Archive for the ‘Ingredient’ Category

How does a 120-year-old bakery bake a loaf?

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

Mayot family started a small bakery near Lille, France in 1889 at the brink of the Industrial Revolution in the region. Their son took over the family business as mines and textile industry boomed with coal and steam power. Right before the Second World War, his daughter married into the Holder family, which has continued bake bread in the traditional manner into the twenty-first century with the name PAUL. Currently PAUL bakes in nearly 500 stores in over 22 countries.Image: State Library of Victoria Collections – StreamGate

PAUL opened its flagship American store in Penn Quarter of Washington DC about half a year ago and is opening a second location in historic Georgetown district of DC in a renovated building in DC that was also built in year 1889, the same year PAUL was started in France.

PAUL bakery believes that “excellent bread depends on excellent ingredients and time-honored methods” developed in France, where bread is an integral part of every meal. Even with a long French baking tradition, PAUL is not shy from using latest technology to bake and committed to making breads from locally sourced flour as long as the quality permits.

Photo Credit: Jason Colston for PAUL USA.

In spring, I got opportunity to learn about making bread from Maxime Holder, the president & CEO and David Dequeker, the chief baker & pastry chef of PAUL. During the lesson, two soft-spoken French baking experts shared their knowledge of baking bread in this 120-year-old bakery.

PAUL’s Bread Recipe

This is a basic recipe bread dough recipe adapted from PAUL’s (converted grams to approximate cups and teaspoons).

Wheat flour 3⅔ cups (1 lb)
Yeast 1 teaspoon
Salt 1¾ teaspoon
Water 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons

Place yeast and salt on opposing side on wheat in mixing bowl.  Yeast is placed away from the salt to avoid prematurely killing yeast with salt. Dough should be fairly wet.

Add room temperature water, and knead the dough by hand on a lightly floured surface. The kneading is done to incorporate air. The best way is to hold the dough by its edge and hit on table while folding it at same time, repeating it fast.

Proof the dough in a covered bowl by allowing it to rise for at least 4 hours. After four hours you should see bubbles and should smell the fermentation.

After proofing, knead and gently pre-shape the dough by slowly folding it over and over in lightly floured surface. In the last stage, add any ingredients you want in the bread bet it chocolate, olive oil, fried onions, poppy seed whatever you want…as you wish.

Once shaped, let the dough rise just a shy of an hour. Gently, give it a final shape you desire.

Bake at 425° F.  Baking time varies according to size of dough. Rule of thumb is 50 grams loaf for 10 – 15 minutes, 100 grams for 15-20 minutes, and over 200 grams for 25-30 minutes.

It is noteworthy that the recipe for bread uses just flour, yeast, salt, and water. It doesn’t use any artificial chemicals, and has remained unchanged for over a century. In United States, PAUL still bakes its breads onsite in each store – not in giant industrial factories. PAUL now uses many advance tools such state-of-art deck ovens to bake breads, but the essence of baking is same – excellent bread with excellent ingredients made by honest methods.

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Posted in Food Techniques, Ingredient, Vegetarian | 1 Comment »

Lobster Rolls Obsession

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

More high resolution photos at DesiGrub’s Facebook album

One hour (or more) long line for a lobster roll! I refuse to stay such a long line to get my lunch on a work day – who has time? At the same time, I was somewhat intrigued by the lobster rolls that made people to stay out in muggy DC weather for an hour to eat $15-18 lunch.

Before these reviews of lobster rolls, I have to disclaim that I am not an expert on lobsters or grew up eating them on a weekly basis. I know good food and believe that ocean already made lobsters so tasty – all we need to do is heat it to perfection without too much of bells and whistles.

Why lobsters are sustainable and expensive?
Lobsters are trapped live in a cage that allows it to enter but makes it difficult to exit. This inefficient way of fishing lobster has inadvertently resulted it in being overfished. Additionally lobster sustainability in the United States has increased because lobstermen are required to measure lobster size and release small young and big fully grown lobster back to the sea to insure healthy future breeding stock.

Lobster recommendations in DC (in no particular order);

Red Hook Lobster Truck [4.5 oz lobster meat]
You can get lobster roll in Maine style (mayonnaise, lime) or in Connecticut style (melted butter) made from Maine lobsters. Both of them are served on white bread toast with big chunk of lobster meat and paprika seasonings. The bun sort of gets soggy with the drizzled melted butter in Connecticut style lobster roll. I would definitely recommend it if the truck is in your neighborhood and if there is no big line. I don’t think this (or any food) is worth hour-long line.

