Experiments at Home: No-Knead Bread

So I decided to try the no-knead bread recipe. This dough is sticky stuff! I hope the loaf turns out well. As I write this, I am waiting for the final rise on the bread.

Unlike your traditional loaf of bread, no-knead bread is never kneaded or smooshed around. The prupose of the smooshing is to lengthen the gluten strands within the dough so they will heal back together, make longer gluten strands and a better rising, stronger bread.

The idea behind no-knead bread is that if the dough is given enough time to sit, then gluten strands will do that chemically, not physically by being smooshed and broken (kneaded). It just takes longer.

This is my first try & this is the dough after having sat for 20 hours.

You goop the very wet dough out of the bowl (I had to use a rubber spatula to help shape it) and onto a well-floured surface. Then I "shaped" the dough, which just kinda blobbed around and put it inside of a dutch oven lined with a floured cloth inside. This way, the bread will appear nice & "rustic," just like my friend in France had been making. Maybe...

We'll see how it looks in another hour. Right now, it looks like a puddle in a pan.

Experiments at Home: Sauerkraut

Real Sauerkraut is different than the type you'll buy in most stores and the recipe is simple as heck:

• cabbage
• salt
• water

The real added ingredients are microbes in the air & on the cabbage and time.

1. Slice cabbage very thin with knife or food processor.
2. Scrunch up with some salt until the cabbage starts shedding some of its juice.
3. Smoosh the cabbage into mason jars or a large crock
4. Keep cabbage under the liquid so no air can get to it

It will be ready to eat in 2 weeks and gets better with age.

This is also the way that they make kosher dill pickles, but this is, as my wife says, some "pretty funky stuff." I love it.

Experiments at home: Live Foods

For the past few years, I've been kind of amazed by live foods & yeasts. If you've ever had a kosher dill pickle or yogurt, you've had a live food. That same acidophillus that everyone says is so good in yogurt is available all over the place (it's on you right now!). A lot of cheese is also very much alive and it's the aging that allows these microorganisms to thrive in whatever food we're eating.

It's a very good thing.

Our body is loaded with tons of these little microbes, inside and out. We can't really digest food without them. By adding in other foods with these organisms already in them, we are making our digestion work better and being healthier. It's pretty amazing really.

What this looks like is a bunch of jars on my counter being left out for weeks on end. Instead of going bad, the bacteria help to preserve the food! It's been done this way for centuries in cultures all over the planet.

The extreme of the American way of eating?

It might tell a lot about America's perspective about eating to say that we're the culture that invented competitive eating contests.  That said, the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition in Coney Island is one of my favorite events, mostly for the spectacle.  The contest is kind of disgusting, but the announcer and the list of the Competitive Eater's lists of accomplishments are amazing.  

I love that this is listed as a "sport" - I guess there has to be some kind of physical preparation.  Lord.

Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, 26, is a 6ft, 218lb engineering student, most recognized as an American Competitive Eater. Currently, he is ranked first in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. He has competed in many food eating competitions around the world. The current world record titles he holds are as follows:

• Pork Ribs: 9.8 pounds pork rib meat in 12 minutes at John Ascuaga's Nugget Casino Resort during the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-off in Sparks, Nevada on August 27, 2008
• Steak: 4.5 pounds of steak, plus sides, in 8 minutes, 52 seconds at Big Texan Steak Ranch on March 24, 2008
• Asparagus: 8.6 pounds of tempura-fried asparagus at the World Deep Fried Asparagus Eating Championship in Stockton, California, on April 26, 2008
• Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs and buns (short form): 68 hot dog and buns in 10 minutes during the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY on July 4, 2009
• Chicken Wings: 241 wings at Wing Bowl XVI in Philadelphia, on February 1, 2008
• Krystal burgers: 103 burgers at the Krystal Square Off in Chattanooga, TN on October 28, 2007.

Tasting Notes

Tonight, two of my students got to be tasting judges at the NYC Healthy Food for School competition. They got to see how the kitchen is at the Food & Finance HS and how their program is running.

They also got to taste 26 different dishes from different competitors, including that was chosen from one of my students' entries, which he was overjoyed to see on the list.

It was a great experience to see my kids tasting and taking notes alongside some of NYC's more talented & socially-conscious chefs. The man on the left of my students is Francois Payard, an outstanding, award-winning pastry chef with a career spanning decades.

I am always amazed at what one single day entails for me. Really, it is never the same. I think this is what keeps me in this profession. It is also quite possibly the only thing that could keep my ADHD tendencies in check, this constant stimulation.

My kids are very happy to be going to judge the NYC Healthy School Food contest. They really seem to be beside themselves with the whole idea of going. I rarely get to see them light up so much.

It always makes me a little nervous, making a promise to a child like that. I feel like so many people have failed my kids, I don't want to be another one of them. This whole judging thing started as such a far-fetched thing that I thought I would just try and ask for to something that I think will really greatly benefit the young men who go. I can't wait to see what happens.

This whole event is at the Food & Finance High School, which I only recently found out about. I think the boys will be impressed.

More than making do

I had a great conversation with Amie from the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food the other day about my program and work we might do in the future. My current kitchen is, well, not up to my standards and we have a long list of issues with it. It's a little embarrassing for me to have guests come into our kitchen when:

• we have no ovens
• our sinks run only cold water & we have to go into the next room to wash dishes well
• All of our equipment is electrical and we keep blowing switches all over the room.
• most everything that we are doing is done with home equipment

That said, the kids are amazing. They:

• work beautifully together
• eat up any skills that I can teach them so quickly, it is hard to plan for (this is a very good problem for me, actually)
• have an excitement for food and learning that has surpassed anything I might have hoped for. I hope that I can deliver more for them.

Amie's comment on this was simple & very supportive. She said that anyone visiting will understand that you are just a teacher that loves food trying to do the best for his kids with what he has. They walk into a lot of situations like this, she said, and the programs still work beautifully.