let my pita go

it’s no secret that i’ve had a year-long steamy love affair with yotam ottolenghi, the swarthy chef & author of “plenty.”  a cookbook about vegetarian cuisine, though by no means a vegetarian cookbook (there’s a difference), “plenty” has enriched the plates of my family for the past year, consistently serving up delicious, nutritious, and only occasionally faffy recipes.  yotam puts lentils on a pedestal, he marvels at mushrooms, and he says in his best swayze impression that nobody, but nobody puts eggplant in the corner.  my kind of chap.

(sadly, eggplant is still, i think, a much-maligned vegetable.  it’s the kind of ingredient that, when mentioned, people often flinch at slightly, whether they mean to or not.  much like when you hear the word “kardashian.”  or perhaps when you hear that they’ve made another fast & the furious movie.  (we get it.  there are cars.  they’re fast.  and also quite possibly furious.)  loosen up, people, eggplant’s not that bad.  it’s actually delicious, it probably won’t release a sex tape anytime soon, and it has nothing to do with vin diesel.  whew.)

back to yotam and the recipe at hand.  i recently got my mitts on his newest tome, “jerusalem,” and blimey, wouldn’t you know it, he’s done it again.  mazel tov, yotam!  inspired tri-fold by my new favourite book, by my mensch of a friend, and by my 3-yr-old daughter’s recent conversion to judaism, i decided to show a little chutzpah and cook up a yotam-worthy feast.  we had shawarma, preserved lemons, pipelchuma chili paste, a bunch of other pungent and piquant dishes, and to wrap it all up in, some homemade pita bread.  

this was a first for me, but buoyed by no recent major baking catastrophes, i decided to give it a go.  much like baking baguettes, or making your own bacon, let’s be honest, we’re talking some faff here.  it’s not going to be easier (or cheaper) than just buying some from the shop.  but, by god, it’s going to be better.  these were the lightest, fluffiest, tastiest pitas i’ve ever had, with wee pockets inside just perfect for stuffing with deliciousness.  oh, baby.  and sometimes, at least in my eyes, a little faff goes a long way.  so go ahead: crank the dirty dancing song on the stereo, let yotam grab you by the hips and throw you into the air, and get ready for the time (or at least the pita) of your life.

homemade pita bread (adapted from “smitten kitchen”)

3 cups plus a scant 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 7g packet instant yeast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 cups water, at room temperature

the day before you plan on baking the pita, prepare the dough:

combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and, using the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until just combined, about 20 seconds.  then, using the dough hook, knead at medium speed for 10 minutes. the dough will be very soft and smooth and a bit sticky.

sprinkle a bit of the reserved flour onto the counter and scrape the dough onto it.  knead for 5 minutes, adding as little of the reserved flour as possible.  use a scraper to help you gather it as you knead - you’re going to need its help as this is by now the stickiest dough you might ever encounter in your life.  it’s like glue, people.  cover it with an upside-down bowl and allow it to rest for 20 minutes. 

knead the dough for another 5 to 10 minutes, knead and scrape, knead and scrape, until it is soft and smooth and just a titch sticky.

scrape the dough into a lightly greased large bowl and cover with a lid or plastic wrap.  refrigerate the dough overnight (or up to 3 days), checking every hour for the first 4 hours and pressing it down if it starts to rise (mine didn’t need this).

on baking day:

preheat the oven to 475°F one hour before baking. place an oven shelf at the lowest level and place a baking stone, cast-iron skillet, or baking sheet on it for preheating.  i used a cast-iron skillet, so for the purposes of this recipe, we’ll go with that.

cut the dough into 12 pieces and cover with a damp cloth.  on a lightly floured counter, with lightly floured hands, shape each piece into a ball and then flatten it into a disk.  cover the dough with greased plastic wrap and allow it to rest for 20 minutes at room temperature.

roll each disk into a circle a little under 1/4 inch thick. allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes before baking.  lightly spritz or brush each pita with water roughly 3 minutes before baking.

working quickly, place 1 disk of dough directly on the skillet, and bake for 3 minutes.  it should puff up marvelously, but not brown.

repeat with the remaining pitas, letting the oven get back up to temperature halfway through if it dips.  keep pitas warm in a clean towel, or reheat later for a minute or two in a warm oven.

stuff with shawarma, hummus, or whatever filling you desire.  use it to break bread with friends and family this holiday season, whatever their faith may be.  merry christmas, joyous kwanzaa, and shalom.