Red Hook’s Connecticut Style Lobster Roll
Red Hook’s Maine Lobster Roll

BGR – The Burger Joint [5 oz lobster meat]
Surprisingly this burger joint serves amazing lobster rolls made from lump claw and knuckle meat from Maine lobsters. I liked the fact that there was no sauce in the lobster roll. Big chucks of lobster were served on a lettuce leaf placed over three conjoined slider buns with sweet cole-slaw dressing sauce. The bread base for the roll can be improved but simply the lobster and sauce makes this lobster roll worth the try. These are seasonal items and served from June to September depending on the quality of the lobsters.

Bgr Joint’s Lobster Roll

Luke’s Lobster [4 oz lobster meat]
Lobster roll lobster from father Jeff’s sustainable Maine seafood company making it a true sea floor to your plate choice. Chunks of lobster meat are made to order and served with mayo and their secret seasoning on toasted/buttered white bread bun. The butter, mayo and seasoning are all optional if you don’t like them.

Luke’s Lobster Roll

PS. Checkout this stop-motion animation of Luke’s Lobster Roll.

All above three lobster rolls are equally good it their own right. Now, here are some other lobster rolls that I would be hesitant to recommend.

Kinkead’s
For comparison sake, I tried a high end Kinkead’s lobster roll. The lobster roll was not better than any other fast food place. Kinkead’s Maine lobster roll is served with side of coleslaw and homemade French fries. Lobster had bit more mayo than I preferred but loved the fresh aromatic herbs on the lobster. The sides were excellent and lobsters were decent but I would not recommend paying twice for a similar quality lobster roll.

Kinkeads Lobster Roll Platter
Kinkead’s Lobster Roll

Au bon pain  [4 oz lobster meat]
Lobster salad croissant sandwich is made from over a quarter pound of lobster mixed with light mayonnaise. I found this lobster had fewer chunkier pieces and way too much mayo (see photo). I ate it is twice so it’s not that bad but I would choose Red Hook, BGR or Luke’s lobster any day.

 

Au Bon Pain’s Lobster Croissant

Quiznos
Quiznos’ limited time lobster & seafood salad sub looked pretty on the promo but was nothing special than any other fast food sub they serve. These lobster rolls are seasonal and like Au bon pain’s choose them only as the last lobster resort.

Quiznos Lobster Sub

When Quiznos introduced the lobster and seafood salad sub, they promoted with this eco-video which shows setting four protagonist lobsters free into the wild. Choose

The narrator ends the video by saying, “We couldn’t help but wonder if what we’d done was just a big contradiction. It’s not their fault, they taste so good.” Indeed!

Posted in American Food, Fish, Ingredient, Lunch, Meat | 2 Comments »

How to save a dime by roasting tomatoes in an oven?

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Usually tomato vendors in any local farmers market sell slightly damaged organic tomatoes at a huge discount. Most of these tomatoes have small bruises due to transportation. I love getting these tomatoes for my sauce or to use as a base ingredient in my future dishes. Since I can’t store them fresh, I oven-roast them in a big batch and get my own roasted tomatoes.

Before I dive into how to roast tomatoes, I want to thank my cousin R’pa for her suggestions. I was searching information on how to roast tomatoes in an oven but couldn’t find any that I liked. So, naturally, I called someone who I thought would know.

Wash tomatoes. Cut into half. Lay tomatoes face down for proper browning and caramelization of tomato skin.

Cut tomatoes

Broil at 500 ˚F (260 C) for 15 minutes in order to caramelize the skin.

Broiled tomatoes

Lower 45 minutes at 375 ˚F (190 ˚C) for to roast the tomato. This is also a good time to add peeled cloves of garlic or cut onions to flavor your roasted tomatoes. These roasted tomatoes can be used to make sauce or ingredients for future dishes.

Roasted tomatoes

I often blend these roasted tomatoes for future sauce or cooking base.

Blended tomato sauce

I would recommend the following steps only if you are directly using tomatoes as a sauce in a tomato-rich dish.  Further bake the tomatoes in 300 ˚F (150 ˚C) for 2 hours to get well cooked roasted tomatoes with a slightly stronger flavor. This is due to more slow-cooking of tomatoes and evaporation of water. The flavor is somewhat similar to wet sundried tomatoes.  This can be directly blended and served as a sauce with your favorite seasoning.

Tomatoes roasted for 3 hours with onion

Storing roasted tomatoes. You can store tomatoes in old pasta jars. Make sure to sterilize them by heating the jar at 250 °F (121 ˚C) for 15 minutes.  Make sure to cool the jars before pouring the sauce. Store the sauce in refrigerator.

Roasting and storing your own tomatoes gives convenience of canned tomatoes with custom-made flavors but without any chemicals. Organic doesn’t mean it’s free from processed chemicals. Have a happy chemical free eating!

