Wheat Berries and Bacon

All of the big late spring produce offerings will come tumbling in any minute. Before all that happens, however, my spring dishes may be cobbled together from season-less and early seasonal ingredients as well as a cheat or two. For example, I recently made a sort of pilaf with some cooked wheat berries I found in the freezer, a handful of arugula that I grew in a container on the porch, and a locally-grown hot-house tomato. All this trio needed was a serendipitous stumble onto a recipe that only needed a little tweaking to fit in. Well, that and some bacon.

The resulting dish is a sort of primitive, ultra-deconstruction of the BLT sandwich. The bacon flavor permeates every bite and the tomatoes and arugula (in place of lettuce) follow along nicely. The wheat berries make something as complicated as a couple slices of bread utterly unnecessary. Of course, they also make it pretty much impossible to eat with one’s hands.

That’s a small sacrifice for something this delicious. And if you don’t want to take the journey with me, you don’t have to see this as a deconstructed BLT. It doesn’t’ take much longer to make than a sandwich, however, assuming you’ve cooked the wheat berries ahead of time. (There’s more on cooking wheat berries in this post.)

I was really happy with the flavors and textures of this dish. The starchy chewiness of the wheat berries and the savory smokiness of the bacon are the dominant themes, but they’re nicely balanced by the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar. I’d love to make it again right away, but I won’t. It’s time to move on. On to salad greens and asparagus and radishes and big bundles of fresh herbs. Besides, I gave my arugula a pretty drastic haircut and will have to wait for it to grow back anyway.

Wheat Berries with Bacon, Arugula and Tomato
Inspired by a recipe in Bon Appetit, September 2009

You can make this dish vegan by omitting the bacon and cooking the onions in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil or whatever oil you prefer.

4 strips thick-cut bacon
½ cup finely chopped onion
½ teaspoon coarse salt
1 ½ cup cooked wheat berries
1 medium tomato, cored and chopped
1 cup arugula leaves, chopped or torn
2 tablespoons white wine or cider vinegar
1/8 teaspoon black pepper (a few grinds from a pepper mill)

1. Cook the bacon in a medium-size skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove the bacon and drain on a paper towel. Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the rendered bacon fat.

2. Add the onion and salt to the bacon fat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and browned, about 5-7 minutes.

3. Add the wheat berries. Cook and stir about 1 minute. Add the tomato and arugula. Cook about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the vinegar and black pepper. Cook 3-4 minutes more, stirring occasionally. The tomatoes and arugula should be well-wilted.

4. Crumble or chop the bacon. Sprinkle on top of the finished dish.

Makes 2 main-dish or about 4 side-dish servings.

Another recipe like this one: Wheat Berry Salad with Sugar Snap Peas and Lemon Vinaigrette

One year ago: Rhubarb Compote with Brown Sugar and Vanilla Bean

Two years ago: Chickpea and Olive Salad with Greek Flavors

Revisiting Baguettes

I was thinking of revisiting the Baguette recipe I use often in order to bump up its WFQ*. I was simply going to add some whole wheat flour and see how that changed the texture and flavor of the bread. But then I got all into Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce and saw that it included a baguette made with a multigrain flour blend. That had to be more interesting.

The Multigrain Flour Mix (see p.109 in the book), which can be used in place of other whole grain flours in just about any recipe, is made up of 2 parts each whole wheat, oat and barley flours and 1 part each millet and rye flours. The blend was developed by the author with the idea of balancing structure and flavor. The sweeter barley and oat flours are meant to complement the stronger whole wheat flour and the millet and rye add another level of complexity.

After one taste of my Baguette made by swapping out one third of the bread flour with this mix, I thought, “Brava!” and “Spot on!” Oh, and “Yum! Yum!” This was my first experience in baking with a multigrain blend and the flavor was all that I had hoped for. Nay, more! It’s grainy, nutty and malty, and reminded me a bit of that day when you’ve outgrown Cap’n Crunch and have found just the right whole grain breakfast cereal. And the texture was wonderful, too, nice and chewy, and not at all gritty or heavy.

While I mostly just borrowed the recipe for the flour blend and added it to my own Baguette recipe, I did take one bit of procedure from the Good to the Grain. While I usually just make what I call a mini starter and let it stand for only 30 minutes, Boyce makes a poolish (another name for a starter or pre-ferment) that stands overnight. Thinking this might enhance the flavor of the bread even more, I did that this time, too. I made a thinner poolish than my mini starter, with just the Multigrain Flour Mix, and half of the recipe’s yeast. The rest of the yeast was added with the rest of the flour.

There wasn’t much risk for me in putting together this flour blend, since I had all of the flours on hand except the millet flour. (I use whole wheat flour regularly, and used barley flour in these pancakes and stone-ground rye flour in this bread and this pie crust. I haven’t posted anything else containing oat flour yet.) I was hesitant to buy the millet flour just for the 2 tablespoons I needed to make this bread, since it was difficult to find recipes featuring millet flour (there’s not a millet flour chapter in Good to the Grain). I was able to find out, thanks to blogs like Gluten Free Girl and the Chef, that millet flour, because it contains no gluten, is best used to create a sweet flavor and pleasantly crumbly texture in quick breads and cookies.

