Since the last time I was around, the weather has turned and autumn is in full swing, so turning on the oven isn’t the torture it was during the summer. I’ve been baking bread at least three or four times a week for the past month or so.

I’m a big fan of grainy, seed-filled, hearty breads. Unfortunately, most of the bakeries around here either cover the outside of their loaves with goodies and ignore the inside, or they sweeten the bread into something more suitable for dessert. Every now and then you can find a good, savory, grain-packed loaf, but it doesn’t happen often enough for me. Since buying them is so tough, I decided to learn how to make my own.

This recipe is my own creation, based on four or five different ones I played around with. Once I found a few standard bread recipes that worked well, I experimented with adding grains and seeds. All the quantities are approximate – I tend to bake bread like I make soup, in that I don’t really measure anything exactly and go for what feels right.

• 1/4 cup each cornmeal, steel cut oats, pearled barley and millet
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1/2 packet yeast
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 3-4 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour (or more)
• scant 1 tb. salt
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds

The night before, combine the cornmeal, oats, barley and millet in a bowl and add water to just cover the grains. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature up to 16 hours.

On baking day, stir the sugar into the warm water and sprinkle the yeast over the top. Let sit until foamy, about five minutes.

Add 2 cups of flour and stir until smooth. Add salt, soaked grains, sunflower seeds and additional flour, stirring all the while to form your dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for eight to ten minutes, adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking. Form the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled bowl, turning the dough in the bowl to cover it with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, 60 – 90 minutes.

Punch the dough down and flatten it out, then roll it into a cylinder and place it in a greased loaf pan, or shape it into whatever form you prefer and place it on a baking sheet (I often like to do a big, round country style loaf, usually on a layer of corn meal rather than greasing the baking sheet). Let the dough rise again, about 60 minutes.

Halfway through the second rise, preheat your oven to 425. If you’re using a baking stone, heat that as well.

Slash the top of your loaf and pop it into the oven. It will take 30-40 minutes to bake, depending on the shape of the loaf and the accuracy of your oven. I usually take it out after 30 minutes.

Give it time to cool, and then slice into it. This bread is dense, hearty, and packed with chewy grains and seeds, and makes an excellent slice of toast on a chilly morning (Spread some cultured butter and sprinkle a little fleur de sel on top). Enjoy it!

I did get a shot of the sky and the highway on my way down. This is on Route 13 South somewhere in Delaware.

photograph by John Monsees

It was raining lightly, so you can see some drops on the windshield. Not a great photo, but it was a great view.

photograph by John Monsees

It’s been a while since my last post. What can I say, it’s been busy around here. I’ve been spending a lot of time writing, and I’ve got a couple of short stories out making the rounds right now, as well as a good start on a second novel. The first novel is sitting in a drawer and settling before I send it on a second trip through the typewriter, which it desperately needs. I just need some time to distance myself from it before tackling the second draft.

Apart from wearing out typewriter ribbons, I’ve also started a batch of home-brewed mead. It’s been over ten years since I last tried home-brewing anything, and it’s been fun reading up on the hobby and working out a plan for the mead.

I found the recipe for Joe Mattioli’s Ancient Orange and Spice mead at Got Mead, a site I heartily recommend to everyone interested in mead making. The recipe is non-traditional in a lot of ways, but promises to be pretty much fool-proof for the beginner. Sounds good to this fool!

You can see the original recipe here.

My changes:

I used 2 clementines instead of one large orange, 2 sticks of cinnamon, the optional 2 cloves and pinch of ground nutmeg, and 1 whole allspice instead of ground. I didn’t count every raisin, but used roughly 30 as some were tiny.

The directions are simple – just throw everything but the yeast into a clean one gallon jug, shake well to aerate, add the yeast, and bung up the jug with an airlock. Then put it in a dark place (the kitchen cupboard is perfect) and let it ferment for a few days. Once the initial fermentation has settled down, top up the jug with water, return it to the cupboard, and leave it alone for about two months. The mead will finish fermenting and clear on it’s own, at which point it can be racked off the sediment and fruit, and either bottled and aged or drunk quickly.

