Blog Posts

Apple Butter Time!

8/24/2013

Using different varieties of apples makes for a more flavorful apple butter.

We get bushels of apples from the abbey orchard, many of them too small to eat out of hand and a few with bruises or bird marks. Applesauce is always a possibility, but lately I've been making big batches of apple butter. I know 8 to 10 pounds of apples seem like a lot, but once it's all cooked down, you end up with about 6 pints. That leaves you with enough apple butter to get through the winter and maybe a half-pint or two to share. Of course with my large monastic family, 6 pints won't last past Thanksgiving---we've been through 4 quarts already! So here's my monk-tested, large-batch recipe.

8 to 10 lbs of apples, washed
1½ to 2 cups apple cider vinegar
3 cups water
4 cups of granulated sugar
4 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
¼ tsp. cloves (optional)
½ tsp salt

This is a 12-quart stockpot but a 10-quart is plenty large.

Cut the apples into quarters--no need to core or peel them, but remove any parts that are bruised or damaged by birds or insects. If you use a mix of different apples you'll get better flavor, but I've made plenty of apple butter with only one or two varieties of apple and it turned out just fine. It's homemade---of course it will be good!

Red peels will give the apple butter a lovely color.

Put apples into a 10 quart stock pot with a thick bottom. Add 1½ cups of vinegar and all the water; cover, and cook at medium heat until apples are soft, about 30 minutes. Periodically stir the mixture so the apples on the top end up at the bottom. Remove from heat and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

A old-fashioned chinois and pestle will work, too.

Ladle the apple mixture into a food mill and process in small batches. Throw out seeds and peels as you process each batch. Return apple purée to pot. Add 3 cups sugar and stir until it is completely dissolved. You can use brown sugar but the amounts may have to be adjusted, so don't add too much at a time. Add salt, cinnamon, and allspice and whisk until smooth. Taste the purée; adjust vinegar, sugar and/or spices to taste, remembering that as the purée thickens the flavors become more intense. If the flavor seems blah, try a little more apple cider vinegar before you add more sugar or spices, especially if your apples were overripe.

Return pot to stove top and cook, uncovered, over medium low heat, stirring constantly so the purée doesn't scorch. It helps to scrape the bottom of the pot while you stir--a flat wooden spatula with a long handle is the best tool for this purpose. Cook until the purée is thick and smooth.

To test for thickness, place a small dollop of the apple butter in the middle of a chilled white plate and let it sit for 10 minutes. If a ring of liquid forms around the dollop of apple butter, it needs to be cooked longer. If it isn't runny with a clear liquid, it's been cooked long enough. Cool pot of apple butter quickly in an ice bath to room temperature and spoon into freezer safe containers. You may also process while hot, using traditional canning methods.

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Baking Blogs for you to try

8/23/2013

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Attending the Food Media Forum earlier this month made me want to explore other baking blogs. I discovered that there seems to be a lot less yeast baking on the web compared to the number of quick bread and dessert recipes. But here are some of the blogs I've discovered and have been enjoying.

The Messy Baker has great recipes and photos, and includes my latest salty-and-sweet treat, Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups with a Pretzel Crust. Drove to Walmart after a Knights of Columbus meeting just to get the pretzels for this recipe: click HERE to try it yourself.

Big Bear's Wife Food, crafts, and occasional reflections on married life, Her writing style is informal, like reading a neighbor’s kitchen notes rather than a formal blog---and I mean that in a good way. Click HERE for a non-cooking post I particularly enjoyed.And she has an entire Pinterest Board dedicated to the Minions from Despicable Me! Click HERE to see it.

The Brown Eyed Baker REALLY heavy on the sweets and not many yeast bread recipes at all, but this blog is a dessert paradise She's been blogging for several years and posts often, so there's a great backlog of recipes to explore, most of them with beautiful photos. Click HERE to see her bread recipes.

Roxanne's Home Baking This blog has plenty of yeast bread recipes in a variety of categories---a little heavy on sweet compared to the savory (I'm sensing a trend here!) but she has more bread variety than the other blogs on this page. Click HERE to go directly to her yeast breads index.

Frieda Loves Bread Frieda makes beautiful small breads like pretzels, bagels, rolls and muffins, in addition to some larger yeast breads. Scroll through the bread gallery when you want inspiration on what to bake next. Click HERE and see for yourself.

Stay tuned for more blog suggestions in the future. Next post: a photo tutorial with recipes for Apple Butter.

