All Roads lead to Chili.

It is Sunday morning. Currently in Seattle, it is 19 degrees. The forecast calls for freezing fog. Just exactly what is freezing fog anyway? With a cold snap still in the area, the roads and houses are dusted with snow, not something normally seen in this area, but we have welcomed some strange weather with the start of winter this year. I believe this is the result of El Nino and Global Warming, in coexistence. Today also marks the start to my weekend, which usually means that while away from my work kitchen, I enter my own kitchen and strangely enough, I cook and I bake.

Lately, I have been thinking of my crock pot.

And, I was reminded of how lovely a crock pot meal can be. While visiting the Bay Area recently, I was lucky enough to arrive on the day my dad was ‘slow cooking’ a pot roast. Of course, his famous ribs are hard to beat, but this meal definitely rivaled.

Back when C&T hosted their annual Chili Cook Off, I remember entering a ‘6 alarm chili,’ which was accented by chipotle, coffee and chocolate. It was good, but it was definitely freaking HOT and NOT like Abby’s crowd pleaser chili that took home the ‘First Prize’ Jalapeno Apron. I believe that I took third that year. The couple votes caste in my direction, I believe, were those of my loving husband and another friend, who liked his chili like he liked his men…

Damn Hot.

SO, today, I thought that I would revisit Chili. I loved the complexity that adding coffee and chocolate gave to my third place chili, but I am thinking, if I just toned down the spice, maybe I too, can take home that ‘First Prize’ Jalapeno Apron someday.

3 Alarm Hoo-Hah Chili

4 oz sliced Maple bacon
2 pounds boneless pork shoulder ( I ended up getting something called ‘pork shoulder butt’…not quite sure what that means..), cubed
1 T olive oil
1 small onion chopped
1 chipotle chili, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tablespoons chili powder (not pure, but the kind mixed with other spices)
1 teaspoon dried Oregano
Pinch of Cayenne powder
7 oz beef broth
½ c brewed coffee
½ c Guinness stout
14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes with puree
15 oz kidney beans, canned
15 oz cannellini beans, canned
¼ cup dark chocolate. (Valrhona 70%)
Salt, to taste

Cook bacon, drain and set aside. Reserve a Tablespoon from fat in pan. Add 1 T olive oil and brown the pork. Transfer to crock pot when finished. Deglaze pan with hot coffee and scrape mixture into crock pot too. Saute onion until softened, then add garlic and spices and cook 1 minute. Add this to the crock pot. At this point, add the stock, coffee, Guinness and tomatoes to the crock pot. Cook on low for 6 hours. Then, add the chocolate and beans, stir, and cook for 1 hour more.
Top with Sour Cream and other fixins’….

Should make around 6 servings…

Reflections on Crusty Loaf's...

I have many good memories from the now defunct bakery where I slaved for a good few years, early in my baking life. I don’t think that I have since worked in an environment where it was clear that we all loved what we were doing and we had such a good time doing it. I think that we were all bonded by the fact that we had a boss who didn’t give a shit about the business, who tried to keep the reigns tight on us from many miles away in Minneapolis. We all loved the place and wanted to see it do well. I think that we even plotted to one day try and pool our funds together to buy the place. I often wonder what would have become if we had indeed pulled that off. I miss it sometimes. I miss all the doughs, all 12 of them, rising in the buckets scattered throughout the kitchen and hall. The Honey Wheat, Rosy Sour, Pumpernickel, Walnut Scallion…all with their yeasty, bready savory and sweet smells. I miss the huge bucket of Sourdough starter, that needed constant nourishment, maybe even some talking to..and in return he provided us that tang and rise to our breads…then, there was the Rye Starter, whom I introduced to the bakery when we changed the way we did our Rye Bread. He was smaller, but much more pungent with the flavor of onions in his blood. Man, he made a good bread…that Rye, it always sold out.

