Friday, May 31, 2013

Barley (more to come)


Our cooking inspiration often emerges from a strange mixture of history and opportunity, the books we read and the comestibles we encounter at the Farmer’s Market and at the Co-op. Those books are as likely to be literature, theory, or history as they are cookbooks. What we’re thinking about shapes what we put our plates as much as recipes do. The market and the co-op inspire precisely because their offerings are somewhat unpredictable. This is not just a matter of the seasons but of other changes—new crops attempted, for example. Farmers’ experiments prompt our own.

A productive convergence occurred recently between the words in our heads and the products on the shelves. Just as the Co-op started to display bags of Full Belly Farm’s whole Tamalpais Hulless Barley as well as flour ground from it, we were thinking about Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. Really.  Defending her choice to marry (often) rather than lead the celibate life of a nun, the Wife compares herself to barley bread.
 

Here are her words from her Prologue, with a modern translation provided by Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Page (http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/gp-par.htm):

I nyl envye no virginitee.
I will envy no virginity.

Lat hem be breed of pured whete-seed,
Let them be bread of pure wheat-seed,

And lat us wyves hoten barly-breed;
And let us wives be called barley-bread;


And yet with barly-breed, Mark telle kan,
And yet with barley-bread, Mark can tell it,


Oure Lord Jhesu refresshed many a m
an.
Our Lord Jesus refreshed many a man.

The Wife here refers to the miracle of the loaves and fishes, by which Jesus miraculously fed a multitude with 5 loaves and 2 fish. It is actually John (6:9) who specifies that those loaves are “barley.” As the New Testament story and the Wife’s reference to it make clear, Barley was considered a humble grain for bread, less luxurious than bread of “pured” or refined wheat. But it was also already familiar in both biblical times and in the middle ages. Now as then, barley can be used to make the malt in beer, as a sweetener (barley syrup or sugar), eaten whole or rolled in soups or grain salads, and ground into flour for bread. The water it is cooked in can be used for barley water or tea. 


Because barley has less gluten than wheat (although it does have some), it can produce a crumbly, low-rise bread. But the breadbaking Sherdo takes a fearless, perhaps reckless approach to throwing grains into bread. Why should barley be an exception? Inspired by Full Belly barley and the Wife’s spirited defense of barley as a symbol of delicious and nourishing imperfection, we started by putting barley in bread. We use our quick-cooking method, described in our post on grains and beans. We soaked the barley in water overnight, then brought it to a boil the next morning, covered it, and left it on the turned off burner (for the residual heat). We then used the cooking liquid and some of the cooked grains for the bread.

It’s surprising how hard it is to find good whole grain bread recipes, partly because it’s hard to get 100% whole grain breads to rise much. For instance, we were disappointed to find how few recipes for whole grain breads we could find even in comprehensive “bibles” of bread-baking. The turning point for us was Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads. We have made a habit of Reinhart’s trick of beginning bread baking several days in advance, making a “soaker” of liquid and flour, whole grains, seeds, bran, and whatever else will make up the bulk of the loaf, and a “biga” or starter of flour, water, and a little yeast. This method vastly improves the flavor and texture of whole grain breads and spreads the labor out over several days. Full Belly barley in hand, we used the grain’s cooking liquid in the soaker and big and the grains themselves in the Multigrain Struan recipe. You can find a version of that recipe here: http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/whole_grain_breads/multigrain_struan. We also substitute Full Belly’s barley flour for some of the whole wheat. And if we’ve got it, a little whole grain rye or pumpernickel too. Is this a soft and lofty sandwich bread? No. But it makes wonderful toast. It’s filling, too, so with a loaf and a fish or two, you could probably satisfy a crowd.






Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Mastering Artichokes


If Pliny the Elder is to be trusted, the status of artichokes in ancient Rome was under some dispute.  Pliny confides to his reader that he accepts class distinctions in prepared foods (including bread and wine), but that he is bewildered that there should be class distinctions in produce. Must the difference of persons according to their purse, appear also in a dish of three farthings price and no better?  Surely I see no sense nor congruity at all in this.  And yet forsooth such herbs there be that the tribes of Rome (the greater part I mean of the Roman citizens) may not presume to eat; as if the earth had brought them foorth for rich men only, being no meat for poor people."   

On the one hand, Pliny thus takes the artichoke as one example of a food forbidden to the greater part of citizens.  On the other hand, Pliny also objects that the artichoke, even as it is elevated as a luxury for rich “wanton and wasting gluttons,” and forbidden to the poor, is fundamentally a weed many animals spurn. "See how vain and prodigal we be, to bring into our kitchin and serve up at our table, the monstruosities of other nations, and cannot forbear so much as these Thistles, which the very asses and other four-footed beasts, have wit enough to avoid and refuse for pricking their lips and muzzles."  
 
Nowadays, artichokes are doubtlessly one of the vegetables most associated with farmer's markets, so it is perhaps surprising that the Sherdos had to learn, not just to prepare them correctly but perhaps even to like them.  Growing up, we usually had artichoke in either of two very different ways, neither of them especially appealing to us.  First: you took large ones and steamed them whole, and then, at the table, you dragged  leaves across your teeth after dipping them in mayonnaise or melted butter.  Second, we encountered artichoke hearts that came out of a can in a salty brine and got thrown into salad bowls to which they contributed little.   

Later, traveling abroad, artichokes were one of the vegetables that first conveyed the meaning of seasonality.  One of us especially remembers a Roman spring in the late 1970’s, in which the sign “Carciofi” went up on every market stall, and carciofi variously prepared appeared on every menu — fried, braised, roasted, steamed. 
 
For some reason, however, we always felt a bit intimidated by them in our own kitchen, and never felt we had mastered the preparation of artichokes at home.  Like so many fearsome hurdles, this one ceases to intimidate once confronted head-on, as we've been trying to do this season.  

The only real challenge is trimming them; and we've realized with practice that we have sometimes, by turns, either over- or under-trimmed them.  Once or twice with baby artichokes we cut so much from each side that by the end (like Peer Gynt with the onion in Ibsen's play) we had nothing left.  More often, however, we have  under-trimmed them.  

This season, embarking on "mastering artichokes 101," we began with  the baby artichokes available at the market.  These grow on the same plants as large ones but do not (usually) include the fuzzy choke.  To prep these, you simply pull off all the outer leaves (pulling out and down) until you reach pale green/yellow leaves.  The trick here is to denude with abandon!  Then you cut off the top 1/3 of the artichoke and trim off all the green from the bottom.  To fry, braise, or roast, cut the artichokes in half or quarters.  As you work, pop the prepped artichokes into a bowl of water mixed with lemon juice so that they don’t brown (much).   
You are now ready to cook them.  You do the exact same thing with larger artichokes except that you have to remove the fuzzy choke with a paring knife.  You do so because its texture is unpleasant in the mouth.  There you go.
The first time few times we prepared these, we quartered the baby artichokes and fried them.  One time we dipped the quarters first in egg beaten with a little white wine and then into seasoned flour (by which we mean a rather haphazard mixture of all-purpose flour, salt, pepper, paprika, etc.).  We place the seasoned flour in a pie plate and toss the artichokes in the flour, using a spoon or clean hands to be sure they are coated.  The second time we dipped them first in buttermilk and hot sauce (as we do when frying chicken), leaving them soaking in the buttermilk in preparation for frying when our guests arrived, then again coated them in seasoned flour.  Shake each piece over the plate of flour before adding it to the hot pan, so that you can get rid of any excess flour.  Both times we fried them in shallow olive oil at medium high heat so that the artichokes could cook through as the coating browned.   This takes roughly 4 minutes per side. 

Pretty tasty.