Many moons ago, working for Chef Jean Michel Bergounoux, I was lucky to get a chance not only to learn his cooking methods as well as techniques. The experience was hands-on private cooking classes. By far he was my biggest influence and I think one of the best chefs in New York City. Strictly rooted in the French classics, he has years of experience in the most renowned kitchens both in France and throughout Europe. Beyond experience, he has an adventurous streak, a constant curiosity to try elements not in his usual repertoire, something that would seem out of  terroir for many Frenchmen.

For instance, he'll create a chutney, more common in the pantries of English kitchens. When first meeting to discuss our opening menu for the restaurant we were launching, Jean Michel had us take notes for the various preparations. One recipe he pulled out was for rhubarb chutney. Jean Michel told us he had found it in some old American cook book. Since the name of the book escapes me, I credit it to my former boss and mentor. The flavor packed chutney  accompanied a roasted duck breast. We often used it with seared foie gras for amuse bouche, or ate leftover in the copper pots  by spoonfuls.

Recently I rustled up the recipe from my folder. Its food stained and yellowing pages had already been torn from the notebook years ago. I wanted to pass it on to a new friend, Sonia F. Bañuelos, who makes some fabulous chutneys herself on her site, Saffron Paisley. She mentioned her gardens rich bounty of California fruits, herbs and vegetables and how she is  preparing all sorts of delicious sounding recipes for preserving from her home  kitchen. I decided to send over this recipe so she could rate this old favorite of mine.  The recipe is a deliciously spiced, unctuous jam, a perfect foil for foie gras or duck breast like we made with Jean Michel. It's a refreshing snack like the one pictured above, which I accompanied with a some rye hopped beer recently. I am sure Sonia will find a good dish to marry it with!

Rhubarb Chutney

2lbs Rhubarb

11/2 cups onions chopped

1/2 cup of raisins

11/3 cup sugar

4 cloves garlic chopped

1 Tbsp. ginger grated (you can use dry, but I prefer fresh!)

1Tbsp. Sel rose or Salt peter (optional)

1Tbsp. Mustard seeds

1/2 Tsp.Coriander seeds

1/2 Tsp. cinnamon

2 Cups Vinegar

1/2 cup of sugar

Cut rhubarb into dice, add the rest of the ingredients except the 1/2 cup of sugar, cook over low heat covered for about an hour, stirring  every few minutes to avoid scorching. Add in the last 1/2 cup of sugar and cool. Can be eaten cold or heated according to what you serve it with.

As of this posting, they will have drilled a hole and removed something from my main line! But as of now (days before) I am still behind the stove, manning the fires, folding the dough, making the stocks! Chefs never stop. We're burdened by ideas, insecurity and probably too much drink or something. You can't stop cooking, baking or doing what you love just cause your sinuses are backed up. Right? Gotta deal! What better time then now to try a new product?

So I have this wonderful sister who happens to be a great baker herself. Whenever possible she sends me sacks of Swiss flour. Recently  she tried sending some, but it seems our regulatory system won't let it come through. What a drag! My sister's last care package contained a product that always has interested me; backferment from Sekowa. "Sekowa Spezial Backferment" is a dry and fine granulate made from high-grade honey, biologically grown peas and wheat. It's not technically a sourdough,If someone knows other elements, please tell me! I am still investigating what it is myself but haven't much via Google. The product is widely used in bakeries and households in Germany and Switzerland.It's origins have sort of health nut hippie roots, according to my forum friend Carla in New Zealand; pointing to a Rudolf Steiner connection, kind of  a cultist culture (pun intended), born from his ideas on bio dynamic farming.

While visiting my sister on my last trip to Switzerland, I tried to cultivate this stuff into a levain,with no success. I made the mistake of assuming it was dry sourdough and fed it a regimen of 1.1.1 like I was doing at home. So when I received this last batch it sat around for a long while until I was  in between feedings of my wheat levain, scratched my head and ripped open the seal.

An alum of Bethesdabakin, Brad Prezant and Nina Holm Jensen both left some answers to several queries regarding this product on Dan Lepards site and Brad kindly sent me some notes from his own bread seminar in France last year.

