Coccodrillo Bread and Kelly Clarkson

Today I galloped out of my medical school lecture hall, unable to quiet Kelly Clarkson singing Under the Christmas Tree, the Play button for which I accidentally tapped on my iPhone. I may also have been squealing Sorryeeeeeee against the cacophony of my classmates’ laughs and professors’ growls as I ran the many yards between my front row auditorium seat and the back Exit. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to turn the song off! Even while hyperventilating red-faced in the hallway outside class! Take away point: never touching my phone again. Henceforth, I shall consider it a crocodile in my pocket. Does this bread look like a crocodile’s head to you? Me neither.

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Coccodrillo Bread

Adapted from The Italian Baker

This bread takes several days of work, and in particular, a final five-six hour stretch in which you have to check and flip the dough every hour. VERY time consuming…not quite tasty enough to be worth the work, in my opinion.

Makes 2 large loaves

First starter:

1/2 cup sourdough starter

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup durum flour

3/4 cup unbleached stone-ground flour

The morning of the first day, stir the starter into the water. Add the flours and stir with a wooden spoon about 50 strokes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 12 to 24 hours. The starter should be bubbly.

Second starter:

1 1/4 cup sourdough starter

1 1/4 cups water, room temperature

1/2 cup durum flour

1 1/2 cups unbleached stone-ground flour

The evening of the same day or the next morning, stir more sourdough into the starter from the first day. Add the water, flours and stir, using a spatula or wooden spoon or the paddle of the electric mixer until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 12 to 24 hours.

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Dough

1/4 cup  durum flour

1 to 1 1/4 cups unbleached stone-ground flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

By mixer:

The next day, add the durum flour and 1 cup unbleached flour to the starter in a mixer bowl; mix with the paddle on the lowest speed for 17 minutes. Add the salt and mix 3 minutes longer, adding the remaining flour if needed for the dough to come together. You may need to turn the mixer off once or twice to keep it from overheating. The dough is very wet and will not be kneaded (which is really too bad because that is my favorite part, after all).

First Rise:

Pour the dough into a wide mouthed large bowl placed on an open trivet on legs or on a wok ring so that air can circulate all around it. Loosely drape a towel over the top and let rise at about 70° F, turning the dough over in the bowl every hour, until just about tripled, 4 or 5 hours.

Shaping and Second Rise:

Pour the wet dough onto a generously floured surface. Have a mound of flour nearby to flour your hands, the top of the oozy dough, and the work surface itself. This will all work fine-appearances to the contrary-but be prepared for an unusually wet dough. Make a big round shape of it by just folding and tucking the edges under a bit. There is no good way to shape this dough. An exercise in futility. Place the dough on well, floured parchment or brown paper placed on a baking sheet or peel. Image

Cover with a dampened towel and let rise until very blistered and full of air bubbles, about 45 minutes.

Baking:

Thirty minutes before baking, heat the oven with a baking stone in it to 475° F. Just before baking, cut the dough in half down the center with a dough scraper; a knife would tear the dough. Gently slide the 2 pieces apart and turn so that the cut surfaces face upward. Sprinkle the stone with cornmeal. Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes. Cool on a rack.

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As I mentioned, not my favorite bread, especially when considering the effort. I really wanted to like this bread because of its name, but alas—its flavor was a little too pasta-like for me. Especially unfortunate was how I timed the rise of this starting First Rise at midnight on Sunday—I ended up pulling an all-nighter to rotate the bread every hour. Kelly Clarkson’s What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger (yes, Kelly Clarkson is one of my favorite guilty pleasures) is what I hummed that Monday morning on the way to school, and it remained loud and clear in my head all day—without need of a colicky iPhone. 

Zuppa Italiano or Bucket List Soup

I made my bucket list today while sitting through a class on palliative care. I’m not sure what this says about me, but half of the activities I included on the list were things that could be accomplished within an hour or two of leaving class. And so I did. Just in case. Making this soup, for example, was on the list. Every existential to do list should have a couple quick and feasible tasks, to avoid crisis and get you on a roll.