I miss those mammoth mixers and that godly Bongard 3 deck oven, too. I think that the actual baking of the breads was my favorite part of the process, although I did love the feel of shaping each bread in my hands. Every dough had its own personality, its own quirks. The oven was definitely the heart of the bakery though. It lay at the very center of the store, in plain view from every angle, especially from the front door, where people walking by would be drawn in by the smell, walk through the front door and see the loaves baking through the oven windows…I loved tending the oven. First, loading the loaves onto the gurney, scoring and garnishing them with salt, or seeds..then, lifting the gurney to the deck where the breads would be magically transferred, with a quick push, and a pull. Voila, the loaves were now perfectly placed onto the baking stone, steamed with a quick push of a button, and left to bake until they needed some rotation. Probably the most dramatic part of the process was when the loaves were set to come out of the oven. Using the 10 ft long peel, I would thrust it into the oven, grab 5 or 6 or 7 loaves of crackling and crusty bread, delicately balance them on the flat end, pull them out of the oven and oh-so dramatically, flip them onto the cooling racks. There was always a crowd to watch this, and I always remember feeling this great sense of pride in my craft when I would hear the sighs and people exclaiming, “look, there she goes…such beautiful bread..” I think that this was such a great selling point, walking into a bakery filled with the most wonderful smell ever, baking bread…seeing fresh bread being pulled out of the oven and deposited onto the cooling racks before your very eyes…then, actually being able to walk up to the counter, point to that very steaming loaf, buy it, and walk out with it, still crackling in the paper bag, under your arm.

People loved this place.

It became clockwork at one point. We had it down to a science, when each type of bread would crackle and steam its way onto the cooling racks. We would actually write these times on a chalk board sign that stood on the sidewalk outside, and then, our regulars would arrive, like clockwork too.

11:30 am….Multigrain…11:45 am Sesame Tuscan…12:00 pm French Rolls…

We even had names for them. The Rye Bread guy. Crazy Sweater guy. Chocolate Roll girl.

It is funny, every so often now, I see a familiar face and think..oh yeah, there is that ‘Sliced Honey Wheat’ guy..

We had so many kinds of bread, but we definitely had the favorites among them. The breads that always sold out. The Apple bread was one of these. This was the lagger in the group, always the very last to come out of the oven. I think this was because we often forgot to prep the apples ahead of time
….ah crap…damn apples.

So, often times, we would have all the breads out of the oven, and we would have people coming in at the ‘usual’ Apple Bread ready time of 2pm.. “Is the Apple Bread ready yet??” So we rushed…peeling the apples at warp speed, chopping the apples into the dough, portioning the dough into the pans and tossing them into the ovens. Then, the people would continue coming in, while the bread was in the oven. So often, I would pull the bread out just as it was perfectly ready, and rush to frost it while impatient customers drooled up front. “Is the apple bread ready?”
I too, loved the Apple Bread, but I sometimes felt like it was the bane of my existence. It was a little more work than some of the other less fussy loaves, and the people always wanted it when it wasn’t ready.

A few years have passed since those days, and every so often I find myself with a craving for some of those breads again. So I scale down the recipes from their 50 pound batches and I make me a loaf.

Even the Apple Bread.

Hubba, Hubba....hard at work...

So, I have been lacking in any baking posts lately because I have been a busy bee in the kitchen at home and at work. I plan on posting more about my Christmas baking adventures..after the New Year...

These last two weeks have given me many projects, from the Saucy Eggnog that almost sprouted hairs on my chest to some Cupcakes for the big O's #1st Birthday ...with some secret surprise Christmas goodies in between...

....My die hard Sausalito reader might be familiar with one of these :)

For now, go eat and drink and be merry.

-S


 
 
 
  

Winter Storm ’06, again….

 


Geez, here I thought this was a food/travel blog, and I am finding that I want to post about the weather, again.

This post was supposed to be about the Apple Bread I made last weekend, reminiscent of the ol’ Crusty Loaf Bakery…may she rest her soul..but, instead, I am drawn to the fact that we pretty much had a Hurricane the other night.

Yesterday morning, I was less than smart, but a damn devoted employee. I decided to get an earlier start on my workday. It has been crazy busy and on Friday we were supposed to have a luncheon. Since business has been booming so much, the kitchen has like 20 new hires…well, more like 3…but the space is so narrow, that once the inflow of people commences, I find that I am squeezed out of my little corner of counter space, out of the ovens, moved from the range…it is a hard transition sometimes. I get so used to having the whole kitchen.. a place to spread out my doughs, mixers and tools…but, come noon, these beloved spaces fill up, and then, the spaces in between those spaces fill up too. My level of productivity seems to halt, when I find that I am skirting between, behind and below everyone, just to grab a mixing bowl, or just to get into the oven to grab a bubbling Pear Crisp.... SO, lately, every once in a while, I wake at an ungodly time (4:08am to be exact) just so I can have peace and space for that much longer, before the big guns come to squeeze the little pastry lady out..

