Cream Puffs

Cream puff aka profiteroles have been on my to do list for a while. Actually ever since James sent me the table of ratios for different types of doughs from Michael Ruhlman's book "Ratio". I didn't even know how to pronounce "pate au choux" ... not sure I do now. But I know how to make it! After two batches of cream puffs based on two different recipes and two batches of pastry cream in less than a week I can confidently say cream puffs are my new favorite thing to make.

Pate au choux is a light pastry dough used to make not only cream puffs but also eclairs, croquembouches, beignets, gougeres, etc. According to its history on Wikipedia, the pastry was invented in 1540 by a chef of the Medici family, shortly after they all fled Florence. The name came much later, in the 18th century, when a patissier by the name Avice invented the Choux Buns and the name of the dough became pate au choux because the buns resembled little cabbages - choux in French. They really look like miniature cabbage heads, don't they?

The first recipe (let's call it Recipe A) came form Brown Eyed Baker's fantastic tutorial:

Pate Au Choux

2 large eggs + 1 large egg white (1/2 C eggs)
5 Tbs unsalted butter
2 Tbs milk
6 Tbs water
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C flour, sifted

The second recipe (Recipe B) comes from Michael Ruhlman's ratio approach:

Ratio Pate Au Choix

1/2 C butter
1 C water + milk
1 C eggs (3 large, ~5 medium eggs)
1/2 C flour, sifted
1 Tbs sugar
pinch of salt

The process of making the pastry is soooo simple. Heat butter, milk, water, sugar, and salt in a pan over medium heat, stirring until the butter is melted the mix starts to bubble. Take off the heat and immediately add the flour, stirring briskly, until a paste is formed. Return to low heat and stir until the batter is glossy and easily separates from the sides. Take off the heat, stir briskly to cool a bit. Then slowly pour in the eggs while stirring until smooth. The batter will be sticky, but thick. To make the puffs, transfer the batter to a pastry bag with a plane tip and pipe 1 to 1 1/2 inch mounds on a wax-paper lined baking sheet. Bake for 15 min @ 415F + 8 min @ 375F. Then turn off the oven, crack open the door and let the puffs cool in the oven. More detailed instructions can be found here.

Now, for the comparison. The two recipes actually had very different ratios of ingredients. The first recipe was 1:1:5/8:1 of liquid:egg:butter:flour, so almost 1:1:1:1. Michael Rulman advocates a very different ratio - 1:2:2:1, so the batter has a lot more egg and butter. In the end however, I was surprised at how similar the batters looked. They had almost the same consistency with B being sweeter and just a bit more runny and unable to hold height when piped. The baking results however were quite different. The puffs from Recipe A held their shape pretty well, puffed a bit but not too much and at the end of the baking were quite sturdy. The puffs from Recipe B puffed up like little balloons and even some of them merged together. They became huge! But at the end of the baking they were still quite moist and some of them collapsed as soon as they were out of the oven. Meh. I personally prefer the first batter though I would increase the sugar to 1 Tbs next time. Ruhlman's ratio works but it the result was not all that satisfying.

Now for the filling:

Pastry Cream

2 C whole milk
1/2 C sugar, divided
5 yolks
3 Tbs corn starch
2 Tbs unsalted butter

Additional for chocolate pastry cream:
3 Tbs cocoa
2 oz quality semi-sweet chocolate

Again, for more elaborate instructions check out Brown Eyed Baker's tutorial. Here is my brief summary: beat yolks + 2 Tbs sugar; add corn startch and beat until mixed well; heat milk + 6 Tbs sugar until boiling; over low heat add the yolk mixture to the milk in a thin stream while stirring well and keep stirring until the mix thickens and begins to bubble; take it off the heat and stir in the butter. For chocolate pastry cream, add the cocoa to the yolk-starch mix and add the chocolate with the butter at the end. Straining the cream is not a bad idea, because there are always lumps. Then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Honestly, I don't know what cocaine tastes like but I can imagine it tastes like pastry cream. This stuff is so tasty it can be addictive. I am adding pastry cream to the list of foods I love, love, love, right next to Thai yellow curry, Monica's lasagna, James's risotto and the 9-grain bagels at Bentley's, among other things.

