It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally perfected gumbo. I’ve gone through countless over-complicated recipes over the years and have systematically thrown out the steps and ingredients that were superfluous. This recipe is what remained. It’s the best gumbo I’ve ever had.
I’ve been meaning to make ravioli ever since I got my pasta press. I finally got around to it last night and I was pleased with the results.
I realized I forgot to buy a loaf of sandwich bread at the store the other day, so I just decided to make my own. I’m glad I did. It came out much firmer and tastier than standard white bread.
The wife’s family collects other people’s traditions. They’re not German, but they hide a pickle ornament in their Christmas tree and make the kids look for it on Christmas morning. And they’re not Danish, but they always make ebelskivers for breakfast on the morning after Christmas. The wife has carried on these adopted traditions, but we’re pretty flexible about when we make the ebelskivers. Anytime between Christmas and New Years works for us.
After my successful experiment with homemade linguine noodles over the weekend, I decided to make some spaghetti. Over the years, I’ve learned to experiment incrementally to see what my flavor limitations are. Like with bread, pasta is 95% flour. That means that you’d have to add a lot of another ingredient to be able to taste it. I thought I’d roast some garlic and mix it with some olive oil in lieu of an egg in the basic dough recipe. I figured even if we couldn’t taste the garlic, the noodles would be healthier.
I’ve been wanting to make pasta noodles from scratch for a while. When we got a stand mixer for a wedding gift, we also got a ravioli attachment. I’ve always wanted to use it, but it seems pretty useless without a pasta roller. Since the pasta press attachment costs a cool $150, I thought I’d better buy a cheaper version first and make sure I’m using it often enough to justify the cost of going electric, so to speak. I picked up a manual pasta press for about $35 and decided to get down to business.
This time of year, hard, sweet, green tomatoes are available at the market. I’ve blogged them before, so I usually don’t post the recipe anymore. This time we experimented with a new breading and a new sauce.
I baked a couple of loaves of homemade bread over the weekend. I used Michelob Ultra Amber for both of them and they tasted great. The first loaf was my basic no-knead bread:
I know what you’re thinking; you’re finally making pretty good no-knead bread but it’s getting a little boring. You’re wondering if there’s a way you can add flavors to your bread without changing the cooking method. I wondered the same thing. I’ve had much success incorporating various liquids and solids into my bread while maintaining a crisp crust and a light, airy center. As you might expect, there was a pretty steep learning curve. I’ve listed some of my hard-learned lessons below. If you’re using a method similar to mine, then these tips and tricks will work for you too. Check out this asiago cheese loaf:
As regular readers know, I’ve been experimenting with homemade bread for months now. In retrospect, I handicapped my learning process by adopting and abandoning several different methods and recipes before perfecting one. After initial success with a no-knead bread technique, I decided to stick with it. Over time, I incorporated techniques and suggestions from several sources and ended up with a pretty foolproof recipe.