After pitching the yeast, I attached my ghetto airlock (a condom with a pinhole in it), and within two hours the yeast were bubbling away happily. This was a couple days ago, and the stuff smells great already. Now all I have to do is be patient for a couple of months…

I’ll post any updates as they come up, but if everything goes according to the recipe I won’t have to do anything further with this particular project until some time after Thanksgiving when it’s time to bottle and drink it. Maybe I should get another couple of batches going before then… A gallon isn’t all that much, after all…

If anyone reading this has any tips or advice, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Photograph by John Monsees

The old pal cocktail is a nice drink, but made with Lillet instead of dry vermouth, it’s even better.

New Old Pal

• 1 oz. bourbon
• .75 oz. Lillet blanc
• .5 oz. Campari

Stir to chill and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

I like to rub the lemon zest around the rim of the glass before twisting it or tying it in a knot and dropping it in. The Campari is still the star here, it’s bitter, herbaceous goodness providing a long finish in spite of the rather small measure used. The Lillet blends beautifully with the Campari in the mouth, smooth, herby and sweet all at once before the bitterness kicks in. The bourbon really takes a backseat in this cocktail, in spite of being the dominant ingredient by volume.

Measuring is particularly important with cocktails like this one, which use small quantities of strongly flavored ingredients. An eighth of an ounce more or less Campari will change the flavor of the cocktail dramatically.

photograph by Tara Valenta

This dish makes a great, decadent lunch. It’s an impressive presentation, and not at all difficult to make as long as you take the time to do each step properly.

Truffled Egg Pockets with Truffle Sabayon (serves 2)

Adapted from Culinaria France, Andre Domine (ed.)

• About ½ oz. black truffles, ¼ oz. thin sliced & ¼ oz. diced fine
• 4 eggs
• Butter
• 6 thin slices baguette
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 oz. truffle juices

Line a saucer with buttered plastic wrap and sprinkle with diced truffles, then crack an egg over the dish and carefully close the plastic wrap over it, leaving as little air as possible in the package. Secure with cooking thread and repeat with the other three eggs. Place the packages in a pot of boiling water and cook for 4 minutes. Fry the baguette slices in butter until golden brown. For the sabayon, heat the egg yolk and truffle juices over low heat and whisk until frothy. Warm the truffle slices (I just laid them in a slotted spoon and held them over the pot the eggs were cooking in for about a minute).

Place 3 baguette slices on each plate and drizzle with the sabayon. Top with 2 eggs from the plastic, carefully removing from the packages over the plate. Top each egg pocket with sliced truffles. Season with salt & pepper to taste, and serve immediately.

This was just delicious, and both Tara and I were pretty much silent for a few minutes after eating. There simply wasn’t anything to say. The rich earthiness of the truffles, the texture of the eggs, and the buttery crunch of the baguette all add up to a transcendent experience.

How could we afford the truffle, you ask? We cheated and used preserved truffles from a jar. These little fellows are no where near as aromatic or flavorful as their fresh or frozen counterparts, but are much, much more affordable. To help them along, I used fragrant black truffle-infused olive oil instead of butter to grease the plastic wrap, and added a few drops of the oil to the sabayon.

Some time this winter, I’m planning to splurge on a fresh black truffle for a dinner party we’re planning. If there’s any left over, we’ll be having this for lunch the next day, using the fresh truffle…

The original recipe for the Sidecar was equal parts brandy, Cointreau and lemon juice, according to Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. Looking through recipe books and websites will reveal that the proportions change frequently, and sometimes drastically, based on the individual taste preferences of the author.

David Embury prefers 8 parts brandy, 2 parts lemon juice & 1 part Cointreau, which makes for a very spirit forward drink. Robert Hess, after much experimentation, settled on 4 parts brandy, 2 parts Cointreau and 1 part lemon juice. Me? I like 3 parts brandy, 2 parts Cointreau and 1 part lemon juice. I’ve also made them for friends at a 2:2:1 ratio, with the lemon juice in the trailing position, as an easily approachable drink for those who aren’t accustomed to the taste of spirits. Other guides I’ve seen suggest a host of other ratios.

The beauty of all this is that we’re all still drinking Sidecars, we’ve just adjusted the drink to our own palettes, something which I think is one of the great joys of exploring cocktails, and cuisine in general. As a fan of garlic, I routinely at least double the amount called for in any recipe I’m trying out, to adjust the dish to my own taste buds. Why should cocktails be any different?

