Nan’s Pan Rolls Recipe

I’ve mentioned before that I regret not asking my grandmother for copies of her recipes; honestly, I felt like that indomitable old lady was too tough to die, until the very day that she passed away. As I grew up, I did less and less cooking with her — she would cook for me or I for her, but rarely did we cook together anymore. It became all that much more difficult once my attention (and hers as well) was focused on my children. I didn’t realize that it would be something I missed so much.

White pan rolls straight out of the oven.

In Nan’s memory, I’ve been trying to recreate her famous pan roll recipe. Whenever we were in town, or she was visiting us, Nan was always the one to cook Sunday dinner (which was always understood to mean “roast beef dinner”). Her fresh rolls were an integral part of that meal, and came to be considered by all the family as the proper accompaniment. She would start the dough and leave it to rise before she left for church in the morning, then punch it down and form the rolls immediately upon returning home. It was a Sunday ritual.

White flour pan rolls after the second rise.

To me, pan rolls should be squished as tightly as possible into their pan so that, when they rise, they rise upward and become tall and skinny once they are pulled away from their fellows. They should be yeasty, but not too fluffy, and fairly filling. They should be golden on top, crispy around the edges, and soft (but not raw) in the middle. With this recipe, I think I’ve made them as close to what Nan made as I possibly can.

White pan rolls after the second rise.

Nan’s Pan Rolls
Yields 35 rolls

In a large bowl, mix together:
– 4 1/2 cups (500g) all-purpose flour*
– 2 packages (14g) quick-rise instant yeast
– 2 1/2 tsp salt
Add to the dry ingredients:
– 3 cups very warm water (120ºF to 130ºF)
– 2 large eggs
– 1/4 cup (4 Tbsp) lard, melted
Stir by hand until mixture is more-or-less smooth.
Gradually mix in:
– 4 1/2 cups (500g) all-purpose flour
If the dough starts to become tough to knead, do not add any more flour. When flour is fully incorporated, dough should be smooth and elastic, but not sticky. If dough is sticky, add all-purpose flour 1 Tbsp at a time until stickiness abates.

Whole wheat dough divided in half and made half into pan rolls, half into a loaf of bread, after the second rise.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about 8 minutes. Oil a large mixing bowl. Form the dough into a ball and place it in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a clean, damp tea towel. Place the bowl in a warm, dry area with no drafts. Allow the dough to rise until double, about 1 hour.

Punch down the dough. Grease a 9″x13″ cake pan. Divide the dough into 35 approximately equal-sized portions. Form the portions into balls and place them in lines closely together to fill up the cake pan.** Cover the pan with a clean, damp tea towel and allow to rise again until double, about 1 hour.

Whole wheat loaf after baking.

Preheat your oven to 450ºF (232ºC). Bake rolls for 10 minutes. Turn heat down to 350ºF (177ºC) and bake for about 20 minutes more. Check to see if they are done by removing the rolls all in one piece from the pan and tapping them on the bottom. When cooked through, they should make a hollow sound. Remove the rolls from the pan immediately and place them on a wire cooling rack.

To create the glossy shine on top of the rolls, use waxed paper to pick up:
– 1/2 to 1 Tbsp cold butter
Rub the tops of the rolls with the butter, keeping the waxed paper between the butter and your hand.

Nan’s pan rolls taste best when served immediately; to keep them at their freshest, pull them apart only when they are about to be eaten. These rolls will keep for three or four days if wrapped in a clean plastic bag. Make sure they are wrapped up only after totally cool, or they will go soggy.

Whole wheat pan rolls being pulled apart by my temporarily-tattooed Thing 1.

*For whole wheat bread, replace the first 4 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour with all-purpose whole wheat flour.

**Alternately, this recipe makes two good-sized loaves of bread. I used a slightly too-small loaf pan to create a “mushroom-top” loaf; if you want your loaf to have smoother sides, use a pan that is at least 9.5″x5.5″. You could also make three smaller loaves in smaller loaf pans instead of two big ones. Allow the loaves to have a second rise as per pan roll instructions. Be careful of cooking times if you change the shape of the end product. Bread loaves will take 10min at 450ºF (232ºC), and then they must be turned down to 350ºF (177ºC). However, how long they stay in at 350ºF depends on the size of loaves you make. When in doubt, bake for less time and check often to see if they’re done.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Back in high school, before the Internet was really a thing and email had only just caught on, I had a pen pal from Japan. I would spend hours composing letters to her, trying desperately to form coherent sentences with an extraordinarily limited grasp of the Japanese language. Her letters, written for the most part in English, showed her struggle with a new language as well. Even so, we communicated fairly well without being able to rely on body language, tone of voice, or facial expression (if at a fairly low grade level). That is, until I mentioned chicken noodle soup.