To finish thinks off, I recommend leaving the puffs uncovered overnight (to dry them even further) and the pastry cream in the fridge also overnight (to thicken and cool). Make little holes on the sides of the puffs and pipe the cream in, slowly and gently so that the cream doesn't come out squirting from the side. Eat as soon as possible - the longer they sit the soggier they get. Cream puffs week is over.

Michael Pollan on Food Television

Several weeks ago, just before "Julie and Julia" hit the movie theaters, Michael Pollan came out with a long (as usual) article in the New York Times about the evolution of food television. In Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch Pollan traces (and criticizes) the long way that food television has gone since Julia Child first appeared on public television some 45 years ago and tries to answer the question "How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?". I recommend reading the article - it is lengthy but it makes some very interesting points. He starts with his own experience watching Julia Child when he was young and the courage she gave American women, goes through the mass exodus of women out of the kitchen and into the work force and the post-war effort to get us all to eat military rations (very successful effort indeed), looks at our life today where we spend only 27 minutes a day on average cooking and ~ 2 hours watching television and discusses what the future holds - will we go back in the kitchen?

I'd never watched Julia Child myself, until yesterday. I was surfing the channels on TV and came across the public TV station and lo and behold, it wad Julia Child in black and white making bouillabaisse. She cleaned the fish, made the soup and then sat at the table, poured herself a glass of wine and showed viewers how to serve and eat the magical concoction. It was fascinating, and extremely educational. I now feel that if the need should arise, I can make bouillabaisse. That sense of having learned something is vary rarely the result of watching the Food Network these days. After that experience I very much agree with Michael Pollen that food television is no longer about learning how to cook but rather about watching other people cook and/or eat. I was also struck with how accurate Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child was - her manners, her voice and intonation were so perfect. Rarely have I seen such a striking resemblance on screen (Salma Hayek as Frida Khalo is another one which comes to mind). Also, I was struck with how thin Julia Child was. Honestly, for someone who uses butter with such unbridled generosity, I thought she'd be a bit more.... plump.

But back to Michael Pollan. A large portion of the article is devoted to a detailed criticism of The Food Network. As I recently acquired cable subscription for the first time in my life, I, too, was struck with the content of most cooking shows. It's been two months since I have been watching The Food Network and I have not yet cooked a single thing I have seen there. Granted I usually turn the TV on in the evening when The Food Network is all about the race against the clock than about showing you how to cook. But even during the day (as in right now, on Sunday afternoon) the shows are about quick, cheap and easy "dump-and-stir" meals which promote the culture of cheap food and how to wow your family and guests with as little effort as possible. What if you want to wow them with some quality food that goes beyond fried chicken breasts you bought on sale for 50% off? Which reminds me that I recently heard an interview with Ellen Ruppel Shell, the author of Cheap - The Hight Cost of Discount Culture and it sounded fascinating. Check it out.

What do you think of food television today? Do you watch it? What do you watch? If you have had the chance to read Michael Pollan's article - what did you think? What struck you the most? Do you agree or disagree with it?

PS. A nearly complete list of Michael Pollan's works (including links to articles) can be found here (scroll down for the articles). Here are two which particularly appealed to me:A Letter to the Farmer in Chief and Unhappy Meals.

PPS. And if you, like me, have never see the original Julia Child series The French Chef, 36 of the original episodes have been published in two DVD box sets which are available on Amazon (Set 1 and Set 2) and on Netflix. You know, Christmas is coming and wouldn't these make wonderful presents for your favorite foodie?

Mozzarella!

Yes, we did it! And it turned out so good, oh so good! Can we call ourselves cheese-makers now? Alright, alright, let me back a little. James visited me last week and making mozzarella was among the many wonderful, exciting, delicious and very much unplanned things we did. We used a very simple recipe - the one included in Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" (read it!). All the recipes from the book can be found here.

Mozzarella

1 gallon pasteurized milk
1 1/2 tsp citric acid dissolved in 1/4 C cool water
1 tsp cheese salt
1/4 tablet rennet dissolved in 1/4 C cool water
or
1/4 tsp liquid rennet dissolved in 1/4 C cool water

Yields: four 2-inch balls
Also helpful: Big stainless steel pot (should fit at least 1 gallon), candy thermometer, sieve, slotted spoon, heavy duty rubber gloves, microwave.

