For the last couple of weeks in the Boston area, it’s been a little hot and a little humid. It hasn’t been bad enough to be considered a heat wave. When I take my late evening walks, it’s actually quite comfortable.
But when it’s that time of day to cook a meal, the stove is the last thing I want to use. This makes me a little sad as making soups and baking things in the oven tends to be my default cooking style.
(Grilling is not something I’ve done on my own. However, I’m determined to change that this year. I’ve dug out an old charcoal grill left by a previous housemate that I will finally clean out and use.)
So, I’ve been playing with my slow cooker some more and I’m going to try using it as my main cooking method this summer. I might as well. I’ll be working from home for the rest of the summer (and likely for the rest of the year).
I’ve done a sweet Italian sausage/tomato sauce/bell pepper recipe. Most of this batch went to some friends, but I kept what I couldn’t fit in the container. It was pretty good, and something I’d like to re-visit with some changes. While I like Italian sausages, I am health conscious, and try not to eat a lot of sausages in general. (Having said that, I do several pre-cooked sausages in my freezer right now because I can’t afford to be picky shopping during a pandemic.) I think the next version will be to make my own meatballs and cook in the same sauce.
Quick breads actually do pretty well in a slow cooker. The cornbread in the photo was a slow cooker recipe. And this weekend, I made my favorite sourdough discard banana bread in the machine – it was delicious.
If you’d like to make my sourdough discard banana bread, take a 6 quart slow cooker and line it with parchment. Drop the whole batter in. Cook on high for 2 hours, with a tea towel lining the lid. The towel makes a huge difference for making baked goods in a slow cooker. It keeps any condensation from falling onto your product.
I’ve actually been slowly working on a rotisserie-style chicken in a slow cooker for the past year. I think I’m finally getting the hang out it.
I have a lot chicken bones in the freezer waiting to be turned into stock. I think I’ll try my sourdough recipe in the slow cooker (yes, the texture will be altered COMPLETELY but if it still yields a tasty bread, I won’t complain). I’ll have to figure out a good vegetable side dish to make because I don’t always want a salad even though it’s the summer. I will NOT be braising any cabbage though. It’s fine in the colder weather but the one time I made braised cabbage in the summer, several flies found their way into my apartment. I think that’s the one downside of slow cooking in the summer. Flies will find their way to you depending on what you’re cooking. The last two times I made chicken, a fly found its way into the house (although, one fly is still better than the several from the cabbage round).
I’ll also take this opportunity to revisit cookbooks I have (Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker and The Easy Asian Cookbook for Slow Cookers), but I’ll probably draw most of my inspiration from whatever I have available.
I guess we’ll see how it goes.
In case you missed it, my favorite banana bread recipe can be found here:
Did you know the average rotisserie chicken has 4 cups of meat on it? This is a thing I learned from “The Best Rotisserie Chicken Cookbook” by Toby Amidor. I think it’s a fun cookbook. The whole premise is focused on buying a rotisserie chicken, breaking it down, and using it for a variety of recipes. Some of the recipes seem obvious, while others are recipes I would have never thought of.
Every recipe has a key for less than 5 ingredients, 15 min or less, freezer friendly, meal prep, and/or or one pot/pan. Depending on your cooking style, this is really handy information. The breakfast, appetizers, and snack recipes come in a variety of serving sizes, but it seems like all of the entree recipes are made to serve 4, so it’s fairly easy to reduce the serving size to 2 if need be.
Brussels sprouts salad with chicken, cranberries, and pecans
Chicken parmesan casserole
Chicken and mushroom baked risotto
Easy chicken and sausage paella
Garlic smothered chicken
Chicken loaf
White bean and chicken chili
Herbed chicken meatballs
Skillet balsamic chicken
Cranberry almond farro (from the sides chapter)
The biggest challenges I had with this book? I only had about a cup of chicken with which I could use for recipe testing, and I had to cook from my pantry. (My location is under quarantine advisory at the time of working on this post.) That’s pretty much it. The recipes themselves all seem friendly for everyday cooking, and nothing looks intimidating.
There were a handful of recipes that fit my ingredient restrictions, but in the end, I kept coming back to Amidor’s recipe for chicken almond soup. The published recipe calls for slivered almonds, chicken broth, almond butter, oil, leek, butter, flour, rotisserie chicken, frozen peas, unseasoned rice vinegar, dried tarragon, dried thyme, salt, and pepper. I had to forgo the slivered almonds. Then, I made two minor substitutions. I used onion instead of leek. I technically ran out of thyme and tarragon, so I used an equal amount of herbs de Provence, since it has both thyme and tarragon in the blend.
I loved how easily this came together. It also smelled really good while cooking. The almond flavor is subtle but complements the herbs. I imagine that if you didn’t want to use chicken, you can easily use cannellini beans instead. Button mushrooms might work well too, but I think cremini or portobello might be too distinctive for this recipe.