Maybe I should prelude a bit now. So, on Thursday night, there was a Hurricane.
Well, maybe not a hurricane to be exact, but in some areas in the state, they did track ‘Hurricane Force’ Winds. There was a bit of wind, and some areas were hit worse than others. Luckily, we were spared in many ways. The two LARGE trees in our back yard didn’t come tumbling down, our basement wasn’t flooded and we didn’t lose our power. We were lucky. So, when I woke up on Friday, I didn’t really think anything was amiss. I preceded to get ready for my day, and then headed out the door to work..

I think I realized that something wasn’t quite right, when I drove about a block, and I realized that it seemed really dark out. Yes, I realize it was only 4:30, but it was SO dark. There were no streetlights on. Then, when I approached what normally is a stop light, it too was out. I turned onto a main throughfare, one that is usually tackily lit with signs for car dealerships, seedy bars, strip clubs and the like…and the eeriest thing, it was all dark. And, so I drove to work, in the dark, never having to stop once for a red light…or any light for that matter.

I turned onto the woodsy and curvy road that I normally take and when I saw a large tree completely blocking the left side of the road, I started to wonder if this ‘storm’ hadn’t been a little more serious than just a few non functional street lights.

I think that what I encountered next was something beyond anything that I have ever seen before. I can’t say that I have been in areas where many natural disasters have occurred before, (aside from the ’89 San Francisco earthquake)
but what made this so eerie and scary to me was that I felt like I was one of the first people to come on the scene of the storm aftermath. As I drove up the hill, I could barely see the road. It was completely blanketed with pine needles and tree branches. Every block or two, a downed tree would be blocking part of the roadway, and I would have to maneuver my way around it. I think what scared me the most was seeing the downed power lines just hanging limply on the side of the road, swaying in the wind. I then came to an intersection where the power lines were literally hanging about 10 feet above the ground. It was at this point that I knew that I was crazy. I mean, shit, I couldn’t believe what I was doing, just so I could get to work a little earlier, just so I could make a few cheesecakes and some bread. It really made me think. What I was going to do was really so trivial, compared to the fact that I was quite possibly putting my life in danger, just to get there. I pulled over into a parking lot at this point, because I really thought about just turning around. It so wasn’t worth it to be electrocuted, was it? I let a car pass and saw that he cut through the parking lot and was able to maneuver around the downed lines, and when I saw that he was ok, I followed suit. When I drove on, I continued to pass many downed power lines and fallen trees, and then many huge trees that had fallen and were literally suspended in the power lines. This, too, was pretty scary. The thought that the lines could break at any moment, and the tree would come crashing down.

So, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when I arrived at the restaurant, that we had no power. That was yesterday. And, this morning, after retracing my steps and finding that the power still hadn’t returned, it has left me feeling lucky that I have the warmth of my house, not too mention, a Saturday off.

I feel very fortunate. 

Early to Rise and Ready to attack (the mall)...

On Sunday, I wanted to beat the crowds to the mall, so I headed out early...
With no traffic on 520 and views like this, even if between clouds of gray and drizzle, I realize just why I love it here..

 

Upon arrival in Bellevue, I headed to my new favorite spot. Koots Green Tea. Watch out Starbucks. Koots is a Japanese Tea House that has begun its spread to the U.S., with its first store in Bellevue and another soon to follow, which will be located above the NEW Whole Foods!

I am a big fan of this place. The first time I went, I had a Jasmine Bubble Tea, which was so good and not too sweet, like some of those teas can be. On Sunday, I branched out and tried this nuclear thing...

 

It may look cancer inducing, but it is actually a 'cancer fighting' Matcha Tea Latte, with just a hint of White Chocolate. It may sound strange, and I think that it took me a few sips before I decided that I really did like it.

So, the next time you are in Bellevue and need a little green fix, try this. 

Where in the World?

This is a silly thing, but it is relevant to the next entry that I wanted to post. I know that I have some readers out there, but sometimes I am not so sure....in a baking quandary? do you have an excess amount of egg yolks and you just dont know what to do? I want to hear from you! or, if you prefer, indulge in my map game....