bits and bobs

bits and bobs, this and that, ducking and diving, apples and pears, rashers and knobs, cor blimey someone stop me before i’m arrested by the cockney police!

truth: this is a cop-out post.  no real cooking.  it’s a mere 3 days before thanksgiving, and though i have no large plans for cookfest 2012, the rest of the country does, so i shan’t cloud your already food-addled brains with thoughts of more recipes.  no, no.  instead we shall be celebrating a fancy-for-no-reason sunday lunch; a long-standing tradition in my family. 

when you look “bit” up in the dictionary, you find definitions involving drill components, horse bridles, and occasionally hatchets.  rustic.  cosy.  but when you ask anyone in my family to tell you the definition of “bits,” they’ll inform you without hesitation that it involves a lunch consumed on sundays and special occasions, consisting of cheeses, cured meats, crusty bread, and wine. 

this tradition reaches back to my childhood in asia, when we would spend our sundays taking our big wooden boat out for leisurely cruises and weighing anchor off one of hong kong’s outlying islands.  we’d spend the morning sunning ourselves silly and diving off the roof of the boat into the murky water, praying that no tiger sharks were lurking that day.  by early afternoon, my mum would whip out the cooler that she had packed full of deliciousness that morning, and a spread of glorious bits would be carefully laid out, then devoured in minutes, washed down by a bottle or two or something cold & yummy.  a few decades later, the wooden boat might be gone, and there are certainly less tiger sharks about (whew), but these lunches remain a firm doctrine of fuller family tradition. 

so let’s say that the main four ingredients of bits are your sex and the city gals: cheese is carrie, appeals to pretty much everyone.  cured meat is samantha, you know she enjoys a good salami.  wine is miranda, a little bit sassy.  then bread is charlotte: can be kind of boring, but you need it to balance out the other ingredients.  boom.  then, of course, you also have your supporting cast of characters: your pickles and olives who are your bigs and your aidans.  their storylines might be on the periphery, they might not make an appearance every week, but they certainly make the show more yummy.  i found a pack of quails eggs at my local asian supermarket the other day, and decided to add these to this episode’s Very Special Guest Stars.  i’ve always had a fondness for these teeny eggs, from the beautiful pale blue of the inner shell to their delicate and somehow rich flavour.  

i also noticed after taking this picture that they are the exact same pattern as my countertops:  

what?!  where’d they go?  stealthy quails…

there is no recipe here, my turkey-focused friends.  you are in control of your own bits (as they say).  make it your own.  but i will say this: with no cooking involved, it makes a spectacular option for the day after, say, cooking some kind of 12-course feast.  and as traditions go, you could do a lot worse.  so enjoy your jours du turkey!  i wish you all things moist and perfectly browned and well-behaved guests.  being foreign, i have no turkey traditions as such, though i shall be helping my matey prep for her feast the day before, the sous chef to her in-law invasion, as we no doubt raise a glass together.  and perhaps good food and good wine and good friendship is something that we can all be thankful for.  even foreigners such as myself.  gobble gobble!  cheers!

beeting around the bush

i was thinking about titling this post “beet it,” but then i thought that conversation might turn to weird al.  whom, i am told, is now 75.  unless that's a complete weird fallacy.  or, at the very least, the conversation might turn to michael jackson.  which would then lead me to talk about my kitchen which is so firmly-entrenched in the oak-clad 80’s that it needs a multi-zippered jacket and a sparkly glove.  one of these days when my hordes of children are somewhat out of my hair (and certainly no longer crawling), i shall grab my sander and my cans of stain and go to town on that kitchen of mine.  and it shall be a thing of beauty.  most likely right in time for us to move, isn’t that how it always works?  but until then, i should probably just give in to the oaky goodness, don a hot pink taffeta-filled dress, aqua net my hair bigger than can measurably fit through a doorway, and crank the duran duran.  at least simon le bon might approve of my kitchen…

anyway, let’s leave the piano ties and members only jackets out of this, and focus on what we’re really here to talk about: a lunch easier, quicker, and more delicious than frankly its nutritional value would lead us to believe.

we’ve spoken of my long-standing love affair with beets.  they’re earthy, rich, full of antioxidants, anti-inflammatory qualities, lutein, AND their latin name is “beta vulgaris.”  which i enjoy on an awfully juvenile level.  but, most importantly, they’re bloody delicious.