Oooh, this might work lovely as a side dish if you omit the chicken completely and add something like butter lettuce. (Yes, I cook my lettuce sometimes. In the right applications, it’s delicious.)
But even as I’m pondering chicken substitutions, I love the recipe as is. The chicken almond soup is going into my cooking repertoire. I just want to let you know that even if you’re not a fan of eating chicken, you don’t need to disregard this book. The recipes all sound flexible.
I’m already looking forward to getting my hands on more chicken. It doesn’t have to be rotisserie chicken from the store either. Honestly, I’m in a mood where I want to roast whole chickens at home. And as the weather gets warmer in New England, I’ll probably pull out my slow cooker instead. But as I’m a regular meal prepper, I expect to get a lot of use out of this book.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Previously, I was unfamiliar with Toby Amidor, but she’s written five cookbooks already, two of which are meal prep books. “The Best Rotisserie Chicken Cookbook” is her sixth. I guess I have more reading to do in the near future!
Disclaimer – I kindly received a preview from Robert Rose for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
With COVID-19 self-quarantine in effect, my scope of recipe-testing was limited. Some modifications may have been made. I apologize that I could not recipe-test better.
For anyone not following my IG, I’m experimenting with making dosa for the first time.
I saw the Bon Appetit video where Sohla and Brad make some, and realized that I technically had all the ingredients. In fact, I have a lot of rice and lentils, courtesy of my grandmother. So, this might be a regular thing I do during quarantine.
I’m working on cleaning out my pantry, so this batch is purple because some black rice was used. I’m not mad at it. 🙂
How to Stop Wasting Flour (when making sourdoughs)
This is something that’s been bothering me since the beginning of quarantine when everyone couldn’t find yeast to buy and started their own sourdough projects. So much so that I felt a need to write about it. People are making a sizeable quantity of sourdough starter and then throwing away the discard because they’re following a recipe exactly. Or getting so overwhelmed by discard that they give up making sourdough completely.
So, there’s the obvious solution – googling recipes for sourdough discard. This is fine. This is great! I do it all the time. But there are still a couple of suggestions I have that further stretch your sourdough discard, and you’ll have no waste at all.
Suggestion #1 – Stop being pedantic
The world of sourdough is a lot more flexible than you realize. If you don’t want to do the experimentation, there’s a good chance someone has already done it for you and even documented it on the internet.
For example, I love the Foodgeek Youtube channel. He often posts experiments that I hadn’t realized I needed answers to.
Suggestion #2 – Make less starter
The recipe I was originally given makes 400g of starter, and the bread recipe needs 160g of starter. It’s a lot more starter than I need for one loaf of bread. So, if I’m going to make a loaf of bread, I only make 200g of starter. And that gives me 40g of starter to seed my next loaf. Realistically, I only make bread about once a month. I feed my starter every week and store in the fridge between feedings because that’s the flavor I like best. So, if I’m not planning to make bread, I only keep 100g of starter on hand. That’s 300g of flour and water that I am not wasting.
Another Youtube channel I like is Bake with Jack. Jack prefers to use the “scrapings” of his starter which would mean no discard at all. I don’t trust myself to do this but I’m also not making bread regularly enough for this method. But you do you.
Suggestion #3 – Freeze your discard
This has been game changing for me.
If I’m keeping 100g of starter on hand and only need 10g of starter for each feeding session, I still have 90g of starter that becomes the discard. Guess what? I freeze it. I have a spare jar where I’ve marked where 1 cup is. Every time I have discard, I’ll stir to knock out the extra air, and place it in my discard jar. This jar lives in the freezer. When I accumulate 1 cup of starter, I can then make my favorite sourdough banana bread recipe. It takes me about 4 weeks to build up 1 cup of discard. This way, I don’t get annoyed at feeding my sourdough starter. And I don’t get tired of making sourdough bread, or making any recipe using discard.
You don’t have to make banana bread. In general, the discard recipes I’ve seen use .5 cup, 1 cup, or 1.5 cups of discard. I say make markings for all three on your discard jar if the jar doesn’t come with its own volume markings, and then bake with the discard whenever you see fit. If you have a favorite recipe using discard, then just tailor your freezer storage around it.
And bonus, if anything should happen to your starter, you will always have a backup plan safely stored in the freezer.
On that note, here’s my favorite banana bread recipe…
½ c sugar
½ c oil of choice (I use avocado oil for its mild flavor)
3 large ripe bananas (does not need to be fully ripe with a black peel, and you can even use under-ripe if needed)
1 egg
1 c sourdough starter (thawed if previously frozen)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1½ c unbleached all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
6 Tbsp chopped walnuts
6 Tbsp chocolate chips, semi-sweet or dark
In a mixer, beat your egg and bananas. If your bananas were slightly under-ripe, let this sit for 30 minutes. Why? I learned from Stella Parks that there is an enzymatic reaction where egg yolks will convert starches into sugar thereby ripening your banana for you.* So I now like to make this my first step. You don’t have to use a mixer, you can do this by hand but I like how well the mixer mashes the bananas for me.