There were also recipes for baked goods containing millet flour printed on the package in which it came (I used Bob’s Red Mill brand, which I found at this supermarket), but even if I don’t try those, I think I might just use up all that millet flour baking more recipes with the Multigrain Flour Mix. I admit that I had more than my usual amount of optimism heading in, but I had no idea that whole grain baking was going to be this great!

*WFQ: Whole Food Quotient

Multigrain Baguette
Inspired by recipes from Cooking Light magazine and Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

You can mix up a large a batch of this multigrain flour blend in the same proportions and use 1 cup of the mixture in place of the whole grain flours in this recipe.

2 teaspoons active dry yeast (or 1 envelope), divided
1 ¼ cup warm water (100 to 110 F), divided
¼ cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup oat flour
¼ cup barley flour
2 tablespoons millet flour
2 tablespoons rye flour
2 cups bread flour, divided, plus more if needed
1 teaspoon salt
cooking spray
egg wash (egg beaten with a small amount of water, optional)

1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon yeast in ¼ cup warm water in a large, nonreactive bowl. Let the yeast mixture stand 5 minutes or until foamy.

2. Add whole wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, millet flour, rye flour and remaining 1 cup warm water to the yeast mixture. Stir until a thin batter forms. Cover with a towel and let stand 6-8 hours (overnight).

3. Stir in the remaining 1 teaspoon yeast (or the rest of the envelope if you are using packaged yeast) and let stand about 5 minutes. Add the salt and 1 cup bread flour to the whole wheat flour mixture. Stir to form a dough. Stir in as much of the remaining bread flour as you can.

4. Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface. Knead the dough for about 8-10 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic, adding enough remaining flour a little at a time to keep dough from sticking. (You could use a heavy-duty mixer with a dough hook for this step.) The final result will be a slightly tacky dough.

5. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray. Spray the top of the dough and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Cover with a towel and let rise about 1 hour or until double in size.

6. Gently deflate the dough without completely squashing it. Reform into a ball. Cover and let rest 5 minutes. Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces. Working with 1 portion a t a time, roll each portion on a floured surface into a long, narrow loaf. Place the loaves on a well-floured surface or on a floured towel pinched into ridges to form a trough for each loaf. (Or place the loaves on a greased or lined baking pan.) Cover with a towel and let rise 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 F.

7. Cut 3 to 4 1/4-inch deep slits into the top of each loaf. Carefully lift the loaves onto a mesh baguette baking pan if using. Avoid deflating them as much as possible.

8. Brush the tops of each loaf with the egg wash. (Leftover egg wash can be kept for a few days in the fridge. It can be used on other baking days or cooked as scrambled eggs.) Bake at 450 F for 20 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

One year ago: Arugula Pesto with Kalamata Olives

Two years ago: Sour Cream Drop Biscuits with Lemon and Thyme

Leaves of Radish

It was probably a few years ago that I learned that one can eat radish greens. I set out to do so immediately. This turned out to be a lesson in freshness, or in most cases the lack thereof, especially when it came to supermarket produce offerings. The wilted and sometimes scummy leaves attached to the bundles of radishes I found were anything but appetizing.

So I tried the farmers’ market, and while I found plenty of great radishes with their leaves still intact, it seems that even these would be wilted and less than wonderful by the time I turned to them for experimentation. Apparently radish greens have a pretty short shelf life. And so this year, in order to guarantee the shortest possible shelf time, I grew my own radishes in my container garden on the patio.

My container radishes have grown fast and well. Unlike the little round vegetable at the dirt end, radish leaves are only ever so slightly zesty in flavor, milder than arugula, but a bit stronger than most lettuces. Their taste might vary depending on variety and growing conditions. I let them grow until the leaves were of pretty decent size before I thinned the plants to give the radishes more room to develop. (You didn’t think I was just going to eat the leaves, did you?) These leaves, after being thoroughly cleaned, can be sautéed or even added to salads, although they are more hairy and rough than typical salad greens. I, however, took a cue from this post from the spring of 2009 from Chocolate & Zucchini (I get to these old recipes eventually) and ground mine into a pesto.

I decided to try something different than the traditional Mediterranean-style pesto, and added Asian flavors to my mix. I used peanuts to fill the traditional nut role for pesto and opted for peanut oil to match. I also added a chopped scallion, which really boosted the spiciness of the pesto as well as soy sauce and a little sesame oil. Since I was going somewhat Asian, I didn’t add any cheese.

The resulting sauce/spread/condiment was fragrant and flavorful, with the good punch from raw garlic that you can expect in a traditional pesto, but also some more zing from the scallion. The ever-so-slightly bitter and spicy taste of the radish leaves was a great background for those stronger flavors and the soy sauce and sesame oil filled in the rest of a very satisfying flavor profile. It’s quite complex and utterly delicious!

