Meet Big Bertha

Say hello to Big Bertha, my new dutch oven! I got her for my birthday and tested her out over the weekend. First I had to replace her knob with a generic stainless steel knob I found around the house from a Tramontina steamer. Bertha is a Lodge oven, and like other ovens, her original knob could only withstand temperatures up to 400F. This, would just not do. After an exhaustive search--I even tried the metal-looking cabinet pulls from the bathroom--I finally found a replacement knob.

First up:

Artisan Bread with Sun-dried Tomatoes, Olives and Parmesan

Adapted from Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread

3 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1 5/8 cups water

Mix all three ingredients together until just combined in a large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and store in a room temperature environment for 12-18 hours. The air bubbles are worth the wait!

Add

1/2 cup grated parmesan (I used 18-month aged parmesan from Trader Joe's)

1/2 cup sliced olives (green or black depending on preference)

4 large pieces of sun-dried tomatoes preserved in olive oil (diced)

Incorporate the above ingredients, with a sprinkle of flour. Recover with plastic wrap and let dough rest for 15 minutes.

Scoop dough out of the bowl on to a generously floured surface. The dough will be very sticky and stringy. Slap the dough around with some flour and shape it into a round ball with flour until it no longer sticks to your hands. Generously flour a cotton towel or a large piece of plastic wrap and place the shaped dough on top and cover with a well-floured cotton towel or paper towel. Let sit for two hours.

30 minutes before baking, pre-heat oven to 450F with the dutch oven inside. Dump the dough into the dutch oven and shake the pot down until the dough settles. You will hear a sweet sweet sizzle when the bread dough hits the hot oven. Close the lid immediately.

The lid keeps all the moisture from the dough within the pot and creates a steamy environment for a crunchy crust. Cook for 30 minutes with lid on and 15 minutes without the lid. The bread should be done baking after about 45 minutes (or until the top of the boule is browned). Let it rest for about an hour if you can wait!

As soon as I took this bread out to cool I began to cook a beef stew and used all 2.5 liters of Bertha for a delicious Irish Beef Stew that spent 5 hours in the oven. I will be giving her a break for the rest of the week. More breads to come soon!

Kitchen Green Thumb and Liz Biscuits

While preparing some stir-fry and baking red velvet cupcakes

last Wednesday, my friends and I decided to try out a nifty Martha Stewart-ish trick I had overheard on the FoodNetwork. We only used the green sections of the green onions for our main course and put the remaining white bulbs in some water. After a week I was pleasantly surprised to find over 4 inches of healthy green leaves sprouted from each bulb! YAY! I wonder what other greens I can grow in water as simply as these...

After making the red velvet cupcakes I wanted to find a quick and easy way to use up my nearly full pint of buttermilk, without having to use another stick of butter to accompany it. This was quite hard to find... so I came up with my own biscuit recipe. These biscuits are soft, fluffy and flavorful, but not as flaky as the typical buttermilk biscuit with the added butter. (They are quite a bit healthier too... even though baking, health and deliciousness don't usually go hand in hand). Given how easy and quick these were to make, I'll definitely be using this recipe again.

Liz Biscuits

Prep time 10 minutes

Baking time 10 minutes

10 biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour (and more for dusting the board and your hands)
3/4 cup buttermilk (approx)

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 T olive oil (any kind you like)

1/4 c grated parmesean cheese (optional to your tastes)

1/8 c crumbled feta cheese (optional to your tastes)

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Combine all the dry ingredients and add the olive oil. Add the buttermilk until the mixture is just combined. Flip the mixture out onto a floured surface. With floured hands, pat the dough until about half inch thick and cut out biscuits with a cutter (I used a small tumbler). Place them on a floured or greased cookie sheet. If you don't plan on eating or baking the entire batch, just place the extra biscuits on their own baking sheet and put the entire thing into the freezer. Once they harden, transfer them into a ziploc for storage. I think this will prevent them from sticking together.

This is great

funny asian baby burger
Originally uploaded by feed scott

Baked Goodies

Rather than write, here are some pictures of some cinnamon buns I baked semi-recently:

The Fun Begins...

Let's dive right in... First, a major disclaimer: I have never been one to keep steady written entries of anything.  I've always been too easily distracted, bored/boring, busy/lazy... let the excuses roll on, to keep up with blogs or diaries.

That said, WELCOME!

So, what spurred me to start this blog, given my aforementioned defects? I felt strangely compelled to respond to this posting, regarding the associations between the display of body language and level of acquaintance-ship while passing by collegemates on campus.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the post and the analysis, I couldn't but help to go "liz" on it... sorry Pablo.

Disclaimer number 2... should be implicit of most if not all following blog entries and liz.  Sarcasm rules me.

1) In this highly scientific and objective analysis... Should body language be independent of oratorical recognition?

While Hi, Heys, What's ups and How's it goings could be grouped under "Facial Acknowledgment", doing so would take out subtle but implicit factor of time in all such interactions. This does not mean that someone saying "How's it going?" (HIG) expects a full account of your day, mood and feelings, but it does mean that there was sufficient time in passing that allowed them to pull off the phrase, whereas a "Hi" would've left empty space and potential awkwardness.

Therefore, a troublesome problem arises, is the HIG a reflection of a friend-type taking the time to throw out a HIG, or someone trying to portray friend-type but really trying to swallow up passing time by filling it with a content-less greeting? Hmmm. Something to think about.

2) Zombie Walkers

This topic is particularly dear to me because I am neither an iPod wearer, cell-phone fiend, or shoe starer.  I tend to walk, staring forward at my destination, to point where everything else blurs.  In attempt to include others like me (if there are any out there), here are some words.  

Zombie Walkers don't mean to be mean or purposely ignore others.  They need someone to snap them out of the "zone", be it a close face to face eye contact smile, wave or straight up shove.  Because such a "zone" exists, the reaction of a zombie walker to the potential acquaintance is particularly valuable for the friendship evaluation.  Getting snapped out of the zone doesn't give the zombie walker enough time to fake a reaction or genuine emotion. 

Smile: I like you, thank you for saying HI, friend.  Frown/twisted eyebrow face eventually fading into a smile: I don't like you/I don't know you, why did you wake me from my zone, but I don't want to offend you so I'll throw you a smile. Expressionless: I am still in the zone, wake me!

Despite the ease of reading Zombie Walker (ZW) - regular person passing interactions, one could never evaluate Zombie Walker - Zombie Walker interactions... for obvious reasons. 

Despite the weirdness factor, and potential walking-into-things hazards, there are advantages to being a ZW. Unlike regular people, you are only stopped/awakened by people who genuinely like you, who else would expend so much energy to distract you? Time flies when you're zoning out. Potentially awkward encounters are avoided because no encounter is made.

The end.