Preheat your oven to 350F. Prep a loaf pan. I will usually use a piece of parchment inside a 9×5 loaf pan. You could use butter or non-stick spray. You can probably use a slightly smaller loaf pan if that’s all you have.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Mix in the sugar and oil into the banana mixture. Then mix in the vanilla. Mix in half of the sourdough discard. When it’s mixed in, add the other half and mix.
Add your dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. When it’s almost combined, turn the mixer off and switch to a spoon/spatula. Add in the nuts and chocolate chips, and handmix until combined.
Bake this for about 60 minutes or until a cake tester/toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely, and then serve.
Please note, this post is about sourdough discard from a starter that is past its infancy stage. I have not fermented my own starter completely from scratch. All the sourdough starters that I’ve worked with was discard from an existing starter, and I was just perpetuating it.
I hope you find this post to be helpful. Let me know what you think or if you have a favorite sourdough discard recipe that I should try out.
“Healthy Eats” is the latest cookbook from Six Sisters’ Stuff. I’ve reviewed one of their books before, with some mixed feelings. I loved their pulled pork recipe, but wasn’t into the amount of pre-made stuff being employed. (To be fair, the book was called “Six Ingredients”, and cooks often have to cheat an ingredient to get the best flavor when they’re not working with much.) Since healthy eating is a different concept than minimal ingredients, I was curious about the contents of this new book.
Chapter breakdown is much like their previous book:
Breakfast
Lunch
Main Dishes
Side Dishes
Snacks and Desserts
Things to I’d like to try:
Hearty breakfast cookies
Red potato turkey bacon bake
Protein packed egg salad sandwiches
Shredded beef and sweet potato tacos
Honey lime grilled chicken
Avocado sour cream
Salisbury steak meatballs
Garlic lime sweet potato fries
Healthy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies
Skinny frozen strawberry bites
Flourless banana bread
Initial impression? The recipes are straight-forward. Most of the ingredient lists are 8 ingredients total. Some are more. Some are much less. None of the recipes are exotic, all are fairly familiar North American fare. In fact my mom, who is an excellent home cook but not very adventurous, really liked the look of the recipes here whereas she’s shown much less interest in some of my other cookbooks.
Since my location is still under self-isolation/quarantine advisory, I was limited at what I could recipe test with little to no changes.
The original recipe I picked out was the egg rolls in a bowl. Ingredients consist of sesame oil, olive oil, rice wine vinegar, low sodium soy sauce, ground chicken, black pepper, coleslaw mix, and scallions. I didn’t have coleslaw mix per se, but I had green cabbage. And honestly, coleslaw mix is mostly cabbage with some carrots. Not a major ingredient replacement in my opinion.
How did it turn out? Initially under-seasoned. I also thought the cooking instructions were odd. I like the idea that you make the sauce directly in the pan, and then add the meat but the recipe has you cook the ground chicken on low for about 12 minutes. And then you add the veggies and cook for about 3 minutes more. That is overcooked chicken in my opinion. I added my cabbage earlier. However, that wasn’t enough to improve on the dish. There’s no garlic. Not even onions. If you’re going to use ground chicken, you really need more flavor. I tried not to fuss with the recipe but, in the end, I added garlic powder and onion powder to make this edible by my standards. At least it tasted better the next day, but I’m still going to give this particular recipe as it stands a failing grade.
I try to be a fair person, so I decided to test a second recipe. This time, I went with peanut butter protein bars made of quick cooking oats, shredded unsweetened coconut, peanut butter, honey, apple sauce, chocolate protein powder, chia seeds, vanilla, and semisweet chocolate chips. I had to make two substitutions in this due to my kitchen inventory. I swapped the chocolate protein powder with vanilla protein powder, and chia seeds with hemp seeds. I’m happy to report that my results were tasty! I don’t think the flavor of protein powder is very important as the dominant flavors are peanut butter and coconut.
But then how does one go about reviewing a book when the scorecard is 1 pass and 1 fail? I kept mulling this over when I decided that there was still one more recipe that I could try with very little change. On a whim this past Sunday, I decided to make the blueberry protein pancakes. This time my ingredients were rolled oats, banana, eggs, baking soda, vanilla protein powder, milk, and frozen raspberries instead of blueberries.
