Popovers as Promised

Popovers are a wonderful thing - sorta, kinda biscuits, but not really. They're rich and eggy like brioche, they rise in the oven like souffle, but they are undoubtedly a bread, a lovely, lovely buttery bread, made in a mold like a deep muffin tin.  

In taste, they come closest to Yorkshire pudding or James' mom's Dutch Babies (from what he's told me - I never had the honor of tasting them myself). 

Having written all of that, there is no way I can adequately convey the wonderfulness of the popover, so here is a photo of my most recent batch and the recipe that produced them so that you can make your own batch. They are sooooooo lovely-good.

*This recipe is adapted from the January 2009 issue of Cook's Country Magazine.

Ingredients:

-Vegetable shortening or butter to grease the popover pan

-3 large eggs

-2 cups of low-fat milk (2% is best), heated to 110 degrees

-3 tbs. unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

-2 cups bread flour (you can use all-purpose, but the Popovers won't rise as high or be as sturdy)

-1 tsp. salt

-1 tsp. sugar

Process:

1. Grease the interior of a 6 cup popover pan and dust lightly with flour.

2. Whisk eggs until very light and fluffy in a medium bowl (I use a stand mixer, but you can do it by hand).

3. Slowly whisk in the milk and butter until incorporated.

4. Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl.

5. Whisk three-quarters of the milk mixture into flour mixture. Mix until no lumps remain. Whisk in the rest of the milk mixture.

6. Cover batter bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for one hour.

7. Preheat oven to 450 degrees and adjust rack to lower medium position.

8. Whisk the batter lightly to recombine, then pour into prepared popover pan. The batter will not quite reach the top of the cups. 

9. Bake until just beginning to brown. About 20 min. Without opening the oven door, decrease the oven temperature to 300 degrees and continue to bake until the popovers are golden brown all over, about 30-35 minutes.

10. Poke a small hole in the top of each popover with a toothpick to help the steam escape. Bake for about 10 more minutes or until the popovers are a deep golden brown.

11. Transfer popover pan to a wire rack. Poke each popover again with a toothpick. Let them cool of 2 minutes. Then turn them out of their pan and serve plain, buttered, with jam or lemon curd or cream, as dessert, or breakfast, or a dinner side. 

* If you don't have a popover pan, you can make them in a 12 cup muffin tin. They won't rise as high, but they'll still be yummy. Fill only the outer cups to 1/4 inch from top. Reduce initial baking time from 20 to 15 min, and reduce secondary baking time from 30-35 min, to 20-25 min. after the oven temperature is lowered. 

Photon Ate Lettuce Tonight

I'm not kidding. He very delicately nibbled and finished off a bit of romaine with olive oil, pepper and salt. He's so weird. I love him.

Podcasts are NEAT!

Okay, I'm pretty sure that almost everyone in the world already knows that podcasts are NEAT, but I'm a Luddite and hadn't ever actually listened to a podcast until last night. Wow, are podcasts NEAT! It's like radio tailored to your interests! 

I listened to an awesome documentary on Dave Brubeck and an interview with David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars and I downloaded a whole passel more - a bunch of "Piano Jazz" and "Thistle and Shamrock" and "The Splendid Table" and "Selected Shorts" and a bunch of other stuff from the BBC and NPR and PRI. It's so cool that I just had to say something, even though I'm admitting to lameness when I say that I only discovered the NEATness of podcasts last night, but wow, the whole idea is awesome. It makes me want to get an MP3 player for the car. 

So anyway, I might be lame and late to hop on the bandwagon, but jeez podcasts are NEAT.

Give Me a Break

Okay, I'm going to indulge in a rant. James and I went to the grocery store today and what's plastered all over magazines in the check-out line? Jessica Simpson and the raging debate over her waist line. Is she fat, or is she a "natural, healthy woman?" Kind of gave me hives, but whatever. 

Then I get home and I'm checking out some different news sources (not the BBC who have better things to report on), and what do I find? More on the Jessica Simpson debate, now accompanied by threads with comments ranging from "She's a FAT PIG" to "She looks waaaaay better now that she looks like a real person and not a skinny bitch." 

Okay, a couple of things:

1. Just because most of America is overweight at best and obese at worst does not make either condition "healthy" or salutary.

2. I don't think this discussion is actually about Jessica Simpson's ass. It's about everyone else's. Here's what I mean. The people saying she's fat now are actually just calling it like it is, even if they're doing it in a *really* nasty, mean, crass way and should be smacked for rudeness. The people who are stridently rushing to defend her are really just rushing to defend themselves. If Jessica Simpson can be so vocally criticized for noticeably gaining weight, then where does that put all of the big, beautiful, healthy, natural, real super-sized Americans? Well, it means that they're fat too, and no one likes to admit that they're fat. Guess how I know?