My pen-pal wrote that she had been suffering through a cold, and I made an offhand comment in my reply along the lines of, “Make sure you have your chicken noodle soup!” Her reply was sheer confusion. These days she would have Googled it on her smartphone, but that wasn’t an option back then. What was so special about chicken noodle soup?

Chicken noodle soup made with ditalini noodles, with a bacon and avocado sandwich on homemade German Beer Bread (World Breads: From Pain de Campagne to Paratha, page 19).

To be honest, the chicken noodle soup that I had when I was growing up wasn’t special at all. It came from a can if I was lucky; it would be plopped as a gelatinous tube of goo into a pot with a couple of cans of water, then stirred until smooth and heated until warmed through. If I was unlucky, or if we were camping, we had the dried soup mix instead. I have to admit that I didn’t really like either of these options, and it’s not because I don’t like instant soups. I use cream of mushroom soup in a number of recipes, and dried onion soup mix is a key ingredient in a great chip dip. I thought that I just didn’t like chicken noodle soup. (This didn’t stop me from having it when I was sick, though. Also being pampered by my mom, drinking flat ginger ale, burrowing under a pile of blankets on the couch to watch bad daytime TV, and draping my head with a towel then holding it over a bowl of hot water to let the steam clear my sinuses.)

Chicken noodle soup made with ditalini noodles and a few more spices, with a chicken salad, cheddar cheese, and spinach sandwiches on homemade Nan’s Pan Rolls, and navel orange slices on the side.

Then, last week I had a crock pot full of chicken bones simmering away for broth, and I thought to myself, “Why not?” I had never made chicken noodle soup from scratch before. I knew that if I didn’t end up liking it, the rest of the family likes the canned version, so it probably wouldn’t go to waste. I followed the Chicken Noodle Soup recipe on page 125 of the Joy of Cooking (2006 edition). And you know what? I actually quite liked it. Homemade doesn’t taste much like the canned stuff at all.

I was happy enough with the recipe that I made soup and sandwiches again yesterday after having to pick my daughter up sick from school. The jury’s out on whether this soup has any true health benefits, but it’s warm and comforting and easy on the stomach, so it’s good to eat when you’re not feeling well. It’s not much more difficult to turn into a meal than the canned stuff, either — so long as you have some broth in the freezer (which I almost always do).

Did I ever properly explain the chicken noodle soup tradition to my Japanese pen pal? Knowing my grasp of the language, probably not. I did try. I even sent her a package of the dried stuff and gave my best shot at translating the directions. Should she ever come to Canada, I think I’d like her to try my homemade version. Then she might understand why, to many Canadians, chicken noodle soup is a true comfort food.

English Muffins

I love English muffins, and not because I am of British ancestry. English muffins aren’t English at all, really; the dish as we know it today was developed by Samuel Bath Thomas in New York City in the late 1800’s. However Thomas, who came from England, did base his recipe on the yeast-leavened muffins sold door-to-door in his home country, back before most people had ovens in their homes. Those were the kind of muffins that they were talking about in the song “Do You Know the Muffin Man”. In England they are just called “muffins”, and are differentiated from quick bread muffins by context.

Thomas English muffins are still sold in the United States today, but so far as I can tell aren’t distributed in Canada. So the English muffins we have here are imitations of an American product, which is in itself an imitation of a British product. I’m sure we’re not getting the most authentic muffin experience here.

So a couple of weekends ago I decided to take a stab at making my own English muffins. The first thing I had to do was make sure I had the correct equipment. Until I tried to make them, I didn’t know that English muffins weren’t baked; I discovered that I would needed a griddle (which is why they’re sometimes called “griddle muffins”).

My stove is a bit atypical. It it a hand-me-down from family who were upgrading, but it was a very fancy model (Jenn-Air F121-C) thirty years ago when it was new. Each side of the stove-top can be removed and switched out; there are simple electric burner panels, a ceramic cook-top panel, a grill panel, and a griddle panel. Although all of these extras came with the stove, I had only ever used the electric burners, so switching for the griddle was an interesting experience, seeing as the stove’s user manual disappeared ages ago.