The pancakes were good, but not great. Solid passing grade. I liked that they were easy to put together. This particular recipe is a blender batter recipe. I recommend letting the batter sit for at least 5 minutes if you can. I found that my first pancakes were quite thin but my last pancakes were fluffier. Flavor was pretty good. They are just sweet enough to eat without syrup if you want but it won’t be disgustingly sweet if you add syrup. My only issue was general texture. They are on the dry side, probably because of the protein powder. The recipe doesn’t specify a whey protein powder or vegan protein powder, so I wonder if one would do better than the other. Most likely though, the texture would benefit from cutting back on the protein powder some. Syrup would definitely help cover up the dryness, but if you don’t want to use syrup then maybe some fresh fruit? I’m not sure.
Overall, I’m recommending with reservation. Like all cookbooks, some recipes are better than others but I think the home cook using this book should heed their instincts, and treat the recipes more like guidelines. Having said that, this is probably also a good book for someone who wants to cook healthier but doesn’t want to stock a large pantry of ingredients. Because while I might be willing to use more effort in a recipe, I recognize that not everyone may feel the same.
Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Shadow Mountain for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own. The book is available for sale now.
With COVID-19 self-quarantine in effect, my scope of recipe-testing was limited. Some modifications may have been made. I apologize that I could not recipe-test better.
“Simply Laura Lea” is the second cookbook by certified holistic chef, recipe developer and writer Laura Lea. I remember perusing her first book and thinking that it looked gorgeous and sounded delicious, but I’ve never used her recipes before, not even from her website. So I was happy to take the opportunity to cook from her newest book.
Lunch and Dinner Entrees (subdivided into red meat, seafood, poultry, and veggie)
Soups and Salads
Desserts
Spice Mixtures, Dressings, and Sauces
Recipes get a helpful symbol to show if they are vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, keto-friendly, gluten-free, and/or paleo. Another feature that I like is that the recipes mark if there’s a “secondary” recipe in it. For example, in the Breakfast chapter, there’s a recipe for Grain-Free Biscuits with Miso Mushroom Gravy. The gravy is the secondary recipe. The ingredients for it and its instructions are still on the page, but if you’re ever interested in just making the gravy, you don’t have to look in the Breakfast chapter. You can go straight to the Spice Mixtures, Dressings, and Sauces chapter. I think it’s a handy reference as sometimes I don’t like making a recipe where half of it is completely listed elsewhere in a cookbook.
Here are some recipes I’d like to try:
Coconut Lime Macadamia Smoothie
Miso Mushroom Gravy
Oil-free Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Bars
Gooey Pecan Cinnamon Rolls
Blueberry Peanut Butter Crumble Bars
“Hot” Honey Cheddar-Stuffed Sweet Potato Skins
Sun-dried Tomato and Walnut Pate
French Dip Calzone
Sun-dried Tomatoes and Basil Falafel with Green Tahini Sauce
Buffalo Tempeh Wraps with Avocado Ranch Dressing
Sweet Potato, Peanut, Black Bean Burgers
French Onion and Kale Lentil Soup
5-Layer Magic Bars
Seeing as my state was (and still is) under Stay-At-Home policy because of Covid-19, I was limited in what I could actually make. It narrowed my scope down to the BBQ “Baked” Lentils recipe. The quotes is because the recipe gives instructions to cook in a pressure cooker or in a slow cooker. There is no baking.
You start by mixing your own BBQ spice rub from coconut sugar or monkfruit sweetener, and spices like paprika and cumin. For the rest of the recipe, you use dried lentils, ketchup, molasses, and vegetable stock. I did not need to make any substitutions for this recipe, but since I was running low on coconut sugar and I had some monkfruit sweetener randomly on hand, I went half-half.
I chose the slow cooker route as I do not have a pressure cooker, electric or stovetop (but if anyone wants to send one to me, I won’t say no – I’m open to do product testing). It’s essentially a dump and cook recipe that takes about 3.5 hours to 4 hours on low.
When it first finished cooking, I thought it was flavorful but a little too sweet for my liking. But then as it sat, it somehow lost all its flavor. It was really bizarre.
I haven’t used monkfruit sweetener much so I don’t know how it behaves in cooking. To be honest, most monkfruit sweeteners are erythritol with monkfruit extract blended in. I bought it on a whim to make some diabetic friendly desserts and just never did. (FYI, the small bag in my kitchen is Lakanto.) Real monkfruit, aka luo han guo, is a bit pricey and therefore harder to get. Lea does not make any mention about monkfruit sweetener affecting food flavor, only that it’s been tested as safe, has no effect on blood sugar, and that she uses it in cooked foods as the heat helps with dissolving.
Since the other ingredients in this recipe are fairly normal and I’ve cooked with coconut sugar plenty of times, I think it was the monkfruit sweetener that ruined the dish for me. At some point I’d like to try this recipe again with just coconut sugar and see how it tastes. (But that’s not going to be right now. There are more important things in life right now than restocking my coconut sugar.)
I originally served the lentils with some bell pepper and grana padano because I had them, but also because I thought the flavors would pair well enough. But it was really messy to eat, so I’m not doing that again. And then, since I had leftover BBQ seasoning, I roasted some cabbage wedges lightly seasoned with it. This worked out much better. I still thought the lentils were blah, though.