Another fun thing about mixing Sidecars is trying different brands of spirit in them. The very first Sidecar I made was awful, largely because I used cheap triple-sec in place of Cointreau. Lesson learned, and that bottle of triple-sec is still gathering dust in the back of my liquor cabinet, serving as a reminder that you can’t make a good drink out of bad ingredients.

I’ve also made these with cheap brandy, which was as uninspiring as you might imagine. What surprised me was that I didn’t like the drink as much when I used a top-shelf cognac instead of my inexpensive “house” brand. The higher-end cognac was too much for the cocktail, and while I’m sure I could have tweaked to ratios to accommodate it, I preferred to sip the expensive stuff straight and stick to my mixing cognac for the Sidecar.

The Sidecar

• 1.5 oz. cognac (I use Salignac VS)
• 1 oz. Cointreau
• .5 oz. lemon juice

Shake with ice & strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist. I like to fine strain the drink to remove the lemon pulp.

Since I appreciate this drink so much, I usually notice drinks that are close relatives to the old fashioned. The gall bracer is one of these drinks – In fact, it’s only one ingredient away from being an old fashioned…

Gall Bracer

• 2 oz. bourbon or rye
• 1 barspoon simple syrup
• dash Angostura bitters
• 2 dashes grenadine

Stir with ice & strain into an ice-filled old fashioned glass. Garnish with a cherry, if desired.

As you see from the recipe above, if the grenadine is replaced with an orange twist, you’ve got an old fashioned. What I find most interesting about this drink, though, is that it beautifully illustrates the difference that real, homemade grenadine can make in a cocktail.

My first try at a gall bracer was pretty uninspiring. I used store-bought grenadine, and the drink basically tasted like an old fashioned with a funky, chemically sort of undertone in place of the sparkle that the orange zest brings to the game. While I didn’t toss the cocktail into the sink, nor did I feel inclined to have another.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I’m paging through my little recipe notebook looking for something appealing that contains grenadine. I had just finished putting together a small batch of homemade grenadine, you see, and I was eager to try it out in a cocktail. I ran across the gall bracer, and decided to give it another shot.

Wow! What a difference this one change made… In place of the nasty chemistry set taste of my first attempt, I instead had a perfectly respectable alternative to my dear old fashioned, one that married the tang of fresh pomegranate to the bourbon in place of the citrus notes of my standard cocktail.

Make your own grenadine, and you’ll never buy a bottle of that nasty red stuff at your local supermarket again.

Grenadine

• 16 oz. POM 100% pure pomegranate juice
• 8 oz. sugar
• Splash of vodka or grain alcohol (as a preservative)

Heat pomegranate juice in a saucepan until boiling, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Lower to a simmer and let reduce by half, about 40 minutes. Let cool and add a splash of vodka or grain alcohol as a preservative. Should keep for months, but it’s so good that you probably won’t need to worry about shelf life…

There’s been a lot of hubbub on the internet over the last decade or so about this drink and how to make it properly. I’ll join the fray with my own comments in the future, but for now I’m just going to share with you a drink I put together this evening (well, afternoon).

Usually I make my old-fashioned cocktails with bourbon, but every now and then I’ll use rye instead. Today, in a sudden fit of inspiration, I decided to go half-and-half with the whiskies, and I was extremely impressed by the resulting potion.

I give to you, the:

Perfect Old-Fashioned Cocktail

• 1 oz. rye whiskey (I used Old Overholt)
• 1 oz. bourbon whiskey (Evan William’s Black Label)
• 1 barspoon simple syrup (2:1 rich simple syrup)
• 4-5 healthy dashes Angostura bitters

Combine simple syrup and bitters in an old-fashioned glass, add 1-2 ice cubes and stir to combine. Add 2-3 more ice cubes and both whiskies, stir. Cut generous slice of orange peel over the drink, twist to express oils and drop into glass.

Incidentally, I’m using “perfect” in the sense of a “Perfect Manhattan,” with equal parts sweet and dry vermouth, to describe the equal parts rye and bourbon in the drink, not to imply that the drink itself is perfect for everyone. As you well know, the only perfect drink is one that satisfies your own tastes and preferences…