Another piece of equipment I needed was English muffin rings… Which I didn’t have, and would have been hard to find on a Sunday morning when most stores were closed. So I chose a recipe that made a more cohesive muffin and didn’t need the rings: How To Make English Muffins from TheKitchn.com

The muffins were tasty, but I wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied with the internal texture. My muffins rose nicely, but solidly, and as such were missing the large nooks and crannies that are, to me, the signature characteristic of a proper English muffin. I’m not sure if that was a problem with the recipe or with my technique. I did the quick version of the recipe and started it that morning. TheKitchen.com says that the starter can ferment overnight and the dough can be left to rise for up to three days in the fridge, so perhaps I will try it that way next time. If I still don’t get the texture I’m looking for, I’ll invest in the English muffin rings and try a different recipe.

That being said, the muffins that I made were definitely edible, and I don’t think the batch even lasted the day. I served them with bacon, cheese, and a fried egg for lunch, and they were eaten spread with elderberry jam as snacks in the evening. My family obviously isn’t nearly as critical of my end results as I am, since they have asked me to make them again soon.

Dr. Seuss’s Birthday

Yesterday, March 2nd, was famous children’s author Dr. Seuss’s birthday; he would have been 113 this year. This year his birthday coincided with UNESCO World Book Day in the UK (they have other holidays on April 23rd, which is when the rest of the world marks it, so for the UK it’s the first Thursday in March). I’m sure that Mr. Geisel would have approved.

Dr. Seuss’s birthday is a big thing for preschool children around here. Teachers generally spend at least a day focusing on his fabulous books; some even stretch it out into a whole week of activities. The environmental themes in The Lorax alone can spread to an entire sciene unit! I read all of the Dr. Seuss books as a child (except for the few that have been published since), and when the time came to read them to my own children, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. They have such great rhythm that I don’t mind reading them again and again. It’s a good thing, too, because when my kids like a book, I end up reading it until I could recite it in my sleep.

To celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday, I made Green Eggs and Ham for dinner. (I was going to read the book to my youngest as well, but apparently her teachers had beaten me to the punch, so we enjoyed Fox In Socks instead.) The eggs were simple scrambled eggs with grated cheddar cheese and a bit of chopped parsley, with a couple of drops of food colouring to provide the virulent green. I couldn’t figure out any way to safely turn the ham green, so I just cut slices of PC Free From Smoked Ham and dry-fried them in a non-stick pan. I also baked a loaf of Fast White Bread (2006 edition, page 597) and scooped some honeydew melon to supplement all that protein.

For dessert I made The Cat’s Hat Parfaits; you can find the recipe via Seussville.com. My kids loved it, and it’s a very healthy dessert (basically just berries and yogurt), so I didn’t mind serving it. In our house, dessert is generally reserved for special occasions.

Lastly, here are my Thing 1 and Thing 2. This picture is ancient now. They were so wee! I made the Thing 1 costume for the Halloween prior to that Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and I was lucky that it still fit in time for her to wear it to preschool. It’s an adapted Simplicity pajama pattern made from stretch cotton, and it was so comfy that she never tired of wearing it. The Thing 2 set was bought at Chapters before my Thing 2 was born.

Dad’s Biscuits (Baking Soda Biscuits) Recipe

One of the things I loved best as a child when coming in on a cold, blustery day was opening the door to the house and having the smell of fresh-baked biscuits wash over me. To me the smell goes along with the orange glow of incandescent lights shining through a window over a dark, snow-covered landscape. It is the scent of hanging up your sled or skates, taking off your snowsuit, and coming in for dinner.

Dad’s biscuits are one of the dishes for which he is best known; childhood friends of mine fondly remember them and often requested his recipe when they moved away from home. The biscuits were more of a winter dish, not because they are heavy, but because firing up the oven on a hot day was tantamount to sacrilege. However, my Nan (Dad’s mom) occasionally used these biscuits instead of cake when she made us a fresh berry trifle during summer visits.

My mother actually wrote down this recipe in the back of her Purity Cookbook (my second-favourite cookbook, after the Joy of Cooking). She copied it from my Nan’s recipe, who had in turn gotten it from my grandfather. Unfortunately, he died long before I was born, so I can’t ask him where he got it, but I suspect that he learned it when he took his turn cooking when working as a lumberjack in northern New Brunswick.