Not willing to admit defeat or give this book a bad mark based on one recipe, I went through the book again to see what I could make quickly with what was in my pantry. Enter Lea’s recipe for Chamomile Ginger Turmeric Latte. Technically, I didn’t have almond milk in my house, but I went with the hack of 1 Tbsp almond butter blended with 1 cup water, and proceeded with the recipe. And, OMG, I loved this drink. Somehow it never occurred to me that the flavors of almond and ginger pair really well together. The chamomile tea is to help tame the turmeric flavor, which I also approve of. (Am I the only one who thinks that the internet’s use of turmeric is excessive?)
I loved this flavor combination so well that I’m trying to decide what other dishes I can use it in. It also made my lentil disappointment an easier pill to swallow.
Overall book impression? If you’re into healthy eating, I recommend it. I like that it’s not purely paleo, not vegetarian, not keto, etc. It has a little of everything. It’s just approachable cooking to cooking with whole foods.
Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Blue Hills Press for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
With COVID-19 self-quarantine in effect, my scope of recipe-testing was limited. Some modifications may have been made. I apologize that I could not recipe-test better.
I don’t know much about Polish food. That’s the thought that drove my interest for “Fresh from Poland: New Vegetarian Cooking from the Old Country” by Michal Korkosz. I also didn’t know much about Korkosz to begin with, and had no idea he won the 2017 Saveur Blog Award for best food photography (both Editors’ and Readers’ Choice) at the ripe age of… 19!
So it stands to reason that the photos in this book are lovely. There’s a lot of natural lighting, cozy backgrounds, and the overall feeling of finding pleasure in home cooking.
The main chapters are:
My Polish kitchen
My Polish pantry
Breakfast
Breads and Baked Goods
Soups
Main Dishes
Side Dishes
Perogi and Dumplings
Desserts
Preserves, Jams, and Pickles
Things I’d like to try… when I’m not following Stay-At-Home/Self-Quarantine orders because of a pandemic:
Parsley root and walnut spread
Rye crumble with honey fruit
Creamy oatmeal with kajmak, apple and walnuts
Whole wheat challah with almond streusel
Sweet blueberry buns with streusel
Almond soup with floating clouds
Lentil, butternut squash, and zucchini stew
Buckwheat stir-fry with kale, beans, and goat cheese
Pierogi with buckwheat, bryndza, and mint
Pierogi with lentils and dried tomatoes
Blueberry pierogi with honeyed sour cream
Yeast rogaliki with rose petal preserves
Yeast-buttermilk cake with berries and streusel
But I am doing my best to stay indoors because of covid-19 which means that I was very limited in what I could make.
The first recipe I made was for oatmeal buns. The main ingredients are quick cooking oats, butter, all purpose flour, instant yeast, old fashioned oats, and honey. These were all things that I already had in my pantry. Having said that, the all purpose flour I was using was of mysterious background. Some months ago, I transferred it from its original bag to a Cambro bin, and put it in the freezer. I didn’t label the bin with the brand of flour. Not long after, I wasn’t baking much and forgot about the flour in the freezer.
Like… really forgot about it. When I started making sourdough bread again back in January, I bought some King Arthur Flour all-purpose and had been using that for all my cooking/baking.
Anyway, long story short, I had some trouble working with this recipe most likely because of my flour. But I managed to bake something closely resembling the photo. (Except that my oatmeals buns lack color. I forgot the egg wash. *sigh*) And I liked them! I gave some to my mom to share with my grandmother, and they both approved.
The second recipe I tried was the tomato apple soup with poured noodles. The main soup ingredients are butter, garlic, dried marjoram, a sweet apple, vegetable broth, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and sour cream. The poured noodles are made from egg, sour cream, and all purpose flour. I enjoyed this too, and it was quick to put together. It’s less decadent than the creamy tomato soup recipe that I like from Jill Winger (which makes it a better “everyday” recipe), and the use of marjoram was new to me. I’ve only used basil in the past for tomato soup. I’m not sure the apple did much for the recipe but maybe it’s because New England is not in apple season. (Translation, my Gala apple did not taste like much to begin with.)
As for the “poured noodles, I like the idea but my execution was lacking. And by lacking, I mean I only made about 5 or so solid pieces of “noodles” (they’re more like dumplings) and the rest just disintegrated into something looking like soft scrambled eggs. I’m not sure if I perhaps mis-measured something or if maybe I just needed extra flour. But I’m willing to give it a go one more time as I really like the idea of putting dumplings in tomato soup. (Ooh, maybe I should do a recipe mashup next time. This tomato soup with Gena Hamshaw’s chickpea dumplings. It should work.)