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The Hero Bowl

8/21/2013

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I attended a blog writing workshop at the Food Media Forum. The presenter (a high school English teacher) gave us a homework assignment: write a descriptive essay about a food or a favorite utensil. Here's mine, and like so many nostalgic reflections, it's accompanied by a grainy photo.)

The Hero Bowl

In some food television production circles, a "hero" is the best-looking version of a particular dish, the one you would want to put on camera or use in a cookbook. When we were shooting Breaking Bread With Father Dominic, this term was expanded to include the bowl in which a particular dough would be featured on camera. I had collected a lot of attractive stoneware bowls, both new and vintage, to use on the set, but only one was exclusively referred to as "The Hero Bowl."

This stoneware marvel was a Christmas gift from my brother Marty years before I had a TV show, and had been made by Jerry McNeil, a talented professional potter who was a family friend. The rest my family got them, too, in various shades of blue, but mine was the only one that was glazed a deep rust brown--the exact color I would have chosen for myself. Jerry had made the glaze himself with clay he dug up from Kickapoo Creek near Peoria. I fell in love with the bowl immediately, or least felt a sudden, deep affection--"love " is a strong word for a monk who is not supposed to become attached to material things.

This was a roomy bowl with both height and heft, essential elements for a bread baker and occasional chef: I need to keep batter in the bowl no matter how vigorously I mix and be able to toss a pasta salad without rotini going rogue. This beauty held over six quarts and was heavy enough to remain stable on the counter while whisking egg whites or mixing a sturdy multi-grain dough.

The Hero Bowl had an unusually graceful shape: an wide inverted bell with a slight flare, perfectly proportioned. The surface appeared smooth at first, but upon closer inspection revealed the tiny ridges left by the clever and loving hands of its maker. This was a vessel that had not merely been formed but caressed into shape. It was decorated on the interior with a bone white band of glaze just below the lip of the bowl, which made it a joy to shoot from above with the jig camera. The exterior sported a series of dark brown stripes ending with the lip itself glazed the same color: a simple accent marked by elegant restraint--anything more elaborate would have appeared gaudy, even vulgar.

When I got my TV show on public television, I used the Hero Bowl for two seasons, transporting it from abbey to studio in a cocoon of bubble wrap and old t-shirts nestled in a dark green plastic tub. But layers of cushioning did not protect it from the dangers of a backstage kitchen staffed by teenage interns. One afternoon I came back to the prep room from a hiatus in Edit Suite B (best napping couch in the building) to a contrite adolescent who manfully admitted, without prevarication, that the bowl had slipped from his soapy hands in the metal dish washing sink and shattered.

I had the presence of mind to ask Josh first if he had hurt himself, even while another part of my mind was cycling through the stages of grief. He apologized repeatedly, wishing he had been more careful, offering to pay for another bowl, talking in frantic circles. I knew I had to lay to rest his real fear: that along with the Hero Bowl he had broken my trust and our friendship. "Josh, it died in the line of duty," I said with a rueful smile, "not knocked off a shelf while you were dusting it. That's something, isn't it?"

Jerry made me other bowls in various shapes and sizes, but even he admitted they weren't as soulful as the Hero Bowl, and he could never reproduce that exact shade of glaze again. For a long time I still had the broken pieces stored in a box stored in the abbey basement. Once I came across it when I was searching for some dishes for a photo shoot. Turning the jagged pieces over in my hands, I realized for the first time that without it breaking I would have never known how beautiful the contrast was between the rich brown of the glaze and the ivory of the stoneware. I thought about making the pieces into a wind chime or breaking them up even smaller and incorporating them into a mosaic or a garden tile, but eventually I threw the box of pieces away. It's the memory that matters now anyway.

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What the heck is a "Clafoutis"?

8/5/2013

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I read a lot of cookbooks, watch a lot of food TV and surf the Internet for recipes all the time. Every once in awhile I find a reference to a dish that I have never heard of before, let alone prepared it. This used to happen regularly when I first started watching Chopped and Top Chef, but after a few dozen episodes you get used to terms like seviche, fattoush and sabayon. But I was caught off guard when Br. Nathaniel asked me if I'd ever made a clafoutis.

I thought he was joking---the word sounds like a Dr. Seuss musical instrument, or some kind of STD. I said I'd never even heard of clafoutis before. "Really?" he replied, in a tone that made me feel as though I had just admitted I had never seen a radish---or maybe that was just my own sensitivity. At any rate, since my iPad was close at hand, I did a quick search and soon entered the world of French custard fruit tarts.