I served the pesto slathered on toasted baguette slices, and I stirred some into a pan of fried rice with eggs. I don’t mind admitting that I ate a bowl of the fried rice for lunch, then ate the rest in guilty increments directly out of the pan before I could pack it away in the refrigerator.

Of course this pesto could be stirred into a pan of noodles (some of the pasta cooking water is great for thinning it into a sauce.) I’m thinking it might also be good as a flavoring for a compound butter that is then spread on bread and topped with radish slices. That will have to wait until those radishes mature, but in the event that they never do, I’m quite content to just eat all of the leaves!

Radish Leaf and Peanut Pesto

about 2 ounces radish leaves (about 2 big handfuls)
1 ounce salted peanuts
1 large garlic clove, peeled and chopped
1 scallion, chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil

1. Put the radish leaves, peanuts, garlic and scallion in a food processor. Process until very finely chopped. Scrape down the sides of the processor bowl.

2. In a very small bowl, combine the soy sauce, peanut oil and sesame oil. Turn on the processor and slowly add the soy sauce mixture through the feed tube. Process until very smooth.

Makes a generous ½ cup.


Other recipes like this one: Basic Basil Pesto, Arugula Pesto with Kalamata Olives

One year ago: Peanutty Noodles

Two years ago: Asparagus and Pasta with Balsamic-Tarragon Sauce and Bacon

Morel Compass

Ah, spring. Lilacs and apple blossoms perfuming the air. Green things growing over all of the brown and gray background that had been exposed for the last several months. And, if you know where to find them in this part of the world, morel mushrooms.

It seems, unfortunately, that I lost all my woods-woman skills (I did have some) when I went off to college. Luckily for me, more talented folks forage for morels and bring them into town where I can find them without a GPS device. It seems that one would need inside information to even know in which direction to proceed, and, since I’m a transplant to this area, I ain’t got it. Even the local co-op, which always indicates the place of origin of their produce items, simply printed “from around here” on the sign for the morel mushrooms.

I might not be able to find my way through the woods to a stash of wild mushrooms, but I know my way around the kitchen and my recipe stash pretty well. The problem was that I had actually collected very few (like, two) recipes for dishes containing morels over the years, apparently not being optimistic enough to think I’d ever get my hands on enough of them to cook with. (Also, they are quite expensive, and I’ve only recently felt I could justify their cost.) Other than making this tart again this year, which might still happen, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the morels I brought home.

I could always toss them with pasta, which is often a good way to make a main dish out of a featured, flavorful ingredient. But with what flavors? Alfredo sauce? Hmmm. Close, and maybe do-able, but not quite right. I rolled the nutty, woodsy, buttery taste of the morel around my mind’s palate a little more and it finally came to me: brown butter. It’s nutty and buttery and wouldn’t take over the flavor of the dish. Great. Now, how do I make brown butter?

Well, rather than taking the time to find some good instructions for making proper brown butter, I simply went from my memories of all those instructions that I’d read before. Just because I hadn’t actually applied that knowledge yet didn’t necessarily mean it had gone stale. I hoped. Anyway, there may be a better way to make brown butter than what I did, but what I did was simple and delicious. I simply melted unsalted butter and let it cook until it turned brown, but stopped cooking before it turned black. I poured off the melted butter, leaving behind the sort of blackened solids, and skimmed off the foam that was floating at the top. Viola! Brown butter. I think.

This stuff was all I hoped it would be with the morels and pasta. I sautéed the mushrooms and some garlic in some of the brown butter, added a splash of white wine and some fresh thyme and tossed it all with some more brown butter. This is quite a buttery dish, so if you’re counting calories, you might want to make some adjustments. For me, the rich and nutty flavor is worth the extra naughty fat calories every once in a while, say, just when fresh morels are in season “around here.”

Pasta with Morels and Brown Butter

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 ounces linguine
½ pound morel mushrooms, cleaned very well, trimmed and coarsely chopped
2 medium-size cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon (loosely packed) fresh thyme leaves
¼ cup dry white wine (I used an inexpensive chardonnay)
¼ teaspoon coarse salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan with a light-colored bottom (so you can tell when it has turned brown). Continue to cook a few minutes more until the butter turns golden brown. Remove the foam from the top of the butter. Pour the butter into another container, leaving as much of the blackened solids behind as possible. Set aside.

2. Cook the linguine in boiling salted water until tender or to taste. Drain and set aside.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of the browned butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly for about 30 seconds. Move on to the next step if the garlic begins to brown before that time.

4. Add the morel mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently for about 3 minutes or until the mushrooms appear limp and have given off some of their liquid.

5. Add the thyme and wine and cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until the liquid has reduced to about half. Add the cooked linguine, salt, pepper and remaining browned butter. Toss to coat the pasta and heat through.

Makes 2 large main-dish or about 4 side-dish servings.

One year ago: Morel Mushroom Galette with Cream Cheese Pastry

Two years ago: Baguette