Dad’s Biscuits (Baking Soda Biscuits)
Yields 10-12 biscuits

Preheat oven to 450°F (230°C)
In a large bowl, mix together:
– 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 tsp baking soda
– 2 tsp cream of tartar*
– 1 tsp salt
– 2 tsp sugar
Into the dry ingredients, place:
– 1/2 cup lard**
With a pastry blender or two knives, cut lard into the flour until the pieces of lard are no bigger than a pea.
To the mixture, add:
– 1 cup milk***
With a sturdy spoon, stir in the milk until the mixture comes together into a single mass, as in the above photo.

Grease a cookie sheet. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough into ten to twelve roughly equal-sized portions (as per above photo). Leave at least an inch between each biscuit, as they will rise. You may have to use more than one cookie sheet to prevent the biscuits from sticking together; you may cook them in batches or side-by-side in the oven if your oven is large enough to accommodate.

Alternately, if you prefer more evenly-sized biscuits, you may roll out the dough onto a floured surface to between 3/4″ and 1″ thick. Use a round cookie cutter (one may be fashioned by cutting both ends out of a small soup can, removing the label, and giving it a good wash) or a floured drinking glass with straight sides to cut the biscuits to a uniform size.

Bake biscuits for 10 to 12 minutes at 450°F (230°C). Remove biscuits from cookie sheet and place onto cooling rack immediately after removing from oven.

These biscuits taste best the day they are baked (even better when served straight from the oven), although they will keep at room temperature in a sealed container for a few days. Make sure that they are fully cooled before they are stored, as otherwise they will go soggy.

*4 tsp baking powder may be substituted if you omit the cream of tartar and baking soda.
**Butter or vegetable shortening may be substituted for lard.
***Water may be substituted for milk.

This recipe is versatile and can be modified many different ways to create the best accompaniment to your meal.

Cheese Biscuits
Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup grated sharp cheese to the dry ingredients.

Red-Lobster-Style Cheddar Biscuits
Add 3/4 cup grated old cheddar cheese to the dry ingredients. After biscuits are baked, melt 1/2 cup butter or margarine and stir in 1/2 tsp garlic powder. While it is all still hot, brush the garlic butter mixture over the biscuits.

Rosemary Biscuits
Add 1 Tbsp dried rosemary to the dry ingredients.

Raisin Biscuits
Add 1/2 cup raisins to the dry ingredients.

Cinnamon Roll Biscuits
After dough is mixed, roll it out onto a floured surface into a rough rectangle about 1/4″ thick. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar with 2 Tbsp cinnamon. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the entire top of the dough. Roll the dough into a tube, then slice it into 1/2″ slices with a sharp knife or unflavoured dental floss. Bake as you would plain biscuits.

Sweet Biscuits
Add 1 Tbsp sugar or brown sugar to the dry ingredients. Use sweet biscuits instead of cake when making fresh berry trifle or individual strawberry shortcakes.

All of the biscuits taste lovely when spread with butter or margarine. The plain and sweet versions also pair well with jams, jellies, and fruit butters. The plain and savoury ones also work with meats (hot and cold) and savoury soups.

Loco Moco

I am being completely honest when I tell you that I know absolutely very little about Hawaiian cuisine. It’s not just for reasons of distance; Hawaii is something like 5,000km from here, but Japan is about twice that, and I do know some things about Japanese food. Yet I can’t think of a single Hawaiian restaurant in this city. I’ve never seen any classes offered locally on how to cook Hawaiian food. We just don’t have a lot of Hawaiian people who have immigrated here, and who would blame them when you compare their tropical paradise with our frozen Canadian winters?

Given my lack of knowledge on the subject, it should surprise no one that I was stumped the other day when a Food Network show I was watching started talking about Loco Moco. Running the words through an online translator yielded, disturbingly, “crazy mucus” from Spanish — an unfortunate name, but no worse than “toad in the hole” or “bubble and squeak”. I then learned through Wikipedia that “the traditional loco moco consists of white rice, topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy”. “Well,” I thought, “That doesn’t sound hard. Let’s give it a go.”