The word "clafoutis" (usually spelled without the final "s" in English) comes from a French dialect word clafir, meaning "to fill up." I suspect that comes from the ridiculously easy method of preparation: you line a baking dish with fresh fruit, fill the dish with a eggy batter, and put it in a hot oven. As with most ethnic dishes, there are endless variations on the proportion of flour to liquid, the number of eggs involved, and just how much sugar is required. It's traditionally made with cherries (with the pits left in, no less!) but I have a suspicion I'll be experimenting with all sorts of fruit before this culinary excursion is over.

(I freely admit that a clafoutis is not by any stretch of imagination to be considered "bread" so strict Breadheads should feel free to tune out for awhile. Maybe you could check out my Pinterest boards.)

Here's my first attempt, which I made in a 10" cast iron skillet. The recipe called for a 9" skillet, but the amount of batter the recipe yielded would have never fit in that size pan. The instructions said to heat the oven to 425 degrees, but the edges seemed to be browning too quickly, so I dialed it back to 375 degrees. I don't think the custard was sweet enough, and I didn't like having to use a blender as per the instructions (one more thing to wash) so I think I want to do some tweaking.

Here's a second version, one that had a higher "fruit to batter" ratio and baked nicely in a 12" ceramic pie plate, although one could increased the volume of the batter slightly. Both of these clafoutis were made with mixed berries which we had leftover from supper. Blueberries, raspberries and even peaches could also be used.

Clafoutis can be served warm or cold (there are ardent proponents of both), usually dusted with confectioner's sugar. If served warm, it is often accompanied by whipped cream, crème fraîche, ice cream or even plain yogurt.

So why no recipe? I'm still not entirely satisfied with the results, and with only two attempts I can hardly be considered a trustworthy instructor. Based on the fact that after monk breakfast the lone piece pictured above remained, I suspect my confreres will be happy to serve as test tasters.

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Big Bake Day

7/31/2013

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Every year there is a drum and bugle core competition in Spring Valley, and we often host one of the bands, letting them bed dwn in the gym and use our grounds for practice. This year it's a group based in Rio Grande Valley, TX. All day I've been working in the kitchen with overcast skies outside, and I keep thinking there's thunder but it's just the percussion line practicing! At some point a couple of kids showed up hoping to fill some coolers with ice, but when they saw the huge batch of dough I was working with they decided they wanted to come back and check things out. They were working with the food trailer and didn't need to be at practice.

So here I am with Rico and everything that came out of the oven this afternoon: cinnamon pecan swirl, a cherry blossom coffeecake, crescent rolls, and 20 loaves of honey wheat bread. They took the cherry coffeecake for a breakfast treat for the kitchen crew, the monks got the crescent rolls at supper and are getting the pecan swirl for breakfast, and the honey wheat will be sold on Friday (I froze them).

Here's the cinnamon pecan spiral coffeecake, similar to the one I made with almond filling not long ago and posted on one of my Pinterest Boards. (Click HERE)

This is the cherry blossom coffeecake with frosting and toasted almonds, similar to the one I made with apricots last month. (See Bread Blog 6/14/2013.)

And here's the honey oatmeal bread I made with some Stage Rats tonight, also destined for the freezer until Friday afternoon's sale. I also put some away for future monk breakfasts, since it's the community favorite. Recipe HERE.

About a month ago I got 150 pounds of flour donated by Hodgson Mill---I'm on the last 40 pounds of whole wheat flour! So glad to have plenty of time to bake these days. Too bad school starts soon!

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My first pie crust

7/26/2013

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We just got a new oven in the abbey kitchen, much to my relief. The old one was well beyond hope of repair---the doors on the top oven couldn't be closed all the way, for example---so we got this new double decker installed today. I saved the "Blodgett" nameplate from the old one and intend to mount it on an old wooden cutting board as a memento. I owe a lot to that old warhorse, which was used to test every single one of my recipes since "Basic White Bread" in season one!

Since I had a shiny new oven to play with, I decided it was time to work on an item that has been on my Bucket List for a long time: learn to make a flaky pie crust. I've never made a pie in my life, and although I'm known as "the Bread Monk" many people express shock at this admission. So I looked at pie crust recipes in my cookbooks and online and studied the subtle variations and slight changes in method for each version. I downloaded a few onto iPad via my Recipe Box app and then went to the store to look at fresh fruit. Some good looking peaches were on sale for 88 cents a pound (!!!) so I brought some home, rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Here is the result I got, of which I am inordinately proud. Since it's Friday (a day of fast in the monastery) I can't sample it until tomorrow, but I know what I'm having for breakfast, believe me! Now I know everyone is going to want a recipe, but since I'm just a beginner, the best I can do it give you a link to the excellent recipe I used, which is HERE. Eventually I'll try some other variations and come up with my own instructions, and then I'll have something to post. After all, the peaches are just coming into season, and soon we'll be getting apples, and my mom loves blueberry pie, and I'm betting a fig galette with ginger and St. Bede honey would be good, and I think there's still some rhubarb in the freezer, and ..........