I think what surprised me most about this book was that I forgot it was technically a vegetarian cookbook. The variety and appeal of the recipes don’t leave you wanting for meat recipes.
Overall, yes, I recommend this book, and I can’t wait for stay-at-home orders to end so that I can explore this book better.
Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from The Experiment Publishing for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
With COVID-19 self-quarantine in effect, my scope of recipe testing was limited. Some modifications may have been made.
I’ve followed Cristina Curp, aka The Castaway Kitchen, on Instagram for several months now. I was excited when I had the opportunity to review her latest cookbook, “Made Whole Made Simple” For those who don’t know her work, she’s a nutritional therapy practitioner. Her recipes in this book are “free of grain, gluten, soy, and nightshades. Minimal amounts of dairy and nuts are used, and many of the recipes are coconut-free, egg-free, and AIP compliant.” Personally, I’m neither paleo nor following an AIP diet, but I appreciate how approachable this book seems to be. Nearly every recipe is weeknight friendly.
Meal Makers (this is basically the condiments and DIY section)
Breakfast
Beef
Pork
Poultry
Fish+Seafood
Sides+Snacks
Sweets+Beverages
Here are some recipes that appeal to me:
Cauliflower Sour Cream
Stir-In Coffee Creamer
Sweet Onion Breakfast Bowls
Pumpkin Pancakes
Balsamic Braised Meatballs and Kale
Coconut Lime Spiked Meatballs
Tasty Mojo Pork
Crispy Ranch Wings
Salmon Noodle Soup
Tahini Cookie Cream Bites
Flourless Chocolate Cake
The first recipe I made from the book was Breakfast Sausage Soup. It ‘s easy. You brown up some breakfast sausage, set aside, saute some cabbage/celery/onions, add spinach, then finish up by adding back the sausage and adding some broth.
At the time of preparing for this recipe, St. Patrick’s Day and COVID-19 self-quarantine were right around the corner. This meant that I had to break my cookbook review rule of staying honest to the recipe. I ended up using green cabbage instead of the original red cabbage, and “made” my own breakfast sausage with some ground meat and spices.
Overall, I liked the soup but you’ll have to keep in mind that most of the flavor is coming from the sausage. So make sure you’re using one you like. I didn’t care for the spice blend I ended up using for my DIY sausage, but that’s my error. On the bright side, I found that my sausage soup tasted better the next day. So thankfully nothing was wasted.
I love the methodology of this soup. You’ve got your protein and your veggies in one bowl that did not require anything crazy. I think my only real critique of the recipe is that, as written, 2 pounds of meat is for 4 servings. That’s more meat than I typically eat in one sitting. So just be mindful that your mileage may vary.
The second recipe I made was the Charred Kale Soup. Again, there aren’t a lot of ingredients in this soup. The flavor mostly comes mostly from the broth, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and lemon zest. Minor adjustments were made because of self-quarantine. I didn’t have bone broth, so I used some vegetable bouillon. I didn’t have lemon zest, so I tried using some True Lemon (which is a lemon crystal product). Like the breakfast sausage soup, the ingredients are so few that the quality/flavor of your ingredients is going to give the biggest impact. The bouillon I used was too strongly flavored, so that’s me and not the soup. I still enjoyed the outcome.
I loved the way the kale was prepped in this recipe. You brown the kale in a pot undisturbed for 5 minutes, stir, and then leave undisturbed for another 5 minutes. Cooked this way, the kale reminded me a lot of making kale chips. It smelled so good when I stirred halfway. This method is definitely one I will reuse.
I was slightly amused that the Breakfast Sausage Soup seemed to make a lot for 4 servings, but the Charred Kale Soup seemed to make so little for 4 servings. It’s definitely a side dish.
Overall thoughts? This is a great book for someone who wants fairly easy recipes with a healthy ingredient list. I like that some of the recipes are inspired by Curp’s Cuban heritage. The style and format feels very similar to other paleo/whole 30 publications I’ve seen. There’s one recipe per page, regardless of length, and one large accompanying photo on the adjacent page. The photos are more function than form, if you will. (Does this matter? Absolutely not. It’s just hard for me to not notice when I compare it to the next book I am reviewing.) All in all, I’ll cook from this book again. (Especially the flourless chocolate cake. It sounds so good.)
Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Victory Belt Publishing for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
With COVID-19 self-quarantine, the recipes I tested for this review had to be modified based on what I had access to.
I haven’t done a “Kitchen Conclusion” post in a long time (oops) but I have a lot of thoughts right now, so I figured I’d share publicly so that others can feel better informed before attempting this recipe from a very well know food publication.
First of all, I don’t consider myself an expert bread baker. Or an advanced bread baker. Or an intermediate bread baker but I think everyone I know in real life would argue against that, so I’ll compromise and say that I’m a “beginner to intermediate” bread baker. (Interginner? Beginmediate?)