Here's a little story. About three years ago, I had a Holy Shit moment. I looked in the mirror after a shower and really saw myself for the first time in five years, and I was horrified. I was 27 years old and I had a body like a 40 year old. Then I stepped on the scale and almost got sick. I was 180 pounds, which, let me tell you, is waaaaay to fucking much. So I stopped drinking that day and lost five pounds. It felt so nice that I started going to the gym *every day*. More weight came off. It felt so terribly nice that I started watching what I ate, cooking more and eating reasonable portions, and more weight came off. It's taken me three years and a total lifestyle switch but I lost over 40 pounds and dropped from a size 14 to a size 6 and I feel nice. So what's the point?

If you're not fat, don't be a judgmental prick about some celebrity's weight gain. What the hell do you care, anyway? But, if you are fat, call a spade a spade and do one of two things. Either do something to get healthier so that you can feel a little better physically and emotionally, or admit that you're overweight and genuinely ok with that and move on. The worst thing you can do is sit on your ass watching Entertainment Tonight debate a celebrity's love handles while sucking on your nightly pint of Ben and Jerry's. Deluding  yourself into thinking that this behavior makes you a "healthy, real" person does not make that true. Leave Jessica Simpson out of it and deal with yourself.

Rant Over. Thank you for putting up with it. As a thank you, stay tuned for my buttery Pop-Over recipe because it's my blog and my hypocrisy knows no bounds :-).

Random

We think Photon is bulimic. He *loves* food. He *loves* food so much that he eats and eats and eats and eats like a little demon. Then he throws it all back up. This is standard for orange and white cats, but I think he needs counseling anyway :) At least he isn't manic-depressive like Vespers, with her ever changing fur styles (her back leg has a mohawk this week) and spiky, bitten nails (I'm not kidding). Then again, maybe she's just goth.

Sopa de Ajo 2.0

So, James came down with a whopper of a cold over the week-end. Come Monday it was still whopping, so I decided to go old school and make him some of Lito's (my grandfather onthe Spanish side) Sopa de Ajo (garlic soup) except that I didn't have a recipe. I did, however, remember it being a free-for-all of garlic, chicken broth and whatever was lurking about the fridge. That memory, plus a nod to chinese egg drop soup, resulted in my old-school-modernized adaptation, which I am calling "Sopa de Ajo 2.0". While it didn't end up like my Lito's (no egg drops there, gracias), this garlic soup was still yummy and filling and delicious, with the added benefit of being quick and easy enough to make for supper after getting home at 7:30pm. 

And now, the recipe for "Sopa de Ajo 2.0."

Ingredients:

- 4-5 cups of good chicken broth or homemade stock (you're going to taste it, so make sure it's one you like). You can use beef too, but consider upping the ratio of garlic to stock by one.

- Fresh garlic. 1-2 cloves per cup of broth, sliced thinly

- 1 Sprig of rosemary or thyme

- Salt 

-Pepper

- 2-3 eggs roughly beaten

- I had some butter/garlic puree left over from the souffle so I included that. If you don't happen to have that puree just hanging about, you can use a sliver of butter for a creamy, round taste. Omit if you don't want a creamy, round taste :)

Process:

1. Put stock and rosemary sprig into a small stockpot and bring to a rolling boil on Med. High.

2. Once the stock is boiling, remove the rosemary and discard. Add the garlic puree / sliver of butter and all of the sliced garlic to the broth and cook on med/high heat for about 5 minutes or until the garlic is tender (it should be soft and nutty tasting without the garlic bite).

3. Turn heat to Med. Low until soup is just simmering. Add salt and pepper to taste (careful with the salt if you're not using low sodium broth - it can get way too salty super easily).

4. Stirring very gently with a fork, slowly drizzle in the beaten eggs. Let sit for 1-2 minutes. Heat should still be on low at this point (if the soup isn't hot enough, the eggs will disperse instead of forming solid ribbons).

5. Gently break up ribbons of egg to preferred size and serve immediately.

Variations:

-Omit the eggs entirely for a pure garlic soup.

-Instead of egg drop ribbons, poach two eggs in the simmering soup. When serving, scoop the poached eggs into the bowls first and then cover them up with soup. Yummers.

-We ate this soup with buttered dark toast, but you can serve toast right into the bowl. Toast a slice of the hearty bread of your choice (any will do), drizzle a little olive oil over the top and place it at the bottom of the soup bowl. Then ladle soup over it. The bread will soften a bit and give the soup some serious heartiness. Also very yummers.