This recent project of mine was as follows; The first dough was a combination of spelt and rye fed from my initial starter, which had wheat and rye, and the other I combined backferment to make a sourdough recipe,(It worked!), which I  adapted from Bread Matters,by Andrew Whitley.

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging recently. I'm taking a bit of a break, the reason being my schnozz,specifically a deviated septum. Work load has been at the limit and thus with illness and stress,can make a less than happy puppy!  But to get better... to lift my spirits before heading to the doc for some minor surgery, I have been cooking and baking,  as well as visiting the farmers market too. All to say that won't fill this post with lots of words, but rather offer plenty of pictures, with titles where appropriate!

Zatar grilled lamb chops with salad and patacones,(fried plantains.)

Cold Lobster,shrimp, purslane, hearts of palm ceviçhe and lobster tomalley dressing.

Most excellent blueberry and oat muffins

Lettuces from the Union Square Green Market

The bounty of spring and summer!

Rising miche in a banneton

My adaption of Alain Coumont's wheat bread, my Pain Quotidien.

Rhubarb, strawberry galette.

Levain based on Jeffrey Hamelman's Norwich sourdough.

 
70% Rye/30% wheat, Detmolder 1 Step method from Dieter Buschmans spreadsheet!

No name levain based on a pide recipe!

As any regular reader of this blog might guess, pizza has always been a  favorite for me. It can be interpreted in so many way. And its derivative names comes in so many different languages! Here's my own addition to those pies and names. This pie is an off shoot of two cultural mainstays; a marriage of sourdough Neapolitan pizza with Alsatian ingredients of a flammeküche, a pizza with no borders!

This will be going to Zorra 1 x umrühren for her pizza BBD 2 year anniversary, viel spaße!(Got to join in the fun, because pizza is fun, isn't it?)

Pizza Napoletana
Recipe adapted to sourdough from Verace Neopolitano style pizza

500g “00” caputo or A.P. flour
325g aqua (water)
20g sale  (salt)
3gr livieto (yeast)

Sourdough version: Based on 100% percent hydrated starter

376 g flour
201g Water
247g Levain
20g salt

Flammeküche topping:

Onions about 2 medium sliced

a couple of slice's of really good smoked bacon cut into small dice

a bay leaf, salt and pepper

2 Tablespoons of greek yogurt, a spoon of quark or fresh cheese, salt, pepper nutmeg.

Sweat onions in a pan with about a quater of a cup of water till softened and starting to get golden brown, add bacon and continue cooking with bay leaf, season and let cool.

mix the yougurt and fresh quark, season.

Cover the rolled out dough with yogurt and cheese mixture, spread cooled onion topping.

Bake in pre-heated oven @ 500 F till bottom and edges of pizza or flammeküche get a nice crusty brown look!

Drink with a good, no excellent beer, maybe an ale, IPA or lager?

Bread and beer are, by far, two of my favorite food and drink. They are intertwined  by virtue of  similar ingredients and fermentation processes The only difference is the lack of flour in beer, hence the moniker "liquid bread." After so many posts about baking, I found myself thinking how  strange I haven't been talking about beer with as much gusto as bread?

When I was in the Army in Germany, we drank lots of bier. Luckily, I was in the bosom of hops and visited amazing  beer institutions like the braühaus. A good thing! Tankards, boots, steins, almost anything that could hold the beverage had a traditional name,a song, a method of ordering, even how to drink, all symbolizing something in ceremony of the culture that is beer. 

In the past few weeks as the weather has warmed up, the seasonal urge for "a cold one" emerges as something offering satisfaction, flavor, and delight. And so preparing for our Memorial bar-b-que, perusing the shelves at Fairway market for sundry sausages and cheese, I spotted some fantastic looking beers and tucked a few in between the apples and pate!

Never one to shy away from a cold glass or room temperature ale like in Wales a few years ago, I picked out a wonderful brew from Brooklyn beer company. It's a recent addition to the wide selection of  homegrown beers offered, but this beer is sort of a specialty Brooklyn Local 2, a golden brown colored ale with flavors of citrus, just perfect with Memorial Day grilling. Sharing it, my cousin concurred, offering up her quickly finished glass to be re-filled!