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 Zuppa Italiano or Bucket List Soup

Adapted from Hyvee Seasons Fall 2013

4 slices bacon, chopped

1 pound ground Italian sausage

1 large onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

6 c. chicken broth

2 large russet potatoes, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp salt

1 c. heavy cream

4 ounces kale, trimmed and chopped (2 packed cups)

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium-low heat until crisp. Transfer bacon to bowl with a slotted spoon, drain any grease and wipe out saucepan with paper towel.

Add sausage, onion, garlic and crushed red pepper to saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until sausage is brown.

Add chicken broth, potatoes and salt. Bring to boiling; reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Image

Add cream and bacon; heat through. Just before serving, stir in kale.Image

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I acknowledge that I am a horrific photographer of soups–I make them look like slides of petrie dishes. Forgive me the inelegant photographic representation–this soup tasted infinitely better than it looks.

One other unexpected outcome of writing a bucket list was that the exercise forced me to entirely rewrite my Christmas shopping list because of the way the shadow of the spectre of death can clarify what it is you actually want in life, which almost always turns out not to be something that can be purchased at the mall. Some of my Existential To-Do-Before-I-Die items were things I want to do for and with loved ones—so that is my new m.o. for Christmas 2013. A bucket-oriented Yuletide, or perhaps, just Dickensian— “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

Pane Tipo Altamura Eggplant and Tomato Sandwiches

If you have been having a hard time cutting Big Macs out of your life, consider trying to fake yourself out with one of these… The resemblance is uncanny. The taste is beyond compare. Trust me—I am not a health nut—several months ago I wouldn’t go near an eggplant because I thought they looked more like a piece of art or a military device than a food, but to these sandwiches I am totally converted. I will never eat a Whopper again.

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Pane Tipo Altamura Eggplant and Tomato Sandwiches

Bread recipe adapted from The Italian Baker

Biga (this will yield 585g, 2 ½ c—more than you need, but you can use the surplus for more loaves if desired!) –mix this up the night before and let sit, covered, at room temperature overnight

¼ cup sourdough starter

1 cup warm water

2 ½ unbleached all-purpose flour

Dough

1 cup sourdough starter

2 cups water

1 ½ cups Biga

5 ½ c finely ground semolina flour, aka durum flour

1 tbsp salt

Directions

Combine all ingredients except the salt and mix for 2-3 minutes. Let rest for 2 minutes, covered, and knead for 10 minutes until smooth. “Crashing” is a particularly good strategy with this bread dough—it helps to relax and develop the gluten. Durum is a hard flour and takes a little extra muscle for its undoing. If you have been angry about something, this is a great bread dough on which to take out your aggression. To “crash” dough—literally through it as hard as you can against your kneading surface.

Place the dough in a tall, oiled bowl and let rest, covered, for about 2 and 1/2 hours. Best is to place the dough in a warm place.

Transfer on a floured surface and shape into a tight round—or several. I wanted rolls for these sandwiches, so I made small boules, and one large.

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Cover and let rest for further 2 and 1/2 hours (or more) at room temperature.

Invert the dough on a baker’s peel or baking dish, score a cross on top, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes for the rolls, 35 minutes for the large boule.

(KP took the main loaf to give at school as a secret santa gift, so I have no photographic evidence of the finished pane tipo altamura loaf– but trust me, it was a beaut).

Now that you have made your rolls, perhaps you are hungry for a sandwich. This sandwich is the healthy equivalent of a Big Mac, and even looks somewhat like it. And it’s quick!

Take an eggplant, and slice into half-inch transverse sections. Salt the sections with coarse salt and set the pieces out for 30 minutes.

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Then rinse the sections, pat dry, and place on a baking sheeting where you will baste both sides with olive oil (estimate about ¼ cup olive oil). Image

With the remaining oil, cut up a pint worth of cherry tomatoes and cover these in a bowl with the remaining olive oil, sprinkle a little coarse salt and pepper in too.