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Filial Guilt, Russian Tea Cakes, and Binge Eating

7/25/2013

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My mom recently injured her leg and has been hobbling around the house, ably assisted by my older sister Anj and my younger sister Eileen. I must confess to feeling guilty that I couldn't be there to help as well, so tomorrow I'm going to visit with a gift of Russian Tea Cakes. (The photo here is from the Kraft Foods website: link HERE.) These melt-in-your-mouth delights go by a variety of other names as well, most often Mexican Wedding Cakes or Snowball Cookies. They are ridiculously easy to prepare (just six ingredients) and are sure to become a family favorite if you don't already have them on your "must-bake" list.

There are lots of recipes out there with subtle variations regarding the amount of vanilla or the kind of nuts used, etc. I relied on good ol' Betty Crocker's version, which has a bit more vanilla and uses ground pecans (my mom's preference over walnuts or almonds). I've posted the recipe below, but HERE is the link to the actual web page. These cookies are popular at Christmas and you sometimes see them in the form of crescents; instructions and a photo can be found HERE.

I don't care what shape they are in, I could eat these sweet treats until I was violently ill and it would not be that bad. I said as much to some colleagues in the school office, which generated a discussion of favorite binge foods and the unhealthy behaviors they inspire in us. For one woman, it's chocolate cake: "I don't stop---I just eat it until it's gone." (I hasten to note that this woman's figure by no means suggests that she has ever eaten a whole cake!) Another person admitted that Frito's corn chips are his guilty pleasure: "Whole bag, gone before the commercial break."

As I diabetic, I can't really indulge in binge eating without some serious consequences, but if I had Wolverine's mutant healing factor, pancakes would be pretty high on my list, and I suspect I could take out a whole pan of warm cornbread if there were enough butter and honey in the house. But after rolling round butter cookies, still warm from the oven, in powdered sugar, I had to go to another floor of the monastery to force myself to leave them alone long enough to cool. Try this simple recipe and you'll find that these little goodies can wreak havoc on any dietary resolve.

MEXICAN WEDDING COOKIES
(From the Betty Crocker Website)

1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped or ground almonds or pecans
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup powdered sugar

1
Heat oven to 325°F. In large bowl, beat 1/2 cup powdered sugar, the butter and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. On low speed, beat in flour, almonds and salt until dough forms.

2
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. On ungreased cookie sheets, place balls 1 inch apart.

3
Bake 13 to 17 minutes or until set but not brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks. Cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

4
Place 3/4 cup powdered sugar in small bowl. Roll cookies in powdered sugar. Cool completely, about 15 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar again. Cookies can be placed in an airtight container and freeze up to 3 weeks. Before serving, thaw the cookies and reroll them in powdered sugar.

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Victory Biscuits!

7/23/2013

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You might think from the title of this post that the recipe for these biscuits came from the WWII era, like Victory Gardens and the like. But in fact I have named these fluffy delights "Victory Biscuits" because up until today my efforts at biscuit making have been failures. Not quite "epic" failures (a word much overused) but not as successful as one might expect from someone had his own baking show and writes cookbooks exclusively about bread. I'll be honest, it's bothered me for years and I got discouraged enough to give up for awhile.

But I've been reading the books from the Taste of Home Annual series, and came across a whole wheat biscuit recipe that looked promising. I did a little tweaking, used only all-purpose flour, and got the results you see here. I made two batches for tomorrow's monk breakfast of biscuits and gravy. The addition of an egg and a little cream of tartar seems to make a big difference. I sampled one with the new honey from our apiary, just brought in and processed by our Br. David---heaven. I'll be sure to let my Breadhead readers know when the new honey is available for sale. In the meantime, make these biscuits and be victorious!

Victory Biscuits
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup cold butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut into small pieces
1 egg
1 cup milk

Directions
In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, and salt;whisk until blended. Cut in butter with a pastry blender (the kind with blades rather than wires works best with cold butter) until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine egg and milk; stir into crumb mixture just until moistened. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead 10 times. Roll out (or just pat the dough with your hands, as I did) to 3/4 " thickness; cut with a 2-1/2-in. biscuit cutter---cut straight down, do not twist the cutter or you will seal the edges of the dough and they won't rise as well. Place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450° for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Yield: 1 dozen.

