oh-so-quiet

This is My Proof, Duane Michals, 1974

but i’m back.

(I realized i’ve said it quite a few times in the last couple of months. Sometimes life is just life and you forget where you are going. I keep reminding myself of where I want to go, but the journey is never easy. Thank you for staying.)

There is something therapeutical about making bread. You have to be patient, you have to use your hands and everything around seems far away when you see a full yeasted loaf of bread.

Last week we went to Alentejo, and finally got around to trying our luck with the wood fire oven. Pedro took care of it – i admire his calm and cool ways, the gentle moves with the ashes and how he can resist to peeking inside the oven every two minutes.

Using Jamie Oliver’s basic bread recipe, I baked it two ways – a simple and crunchy bread, and small breads filled with chouriço. The texture was soft on the inside, but so crunchy on the outside.

Jamie Oliver Bread Recipe

1kg/ strong bread flour
• 625ml tepid water
• 30g fresh yeast
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
extra flour for dusting

Stage 1: making a well
Pile the flour on to a clean surface and make a large well in the centre. Pour half your water into the well, then add your yeast, sugar and salt and stir with a fork.

Stage 2: getting it together
Slowly, but confidently, bring in the flour from the inside of the well. (You don’t want to break the walls of the well, or the water will go everywhere.) Continue to bring the flour in to the centre until you get a stodgy consistency – then add the remaining water. Continue to mix until it’s stodgy again, then you can be more aggressive, bringing in all the flour, making the mix less sticky. Flour your hands and pat and push the dough together with all the remaining flour. (Certain flours need a little more or less water, so feel free to adjust.)

Stage 3: kneading!
This is where you get stuck in. With a bit of elbow grease, simply push, fold, slap and roll the dough around, over and over, for 4 or 5 minutes until you have a silky and elastic dough.

Stage 4: first prove
Flour the top of your dough. Put it in a bowl, cover with clingfilm, and allow it to prove for about half an hour until doubled in size – ideally in a warm, moist, draught-free place. This will improve the flavour and texture of your dough and it’s always exciting to know that the old yeast has kicked into action.

Stage 5: second prove, flavouring and shaping
Once the dough has doubled in size, knock the air out for 30 seconds by bashing it and squashing it. You can now shape it or flavour it as required – folded, filled, tray-baked, whatever – and leave it to prove for a second time for 30 minutes to an hour until it has doubled in size once more. This is the most important part, as the second prove will give it the air that finally ends up being cooked into your bread, giving you the really light, soft texture that we all love in fresh bread. So remember – don’t fiddle with it, just let it do its thing.
If you’re planning on doing any kind of filled bread, this is the time to fill the dough and form the loaves.

Stage 6: cooking your bread
Very gently place your bread dough on to a flour-dusted baking tray and into a preheated oven. Don’t slam the door or you’ll lose the air that you need. Bake according to the time and temperature given with your chosen recipe. You can tell if it’s cooked by tapping its bottom – if it sounds hollow it’s done, if it doesn’t then pop it back in for a little longer. Once cooked, place on a rack and allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes.

slowly, I’m coming back.

let’s be happy.

A beautiful Sunday spent around a wood table, simple and good food and wine. Food made with love, that brought strangers together.

Obrigada, Inês.

Experimenting with new flours is a good way of doing classics with a twist. Scones are a winter staple in our home, and we usually do them on Sunday nights, served with a hot cup of tea. This recipe, taken from Good to the Grain, from Kim Boyce, also comes up with a new way of presenting. Instead of shaping small balls of dough, you halve the dough into two discs and fill one with jam and then top with the other and slice it.

What you get are these beautiful and rustic scones, filled with your favourite jam.

Barley Scones

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons barley flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt*
1/2 cold unsalted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup Fig Jam (or any jam you like)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and place a rack in the center of the oven.  Rub a baking sheet lightly with butter.  Sift the dry ingredients, flour through salt, into a large bowl, pouring back into the bowl any bits of grain or other ingredients that may remain in the sifter.

Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and add them to the try mixture.  Using your hands, toss the dry mixture with the butter until it is thoroughly coated. Starting from the back of the bowl and working forward, pinch the pieces of butter between your fingers breaking it into smaller bits.  Continue rubbing until the butter is about the sizes of peas.  Be sure to do this as quickly as possible in order for the butter to stay cold.