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Arrange the tomatoes around the eggplant slices and bake at 425F for 25-30 minutes. When roasted, arrange the roasted eggplant slices and tomatoes onto the sliced bread, with any extra oil, spread onto the bread. Top with some parmesan cheese, or pecorino romano, and enjoy! SO GOOD. Image

Pane Toscano Scuro

I’m in the mood to create a Minnesota version of Pennies From Heaven. Every time it snows, it snows pennies from heaven. This song has always been able to put me into a shimmering state of mind. You’ll find your fortune falling all over town/ Be sure that your umbrella is upside down! Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers. If you want the things you love, you must have showers! While simple enough, it strikes a deep truth—you cannot have joy without sorrow—we only know one by the other.

It is the same with light and darkness. I made the light version of this bread, Pane Toscano, and now here is the dark—scuro in Italian meaning swarthy or dark. On the Second Sunday of Advent I contemplated the literary phenomenon of foil, which describes how entities can be better known by the presence of their opposite. How curious that it is only through Christ’s humanity that we have come to more fully know the divine. And how strange that He was able to fully embody both.

Pane Toscano Scuro

Adapted from The Italian Baker

Sponge Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup flour

½ cup starter

1 cup water

Final Dough Ingredients:

1 cup white flour

3 ¼ cups whole wheat flour

1 cup water

1 cup starter

All of the sponge

NO SALT

Method:

In a bowl, combine the sponge ingredients. Cover and let rest for about 8 hours or overnight.

Combine all of the final dough ingredients. Mix until the ingredients are incorporated. Adjust the water as needed to achieve a medium dough consistency.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled container. Cover and ferment for 1 to 1.5 hours, until the dough approximately doubles in size.

Turn the dough into a lightly floured counter. Flatten and shape into a boule, seam-side down on a floured or parchment covered board.

Proof, covered, for about an hour, until the indentation left by a fingertip springs back very slowly.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven, with baking stone, to 450F. You will also need steam during the initial phase of baking, so prepare for this now.

Just before baking, slash in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Image

Once the loaf is in the oven, reduce the temperature to 400F. Bake for 8 minutes with steam, and another 22 minutes or so without steam. Then turn off the oven and leave loaf in for another 10 minutes, with the door ajar.

Cool on a wire rack.

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Pennies From Heaven is a tune that has been taking laps through my brain because I get to perform it this weekend at the Department of Surgery holiday party! Last Saturday, I sang with Take Two at the Assisi Heights’ Umbrian Christmas fundraiser for the nuns who live there—and yes, Marilyn, in the pic taken by my bread guru (no less!) I am wearing Grandma Alice’s 40s black lace collar! While I thought the high point would be getting the chance to sing, it was actually meeting Zola, a 90-year-old nun who recited a poem she memorized, Prinderella and Cince, which my gairy fodmother Sarah Roskum used to say for me, and which now I have a goal of memorizing before I’m ninety.

Hearty Oatmeal Pancakes

It feels like Christmas. The tree is up with gifts underneath for our Calvary film club event next week. Holiday cards are rolling in. Lights and holly are hung high. Kenny G (I admit without shame) is intermittently taking a spin through the CD player. And my Saturday mornings are free, gloriously free, for writing aimlessly, reading aimlessly, watching Muppet Christmas Carol and baking pancakes and quiches and soups for the coming week. The art of dithering is a luxury, and yet, the most fertile creative state of mind for innovation and progress. Maybe by the end of today I’ll now what kind of doctor to be. But for know, I’ll keep flipping these flapjacks on the griddle. I like mine amoebic and a little bit burnt.

oatmeal pancake

Hearty Oatmeal Pancakes

Inspired by Hyvee Seasons Mag

Makes about 6-8 large pancakes

1/2 c.  flour

1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour

1 c.  rolled oats

1 tbsp  sugar

1 tbsp brown sugar

½-3/4 cup sourdough starter

1 c.  skim milk (great opportunity to use expired milk if you have it)

2 eggs

2 tbsp  unsweetened applesauce (optional)—I don’t like applesauce, so I defer

butter and  Select maple syrup, optional

Combine flours, oats, sugar, milk and sourdough starter in a small bowl. Let sit out, covered, overnight.

