14 October 2009

computerbroke....


wokeupat4am....firstbluster





14 July 2009

Risky Business


08 June 2009

The Biggest

On my drive from the kitchen to Ned Ludd, the resturant where I was meeting Tricia, her family, Morgan of Dovetail fame/my friend and boss, and folks who own Ned Ludd, and my Buddhist nun friend Chodon, it suddenly occured to me that I needed the lime green instant read thermometer that my dad gave me for the holidays. He asks me all the time if I've used it yet, and I always sheepishly say no. I'm not a thermometer kind of person, I use my senses to bake. I smell when the cookies are almost done, I push the cakes in gently to see if they spring back, and I knock on the bread's crust to listen for hollowness. But this was different, this was no ordinary loaf of bread. How much knocking could I do? How could I be sure that it was done in the inside? And then it just hit me! The instant read thermometer! It saved the day, really. I knew that, as soon as I saw that the temperature inside the giant bread was 210, I thanked my dad for such a perfect tool, the best thermometer out there, and surprisingly the only thing that truly made me feel like this crazy experiment was going to work.
Fifteen pounds of flour, water, salt, yeast, starter and a lot of waiting. A lot of test loaves that couldn't be baked 5 feet long, and one late night the night before the big day sanding the giant peel with Erik while he meticulously carved the handle and cleaned up my not so perfect sanding job. I was so impressed with Erik's work. I wanted a peel that wasn't made out of plywood, and he made me this beautiful handcrafted tool that I will keep for the rest of my life, and curse it every time I move houses, but that's not for a while...It gave me a boost in confidence to have such a beautiful work of art at my side.
So I mixed the dough at Dovetail, drove it over to Ned Ludd, met everyone and started shaping the dough. Simple. Tricia, Chodon, and I stretched it out and then shaped it into a giant batard. On the count of three we moved it like a injured person in the hospital onto the giant peel from the work table. We floured a million towels and covered it up. I then rolled up every towel I had including bath towels and surrounded the loaf with little buffers to mimic a rising basket so the loaf woudn't flatten out. And then we waited. We drank coffee and ate cardamom coffeecake that Tricia made and some blueberry muffins I made. We chatted, I nervously checked on the bread every so often, made sure the towels weren't slipping and the loaf was ok. Everyone kept asking me if it was done rising yet, and even though the hour had past, I felt like it wasn't ready. I figured my intuntion has gotten me this far, why mess with it now.
When it was finally ready we gathered everyone together and lifted the peel, some folks at the handle some holding the main part. The thing was heavy! We slid it into the oven, which at this point I realized was built for tall men and not me at 5 feet 3 inches, and even though I was on my tippy toes I still couldn't quite get a good height for yanking the peel out from under the bread. I counted to three and we all pulled back and tried to slide the peel from under the bread. It worked ok, to be honest. We got the bread off, but not completely in the oven! To my horror we had to push the butt of the bread into the oven so we could close to door! But not bad for the first attempt, no!?

That is most of the drama of it all..The bread baked for about and hour and it was beautiful. We've done it one other time and my friend Jac made some videos of the process. This bread was made at Tastebud thanks to Mark, who owns Tastebud and who I buy delicious pizza from every Saturday, and Katie who let us ambush her while she worked, took us in stride and hopefully had a fun time hanging out with all of us!





15 May 2009

Copain / Coping

Coping
We painted the kitchen lavender...Not purple not pink, somewhere in between. It was one of those excitedly discussed ideas over our new greenish farmhouse kitchen table. An idea that could have been a "good at the time idea", but actually it has worked out quite well. It makes the room inviting and it blends into all the old reused wood in the kitchen. Everyday we look at each other excitedly and say "our kitchen is purple!!!", like we can't believe we actually did it.

This month has really been tough, exciting though. The moving came at a pretty bad time, but I am trying to sort what is important to do now, and what can wait until June. Tomorrow is the baby shower I am helping throw. I am stocked up on bubbly fruit waters: Blood Orange, Pink Grapefruit, Lemonade, Limeade. I have two bottles of Prosecco and a lot of streamers. Now all I need are desserts.
Today I am making a gluttonous amount of vegan treats:
Trail Mix Cookies
Chocolate Chip with Almond Paste

Claire's Cocoa Cookies - chocolate, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper

Sugar Cookies with Meyer Lemon Icing

Wheat Free Chocolate Ginger Cakelettes

Lemon Poppyseed Cakelettes

and the grand finale
Meyer Lemon Curd & Rhubarb Marionberry Tart

Copain

(photo by Alexandre Bettler/bread by Flourpower city bakery in London)

