Personal essays
Sometimes the most important things are the things you don’t see.
Addiction
I was in London in one of my favorite cookbook stores.
I love bookstores. I used to love technical bookstores but they don’t seem to exist anymore so my favorite genre stores are mystery book stores, craft book stores, and cook book stores.
My two favorites of this last category are Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York and Books for Cooks in London.
I’ve never actually been to Kitchen Arts & Letters but they’ve been so nice and knowledgeable in all of our interactions that I go out of my way to buy from them.
The owner at Books for Cooks is crusty but so knowledgeable.
I think he’s the owner.
When we were chatting a week or so ago I mentioned that he was the one who introduced me to Ottolenghi. I was browsing for a new book or two and spotted the first Ottolenghi book. He praised it and told me that the restaurant wasn’t that far away and I should stop there on my way to the theatre.
“Well,” the owner said smiling, “that’s when he was still good.”
I like an opinionated, knowledgeable bookseller. I may not agree with their opinion but I know what it is and I can act accordingly.
I was torn on buying a new book on fermenting. It looked pretty good but I was still deciding.
I asked him about a book on hand-pulled noodles.
This is still my obsession. I am determined to learn how to make them.
He thought and thought and couldn’t remember the name of the book that he thought had something in it. He didn’t have it in stock in any case.
“But,” he said, “if you go to the Leicester Square station…” and he directed me to a restaurant that he said will look to me like cheap take out - but they make amazing hand-pulled noodles.
It’s on my list for my next visit.
One
I know I have a problem. I love to buy cook books.
Kim used to hate it and then she decided that if I got one good recipe from a book, then it was worth it.
I’ve already made two from this book.
I made a really good bread and butter pickle and I have a half-sour going right now and am deciding whether or not to take it to full sour.
Combine this with the pickled beets I made a couple of days ago with cloves, cinnamon, and cider vinegar, and with the quick dills I made from a Kenji recipe, and I have a refrigerator filled with various pickles.
I bought the book because many of the ferments involved an initial flurry of activity followed by waiting for between an hour and two weeks.
This works perfectly with my upcoming schedule. There are a bunch of times that I’ll be gone for exactly the time it takes for one recipe or another to come to full flavor.
His instructions are often the same. Cover with water, weigh the ingredients including the water and salt it to a certain percentage based on that weight.
Start tasting it on day
His recipes were more complicated than the beets and the quick dill. I’ve committed both of those to memory already.
Ratio
Partly a good pickle is about the radio of ingredients to salt or vinegar or of vinegar to water.
It’s the way I was taught to bake.
A friend sent me a pizza dough recipe he’s been using lately.
It’s been very successful for him and yet much of it didn’t make sense to me.
If it works for him, I don’t want him to change but the first stage of his recipe was described as a poolish.
Generally a poolish consists of a small amount of the flour from the total recipe - I often use around 16% but it can be a little more or a little less. For my 1-2-3-4 recipe, the flour for the preferment is 1 of the parts which works out to be 1/6 the weight of the dough. But it can be more or less.
Whatever the weight of flour is, you use the same weight of water. So the 2 in 1-2-3-4 is equal parts water and flour which make up 20% of the dough weight and use 16% of the flour weight.
You add a pinch of yeast, stir, and let it sit overnight on the countertop.
Well longer than overnight. At the end it should be bubbly and smell nice. It’s like an overnight sourdough though we’re going to need yeast to make the bread rise.
Anyway, my friend’s recipe used equal parts flour and water in the poolish but it also used a lot of yeast and a lot of honey. It was then refrigerated overnight to slow down the growth.
I’m not saying the recipe is wrong - it wasn’t how I was taught. I’ll have to try it out.
It used yeast to speed up the fermentation then cold to slow it down.
Salt in a dough is different than salt in a pickle. You calculate the salt as a percentage of just the flour. You don’t include the water weight. In a pickle you count the water weight.
I’ll often use some of my pizza dough immediately after I’ve made it and then refrigerate the rest for a couple of days so that it develops a more complex flavor.
It’s like the pickles - you smell the dough and look at it and you just know when its ready.
Recipes often leave out water in the list of ingredients. It’s an important ingredient and different industries form calculations with it included and without.
Recipes always leave out time from the list of ingredients - it’s often the most important.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 323. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe