Best Bites of 2011 & Resolutions for 2012!

Tags

bacon jam, Best Bites, Best Bites of 2011, blueberry mufifns, cheesy bunnies, double chocolate mousse cake, Doyle, eggplant parmesan, eggplant parmigiana, hard boiled eggs, homemade ciabatta, homemade goldfish crackers, homemade pizza, madelines, molded hard-boiled eggs, mother starter, mussels, New Year's resolutions, resolutions, rhubarb vodka, shepards pie, sourdough starter, thyroid cancer blueberry muffins, tomato plant

As 2011 came to an end and 2012 began, there has been an exponential number of blog posts focused on the best or worst of 2011 and resolutions for 2012 and because this is the first year of life for my blog, I thought I would do the same.

This blog was born in May 2011 because I wanted to chronicle the recipes passing through my kitchen and pictures of all the delicious bites that I wish I could make for all my friends. In fact, one of my life goals? A dinner party every night for all of my friends, so that I can share all my favorite meals with them! … In all reality, that is probably far-fetched, but that won’t stop me from baking and cooking and sharing it at every opportunity!

I’ve had a crazy year! My husband and I began the year with the birth of our first child, a beautiful baby girl we named Mei Kiyoko Hildegarde Mizer weighing in at 5 pounds 10 ounces, in the middle of January and from there? Our year took off! My husband had to leave to work after Mei was only a couple months old due to real life world conflicts and Mei and I took her first airplane ride and trans-Atlantic trip to visit and meet the rest of her family and we filled out the rest of our summer with many adventures around England. We took Patella on daily walks, struggled to get enough sleep, ran errands and spent plenty of time with our friends and of course – LOTS of time in the kitchen! Including beginning our adventures with Dorie Greenspan. What started as a way to try a new meal once a week quickly turned into a baking and cooking obsession. My husband and I would talk about the Dorie recipe coming up for the week, eagerly awaiting the day that we would make the meal and try it for the first time, shopping for the ingredients and trying our hand at the new techniques involved in many of the recipes. It has been such a delicious journey so far and I have made many great friends on this path. I can’t wait for a full year of Dorie recipes!

Many of my blog readers and followers have had the privilege to see little Mei grow and change since I began our blog in May until now, just a couple weeks away from her first birthday! It has been a great year, filled with many delicious bites and adventures and the next year promises quite a few adventures and surprises -including baby number two! He or she is due in late July 2012, so there will be plenty of new adventures to look forward to! Already the adventures have begun, my blog has struggled a bit as we have been making our way through the first trimester and enjoying our time together as a family reunited all over again. We can’t wait to see how 2012 pans out!

First up? Resolutions!

1. Reach my goal of 365 recipes posted on this blog by the date of my blog-oversary in May 2012.
2. Finish and publish my recipe index! This should make things much easier to find on my blog!
3. Work on the infamous lemon bar. I have got the lemon curd recipe, but the shortbread crust? It needs some TLC.
4. Work on making and trying things in the kitchen that have previously seemed intimidating or “really hard” that I have avoided in the past.
5. Accomplish five items on my Unfinished Business page, including:

(a) make chocolate truffles

(b) make French macrons

(c) make hollandaise from scratch and the perfect eggs benedict

What are your 2012 resolutions?

Now? The Best Bites of 2011! 

1. Possibly the cutest bite! Hard boiled eggs!
    
2. Hachis Parmentier! Shephard’s pie!
   
3. Homemade pizza! We have it as often as possible, throwing on whatever toppings we desire!
   
4. Madelines - these were worth every gram of flour and sugar…. and butter!
   
5. Double Chocolate Mousse Cake. I just need to make this more often.
   
6. Sourdough bread. I mastered the starter and made many a loaf for all my friends and family to boot! Love it!
   
7. Mussels and homemade ciabatta!
   
8. Cheesy bunny crackers! My homemade “goldfish crackers” but made with the tastiest European semi-hard and hard cheeses available. Simple to make and quick to be eaten, so much so that if my friends know that I will bake some we tend to get spontaneous “visitors” on our doorstep!
   