In the morning, add the eggs and about ¼ cup more of milk. Mix in, and heat up an oiled cast iron skillet.

Pour 1/4 cup batter for each pancake onto a hot griddle, and cook until pancakes until tops are covered with bubbles and edges look dry; flip and cook other side. Image

If desired, serve with butter and maple syrup or other desired toppings.

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Thick, maybe a little too thick. Very hearty. In fact, so hearty, they don’t quite cook all the way through, and each pancake takes its sweet time to blister and brown. But, the tradeoff, they are healthier. Perhaps adding more milk would make them cook a little faster. Good thing its Saturday morning and I have all the time in the world.

Peanut Butter Pie

During my medical school Nutrition Block, I have eaten far fewer fruits and vegetables than I normally do and I think it is because I’m counting the sheer volume of Powerpoint slides on “healthy choices” toward my daily servings. After being reminded for several hours how important it is to minimize sugar and saturated fat, the Forbidden Fruit phenomena kicks in when I get home–and–I go and make a peanut butter pie, which not only tastes incredible, but on these dark subzero Minnesota days, also gives me emotional Vitamin D in the form of what Seamus Heaney calls “coagulated sunlight.” Nutrition, I believe, comes in many forms. This pie is like a soul vitamin.

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Peanut Butter Pie

Adapted from Food and Wine Oct 2013

8 ounces peanut butter sandwich cookies, such as Nutter Butters (I got knock offs at Target for cheap—Nutter Butters are pricey, go figure)

Salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

1 3/4 cups heavy cream

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 cup salted roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a food processor, pulse the cookies with 1/4 teaspoon of salt until finely ground. Scrape the cookies into a 9-inch pie plate. Stir in the melted butter, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, until the crumbs are the texture of wet sand; you may not need to use all of the butter. Using your fingers, press the crumbs evenly over the bottom and up the side of the pie plate. Freeze the crust for 15 minutes. Image

Bake the crust for about 10 minutes, until lightly golden. Let cool on a rack.

In a medium bowl, combine the peanut butter with the cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and mix until thoroughly blended. In another bowl, whip 3/4 cup of the heavy cream until stiff. Whisk the whipped cream into the peanut butter mixture. Spread the peanut butter filling in the crust in an even layer. Refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes. Image

In the same whipped-cream bowl, whip the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of sugar with the vanilla until stiff. Spread the whipped cream over the pie. Sprinkle the pie with the chopped peanuts (if you want, I thought that a little excessive on the theme) cut into slices and serve. Image

One could imagine an adult-version of the Stanford Marshmallow Test (classic experiment on four year olds to test for early evidence of willpower, possibly a predictor of future success) with this pie. Gratification well worth the delay. I’m pretty sure Izzy would fail. Quickly. Image

Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon and Chives

Winter is about attitude. If Minnesota has taught me anything, it’s that. I was showering to Sheryl Crow this morning (not routine), and she sang a truth that prompted me to visit my refrigerator with fresh eyes, and with a towel, of course. See, I had been under the impression we had nothing to eat. Then Sheryl reminds me (with a cliché no less) that “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got,” and suddenly, my fridge full of misfits, of sweet potatoes and green onions and garlic—my fridge of spare parts—starts to look like a tasty soup that indeed I have been wanting very badly. Very much the Dorothy in Kansas phenomenon. All bleak Midwest winters have a yellow-bricked road. All ill-stocked fridges have a soup somewhere inside them waiting to boil.

Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon and Chives

Adapted from Cook’s Country March 2013

6 slices bacon, chopped

1 onion, finely diced

1 teaspoons brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

dash (or more, if you’re me) cayenne pepper

5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

2 pounds sweet potatoes (2-3 large), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and sliced thin

4 cups chicken broth

1 cup water

garnish: fresh or dried chives

Directions:

  1. Cut bacon into 1/4-inch slices and place in a cold soup pot. Heat the pot over medium-high heat and cook the bacon until it’s crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate covered with paper towels and set aside to drain and crisp.
  2. Keep 1 tablespoon of the fat in the pan and discard the rest. Re-heat the fat over medium-high heat, then add the onions, sugar, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft, about 5-7 minutes. Toss in the garlic and stir, cooking until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
  3. Add the sweet potatoes, broth, and water to the pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover, and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 10-15 minutes.
  4. Working in batches, purée the soup in a food processor or blender until it’s smooth. Return to the pot, taste, and adjust seasonings. Ladle into bowls, then sprinkle with a little bacon and chives. Both the bacon and soup hold up well in the fridge for a few days.

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This soup is incredible—especially with Parmesan cheese and slices of toast with cheddar cheese (other random things that happened to be in the fridge). For the record, I actually hate that Sheryl Crow song, especially this time of year when I am impossibly far from any beach. The only song I hate more is the Drummer Boy (Pah rump pump um pum? Worst ever.) If that song comes on while I am driving, I will pull over. I was getting out of the shower to turn it off when I had my soup epiphany. One never knows when inspiration will strike.

Gingerbread for the First Sunday of Advent

A sign that I have been a student too long: after the Lessons and Carols advent service tonight at Calvary, a woman approaches me at the refreshments table where I have proudly placed a tray of gingerbread tree cookies, and asks, “Where did you get the recipe for these?” and I say without missing a beat, “The Betty Crocker Textbook.”  Which sounds like something I keep on the shelf next to other important works like The Pathologic Basis of Disease and Gray’s Anatomy.    Image

Advent is a beautiful season. Today, the first Sunday of advent, our church lit the giant evergreen tree outside at 4:30p. ImageImage

Darkness before dinnertime at the senior center, ugh. I would dread these early nights were it not for the lights and candles we festoon on every bough, to scatter the darkness and remind us of the Savior Christ whose birth in great humility sanctified us all with light and peace.  Image

A friend of mine, whose foreign birth has him unconvinced of the merits of the English language, is discomfited by the absence of the “y” in holydays, and rightly so. The meaning of Christmas has lost much more than a letter since medieval times, but perhaps the word can remind us to look for the return of the y—the holy—the second coming we yet await. I love the inklings of Christ’s coming in the Old Testament “shoot out of the stump of Jesse” passages we revisit this time of year—“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion, and a little child shall lead them…They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9) To a promised time of peace like this, I can only chant Come O Come (quick!) and pray that it is a promise that will be kept.  ImageImage

Meanwhile, I will spread good cheer in the form of sugar, put lights and ridiculous garlands all over Fuchsia and Lime, and try to achieve fewer days like today, in which my diet consisted entirely of these: Image

More Addictive Than Crack Gingerbread Cookies

Adapted from the old stained cookbook I used to use with Mom (Betty Crocker ala 1960s?)

½ cup sugar

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup dark molasses

¼ cup cold water

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoons ground ginger

½ tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground allspice

¼ teaspoon salt

In large bowl, beat sugar with butter. Then add molasses and water with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours.

Heat oven to 375°F. Grease cookie sheet lightly or put down a layer of parchment. On floured surface, roll dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut with floured gingerbread cutter or other shaped cutter. On cookie sheet, place cutouts about 2 inches apart.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Cool completely before frosting, or else you’ll have a bunch of melted wax faced gingerbread people.

Frosting

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 to 5 tablespoons half-and-half (or nonfat milk and half a stick of butter, like I did today!)

In medium bowl, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and half-and-half until frosting is smooth and spreadable.

