Sidecar Cocktail with Dried Cherries

According to legend, the Sidecar cocktail was created by a bartender at Harry's New York Bar in Paris during World War I, after the customer for whom it was invented rode up on a motorcycle. This cocktail was supposed to complement the bike.

69% Hydration Pain au Levain

Pain au Levain is made with naturally fermented dough without the help of commercial yeast. Plus, "Pain au Levain" is such a nice way to refer to sourdough. I encourage you to try baking bread with wild yeast. You might just turn out to be a bread geek too.

Pain de Campagne

Pain de Campagne, country bread, is a French bread typically made with a combination of mostly white flour with added whole wheat or rye flour. The leavening can be from either a starter or commercial yeast. This bread formula uses both.

This bread is made completely by hand in an inexpensive 12 quart bucket (and I just bought myself a brand new shiny red stand mixer for Christmas!).  The reason for such a large bucket is to give you room to "stretch and fold" without removing the dough from the bucket. A very large mixing bowl would work well too, but I like using the markings on the bucket to gauge how much the dough has risen.

This is a photo of the dough after the first rise. It started out just above the bottom of the red line.

As much as I love my new mixer, this bread is miraculous. Just scroll up and look at the first photo.... The crust is crunchy and thick, and the interior is incredibly soft and moist. It stays fresh for days, and is soooo good sliced and buttered.

What's cool about this bread is that once you've shaped the loaves, they ferment in the refrigerator overnight and can be baked while still cold. I've never had much luck with that until now.

Note: The levain for this bread is 80 percent hydration with a mix of whole wheat and all purpose unbleached white flour. To create the levain/sourdough starter, I took 100 grams of my 100 percent hydration white flour starter and fed it two times with 400 grams of white flour, 100 grams of whole wheat flour, and 400 grams of water with the final feeding on the morning of the day before mixing day. With each new feeding, I started with 100 grams of starter.

Another note: To make sure that your shaped loaves are ready for an overnight rest in the refrigerator, begin the process for mixing this loaf around 8 a.m.

Pain de Campagne

Ingredients

Levain

100 g active sourdough starter

400 g unbleached all purpose flour

100 g whole wheat flour

400 g lukewarm (85 to 90 degree F) filtered water

Dough

740 g unbleached all purpose flour

60 g whole wheat flour

620 g lukewarm (90 to 95 degree F) filtered water

21 g salt, preferably fine sea salt

1/2 tsp instant yeast

360 g of the levain

Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, feed your starter with the levain ingredients listed above. Stir with a spoon and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit at room temperature for about 6 to 8 hours.
2. In a 12 quart tub or large bowl, whisk together the white and whole wheat flours.
3. Add the water and mix by hand until just mixed. Cover, and let rest for 30 minutes.
4. Dust the top of the mixture with the salt and yeast.
5. Add 360 grams of the levain to the dough. 
6. Placing a bowl of water nearby for dipping your hands, mix the dough by hand by alternatively pinching it and folding it, until all of the ingredients are fully mixed, about three minutes. 
7. Cover the container, and let the dough sit for 30 minutes. With wet hands, stretch and fold the dough from all four "sides" and flip it over, seam side down. Recover the container. Repeat 3 more times, at 30 minute increments. These stretch and folds help develop the dough's structure and gluten. 
8. Let the dough rise until about 2 1/2 to 3 times its original size. This should take about 5 hours from the first mixing (step 6). 
9. Scrape the dough out of the bucket/bowl onto a lightly floured surface and divide it in half with a wet or floured bench knife. 
10. Generously flour 2 proofing baskets. I used a mix of all purpose and brown rice flour. You can also use a mixing bowl lined with a lint free kitchen towel that has been sprayed with oil and heavily floured. 
11. Shape the dough into boules, creating a taut skin over the top. Place the shaped dough into each basket, seam side down. 
12. Spray the top of the dough with spray oil, and cover with plastic wrap or enclose in large plastic bags.
13. Refrigerate overnight for 12 to 14 hours. 
14. The next morning, remove the loaves from the refrigerator.
15. preheat the oven to 475 degrees F with two empty covered Dutch ovens placed on the middle rack. 
16. When you are ready to bake, cut parchment into two 9 inch by 15+ inch pieces. 
17. Remove the Dutch ovens from the oven and remove the tops. One loaf at a time, place the parchment over the dough and place a plate over it. Flip the dough over, remove the basket, and lift and place the loaf in the Dutch oven by using the parchment as a sling (leave the paper under the dough). Cover the Dutch oven and place it in the hot oven. Repeat with the second loaf. 
18. Bake for 30 minutes. Uncover the loaves and bake for about another 20 minutes, until the interior of the loaf reaches 205 to 210 degrees F. I usually move the loaves to a baking sheet after the first 30 minutes to prevent burning on the bottom of the loaves. 
19. Cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing. 

Recipe adapted from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza. It's an amazing book with fabulous illustrations of the techniques to make this wonderful bread. This book makes artisan bread and pizza incredibly accessible, and his story is a wonderful read.

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Chinese Trinidadian Chicken with Mango Chutney | Wok Wednesdays

The story of this Chinese Trinidadian Chicken is as interesting as the dish is delicious.

