Cheese, Bread and Julia Child

Yummy cheese, photo from Zabar

Edward has good cheese karma; I have to start with that. He chose a lovely taleggio he had never tried to take to my mother's in October, and last night he came home from Central Market with this Alta Langa Cravanzina. It is from the Piedmont region of Italy and a lot like a brie, maybe a little earthier, maybe a little tangier...I don't know, it's hard to describe the difference. Very, very soft, very delicious.

From Zabar's in NYC: A delicate and lovely little round from the Italian Piedmonts; in the "paglia" family of cheeses, so named because they are aged on beds of straw (paglia = straw). Covered with a bloomy rind, the voluptuous paste is mild, creamy, buttery, and a little musty. Eat it quickly, otherwise it might run right off the table - not that something this good will be around for that long.

He also brought home a big, lovely pain de campagne, which was almost identical to the rustic bread, with a touch of rye, that I made from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook - still my best home baked bread effort.

My bread, also yummy

I may be thinking about matters of food and cooking more than usual (nahh), because I just finished Julia Child's memoir of her years in France, mostly Paris, (1948-54) and the trials and tribulations of cooking school, testing, writing and publishing her first cookbooks and the (accidental) beginning of her career as a TV chef. She and her husband didn't even have a television when she made her first TV appearances.

I love her absolute enjoyment of food, and the exacting detail that went into her preparation of her recipes - truly hundreds of hours of research and trials to perfect a single recipe that would be foolproof to American cooks and housewives of the 50s and 60s who knew nothing of French cooking but wanted to learn. And her sense of fun.

Unfortunately, I now want to buy most of her books, particularly From Julia Child's Kitchen, a cookbook that also includes comments and stories, my favorite kind. "Unfortunately", because I know most of these early books are full of recipes that I will NEVER make or eat, eel, tripe, brains, rabbits...crazy foods, foods that I wouldn't have considered cooking or eating even if I had not become a vegetarian and also just a lot of beef and chicken recipes and recipes heavy with absolutely perfected French sauces full of butter and cream. And now, even though the holidays are over, and I am ready to trim back on the cooking and eating and shed a few pounds, I am pretty sure that I will be researching the one or two Julia Child cookbooks that I simply must have.

Baking bread

Last weekend in the midst of kids in tents, visits to area farmers' markets and a surprise water heater emergency (as if there's a such thing as a planned water heater emergency) I decided to bake bread. Not throw the ingredients in the machine and push a button bread, but three different risings and kneading bread. Bread that matured and became more complex and interesting through its longer, cooler rising times and over night stays in the fridge. I started the bread just after noon on Saturday as a half whole wheat and half unbleached white all purpose poolish (a watery starter that sits out and develops), and we ate it at dinner Monday night. Bread is a deceptively simple thing: flour, water, yeast, a little salt (unless you're in Tuscany, but that's a different story, and you can always just throw a few grains on a slice when your host or waiter isn't looking.) Serious bread makers usually have brands and types of flour they prefer, and some recipes very definitely specify bottled or spring water. This time, just by accident (water heater, remember?) I used bottled water in the poolish and in the dough itself. After the first rising of the dough, it was so big I didn't know if it would fit on my pizza stone.

Dough ready to go on hot stone

This is basically the America's Test Kitchen Rustic Country Bread with a little rye flour. The loaf was gorgeous.
Rustic country bread in the oven

However, while the bread was yummy, and made great toast for our artichoke-crab dip later in the week, the crumb was a little dense; it didn't have those big holes I thought it should have. I think I'd add a little more water next time.

To go with the bread...because after 3 days in the making, the bread was really the focus of the meal...I made a very fresh and light lentil and basmati rice soup with diced carrot, cumin and fennel seed, and diced yellow squash, shredded spinach and arugula from the garden. It was even well accepted by the 10 year old, and the cup of it that was left over was even better for lunch the next day.

Lentil spring vegetable soup

And yes, I finally got a hot shower.