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Seriously, I cannot control myself with these cookies. They deserve their own series of Breaking Bad. My flesh, my flesh is weak (and I don’t care)…particularly the flesh right under my nose and attached to my esophagus. Thankfully they disappeared from the refreshments table in two blinks. I’m already measuring out my willpower to resist making them again for at least a week. Maybe my anticipation for the second Sunday of Advent can be coupled with awaiting a second taste.

“May He whose second Coming in power and great glory we await/ make us steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, and constant in love.”  Amen

Potato, Pastrami and Gruyere Knish

Because yesterday was not only Thanksgiving but the start of Hanukkah, per my usual style, around midnight on Thanksgiving-eve, I had an epiphany to change what to bring to our friends’ houses for Thanksgiving dinner. Knishes! I had heard on NPR that there is a nationwide Knish shortage because of a factory fire in NY, which prompted me to ask, what is a kah-nish and can’t we just make them ourselves? (And ever the entrepreneur, to scheme: if I can make a pretty good homemade knish, maybe these can be my holiday cash cow. Currently writing business plan for Sealed With a Knish, Hammer Holiday knish mail-order service company). Mine are healthy knishes, not deep fried, but baked in olive oil.

I’m not Jewish, but ever since I played Hodel in Fiddler on Roof in seventh grade, everyone seems to think I am– with the name Rachel Hammer, my aquiline nose, curly dark hair, blue eyes, and loud personality. So I figured I might as well learn to play the part a little better. Anyone reading this from the Jewish community will smell the shiksa on me. But then they will smell the pastrami and gruyere goodness and bless me for my rescue efforts in the knish shortage of 2013. Mazel tov.

Potato, Pastrami and Gruyere Knish 

Adapted from Cook’s Country Winter 2013

Dough

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1 large egg

6 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup milk (or water)

Filling

2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and quartered

3 onions, peeled and diced small

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese

8 ounces deli Pastrami, chopped

2 tbsp deli mustard

1 tsp caraway seeds, crushed

½ tsp dried dill

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

To finish

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon water

Olive oil, about ½ cup

Make dough: Stir together your dry ingredients in the bottom of a medium/large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, oil, and milk or water. Pour it over the dry ingredients and stir them to combine. On a floured surface, knead the dough smooth. Place the dough back in the bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Set it aside for an hour (or in the fridge, up to 3 days) until needed. Just be sure to cool it to room temperature before rolling it out.  Image

Meanwhile, prepare filling: Put potatoes into a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook until potatoes can be pierced easily with a knife, about 20 minutes. Drain, then transfer to a large bowl to cool.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add oil and add onions and reduce to medium-low. Cook, stirring frequently, until deeply caramelized, which will take about 45 minutes. Transfer to bowl with potatoes and mash together until almost smooth. Add grated cheese, pastrami, dill, caraway, and mustard. Stir in salt and many grinds of black pepper and set the filling aside to cool. You can let this cool, if covered in the refrigerator, for 24 hours.

When you are ready to assemble the knish: Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, brush 2 tablespoons of oil over the paper, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Divide the dough in half. While working with one, keep the other lump covered. On a well-floured surface, roll the first half of the dough into a very thin sheet, roughly in the shape of a 1-foot square-ish.  Image

For moderate size knish, create a 2-inch thick log from half your potato filling across the bottom of your dough. Image

Roll the filling up in the dough like you were rolling a cigarette, not that you would know how to do that, ahem. A tiny amount of slack will keep the dough from opening in the oven. Brush the dough with oil as your roll. Image

Keep rolling until the log has been wrapped twice in dough. Trim any unrolled length and add it to the second half of the dough; it can be used again. Repeat the process with the second half of your dough and second half of filling.