“bloody” being the operative word, actually.  here’s some beet juice carnage after oven-roasting some of those bad boys.  am i alone in thinking that this is probably dexter’s favourite vegetable…?  eek…

serial killers-aside, though, beets are a phenomenal weapon to have in your pantry.  they keep relatively well, and they're exceptionally versatile.  i like to roast up a bunch at any given time (reserving the greens for my sauté pan to have its wicked way with them at a later date), giving me a plethora of later lunch options at my fingertips.  this might frankly be the easiest, but also one of my favourites...

roasted beet, arugula and mozzarella salad

4 beets, trimmed and scrubbed.  (a lot, but if you have leftovers, you can think of a million things to do with them.  trust.)

fresh mozzarella, torn to deliciously appetising ribbons

arugula leaves

balsamic vinegar

good quality olive oil

salt & pepper

preheat oven to 375

wrap beets in aluminium foil with a drizzle of olive oil. roast for 45 minutes (or more, depending on their immense girth.  oh my.)  when tender, remove from heat and, once cool, peel and slice to 1/4" slices.

arrange arugula, beets, mozzarella in bowl in some kind of incredibly fancy manner.  drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then season.

told you it was easy.  and as weird al would say, just eat it.

bacon 2: electric boogaloo

my friends (as i think i probably personally know all 8 of you who are reading this), when we last went our separate ways, i was slapping 5lbs of pork belly in the fridge and letting some salt and sugar have their wicked way with it.  well, here we are a week later, and stuff’s starting to get real, people.  this pork belly has defied town law, has looked the pastor in the eye and said “NO, i do not follow your rules,” and has put on his dancing kicks to cut loose, footloose.  kick off your sunday shoes.  

wait, no.  that’s kevin bacon.  but i’m not going to lie to you, this bacon is just as mind-blowingly awesome as that bacon was back in 1984.

okay, so let’s talk smoking.  i have a smoker - one of those weber deals that looks kind of like R2D2 and darth vader had a baby.  “bleep bloop, i will destroy you.”  cheeky yet menacing at the same time.  so once the delicious heritageheirloomartisanal pork belly had cured for a week, at a time that i had all small people either at school or napping, i go to set R2 vader up…  i’m measuring out charcoal, setting the starter fire, blah de blah…  annnnd all of a sudden i completely and utterly wussed out.  i frankly had visions of calamity jo here burning the deck down (you REALLY don’t want to mess with open fires in the very wooded pacific northwest when you have a track record of being awfully accident-prone), so instead i decided to jury rig myself a smoker box in my far-safer gas grill.  i know, so lame.  i truly beg your (not to mention snoop dogg's) collective forgiveness.  but i assure you that plan B actually & completely (and maybe somewhat surprisingly) turned out rather brilliantly!  hallelujah, all praise kevin bacon!

homemade bacon pt. 2 (terribly loosely adapted from michael ruhlman's "charcuterie")

remove pork belly from cure (see previous post).  rinse and pat dry.  it should feel dense and firm, like grabbing the guy who played thor's upper arm (oh, my...)

now either prep your smoker like someone with bluster and bravado, or your gas grill with accompanying makeshift smoker box like i did.  i took a disposable aluminium (that's right, i stand by my superfluous "i") pie dish, filled it with soaked mesquite wood chips, sealed it tightly with foil, and poked a few holes in the top.  i then placed it under the grate of one side of the grill, and lit only the burner underneath it. 

once the grill has warmed up to about 200 degrees and the makeshift smoker box starts to smoke, place your slab of pork belly on the unlit side of the grill.  close lid and let the magic happen.

start checking the temperature after about 90 minutes. once the thickest part of the belly reaches 150 degrees, you're done.  for mine, this took about 2 hours on the dot.  boom:

let cool, then refrigerate.  slice to desired thickness, to lardons, or eat like an apple, as you wish.  keeps in the fridge for 1-2 weeks, or frozen for 3 months.  but before you sequester it away to the depths of the fridge or freezer for future deliciousness, fry yourself up just one slice to eat hot from the pan, the grease dripping off your fingertips.  because you, my 8 friends, are worth every bit of it.

now if you'll excuse me, my 9 year-old business partner and myself have some fierce meetings with the people of whole foods, with food network, and with the offices of kevin bacon.  mr. six-degrees is ready for a makeover...