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How a Breadhead relaxes

7/11/2013

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(This is posted a little late, because the cabin doesn’t have Internet, and although the clubhouse had WiFi, my iPad and my web host are not compatible.)

Just three days left here at our retreat cabin at Lake Thunderbird, where I have been working on organizing recipes for two new cookbooks. The first is Father Dom’s Favorites, which is rather like a “Greatest Hits” album of recipes from the three seasons of Breaking Bread with Father Dominic—those cookbooks very nearly out of print. The second is Breadhead Breakfasts and Sweet Treats, which will include recipes like coffeecakes and cinnamon rolls, but also some of my favorite cookie, brownie and candy recipes.

Both of these titles are tentative, and which recipes go where is still a bit fluid. Fab’s Nutty Goodness Rolls are clearly a breakfast bread, but they are also one of my top five favorites. Funnel Cakes are a sweet treat, but they are definitely a favorite with the Stage Rats. There is bound to be some doubling up, but not so much (I hope) as to dilute the value of either book.

I’ve also been baking like crazy while watching movies, since that’s my idea of a great vacation. When I told people I was coming to the cabin to work on books and bake, several of them said rather pointedly, “I hope you will find some time to relax, too.” These are clearly people who need to broaden their ideas about “fun.” Editing recipes doesn’t feel like work if you can do it while sitting on a shady deck with the wind blowing through the trees and a diet Dr. Pepper close at hand. I’ve also had the opportunity to shoot some interesting pictures of roadside flowers and of scenes at the local county fair (see slide show below). If it’s any consolation to those who fear for my mental and physical health, I didn’t bring an alarm clock.

The cabin here doesn’t have a full range of cable channels, but it does get all three channels of PBS out of WTVP in Peoria, including Create, which means I’ve also watched about four hours of cooking shows every day---pure bliss, even if it feels like I have to wash dishes about the same amount of time! And today I watched Julie and Julia while making croissant dough for cronuts.

Yes, I’ve jumped on the cronut bandwagon, although I don’t intend to ride it for long. My first batch didn’t poof very much because my cookie cutters were plastic and sealed the edges of the dough too much. But I ran home to get my professional donut cutter and an electric fryer---trying to keep oil at 365 degrees F. on an electric range is maddening. Besides, I also needed my pastry bag for the filling. The original cronuts at Dominique Ansel Bakery in NYC have a pastry cream filling. I’m going to try them with lemon curd filling and topped with powdered sugar, and some with a tiramisu filling and mocha frosting. More on that in the future blog. Right now my croissant dough needs another turn.

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St. Vincent Gristmill

7/5/2013

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This is the basilica of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe Pennsylvania, which is the motherhouse of all the monasteries of our congregation. The basilica is beautiful, with some wonderful old stained glass windows in the nave of the church and more modern ones in the crypt. The monastery guest quarters are very nice and the hospitality every bit as good as St. Benedict says it should be in the Rule. The archabbey has a college and a seminary, and is also home to the Fred Rogers Center, which house all of the archives from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and the entire career of its creator. But of course, what I was most interested in was the St. Vincent Gristmill.

Boniface Wimmer and his eighteen pioneer monks came to Pennsylvania in 1846 with the intention of building a monastery which we be as self-sufficient as possible. Soon the community had cleared and planted fields, build a sawmill and a brickyard, and constructed a number of buildings, including the gristmill in 1854. Buhrstones were imported from France, the building and apparatus were designed by a local millwright, and the construction undertaken entirely by the monks themselves.

Visitors to the gristmill are not allowed in the upper two floors (although I'm hoping I can get a private tour some time!) but the lower floors include views of the secondary stones and some of the apparatus. There is a 10 minute video depicting the mill's history and its current operation (which I wish they would post in its entirety on their YouTube Channel) as well as a small gift shop. About twice a week they grind wheat and other grains, which are available for purchase. The apparatus still makes use of some of the original leather belts and wooden gears from 1854.

Another fascinating aspect of St. Vincent Gristmill is the wetlands reclamation project they have begun. The wetlands around the gristmill were seriously polluted by the local coal mining operations. In cooperation with the PA Department of Natural Resources, the monastic community instituted a wetlands reclamation program. Native plants were reintroduced and propagated to act as natural filters to purify the surrounding water and soil. There is also an environmental education room located within the gristmill itself.

I recommend the Archabbey and its gristmill as a fascinating combination of history and modernity---can't wait to go back again!

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