Souffle!

Tonight, I made my first souffle - here's a picture of it in the oven about five minutes from done. 

The basic recipe is from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, an absolutely fantastic book that my brother gave me for Christmas. Click here for a full review... I made a few changes based on some research (I used eggs and milk at room temperature and cooked it for the first 10 min. at 400, then down to 350 for the remaining 25 min), but I didn't stray too much beyond that.

So, like I said, I'd never made a souffle before but after reading a bit, it sounded a great deal like making chocolate mousse cake, what with the gentle folding of the egg whites into a heavy base. I've made chocolate mousse cake with some pretty nice results, so I decided to be audacious and give it a try. 

Following the basic principals that Waters outlines in The Art of Simple Food, I whipped together a butter and garlic puree for the inside of what I hoped would turn out to be 

a tasty gruyer-parmesan-garlic souffle. While the puree was cooling, I pulled together a basic béchamel sauce with butter, all-purpose flour and 1 cup of whole milk. 

Photon helped me with that - here's a picture of him in action.

It took about ten minutes for the béchamel to cook. Once it had cooled a bit, I whisked in 1/4 cup of garlic puree, 3/4 grated gruyer cheese and 1/4 grated parm. Once the cheese had incorporated, four egg yolks went in while the whites where beaten to stiff peaks in the stand mixer (I used a pinch of cream of tartar to help stabilize the whites). 

Then is was all a matter of folding the whites into the béchamel. This is the part that made me nervous. So, being the research geek that I am, I did some research and found out from several sources that the trick is not to fold the whites in aggressively. Rather, you should fold them in "casually" so as not to deflate them (it's the air bubbles in the beaten whites that make the souffle rise like a big ol' souffle). So, I folded casually - maybe a little too casually because the souffle rose a bit unevenly, but it *did* rise like a demon, so I think the principal of casualness holds. I just need some practice. Then, it went into the oven for a half an hour until the souffle was just turning golden brown and "jiggly" in the center when shaken, as Ms. Waters puts it.

Et voila! Souffle!

And thank you to James for being Johnny-on-the-Spot with the camera for this event. Souffles start to fall as soon as they leave the oven, but thanks to his swift moves and keen eye,

we even got a picture of it on the table before it fully deflated.

Ingredients:

5 tbs. unsalted butter

3 tbs. unbleached all purpose flour

1 cup milk, room temp. (I used whole, but 2% works too. Not sure about skim).

Salt (I used kosher sea salt, but table salt is fine)

Black pepper

A pinch of cayenne (I omitted for this version and replaced with dill)

4 eggs, separated. Room temp.

3/4 cup grated Gruyer cheese

1/4 grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 garlic puree (can be omitted)

1 tbs. soft butter to butter souffle dish with.

Process:

1. Melt 5 tbs. butter in heavy saucepan over med. heat

2. Stir in 3 tbs. flour. Cook for 2 min.

3. Whisk in, little by little, 1 cup of milk, whisking thoroughly between additions

4. Season the béchamel with a pinch of salt, pepper and dill (if using)

5. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally for 8-10 min. until sauce is thick. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

6. Separate eggs. Whites into mixing bowl or bowl of stand mixer, yolks left whole in small bowl.

7. Once béchamel is cooled slightly, add the egg yolks, stirring vigorously so as to avoid scrambling the eggs in the warm sauce (ew).

8. Add various cheeses and puree (if using) stirring with whisk until incorporated.

9. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prep lowest rack.

10. Add a pinch of cream of tartar to the 4 egg whites and whip, starting at low speed and building to med.high/high, until they have formed moist, firm peaks. 

11. Transfer béchamel to a large non-reactive mixing bowl (glass is awesome). Stir in 1/3 of beaten whites with a whisk until fully incorporated.

12. Add rest of whites to beschamel, folding casually no more than 8-10 times. There should still be streaks of white visible.

13. Decant mixture into a well-buttered souffle dish (you can really use any sort of dish you like as long as it has tallish sides and holds 1 quart) and resist the urge to mess about with it. Just put it into the oven. IMPORTANT: Also resist the urge to open the oven door and look at it in the first 20 min. This is when most of the inflating happens. Opening the door will cause it to collapse like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would say.

14. Bake on lowest rack at 400 for first 10 min. Then reduce heat to 350 and continue to bake until the souffle is golden brown, "but still soft in the center and jiggly when shaken gently". About 25-30 more minutes.

15. Remove from oven and serve immediately!