I am not going to explain you how to make the cheese - just follow the instructions here.

Aout the ingredients: You need pasteurized but not ultra-pasteurized milk (a.k.a. HUT milk). Ultra-pasteurized milk cannot be turned into cheese. With the advent of big milk-processing plants, milk distributers wanted to be able to keep milk from spoiling for longer periods of time and thus developed the process of ultra-pasteurization - by heating milk to a higher temperature (280F/138C vs. 161F/71.7C for regular pasteurization) milk will stay "fresh" for up to couple of weeks months. Unfortunately, this also changes the protein structure, so milk will not curdle properly. Frequently, additives need to be included in UHT milk to duplicate the taste and texture of regular milk. To summarize, avoid it if you can in principle, definitely avoid it if you are making cheese.

Rennet, according to Wikipedia, is a natural complex enzyme produced by any mammalian stomach to digest the mother's milk and often used in cheese production. Ewwwww. Luckily, I managed to find some vegetable rennet at a brew-store in Arizona (which is usually derived from mold?). I got a dozen of tablets for ~$7 which will make a whole of a lot of cheese. Rennet can also be found online as well as here and I saw some liquid rennet at Whole Foods the other day (not sure that was vegetarian though... I think it was).

Citric acid ... Hmmm, I bought it from the same place as the rennet. I have also seen it in Middle-Eastern grocery stores. If you live in Tucson, AZ, Caravan (on Glenn and Country Club) is the place to go. Also, use non-chlorinated water if possible and definitely non-iodized salt. The latter is important, for iodine may interfere with cheese making enzymes. Get some cheese salt (which is just nice coarse-grain salt without iodine) or get the box with the girl without iodine.

This is a lot of explaining for such a short ingredient list!

About making the cheese itself. We followed the recipe and things went pretty smooth. We had to heat the curds three times for about 20 seconds each time while kneeding until we reached the desired consistency. The result was very smooth but not as stretchy as I thought it needed to be. I think we just didn't heat it enough because I just saw the pictures here - wow, this really stretches like taffy. The cheese came out a bit dense, but the taste was great! We kept it in a bowl covered with whey to prevent it from drying. The whole batch swiftly disappeared over the course of the weekend - most of it was consumed at a dinner with friends along with some sliced tomatoes, olives, basil and olive oil. The rest went to top our amazing Sunday night dinner.

What next? I think I need some more practice with the mozzarella. But other than that I am thinking of getting Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making book to explore some other recipes. Ultimately, wouldn't it be nice to be able to make feta? I think my life would improve substantially if I could do that... Or I'd get fat. Possibly both.

Passion. Ambition. Butter.

I came across this a few weeks ago - a movie about Chef Julia Child and Julie Powell who cooks her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (now in its 40th anniversary edition). The movie is partially based on Julie Powell's blog later turned into a book - "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen". But wait... what? I have to wait till August 7th? That's like ... a year from now!!! Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci. It looks fantastically delicious! In the mean time - enjoy the trailer.

Biscoctus Biscotti

In all honesty, i had somehow managed to go through most of my life without discovering biscotti. I even managed to live for a month in Italy without having a single one. Granted, it was June and I was distracted by gelato, Baci chocolates and good-looking Italian men. And until a few weeks ago I had no clue they belonged to an extensive class of "double-baked" cookies. So when I was flipping through the cookie section of The Baker's Dozen Cookbook (my new favorite desert book!) and came across the biscotti recipe I immediately decided I had to make them. Two batches later, I am hooked. They are great and easy to make. The double-baking makes them last forever though that doesn't make much sense around here because they seem to disappear within days...

According to Wikipedia, the word "biscotti" (pronounced [bis-COT-tea]) in Italian is the plural form of biscotto, which applies to any type of biscuit, and originates from the medieval Latin word biscoctus, meaning "twice-baked": it defined biscuits baked twice in the oven, so they could be stored for long periods of time, which was particularly useful during journeys and wars. Through Middle French, the word was imported into the English language as "biscuit". Frequently the term "biscotti" is taken to refer to a specific type of hard almond-flavoured biscuits traditionally served with vin santo, probably originating from the town of Prato and therefore still known as "biscotti of Prato". In general, biscotti is more a method of preparation, rather than a specific recipe, as pointed out by Laura Schenone from Jellypress.com in her history of biscotti. She also points out the fact that biscotti are usually first baked at high temperature and then on low temperature - probably a consequence of how wood-burning ovens work.