In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg until thoroughly combined.  Scrape the buttermilk and egg into the dry mixture, and mix until barley combined.  Use a spatula to transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface.  If the dough is too sticky to handle dust it with flour and fold it together a few times.  Divide the dough into 2 equal size pieces.  Flour your hands and pat each piece of dough into a disk about 1/2 inch thick and approximately the same size.

Cover one disk with the jam or marmalade. Place the other disk on top of the jam and press down gently so that the dough settles into the jam.  (I found an offset spatula very helpful to ease the 2nd round of dough off the counter and onto the jam.) Brush the dough lightly with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Use a sharp knife to slice the circle into wedges, like a pie.  Carefully place the wedges on the prepared baking sheet, leaving a couple inches between them.

Bake the scones for 20-25 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through.  They are ready when their tops are golden brown and some of the jam has bubbled over onto the pan.  To keep the scones from sticking to the pan, slide a thin spatula underneath them while they’re still warm and move them to a baking rack.  The scones are best eaten warm from the oven or later that same day

taken a few years ago, on our first trip together.

the beauty of life is being by your side.

I have a thing for cheese. I could live off it, it could be in every meal I ate and I have yet to taste a cheese I don’t like.

We had been in our new home for a few months only, and it was the first time I had a kitchen of my own. Even if I always cooked a lot at my parent’s house, it is very different to own your space, to have your particular way of staking the plates, mugs or of  keeping the spices. It’s the things that make it your kitchen.

Summer left and the somewhat cold days were starting and you cold see it in the morning light – winter was coming. I felt the need to feed my love something new, something hearty and I opened Julia Child’s Mastering  the Art of French Cooking.

 I always thought there is something special about soufflés, the way they are so airy, so unpredictable and supposed to rise in the warm oven, and then slowly fall apart in your plate. So, on that day, I fed my lover a cheese soufflé.

Two great loves, side by side, at the table.

Julia Child’s Cheese Souflé

2 tablespoons finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, or other hard cheese
2 ½ tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for buttering dish
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk, hot
½ teaspoon paprika
A pinch of nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
3 grinds of freshly ground pepper
4 egg yolks

5 egg whites

1 cup coarsely grated cheese, such as gruyère or sharp cheddar

Generously butter a soufflé dish. Roll the grated Parmigiano Reggiano in the buttered baking dish to cover the bottom and side. Set the oven rack in the lower third of the oven, and preheat to 200º.

To make the béchamel:
Over moderate heat, melt 2 ½ tablespoons butter in a saucepan; then blend in the flour with a wooden spoon to make a smooth but somewhat loose paste. Stir until the butter and flour foam together for two minutes without coloring to more than a buttery yellow. Remove from heat. When the bubbling stops, in a few seconds, pour in the hot milk all at once, whisking vigorously to blend. Place the saucepan over moderately high heat, whisking rather slowly, reaching all over the bottom and sides of the pan, until the sauce comes to the simmer. Simmer two to three minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the sauce is very thick and coats a spoon nicely. Whisk in the seasonings, and remove from heat. Whisk the egg yolks into the hot sauce one by one, transfer sauce to a large bowl, and set it aside.

In a clean bowl and with clean beaters, beat the egg whites to stiff shining peaks. Scoop a quarter of the egg whites into the bowl with the sauce, and stir together with a wooden spoon. Turn the rest of the egg whites on top; rapidly and delicately, fold them in with a rubber spatula, alternating scoops of the spatula with sprinkles of the coarsely grated cheese. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish, and use your spatula to trace a circle in the top of the batter, just inside the rim of the dish. This will help the soufflé to rise freely.

Place the soufflé in the oven, and turn the oven temperature down to 175º. Bake about 25 to 30 minutes (without opening the oven), until the soufflé has puffed one to three inches over the rim of the baking dish and the top has browned nicely. Serve immediately, because yes, it will deflate within a few minutes. To serve without crushing it, use two serving spoons pointed down and back-to-back; plunge them into the crust and tear it apart.

around Lisbon.