This dish's roots are in the Chinese, and more importantly, the Hakka diaspora from China. The Hakka were, according to Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge by Grace Young, considered the gypsies of China.

During the time that the United States was not admitting Chinese immigrants (1882 to 1943), many of the Hakka people emigrated to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. The journey from China to the Caribbean was arduous and traumatic. When they finally settled in Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, they combined their traditional Hakka dishes with available local ingredients and spicy Creole and Indian traditions.

I've just given you a very short version of the story. I really recommend getting the book to read more about the Chinese diaspora.

Let's talk about the food!

This chicken dish combines the flavors of mango chutney, soy sauce (regular and dark), and Scotch bonnet peppers, along with garlic, ginger, and onions. The onions are actually my favorite part of this dish and I could eat them all day.

The dish is topped with chopped cilantro, to mimic the flavor of shandon beni leaves from Trinidad. Along with salt, pepper, and peanut oil, that's pretty much it. I could not find Scotch bonnet peppers, so I used a Habanero. I looked up the heat index, and Habaneros are a great substitute. You can adjust the pepper quantity based upon the heat index.

The members of the Wok Wednesdays group have all agreed to not rewrite the recipes from the book. I encourage you to get the book. It's fabulous. Every single recipe I have tried so far has been flawless and all of the stories are captivating.

Here's a sneak peek of frying the chicken and the onions... Stop by the Wok Wednesdays website and click on the links to see how others fared with this dish.

This dish is amazing and a new favorite. Get the book. Try the recipe. It's seriously good and so easy.

We had this with rice and a cabbage salad, and we had enough for four people.

Whole Wheat Hazelnut and Raisin Bread

This whole wheat hazelnut and raisin bread is nutty, flavorful, with a hint of sweet. The hydration in the dough is from the water used to soak the raisins, and is the perfect match for the whole wheat flour.

This bread can be either be made into boules, batards, or formed into sandwich loaves as I did.

"What can I do with this hazelnut raisin bread?" you ask.

Toast it, spread it with fig jam, or make make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, or even tuna or chicken salad sandwiches (which I did). Whatever main course salad that you might make with hazelnuts and raisins would translate perfectly into a sandwich with this bread. Crazy good.

This bread calls for toasted hazelnuts. Finding the hazelnuts was the first hurdle. I had forgotten that they are also called filberts. As I expressed my frustration that I could not find hazelnuts in the mass quantities of bins of nuts at my local Sprouts Market, one of the employees very politely pointed out the filbert bin (with "hazelnuts" in very fine print) right in front of me. Sheepish grin. If you can't find hazelnuts, walnuts or pecans would work well too.

The other issue with hazelnuts is peeling them. They typically come with a thin dark skin that most recipes will require that you remove.

One way is to roast the hazelnuts with the skins on and then rub the skins off with kitchen towels, and demonstrated in this video.

Another way is to boil the hazelnuts in water that has added baking soda as demonstrated by Alice Medrich for Julia Child in this video.

Having tried the roasting method in the past, I opted to try the boiling method. While neither one is easy, the boiling method sure gets off ALL of the skin. Be sure to use a large pot, because the water/baking soda mixture will bubble up quite a bit.

Whole Wheat Hazelnut and Raisin Bread

Makes two 2-pound loaves

Ingredients

136 grams raisins (I used golden raisins)

618 grams water

454 grams whole wheat flour

454 grams bread flour

4 grams instant yeast

136 grams hazelnuts, peeled, roasted (at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or so), and roughly chopped

Instructions

1. Place the raisins in a small bowl and cover with water. Let soak for about 30 minutes.
2. Drain the water into another container (do not discard) and add enough water to bring the total weight to 618 grams
3. Add all of the ingredients except the raisins and hazelnuts to the bowl of a stand mixer and knead on the first speed for three minutes and on the second speed for 3 more minutes. 
4. Add the raisins and nuts and knead on low for about a minute to incorporate. Finish kneading by hand to evenly distribute the raisins and nuts. 
5. Allow the dough to rise in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap until doubled, about two hours, folding the dough over itself after one hour. 
6. Shape the dough into two loaves. If you are using bread pans, they should be 10 inches by 5 inches. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise for about 70 minutes. 
7. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and prepare for steam. 
8. Bake the loaves for about 35 minutes, until they reach an internal temperature of about 200 degrees F. If the loaves are browning too quickly, lower the temperature to 425 degrees F and tent the loaves loosely with foil. 
9. De-pan and cool completely on a rack. 

This is the Bread of the Month (BOM) for December for the Artisan Bread Bakers Facebook group. The recipe was contributed by David of Hearth Baked Tunes.

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Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

I made these chocolate cheesecake brownies for our annual family Christmas Eve gathering. Every year we rotate hosting duties, and everyone brings a dish. My sweet cousin did a wonderful job. Next year, it's my turn... and next year there will be a new baby in the family!

Country Boule with Spelt and Sourdough

This country boule with spelt and sourdough has a wonderful sourdough flavor and aroma even though it contains a combination of 100% sourdough starter and a small amount of commercial yeast.

If you have an active starter, you can make this bread in just a few hours with very little hands on time. The trick is not to add too much flour. Try to keep the dough sticky but still workable.