While keeping their hardiness, biscotti today seem to be very different from their ancient predecessors. They are buttery, usually studded with nuts and sometimes covered in chocolate. We are so spoiled, I don't think we would have them any other way.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti

2 +1/2 C flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C butter (1 stick)
1 1/4 C sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 C hazelnuts, roasted, chopped
1/3 C quality semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 300F. Sift flour with baking powder and salt, and set aside. Beat butter and sugar until combined (1 minute) - do not overbeat, you don't want to incorporate too much air. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and blend until almost combined, add the nuts and chocolate and mix well. I thought that 2.5 C of flour were a little too much so go easy on the flour at the end, you do not want crumbly dough. Divide the dough in half. Wrap each half in a plastic wrap or parchment paper and roll into a long log, about 14 inches long. Place the two logs about 4 inches apart on a big baking sheet, lined with lightly oiled parchment paper. Bake, turning the sheet around halfway, for 1.5 hours. Remove from the oven and let just cool slightly. Slice carefully into 1/2-inch thick slices using a serrated knife. Return the cookies to the baking sheet, laying the flat and return to the oven for ~10 minutes, until golden. The oven can be turned off before placing the cookies inside. Cool and story in a tin box.

These were marvelous! Crisp but not too hard. They can be eaten as it is or dipped in tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Oh, I love the combination of chocolate and hazelnut, it makes me think of Nutella. Just smelling these is heaven! The variations offered include pistachio-raisin (2/3 C pistachios + 1/3 C raisins in place of the chocolate and hazelnut), pine nut-orange (1/3 C tasted pine nuts + 1/3 C candied orange), and the classic almond anise biscotti (1 C almonds + 1 tsp anise). What other flavors can be made? Any ideas?

A Moment with Eric Schlosser and a Movie

I rarely read the Princeton Alumni Weekly, but the November 19th issue, devoted to food, had my attention since it made it through the door. I haven't had a chance to read through all the interesting articles, except for an interview with "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser (apparently a 1981 Princeton Alumni). The full text of the interview can be found here. He makes interesting points about his career, the Slow Food movement and future US food policy.

In the introduction, the article mentions that Eric Schlosser is a co-producer to a new Robert Kenner (who is he anyways?) documentary, "Food, Inc.". It is shockingly difficult to find information about the movie (yes, I did Google it!)... There isn't even a trailer! Some info can be found here and here. Quoting one of the interviews: I have to admit that after coming out of a packed screening Monday afternoon of "Food Inc,." I was suddenly convinced that all my vegetarian pals were a lot smarter than I'd ever imagined. Yes, I know, that's just mean on my side.

Anyways, something to look forward to.

My Last Fast Food French Fries

Wow! Has it been a month already? I cannot believe it! Well, I really haven't been cooking all that much over the last month, at least nothing blog-worthy. But I promise to catch up! I spent the last two weeks in Chile, working, traveling and above all, eating tons of tasty Chilean food (and taking pictures of it). The trip, the food and the views will be a topic of another post though. Here, I wanted to write about quite a striking book I read while I was on the road - "Fast Food Nation". I know, I know, I am seven years too late and most of you have read it ages ago, but seven years ago boiling rice was my crown culinary achievement and I certainly couldn't be bothered to care where my fries came from. Times have changed. Now I cook, care and blog about food.