Simply put, I know just enough about bread baking to recognize when I’m doing something wrong or when there’s something wrong with the recipe I am using.
I have a sourdough recipe that I’ve made a couple of times and liked. I still need to work on my shaping technique but that’s a user issue. And even though I have a recipe I like, I still like to explore other recipes. It’s how I learn. So when I wanted to make sourdough bread this weekend, but realized that the timeline of my tried-and-true recipe wasn’t going to work with my schedule, I took that as an opportunity to experiment with a different recipe.
That was when I remembered that America’s Test Kitchen recently posted on Instagram their Almost No-Knead Sourdough.
I copied the recipe before it went behind a paywall. I used the weighed measurements which are a little weird but anyone who bakes bread regularly should be using weighted measurements. Honestly I don’t mind that the recipe is in ounces as opposed to grams since my kitchen scale can do both but WHO ON EARTH DEVELOPS A RECIPE WITH A THIRD OF AN OUNCE?!
Anyway, I’m reposting it for you even though I don’t like to repost things out of copyright respect. But if I’m going to talk about this recipe in depth, then you need all the details.
18 1/3 ounces King Arthur all-purpose flour 1 ¾ teaspoons salt 12 2/3 ounces water, room temperature 3 ounces mature Sourdough Starter
Whisk flour and salt together in medium bowl. Whisk room-temperature water and starter in large bowl until smooth. Add flour mixture to water mixture and stir using wooden spoon, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until dough comes together, then knead by hand in bowl until shaggy ball forms and no dry flour remains. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for at least 12 hours or up to 18 hours.
Lay 12 by 12-inch sheet of parchment paper on counter and spray generously with vegetable oil spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured counter and knead 10 to 15 times. Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle. Transfer dough, seam side down, to center of parchment. Pick up dough by lifting parchment edges and lower into heavy-bottomed Dutch oven. Cover with plastic wrap.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and place loaf or cake pan in bottom of oven. Place pot on middle rack and pour 3 cups of boiling water into pan below. Close oven door and let dough rise until doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with your floured finger, 2 to 3 hours.
Remove pot and water pan from oven; discard plastic from pot. Lightly flour top of dough and, using razor blade or sharp knife, make one 7-inch-long, 1/2-inch-deep slit along top of dough. Cover pot and place on middle rack in oven. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Bake bread for 30 minutes (starting timing as soon as you turn on oven).
Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and let cool completely before serving.
And here’s the clip of the recipe they shared on Youtube. Skip to 4:15 to go to the recipe. The first four minutes are about making your own starter, which I did not need to do since I was using my existing starter.
So…
No offense to ATK or to Dan Souza, but I have no idea which bread recipe they were using on the show because it DEFINITELY IS NOT the published version. I wish I had photos or videos of my experience to show as proof but I had no idea I was going to have very strong opinions about this recipe.
To be transparent, there were two things that I did differently that would not have changed the experience for the worse. I mixed my dough for 5 minutes with a dough hook in my KitchenAid at the start instead of mixing until shabby ball formed. All this should have meant was that my dough would be ready in 12 hours, not more, and even possibly a little less time. I swapped about 2 to 3 ounces of King Arthur all purpose flour with a whole grain flour from a local source. Theoretically, it would make my dough drier than what the recipe intended because the germ and bran that are present in whole wheat flour can absorb more liquid. For the record, I did not add any extra water.
After 12 hours, my dough had risen beautifully and was double in sized. So far, so good. Or so I thought. When I turned the dough out to knead 10-15 times, I couldn’t! The dough that came out of the bowl was nothing like what is shown on the show. It was quite wet and stuck like crazy. The only way I could knead it was to use the slap and fold technique. It was my salvation. It didn’t take long to shape a ball with this technique, but it’s outside the scope of the recipe.
If you need it, here is an example of the slap and fold technique, which I think was made famous by Richard Bertinet. (At least, that was who I learned it from back in the days when his first book “Dough” was published.) You can skip to 1:40 to see it in action. You can see how sticky a Bertinet dough is. It is nothing like the ATK video. This is basically what I had.
By this time I was done with kneading, it was almost 9pm. Rather than shape it, move it to a parchment sheet, and then letting it rise for the final time in the dutch oven, I chose to do my final shaping in a banneton and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Because this was a very wet dough, I knew it was going to need the physical support of a banneton for any success. Also? I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
On the plus side, it meant I got to work with my banneton. The last time I used it, I screwed up my shaping which meant my dough stuck to the banneton like crazy. I have since watched many videos from “Bake with Jack” and learned what I did wrong.
In the morning (aka “This Morning”), I took my banneton out of the fridge. My dough hadn’t risen as much as I thought it would. At this point, I let this sit in a “cold” oven for an hour with a pan of just boiled hot water next to it, much like the original ATK instructions. When the hour was up, everything looked good to go. I carefully turned the dough out onto a parchment sheet, and it looked lovely. (THANKS JACK FOR THE SHAPING TUTORIALS!) I scored it with the sharpest knife I had and proceeded with the rest of the recipe.