I used the first recipe that came up when I searched for “Loco Moco recipe”: Guy Fieri’s Loco Moco. I don’t have any context to know how accurate this recipe is, but it was very tasty. Even my children requested that I make this comfort food again, and they are my harshest critics. Be warned, though, that this recipe says that it makes two servings, but it made enough for my family of four with leftovers. I know food portions are generally larger in the US, but do you really need a whole cup of rice (before cooking, so about two cups cooked), two quarter-pound hamburgers, and two fried eggs per person? That’s one heck of a lot of food.

Since we liked this dish so much, I think I may look into more Hawaiian dishes when I have the chance. Poké looks delicious, given that I love the sushi bowls that it resembles (and there are some restaurants in town that serve it now). Spam musubi looks like fun as well.

Purple Sweet Potato Bread

A few weeks ago I made one of my semi-regular trips to the Asian supermarket. I greatly enjoy shopping there; so much new stuff to try! I find the fresh fruit and vegetable section particularly appealing, as this is one of the few places in town where some of these foods can be found. On this particular trip, I found purple sweet potatoes — ones that were not just purple-skinned, but also purple-fleshed (I learned my lesson about checking the colour of the flesh before I bought them).

After peeling and boiling, this variety of sweet potato remained a vibrant deep purple. I served it a few times as a side-dish with dinner; it’s definitely not as sweet as the orange version I am most familiar with. I still had a few roots left over, so I decided to bake with them. I chose to use the Pumpkin Bread recipe from the Joy of Cooking (2006 edition, page 628). As per the book, “this loaf can be made with any cooked mashed squash, yams, or sweet potatoes”.

I was really hoping that the fantastic purple would come through, and I was happy to observe it in the batter, although it is diluted somewhat by the other ingredients.

Upon baking, though, I was highly disappointed by the colour. As it cooked, the loaf just turned brown, so much so that it is visually more-or-less indistinguishable from a pumpkin or orange sweet potato loaf. Obviously, some kind of chemical reaction had occurred.

Cracks on the surface of the loaf did reveal an odd green, so I decided to investigate. (I like “investigating” food, since this usually means I get to eat it.)

When sliced, it’s interesting how the outside turned brown, but the inside turned a dark, rotten turquoise. Even though the bread is only an hour or two old, it looked like it had been moldering in a damp cellar for years. Sadly, when I ate this bread, my taste buds and nose warred with my eyes; each slice was delicious and moist, and smelled delicous, but my eyes kept warning me that it was rotten, so I couldn’t enjoy it very much. (I had a similar experience with scrambled eggs turned green with food colouring for a meal of Green Eggs and Ham for a celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday on March 2nd a few years ago.)

I found it interesting how each slice different in its green shade, with the ones closest to the heel of the loaf being mostly brown, and the ones closer to the center of the loaf being mostly green, except for the edges.

All in all, this didn’t turn into the purple bread that I was hoping for, but as it stands, sweet potato bread made with purple sweet potatoes does have possibilities as Hallowe’en party food. That’s the one time of year that food that appears rotten while remaining safe and tasty is actually a triumph.

Sushi Bowls Recipe

Sushi bowls are a favourite go-to when I am running short of time to make dinner. Basically, a sushi bowl a bowl half-filled with rice, half-filled with sushi-style toppings. This dish takes as long as the rice takes to cook, so about 25min if you use sushi or basmati rice (much longer if you use brown or wild rice). This is a shortcut to some of the flavours of sushi without taking hours to roll it all up and years to perfect the craft.

Below you’ll find my recipe to make the sushi bowl pictured. Of course, feel free to experiment with the toppings. Vegetarian? Try avocado, cucumber, and mango. Will you eat only California rolls? Try imitation crab meat, cucumber, and avocado. Do you like barbecue? Try barbecue eel, which comes per-prepped at many Asian grocery stores and just requires reheating. Raw fish doesn’t frighten you? Try fresh sashimi-quality salmon, tuna, butterfish, and snapper. Like little bursts of saltiness? Include some tobiko (flying fish roe) or larger salmon roe. Want a little creaminess to your dinner? Drizzle the contents of the bowl with Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise. Prefer a little spice? Drizzle with Japanese spicy mayonnaise. Be creative! You don’t have to prepare this dish the same way twice if you don’t want to.

Sushi Bowls
Yields four adult servings

Rice
In a strainer, rinse until water runs clear:
– 2 cups sushi rice
Cook rice as per package directions*.

