What do you cook when you want a chicken pot pie but are too lazy/busy to screw around with making a crust? You cook chicken with dumplings. I saw this recipe on Michael Ruhlman’s site and figured it would give me a chance to practice my pâte à choux technique and put together a reasonably quick dinner. That the dish is also one of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s favorites was just extra win.

I started with two carrots and two celery stalks cut into large dice, a diced medium onion, two cups of cooked chicken, a third of a cup of flour, and three tablespoons of butter.

I melted the butter over medium heat, then added the onions and cooked until they were translucent. I stirred in the flour and continued cooking until I could smell the flour toasting.

I whisked in a quart of homemade chicken stock, brought everything to a simmer, than added the chicken, carrots, celery, a bay leaf, and a teaspoon of salt.

I could have stopped here and had a pretty good soup, but I continued on so as not to hear “What, no dumplings?” later. The dumplings were a simpler variation of the gnocchi à la Parisienne I had made before, leaving out the cheese and mustard. And substituting milk for water. And using four eggs instead of seven. And less butter. Well, sort of the same recipe.

Fifteen minutes later I was piping dumplings into boiling water and pulling then out to drain.

If you look carefully, you can see that this batch was thinner and more uniform than the previous attempt. Between then and now I managed to locate a pastry tip with the correct diameter, which made a huge difference in piping out the dough. I froze half of the batch for future use.

By the time the dumplings were done, the chicken and vegetables had thickened. I added the dumplings and simmered for an additional five minutes before serving.

Soft dumplings, smooth sauce, vegetables still slightly firm – the only thing a pot pie had over this was a crispy element, which I remedied by serving a few slices of homemade bread. It was the perfect dish to eat while watching the snow fall. And now that I have extra dumplings in the freezer, I can make this dish again on a whim.

I may be a decent cook, but I know when I’m outclassed by a great baker. When I saw Facebook photos of my friend Maggie’s baking projects – collected in an album titled “Food Porn” – I jokingly suggested that she ship some goodies my way.

She had been baking macarons, and was concerned that they would arrive as a big pile of crumbs. Apparently my idea of shipping them in an egg carton with extra external padding got her thinking. (My other suggestion, individual bubble-wrap envelopes, was impractical and expensive.) She sent me the photo at the top of this post, inspired by the colors usually found in a Mardi Gras king cake, and told me a box was on its way to Chez Belm.

They arrived this afternoon, nearly intact:

I waited until She Who Must Be Obeyed returned home from work before tasting them (I know what can happen if I don’t share). We tried one of each. The purple was lavender and white chocolate, a bit sweet, but you could taste the lavender. The green was matcha (green tea powder) and pistachio, with the pistachio a bit muted. The yellow – and the clear winner – was saffron and vanilla cream. They all tasted wonderful, but the subtlety of the saffron perfectly balanced the sweetness of the macaron.

I have no idea how I’m going to return the favor, but I know what we’re having with tea tonight:

Thanks, Maggie!

All of the rave reviews I read about Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking assured me that I could bake high-quality bread with little effort. Since my previous bread baking attempts have resulted in less than optimal results, it was time to try this “revolutionary” method. My first test was to bake a simple boule loaf with the master recipe.

I began with six and a quarter cups of all-purpose flour, three cups of 100 °F water, one and a half tablespoons of yeast, and one and a half tablespoons of salt.

I dissolved the yeast and salt in the water, which I poured into a six-quart bucket.

I unceremoniously dumped the flour into the water and stirred with a rubber spatula until the flour was completely moistened with no dry spots, resulting in about a quart of wet dough.

The dough needs to rise at room temperature. It’s pretty cold in my kitchen during the day, so I set the bucket (covered with a lid) in my turned-off oven where it would be warmer. After a two hour rise, the dough had quadrupled in volume.

The top was level and full of bubbles.

I moved the covered bucket to the fridge, which helped the dough develop and become easier to handle. After three hours, I sprinkled some flour over the top, pulled up a one-pound chunk of dough, and shaped it into a ball by folding the edges under and rotating a quarter turn after each fold. I set the dough ball on a pizza peel dusted with coarse cornmeal.

I let the dough rise at room temperature for forty minutes while I prepared the oven. I moved my pizza stone from the oven floor to the middle rack, set a broiler pan on a rack underneath the stone, and preheated to 450 °F. At the end of the rise I dusted the top of the dough with flour and slashed a quarter-inch deep cross in the top with a serrated knife.

I let the loaf bake for thirty five minutes until the crust was golden brown.

I cut the loaf only after it had cooled to room temperature.

It was very good bread for the amount of effort I put into baking it. It wasn’t too dense, it had a nice structure, it cut easily, and tasted like the “peasant” loaves I’ve purchased at bakeries. It was a bit chewier than I expected, but not unpleasantly so.

As I prepared the dough, I was bothered by the lack of precision in the recipe. Years of reading Cook’s Illustrated and watching Alton Brown have ingrained in me the principle that baking quantities should always be measured out by weight, not by volume. Yet here I was, measuring flour with the old dip-and-sweep method, knowing that the actual weight of flour could vary from cup to cup by as much at ten percent. In addition, I was using King Arthur all-purpose flour, which has a higher protein content (11.7 percent) than most supermarket AP flour brands (averaging ten percent). The book’s solution — “use a quarter cup less per six cups ” — also seemed too vague.

Was that extra chewiness due to the variability of the flour weight, or is it a property of the dough? I’ve consulted with a baker friend, who provided me with the weight equivalent for a “cup” of flour, so my next test will substitute weights of flour in the master recipe.

But that won’t be for another week. I have a tub of dough in the fridge I have to work through first.

Ming Tsai, chef at Blue Ginger, has a cooking show on PBS in which he presents his “east meets west” approach to his food. On a recent show he explored the pairing of maitake mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce, then invited chef Tony Maws of Craigie on Main to present a dish made with the two ingredients. Maws posted the recipe on his blog, which gave me the opportunity to try it myself.

I started with four pounds of cut oxtails, a navel orange sliced into half-inch rounds, three thick slices of ginger (smashed), six whole peeled shallots, a third of a pound of maitake mushrooms,two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, two cups of red wine, and some flour.

I salt and peppered the oxtails, sprinkled them with flour, then browned them on all sides on two tablespoons of canola oil.

I removed the oxtails, wiped the pan clean, added more oil, and roasted the orange slices until they were caramelized.

I removed the oranges, added a bit more oil, and roasted the shallots, mushrooms, and ginger until they began to soften. Although it’s not in the recipe, on the show Maws added a Thai bird chile to the pan. I didn’t have a fresh Thais pepper, so I tossed in two dried piquin chiles.

I deglazed the pan with the wine and Worcestershire (the Brits make this easier and call it “Wooster sauce”) and reduced by half. I returned the oxtails and oranges to the pot and added enough chicken stock to come halfway up the oxtails.

I brought the pot to a simmer, covered it, and placed it in a 300 °F oven for three hours.

I strained off the sauce and reduced it until it was thickened.

I served the oxtails with the orange slices and vegetables, added the sauce, and garnished with chopped scallions.

Sometimes Ming’s combinations can feel a but contrived, but the one-two umami punch of the mushrooms and Worcestershire added even more meatiness to the oxtail. The ginger and orange contributed enough brightness and acidity to balance the rich beef, and the heat from the chiles crept in at the end.

I know, another week, another braised dish. When am I going to get off this kick? Given the weather we’ve been having, it could be a while.

Sources:

Oxtails, maitake mushrooms, orange, ginger: H Mart