, tiny morsels of instant yeast (living time bombs, in the world of leavening) are so light and airy our scales can’t discern their 1 gram increments. As a result, we bakers sometimes have to ditch science and use our senses instead. It’s that combination of these two forces – one scientific and the other learned by the senses—that creates the mighty and delicious alchemy of baking.

(To be continued, next week)

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Rye Lavash with Maldon Salt, Chili Flakes and Rosemary

Adapted from “Caraway Rye Crisps” this recipe highlights rye’s awesome flavour and is a no-brainer, requiring next to no kneading nor any yeast.  Go ahead and cut these into fussy rectangles for traditional crackers but I prefer baking this out in two large sheets and dubbing it lavash.  Once cooled,  break into long, random sticks and serve alongside dips, paté or cheese.

114g unbleached, all-purpose flour

114g  whole rye flour (we used KAF Pumpernickel)

1 tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

25g diced, cold unsalted butter

118g water

20g dark molasses

Maldon salt

Chili Flakes

Dried Rosemary

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine all purpose, rye, baking powder and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until it resembles coarse meal. Scale water in a bowl, tare, and scale in molasses by drizzling from an oiled spoon.  Add liquids to dry and combine with a curved edge plastic scraper kneading into a rough dough. Wrap in plastic, flatten into a disc and refrigerate for at least 15 min.

Place the disc on a lightly floured surface, cut in half and roll out each to 1/16thinch thickness.

Transfer to parchment lined baking sheets. Sprinkle with salt, chili flakes and rosemary and use the rolling pin to press in gently.

Bake 9-12 min or until golden brown.  Transfer to a rack to cool.  Break into pieces, if desired.

KAF Day One

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