Toppings
While rice is cooking, boil a pot of water, leaving room for:
– 4 large eggs**
Once the water is at a rolling boil, add the eggs one by one gently to the water, using a spoon. Set a timer for six minutes. Once the time is up, remove the pot directly from the heat and carefully pour out the water. Refill the pot with cold water and wait for the eggs to cool (you may have to replace the water once or twice more to speed the process). Once the eggs are cool, remove them from the water, then peel them and set them aside.
Separately, peel and chop into bite-sized pieces:
– 2 ripe avocados
– 1 ripe mango
Wash and cut into bite-sized pieces:
– 1 small cucumber
Cut up with scissors into small strips:
– 2 sheets nori (sheets of Japanese seaweed)
Unpackage, wash, and peel if necessary:
– 16 precooked large shrimp
Open and set aside:
– 150g package smoked salmon

When the rice is finished cooking, fluff with chopsticks or a fork. Dish the rice evenly into four deep bowls. On top of the rice, into each bowl place:
– 1 soft-boiled egg (cut in half immediately before placing on the rice)
– 1/2 an avocado
– 1/4 of the mango
– 1/4 of the cucumber
– 1/4 of the nori strips
– 4 of the shrimp
– 1/4 of the smoked salmon.
Serve.

*When rice is cooked, you may drizzle it with 2 Tbsp rice vinegar. My kids don’t like the vinegar, so I don’t make it this way when I make it for them, but the vinegar tang will make it taste much more like sushi. (The word “sushi” actually refers to the cooked vinegared rice, *not* raw fish.)
**Soft-boiled eggs may be replaced with scrambled eggs. When you are mixing your eggs, season with 1 Tbsp of mirin (a sweet Japanese rice-wine sauce). This will make the scrambled eggs taste more like the kind that are used in tamago sushi (egg sushi).

P.S. Yes, I know I have more eggs in the picture than I have in the recipe. Of the people in my family, I’m the only one who likes two, so I averaged out the recipe somewhat. If you want more eggs, make more eggs!

Labskaus

On my trip to Hamburg last winter, I ate out often on Lange Reihe, a street with many restaurants not far from my hotel. On one such excursion I stopped in for lunch at Frau Möller (apparently named after the owner’s dog): a local pub that was busy whenever I walked past. I sat at the bar, since the rest of the pub was packed. The waiter was able to provide me with an English menu, thank heavens, because my accent is so bad that I can’t get a native-speaker to understand my small spattering of German.

Frau Möller at Lange Reihe 96, 20099 Hamburg, Germany

One section of the menu was labeled “Hamburg stuff”, which caught my attention immediately. Why visit another country if you’re not willing to try the local dishes? I was intrigued by the entry for labskaus, which had a description of the side-dishes but not the dish itself. I asked the server what it was, but his English failed him and he just shrugged and said, “Labskaus is… Labskaus.” So I had to try it.

Labskaus at Frau Möller

The toppings were two eggs sunny-side up, dill pickles, pickled beets, and rollmops. I’ll confess to never having had rollmops before, but a brief examination revealed that they are a sweet pickled fish (herring, I found out later) wrapped around a cucumber pickle and held together with wooden skewers. But what was underneath the eggs? That, apparently, was the labskaus itself. I feared at first, based on the looks alone, that I’d ordered myself some kind of raw ground meat. But I took a bite, and realized that it couldn’t be. Upon tasting, I could tell it was some kind of meat (corned beef) and potato mixture. But what gave it its characteristic pink hue?

A bit of research back at the hotel when I could use the WiFi informed me that the pink came from pickled beet juice. All of these ingredients preserve well and were commonly available on seafaring vessels, making this dish popular both aboard ship and in coastal cities in Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The British have a similar dish, a beef stew called lobscouse, which is eaten by sailors and is popular in seaports like Liverpool; it is from this that the slang “Scouse” accent gets its name.

Rollmops available in Canada

When I came back home, I wanted to try to make labskaus for myself, since, as I’ve complained before, there aren’t any German restaurants around here. I decided to try a simple recipe from My Best German Recipes. Sourcing the ingredients was actually a lot harder than making the dish itself. Corned beef can’t be found out of a can for love nor money around here, so canned had to do. But which variety to choose? None of them were German. I read all of the ingredients and eventually settled on the one kind that had no sugar. I thought I’d have to make my own rollmops, but as it turns out you can buy them pre-made in most grocery stores. They even have the same shape of skewer as the ones from Frau Möller.