I enjoyed the book very much. So much that I read it in two days all the while craving one last serving of french fries. The book is very informative and quite frightening, though in the lest expected ways. When I started reading it I was anticipating (a) a treatise of why fast food is bad for you, much like "Supersize Me" and/or (b) a rant against the inhumane treatment of animals. While both topics are touched upon in the book, neither is placed in the center of the discussion. Instead, Eric Schlosser presents the reader with an extremely well researched work (the bibliography alone is 69 pages) on the history, development and current world-wide hegemony of the fast food industry. This is a book about the transformation of the American diet, economy, workforce, landscape and popular culture caused by the fast food industry. It is thoroughly enchanting. On a given day a quarter of the US adult population visits a fast food restaurant. 90% of US children eat at a fast food restaurant at least once a month. Ronald McDonald is the second most recognizable face (after Santa Claus) by school children - 96% can recognize him. The profit margin of a cup of soda is ~95%. It is practically impossible to summarize everything the book is about in a paragraph or two. It is also practically impossible to summarize all that is disturbing about the fast food industry in a paragraph or two. Therefore, I would like to mention the two topics which struck me the most: the treatment of workers in the meat processing pants (yes, workers not cows) and the lack any government control over the meat industry.

The chapters describing the meat packing industry, Schlosser's visits to the meat packing plants, his encounters and interviews with workers at the plants all speckled with references to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" were the hardest to read. Now, even though I am a vegetarian, I am very much aware that hundreds of thousands of animals must be killed for all the steaks and hamburgers to show up at the grocery stores and restaurants and I have no illusions that this is done in the most humane manner possible. However I never realized that the people working at meat-packing plants were treated so disgustingly inhumanely! The stories portrayed in the book are beyond belief! Missing fingers, missing limbs, people incapacitated for life being compensated by a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, extremely dangerous jobs without health insurance staffed by illegal immigrants who do not speak English and cannot defend their rights, company doctors deliberately misdiagnosing injuries to avoid paying the medical expenses, companies paying dimes in penalties for the deaths of workers caused by negligence - just a few of the details portrayed in the book. I find it truly bewildering that so much fuss is made over the living conditions of animals (including Proposition 2 - The Prevention of Animal Cruelty Act which just passed in Calofornia) when thousands of people, people who put food on the tables of millions of American families every single day, are treated with such abyssmal inhumanity! It is beyond disturbing! According to a December 2006 PBS article not much has changed since Fast Food Nation was written in 2001: "In early 2005, Human Rights Watch released a report entitled "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants" which concluded that the working conditions in America's meat packing plants were so bad they violated basic human and worker rights. This was the first time the human rights organization had criticized a U.S. industry." Isn't anyone paying attention?

The several country-wide produce scares in the last one year (was it tomatoes and spinach?) made me read very carefully Eric Schlosser's discussion of the dangers of the centralization of meat-production, or any production: "Today a cluster of illnesses in one small town can stem from a bad potato salad at a school barbeque or -- or it may be the first sign of an outbreak that extends statewide, nationwide and even overseas." Millions of tons of meat infected E. Coli and Salmonela can be distributed unchecked throughout the country, sicken thousands of people, and no government agency has the right to issue a recall and inform the public that they should not buy the infected meat! A voluntarily recall can be issued by the company weeks and months after the discovery of the infection, long after the infected product has already been sold and consumed. Since when did eating a steak become risky business? Apparently, a large amount of money and effort have been invested by the meat industry to prevent the institution of control. Isn't this frightening? The Secretary of Agriculture is quoted to have said: "We can fine circuses for mistreating elephants but we can't fine companies for violating food-safety standards."

In short, if you haven't read "Fast Food Nation", read it. I recommend it.

What now? It's not that I have ever been a big fast food fan. I was 17 years old (and already a vegetarian) when I walked into a McDonald's restaurant for the first time, I think it was in Belgrade, so I do not have the childhood allegiance or comfort food association. And, honestly, I've never had a hamburger, let alone a BigMac. Yet, aside from reasons loosely defined as "they don't serve anything I eat", I have never consciously avoided them. In fact, french fries and/or a frosty is my occasional fare after a late night out. Given that the majority of fast food purchases are spontaneous, I may as well be the typical customer. Or should I say "was" the typical customer. I here-by solemnly swear to never eat at a fast food restaurant ever again. I had my last serving of (Jack In the Box) fast food fries last Sunday, November 2nd, 2008. I oppose their practices, I oppose their corporative greediness, exploitativeness and manipulativeness. Fast food chains very much remind me of Walmart, like the food version of it (seen Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price?). Well, I won't be spending my money there no more.

And if I were to ever buy meat, I'd rather know the name of the cow/chicken it came from. (Sorry, Monica!)