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Posted in American Food, Ingredient, No Chemical Diet, Produce, Vegetarian | 11 Comments »

How to eat a dragon fruit

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

I don’t know much about “dragon fruit”. I was intrigued by it when I saw it in an Asian grocery store, H-mart, last weekend. I decided to buy it even though I had no idea how to eat a dragon fruit or which part of the fruit to eat. I was curious.

A dragon fruit

Internet (and youtube) came to the rescue. A quick research also told me that dragon fruit is also known as Hylocereus undatus, red pitaya, or strawberry pear. It’s popular in Southeast Asia (China, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, etc.) and believed to be native of Central America.

Dragon fruits in an Asian grocery

You eat the inner white flesh of a dragon fruit. The taste and texture of a dragon fruit is similar to kiwi because both have similar texture and contain small edible seeds. The flesh of a dragon fruit is uniformly distributed with black and crunchy seeds that give it nutty and somewhat oily flavor.

Dragon fruit is, perhaps, one of the least sweet fruits that I ever tasted. No wonder that it has low calories and consumed widely by diabetic people.

To eat dragon fruit, peel of the shell and eat its flesh. This is how I did.

Cut the fruit straight down the middle longitudinally through stalk.

Cutting a dragon fruit

Scoop out white flesh using a spoon.

Scooping flesh out of the cut dragon fruit

Cut into cubes. Optional serving suggestion; serve the cut dragon fruit cubes in a boat made from its shell.

Cubed dragon fruit served on a boat made from its shell

For those who have sweeter tooth, drizzle with honey.

My dragon fruit snack

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Posted in Desserts, Ingredient, Produce, Vegetarian | 4 Comments »

How to store bananas?

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

I always regret buying bananas after a few days because often they overripe into mushy and soft mass. Taste and texture of bananas are directly related to its ripeness, so the best way to enjoy bananas is at their peak. During ripening, starch in a firm astringent tasting green banana converts into sugars to give sweet and creamy fruit we all love. Yellow bananas with a few brown spots with soft (but not mushy) texture are in peak of their flavor.

Bananas from Musa family (genus)

Accumulated reserve stored starch, which is about one fourth of weight of a fresh unripe banana, is completely converted into soluble sugars during ripening. Initially, the sweetness in a ripe banana is given by sucrose, which is the table sugar. Later in an overripe banana, 12 carbon sucrose is broken down into two 6-carbon hexose sugars, such as fructose, which is relatively sweeter than sucrose – hence increased sweetness in overripe banana.

Bananas like other fruits (e.g. tomato, avocado, apple) produce high enough ethylene gas to increase the fruit ripening. Thus, often those fruits are placed in paper bag to hasten ripening by confining ethylene within the bag. So, the traditional way of hanging banana sounds very logical. It allows maximum dissipation of ethylene gas to the air, allowing the longest shelf life without use of any modern technology.

Naturally, I had to buy a banana hanger. After much search, I found one at the Container Store in my neighborhood.  However, being curious, I ran a simple experiment. I took two bananas from the same bunch and stored in four different ways;

hanging in the new banana hanger
on countertop
in a clear plastic bag on countertop
inside refrigerator

Here are the pictures of bananas after 72 hours of storage.

The hung bananas
Bananas that were left on a countertop
Bananas that never left the grocery store plastic bag
Bananas stored in a refrigerator

Hanging bananas indeed resulted in the balanced ripening. The bananas stored on countertop produced one sided mushy bananas. The bananas inside the plastic bag had fewer brown spots (maybe due to lack of oxygen) but tasted sweetest and were mushiest. Once bananas are stored in temperature lower than 10°C or 50°F, the rate of respiration decreases, which slows down the ripening process. However, chilling bananas also results in discoloration of peel.

So, how to store bananas? My recommendation is use a (banana) hanger to ripen bananas. After perfect ripening point to your culinary preference, enjoy the nature’s  gift. If you don’t mind the peel discoloration, transfer remaining bananas inside a refrigerator to increase its shelf life by few days. If you are in for even longer haul, peel banana and freeze them. The frozen ones go well with any smoothies. Make sure to individually freeze bananas and refreeze them in freezer burn proof Ziploc bag. For sure, now, I won’t be hesitant to buy bananas.

PS. I wrote according to your “culinary preference” because, depending on your personal preference or type of food, you may want different ripeness. For example, you may want super-ripe bananas for banana bread but may prefer less sweet ones when you snack or even with different ripeness when you are mixing them with your morning cereal.

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Posted in Ingredient, Produce, Vegetarian | 3 Comments »