My labskaus

My final product was definitely edible, but paled in comparison to the ones I had in Hamburg. I would like to try to make this dish again, but this time with corned beef that has never seen a can. I think that this would make all of the difference in the world. I will have to try a specialty butcher, rather than a grocery store. I am not satisfied enough with my first attempt to try it without better meat.

Bread Basket

I’ve been working on my bread-making skills over the last few weeks, much to the happiness of my family; it generally makes the house smell great even when I fail. For these experiments I have been relying predominantly on World Breads: From Pain de Campagne to Paratha by Paul Gayler (2006). It’s not a very long book (it’s subtitled “a small book of good taste”), and I’m determined to make my way through it recipe by recipe.

Broa (Portuguese Country Bread)
World Breads, page 16

This isn’t a kind of yeast bread I’d ever had before, although in texture and flavour it greatly resembled the cornmeal muffins that we eat here around Christmas. To my taste, this recipe needed either a little more sugar or a little more salt… I need more experience to figure out which, but I’m leaning more toward salt, since the recipe (and many other perfectly good ones) don’t call for sugar at all.

Dill and Curd Cheese Bread
World Breads, page 41

This bread was absolutely delicious, needing no tweaking, and I would make it again in a heartbeat. There’s not enough curd cheese (I used ricotta) to make it greasy; rather, it adds a touch of moisture and helps the bread be light and fluffy.

The dill bread recipe makes two loaves, and my family didn’t have a chance to finish it all before it started to go stale. I suppose we could have just toasted the last few slices, but instead I decided to leave them out overnight so they’d become properly hard. Then I put the slices into a plastic zipper bag and crushed the bread in the bag with a rolling pin to make fine bread crumbs. I had a bit of fresh dill left over that needed to be used, so I chopped that and added it to the bread crumbs. I then beat a couple of eggs, dipped the tilapia fillets in the egg, then dipped them into the bread crumb mixture, and fried it all lightly in a drizzle of olive oil in a nonstick pan. I served it with steamed bok choy and penne with pesto, and it was delicious.

Oatmeal Bread
World Breads, page 25

I liked the texture and heft of this bread; it was particularly good for sandwiches. However, this one too was lacking either salt or sugar to my taste, so I will have to adjust the recipe next time to see if that helps.

Seeded Granary Baton
World Breads, page 16

This loaf was full of all the seeds and heavier flour that I love in a breakfast bread, but I planned this bake very badly, as I couldn’t properly enjoy it after having just had dental work done that day. Even so, it was very tasty — I just had to be very careful how I chewed. I like that the grains/seeds can be varied to change the texture and flavour; the original recipe calls for sunflower, pumpkin, and sesame seeds (pepitas), but I would enjoy trying it with all of the interesting seeds that are available at the local bulk store.

White Soda Bread
World Breads, page 12

Wow, did I ever mess up this bread. I didn’t flatten it enough, so the center wasn’t cooked through. I cut the slashes too deep, so the bread opened up like a facehugger egg from Alien. And somehow I made a mistake with the mixing, so that instead of a nice, smooth crust, I ended up with something that strongly resembled cellulite. The flavour, for those parts that were cooked through, was quite nice, so I think I shall try it again with my newly-acquired knowledge of what not to do.

Whole Wheat Bread
Joy of Cooking, 2006 edition, page 599

I was craving a simple whole wheat loaf, so I veered away from my quest to finish all the World Breads recipes. This recipe is from my trusty standby, the Joy of Cooking. The texture and flavour of the loaves was quite nice. However, I discovered that there is a typo in my copy, one that was corrected in the more recent digital edition (which I did finally break down and buy). At the start of the recipe, it says that it should yield three 9″x5″ loaves. Yet at the end of the recipe, it instructs the cook to “allow the dough to rise in a large oiled bowl until doubled, about 1 hour, and once in 2 greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pans until doubled, about 45 minutes”. Basically, it says that the recipe yields both two or three loaves, which is definitely an error. I flipped a coin and went with two loaves, and the end result was that the loaves were huge. I had to cook them for about 15 minutes longer than indicated so that they sounded hollow when I tapped the bottoms. Next time I’ll split it into three loaves — even though the digital version says to make two loaves as well.