Trim the ends of the dough so that they’re even with the potato filling. Then, make indentations on the log every few inches and divide the dough with your hand (this, apparently, is tradition). Image

Pinch one of the ends of each segment together to form a sealed knish base. Use the palm of your hand to flatten the knish a bit into a squat shape and from here, you can take one of two approaches to the top: You can pinch together the tops as you did the bottom to seal them; indenting them with a small dimple will help keep them from opening in the oven. You can gently press the dough over the filling but leave it mostly open, in a rosette style, which I think looks nice. Image

Bake knish: Arrange knish on prepared baking sheet. Whisk egg yolk and water together to form a glaze and brush it over the knish dough. Bake knish for about 45 minutes, rotating your tray if needed for them to bake into an even golden brown color. Great for appetizers. And, for breakfast, I say having reheated these this morning to serve with eggs and coffee. Yum!Image

This recipe is dedicated to all the families we spent our orphan Thanksgiving with yesterday. Bryan and Anita, Eric and Katie, Chris and Nicole—y’all are now officially family. I also need to express my deep thanksgiving for the incredible, unrelentingly can-do attitude of my husband Karl-Peter. KP, as usual, got wrapped into my manic agenda and after midnight went to the grocery store for me to get gruyere cheese while I boiled and peeled potatoes with Frank Sinatra to kick off my all-night knish project. KP is the best first assist anyone could ever ask for. I thank my inner-Yente for him everyday.

Pane di Terni as ACLS Mannequin

The holidays are the perfect time to review basic CPR. It’s a matter of statistics, more people eating and laughing simultaneously means a greater likelihood that someone will inhale a melon ball or a hunk of pie and go down next to the Thanksgiving buffet. If you are the one in the family who is BLS/ACLS certified, as I am, when this happens, all eyes will be on you to save that life. 

Show up to the festivities with an AED and a bottle of wine, stow a mouth barrier in your sock, and meanwhile, practice the most important technique–chest compressions–while baking your holiday dishes. Bread dough, for example, offers the perfect opportunity to rehearse. This bread recipe needs 10 minutes of at least 100 compressions/minute. And while you don’t need to pause every 30 to give 2 breaths (the yeast can do just fine on their own thank you), you could substitute the breaths for two kisses on a loved one passing through the kitchen (just as life-sustaining, research shows).  Image

Pane di Terni and ACLS 

Adapted from the Italian Baker

Biga (prepare the night before)

¼ cup sourdough starter

3 ¾ cup flour

1 ½ cup warm water

Mix and cover and leave overnight– the effect of this on the dough is just like giving a 1 mg bolus of epinephrine to a case of asystole.

Dough

Mix the refreshed sourdough with 1 cup of warm water until you have a milky paste.  Then add:

½ cup sourdough starter (yes, more)

1 ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour

2 ½ cup all purpose flour

2-4 tsp salt (as you will)

Knead for 10 minutes and then let it rest for three hours, covered in an oiled bowl. Make sure you compress quickly and allow for full chest recoil. Image

Remove from the bowl and divide the dough into four equal pieces.  Place four pieces of baking parchment on the counter and sprinkle them with flour.  Shape the dough into boules, and place them on the baking parchment, rough side up.  Cover and let them rest for 30 minutes.Image

Dimple the balls (strange phrase) then oil them with olive oil.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until they are blistered on the top.  This can take 2-4 hours depending on the heat in the kitchen.  Remove the plastic and let the loaves develop a bit of a skin for 10-15 minutes as you heat the oven and baking stone to 400 degrees F. Image

Pick the dough up and invert it onto a new piece of parchment paper covered in cornmeal, and slide it into the oven on a peal. This is ridiculously challenging. If anyone figures out a smooth way to do this that doesn’t over-handle the dough let me know.

Place in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden brown. Spray the loaves with water three times in the first three minutes.

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I need all four loaves this recipe makes because tomorrow we have an itinerary set for four thanksgiving dinners! Apparently it is too awful to imagine a lonely couple without kids, too poor to fly home, eating out for Thanksgiving (which was my solid Plan B because I have never cooked a turkey and actually prefer steak). Thus, we have been invited to join a myriad of tables—which is a lovely sign that the holiday spirit is alive and well in Rochester. Because I hate to say No to grace, we shall try to appear at as many tables as possible. I’ll be on the edge of my chair, ready for Heimlich, if need be.