9. You have thyroid cancer? No problem! I have the perfect, delicious morning muffin to curb your craving for baked goods!
   
10. Rhubarb? I’m not a fan, but rhubarb vodka? YES PLEASE!! It was so easy to make and so delicious, straight out of the bottle!
    
11. Bacon Jam. Enough said.
    
12. Doyle. My little pet tomato that I grew from a starter plant and later ate. It was the first tomato I have ever successfully grown!
    
13. Eggplant Parmesan. The single eggplant recipe that will convert any eggplant “hater.” It’s perfect!
    

The Mother Starter

Tags

Artisan Breads Every Day, mother starter, Peter Reinhart, sourdough starter, wild yeast starter, yeast starter

At first, I thought “mother starter” was just a kitchy name for the sourdough starter, but once it came together, I understood just how fitting the name was. When you finish with your seed culture, it really is a seed! No more than one cup volume, it grows instantly into a 4-6 C mass! It’s unbelievable! You can make quite a bit of bread with just half of a part three seed culture!

Its a MOTHER STARTER!!! Its ENORMOUS!!

This is good news for all my sourdough eating friends though, I plan to just bake loaves back to back so that I don’t have to stall my bread baking with baking only sourdough for a month or longer.

before kneading...

Ok so directly out of Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Everyday:

This is the starter you’ll keep in your refrigerator  perpetually and use to build your actual bread dough. To convert a seed culture into a mother starter, you’ll use the seed culture to inoculate a larger batch of flour and water to make a firm piece of starter with the consistency of bread dough.

To make the mother starter strong enough to function in a final dough, you’ll build it with three times as much flour as seed culture, by weight. This process will give the mother starter about the same feel as the final dough.

A little starter goes a long way, so the following instructions call for you to discard half of your seed culture or give it away. Or if you’d prefer to keep a larger mother starter on hand, especially if you bake often or in large batches, you can convert the entire seed culture into am other starter by doubling the weight of the new flour and water.

Ingredients:

• 2-3/4 C whole wheat flour
• 1 C plus 2 TBS filtered or spring water
• 3/4 C of half of the part four seed culture

Combine all the ingredients int he bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on slow speed for one minute. Or combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and use a large spoon or your hands to mix until all the ingredients  form a rough, slightly sticky ball. Transfer the starter to a lightly floured work surface and knead for two minutes, until the starter is fairly smooth and all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Place the mother starter in a clean, lightly oiled nonreactive bowl or plastic container large enough to contain the starter after it doubles in size. cover loosely with plastic wrap or a lid (but don’t tighten, as the carbon dioxide gas will need to escape). Leave the starter out at room temperature for 4-8 hours  (or longer if needed) until it doubles in size. The timing will depend on the ambient temperature and potency of your seed culture. Once its doubled, it should have a pleasant acidic aroma.

sneaky Mei! You turn your back for just a second....

When the starter is fermented, degas it by kneading it for a few seconds, then form it back into a ball, cover tightly and refrigerate. After a few hours in the refrigerator, vent any carbon dioxide buildup by briefly opening the lid or plastic wrap. the mother starter is now ready to use and will be good for up to five days.

Ok, so there you have it!

I was in the middle of loosing my mind right at the end of kneading together my seed culture and mother starter, so I kneaded and dumped it all into my dough rising bucket and stuck it in the fridge, a couple of hours later, I realized I needed to “proof” it, so I pulled it out and let it sit at room temperature. I have a feeling its going to take around double the time to  activate itself now that the wild yeast is probably sleeping….

Signing off for the night, mother starter, sitting in the oven, the warmest part of the kitchen, heat off of course, but protected from any cool breezes in the kitchen overnight, we will see what happens tomorrow!