The thing I learned next? Do not use a cold start oven method when using a wet dough. That lovely looking dough I had? Gone. I wish I took a photo of it before it went into the oven. It grew out instead of growing up, spreading out mostly where I had scored the dough.
Now, I know some modern ovens don’t lend to cold start oven method very well, but that is not my oven. I have done cold start oven bread recipes before with standard instant yeasted doughs without issue. I’m 100% positive it was the hydration level of the ATK recipe that caused my bread to not look like Dan’s loaf.
I also think that the cold start oven method with a wetter dough caused my crust to be softer and chewier than expected. If you don’t like a crunchy crust, then this might be the preferred method for you. But if you want the classic crust usually associated with a sourdough, this is NOT it. You will be disappointed.
While my bread does look much like the one in the official Instagram post, it looks nothing like the bread in the video. FYI, I baked for the full amount of time per the recipe instruction.
Last observation, when it comes to sourdough, people like their open, irregular crumb. This is still not that recipe. My crumb, while not dense like a standard yeasted dough, was not as open as I would have liked.
When all is said and done, the bread tastes fine. But I’m still going to officially declare this as a recipe fail. It did not work as expected. It looked nothing like what was on the show. Anyone with less bread baking experience is going to freak out trying to make this, and think they did something wrong.
Even though I know ATK will never notice my little blog, if they ever should:
I know we’re only into February but “Start Simple” by Lukas Volger might end up being my favorite cookbook of 2020. I know, those are some bold words! But this is the first time in a very long time that I’ve come across a book and I couldn’t find a recipe that I didn’t want to make.
In this book, Volger presents recipes that are realistic for everyday cooking. Some recipes are for four servings, but there are also a lot of recipes for one serving or two servings to reflect those readers who are not cooking for a family of four. These recipes are generally great for weeknight cooking. The ingredient list is often 10 ingredients or less, and nothing very exotic.
The book is divided by eleven primary ingredients:
Winter squash
Tofu
Hearty greens
Beans
Sweet potatoes
Eggs
Mushrooms
Tortillas
Cabbage
Cauliflower or broccoli
Summer squash
Dessert (not a primary ingredient but who doesn’t like a little dessert?)
Here is a sampling of recipes:
Steel-cut oats with squash and tahini
Peanut butter and greens sandwich
Spicy beans and greens over polenta
Grilled eggplant, scallion, and white bean dip
Black beans with scallion-lime vinaigrette, avocado, and spinach
White bean, tomato, and dill salad with charred romaine
Cold sweet potatoes with spiced seeds and yogurt
Sweet potato and tahini soup
Broken pasta with roasted mushrooms, caramelized onions, walnuts, and pesto’d Ricotta
Cauliflower and kimchi sandwiches
Roasted broccoli sauce
Savory zucchini beer bread
Polenta and pine nut biscotti
For my preliminary recipe, I went with the kale-cabbage slaw with quinoa and brown sugar-dijon vinaigrette. The recipe is pretty easy (to reiterate, nothing in the books seems to be complicated as the author promised in the introduction). You make some quinoa. You salt and massage the kale and cabbage. You make a vinaigrette. Finally, you mix it all together.
The vinaigrette was very sweet. I know… that’s a really obvious thing to say when it’s got “brown sugar” as part of the name. But I’d say start with half the amount of brown sugar, and then add as needed. The amount you want is going to depend on the punch of your mustard. I was using a homemade mustard (my first attempt at mustard so it could have been better) that didn’t have much punch, so I only needed 4 teaspoons instead of the full 2 tablespoons.
I enjoyed this. It preps ahead really well. Because kale and cabbage are really sturdy greens, this slaw made for great work lunches. But as much as I liked it, I didn’t love it. Which is totally ok! It doesn’t mean that I won’t make it again. It just means that I’ll try out some of the other salad/slaw recipes in this book before I go back to this one.
I felt compelled to make another recipe almost as soon as I finished the slaw. Since I had some cabbage left from the slaw (and I happened to have cheese in the fridge), I made the cheesy cabbage and white bean soup. I’m glad I did too. It was another easy recipe to put together, and perfect to eat on a February day in Boston. It was really cozy and had a lot of good flavor. (To be fair, since I’m not vegetarian, I was using a homemade chicken broth for it.) I like it so much that this soup is definitely going into the regular rotation.
“Start Simple” is available as of this week. Definitely pick up this book whether or not you’re vegetarian. (Yes, the book is vegetarian but it doesn’t feel like the intention of the book is to necessarily espouse vegetarianism.) The collection of recipes here are just great ideas for incorporating more vegetables in your everyday diet without being overwhelming or complicated.
Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Harper Wave for this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.