The other specialty or novelty beer I found on the same shelf was called "Hebrew, The Chosen Beer."  Looking at the label, I thought it was a joke. On closer inspection, something stood out, the words "rye malt IPA.: Hmmm, speaking those words to myself, my ears peaked and the hair on the back of my neck stood up straight. Rye! This one I am tasting over the weekend. I have to be in the mood and maybe have to think of food appropriate to pair with this one?

So the other day after a trying shift at work, I stopped at Superiour Market, my local beer store. When I say "beer store," it should be pointed out that this store's windows are covered with all sorts of labels, some that I have never seen.

There are Belgian ales, fruit flavored, even one made with bananas and another with coffee! They also carry weisse biers from areas of Germany through which I have never passed, or at least I don't recall. There are also lots of American artisan beers, as well as French and Canadian and... you name it, they have it! This visit I limited myself to these two new brands, as my previous purchases were waiting at home for an indulgent weekend of good food and beer. So I spied a small bottle of beer called Cane and Ebel, with the interesting combination of Thai palm sugar and rye malt.

The other is Unibroue, a beer from Quebec that my brother told me about and swears it's a keeper, lots of yeast fermented in the bottom of the bottle!

I popped open this bottle after cooling it down, and was really pleased. It was sweet and reminded me of a beer I used to drink at a favorite beer pub, years ago. This would go so well with a onion tart. It's got a beautiful head and reddish color, almost smokey with a definite note of the rye I am happy to say.

The next few bottles I will open and try with some notes,suggestions for pairing perhaps? Beer is an old friend. Like wine, it's full of depth, sometimes maligned and misunderstood, but it's a drink that hearkens back to our early days as humans, cracked grain, a little water and heat, fermentation! It's magic.

Oh and please don't drink and drive, that is just stupid!

Given my previous tribulations with rye, any reader of this blog must know that I'm not the kind of baker to accept defeat in the face of adversity, especially in my search for wholesome German breads. 

While not fortunate with all results, I still can't throw in the towel. There are too many deep flavored breads, whether with whole rye, cracked meal, vollkorn as they are named. These are whole grain loaves with only the grain and occasional additions of nuts or seed held together by nothing more then the paste made from a finer milling of grain and water. Sort of like cement, but with a lighter aspect!

In my quest for the perfect bread, I have found so many different variations of well known loaves from the German speaking lands, including Switzerland, Germany, Austria. The language in each of these particular places are common but, like the breads, vary in colloquial jargon as well. So when I try to use whatever means at my disposal to make a loaf of rye or spelt, it's a bit like deciphering the Rosetta stone! Thankfully I can wander over to Nil's site. He's is always a good guide for any sort of bread.Thankfully he has translated recipes I can't understand, and occasionally even sends me some awesome looking bread. Recently, it was a schwarzbrot, which is one I aim to bake, myself. But this loaf, (in the picture above), was one Nil's adapted from Maggie Glezer's book, Artisan baking in America. It's his adaption of a schrotbrot, a grain bread with some added seeds. My dilemma is the ingredients, and how we can decipher the grades or types.

Some definitions: My own humble efforts with bad translating tools available.

Schrot: pellet, grain, cracked grain

Fein: finely ground grain

Mittel: a coarser or middle cracked grain

Gross: Large, cracked grain

So this mystery isn't answered, yet! I am still seeking advice and knowledge regarding these various types from all sources, googled or even e-mailed in by hopefully someone knowledgable in milled rye.

For example:

Roggen/ Rye: Fill in some of the blanks!

Roggen geschnitten =cuts

Roggenflocken = Rolledflakes,

Roggenganzkorn

Roggenkleie =Bran

Roggenmehl 2500

Roggenmehl 500

Roggenmehl 960

Roggenquetschkorn

Roggenvollkornschrot fein

Roggenvollkornschrot grob

Roggenvollkornschrot mittel

Roggenvollmehl

 Roggenganzkorn
 
Roggenmehl 2500

 Roggenmehl 960

 Roggenschrot extra grob

 Roggenschrot fein

 Roggenschrot mittel

 Roggenvollmehl= whole grain flour

It's not going to be easy, especially as the state that our milling process differs here in America. It's no wonder that German rye breads aren't commonly baked or found on many bakers shelves!
If you're a German speaker, or a schrot loving home baker like me, give us a hand defining some of these mysterious terms. I am sure once we get some knowledge,we can start baking with a lot more ease and understanding!