The other project I have been working on is a 5 foot long loaf of bread for Tricia's art final. It's been really fun and a little nerve wracking trying to practice something I can't actually practice. I can make 3 foot long loaves in the oven at Dovetail, but I can't actually make the 5 foot loaf until the day of at Ned Ludd. They have kindly let us use their oven, a 5 foot longish wood fire oven in North East Portland, and so until the day of the baking next week all I can do is practice 3 foot long loaves and hope everything will work out. In the meantime I have been talking to every bread baker I can find. I sat at the bar and chatted with the St. Honore bread bakers and explained to their bemused and curious faces about the 5 foot loaf. They gave me tips that Mark of Tastebud later thought were possibly not good for the wood fire oven. Its been confusing, but I love asking people's opinions. People love the 5 foot loaf! They just love the idea of it. They want to talk about it and impart their wisdom, and bakers can't help but tell you their opinions, can they.
I just keep telling myself, "It's just bread..Flour, yeast, salt and water...it's just bread"

Go here to read more about the project and please come to the opening at 7 pm on May 24th at 1241 NW Johnson Street in Portland.



01 May 2009

Moving

It happened faster then we could really be ready for, even though we are the ones creating this situation. We found a new house before we had even given notice on the old one, and so now we are paying double rent and living in chaos. We are so excited about our new house that we have been frantic to get out of the old one..packing food in shopping bags without going through it, throwing everything in boxes. My desk is still set up at the old house, looking untouched and just how I left it, while everything around it is a mess. The bookshelf awkwardly on its side in the middle of the room, the untidy and mysterious creatures living under the couch, cruelly exposed to the light of day, stay in their places refusing to move..a dirty summer window fan, a stinky sleeping bag, dust bunnies, and a print goco machine huddled together. The new house has a L shaped wrap around porch, a place to get baguettes a block away, a small commercial gas stove, a claw foot tub, and a beautiful garden. The fridge is covered in old plank wood so it disappears in to the room. There are things to fix of course...The kitchen is a horrible orange, things are dusty and grimy, many things need to be painted (see butterfly table below...we did not do this I swear)

May looks like a busy month. I have a baby shower to plan, a house to unpack, new sweets to make, last Thursdays, and a 5 foot long loaf of bread to bake. Yes, 5 Feet! More on that later... off to the Farmers Market.. I have pizza to eat and elicit coffee to sip.

27 March 2009

Sore Legs and Dreams of Rhubarb

The weather can't make up it's mind, it's warm then it's rainy. Overcast and then the sun peeks out just a bit. It makes this California girl homesick. Well that and my wonderful friend Sarah Jane coming to visit for her spring break! We wandered the first farmers market of the season, SJ and I laughed at how little food there was, her once again feeling grateful and lucky to live in such sunny part of the country. But I said, you won't feel that joy when the food starts coming! When there is more then root vegetables, apples, and onions. I bought some handmade butter, talked to the wife of the goat cheese maker about butter making, and we wandered back home in the rain of course, to make birthday cake for her.

Oh yeah, then we got some big ass friendship tattoos on our legs. It is the three
of bottle/cups, the tarot card associated with friendlove and deep friendship. Claire, SJ, and I are all water signs astrologically speaking, and the cups/bottles suite is all about water and emotions. There are sprig of lavender around it cos you know I love some lavender in the summer, and a big moon. I have left the banner blank so far because I am not sure what I want it to say yet. SJ got "Together we're home" which I like a lot, but I also like the idea of all of ours saying something different. So far "Never a wife" , " Fuck Ya!" (in honour of Shon's unicorn tattoo), and "Hella" are in the running. Of course all of these are awesome and terrible in their own ways, hence why the banner is blank!

Meanwhile my mind has been wandering back to the markets in Nice. In my dreams sometimes I am still wandering the 8 block maze of farmers market and flower stalls in the south of France.
The bread and gooey cheese and the huge figs. The most beautiful carrots I ever saw; I bought them even though we were leaving on the plane the next morning and I wouldn't have been able to finish them in time. I just wanted to look at them and eat as many as I could. I brought them on the plane with me and snuck glances of them every chance I got.

And so as I am dreaming of Nice and waiting for spring and our markets to have abundance again, I scribble notes to myself in my book....blood orange and olive oil cake, orange yogurt cake with little wisps of rhu
barb on top, meyer lemon curd tart with rhubarb, that tart from the gourmet magazine, peach tatins....

14 March 2009

Eggs

Every so often I get these wonderful fresh eggs for trade from my friend Eric. Aren't they beautiful?!

24 February 2009

A day off


Even though it's my day off, I can't seem to stop baking. I mean it's not a bad life, waking up and thinking, "hmm, I need to test that cake recipe. Should it be chocolate ginger? Chocolate pink pepper? Chocolate orange? maybe chocolate hazelnut..." Well let's just try it all!

Well the chocolate ginger and chocolate orange are my favorite so far. I think I might try chocolate coconut later......

21 February 2009

Roasted Apple Tart

Oh, lets all thank Elizabeth for this recipe. Apples roasted with a little sugar and then blended. Topped with thin apple slices and baked until browned. So simple. I can't wait for her return so we can bake more.

13 February 2009

Moi et Oliver partage un croissant