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summary: recipe for Nan e Barbari (Persian flatbread); a Bread Baking Babes project; submission for YeastSpotting; (click on images to see larger views and more photos)

Bread Baking Babes (BBB) June 2013

Last month, Ilva whipped us back to basics. This month we’re plunging back even further and making the bread with our hands.

Some weeks ago, when we got anardana, I wandered around the internet to find what people made with it. In my wanderings, I discovered a Persian-style kebab. And along with the kebab, I learned about the most wonderful looking ridged golden flatbread, nan e barbari.

We HAD to make both! And as soon as we did, I knew what bread the BBBabes HAD to make this month. Out of the several similar internet versions of recipes for this bread, I chose Lida’s recipe. She wrote:

Perhaps the most famous and widely used bread in Iran, Barbari is a part of Iranian culture. A piece of Barbari with some feta cheese and a cup of tea form the traditional breakfast in Iran. The secret behind the golden color of Barbari and its unique smell is in the small amount of baking soda mixed with some water and used to brush Barbari before baking. This mix is called Romal.

- Lida, 1001 Recipes, Barberi Bread

I love the shape. I love the colour. Let’s face it. I love this bread. (continue reading…)

• inspiration: Rhubarb Mousse
• SAVEUR Magazine No. 155 (May 2013)
• Good Stalk: Rhubarb
• By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl
• (learn more by following this link)

summary: SAVEUR magazine’s rhubarb mousse; what’s with the price of rhubarb?; great dinner at The Local restaurant on Queen West; (click on image(s) to see larger views and more photos)

If rhubarb grows like a weed, why is it so expensive?

I know I’m like a broken record but I can’t stop saying it: I love SAVEUR magazine!

Whether you’re in Minnesota or Tibet, Missouri or Latvia, England, Alaska, or Iran, rhubarb grows like a weed pretty much anywhere with usable soil and a hard freeze in the winter, which the plant needs to thrive. But now things get interesting again, because at my local farmers’ market, and at all of those in the rest of the snowbelt, this weediness makes rhubarb one of the superstars of early spring. That’s when bundles of rhubarb stalks appear alongside ramps, fiddlehead ferns, and wild watercress. They mark the true end of winter, the beginning of the edible outdoors, the start of local cooking becoming exciting, even exuberant, again.

-Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, Good Stalk: Rhubarb, SAVEUR Magazine, no.155 (May 2013)

Rhubarb!! I also love rhubarb. (continue reading…)

Peeza Pieeey!
 
2013 experiments with Irfanview:

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• inspiration: lamb slipper kebabs and cumin-coriander beef patties, p. 257, 268
• Mangoes and Curry Leaves
• Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent
• By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
• (learn more by following this link)

summary: anardana is great in kebabs; mint is equally wonderful; our mint is alive and our chives are flowering! I love a good coffee table book that includes terrific text and recipes; brief review of “Green Mangoes and Curry Leaves” by Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid (click on images for larger views and more photos)

Last month, when I was raving about anardana, I mentioned the lovely looking slipper kebab recipe on p. 257 in “Mangoes and Curry Leaves” by Naomi Duguid and Jeffery Alford.

Here is our take on the slipper kebabs, made with ground pork instead of lamb (because I am a freak and don’t care for lamb). We garnished them with coriander leaf and served them with bread, yellow dahl, stir-fried cabbage and hot hot hot red chillies.

Dinner, once again, was fabulous. (continue reading…)

summary: Approved comments not showing up; new images not appearing; pizza cooked on the barbecue is great; (click on image(s) to see larger views)

How very annoying. Something happened between 09:57 EDT and 22:00 EDT on 3 June 2013 that has caused approved comments not to show up. I’m looking into it.

In the meantime, please admire this fabulous pizza that we had the other night.

edit 08:26 EDT: And now new images are refusing to show up too. There is SUPPOSED to be a thumbnail of the pizza here. Phooey!

I made the pizza dough using the recipe for ‘same day straight pizza dough’ in Ken Forkish’s “Flour Water Salt Yeast” (I love this book!) (continue reading…)

summary: Hand-kneading slack dough is easy and fun too – so fun that we made another video (with sound!!);

We were bemoaning the fact that our camera doesn’t have a recording device and suddenly realized that our MP3 player does! …thank goodness for the internet and the several people who posted tutorials on how to edit movies in Windows Movie Maker. It’s not perfect syncing but it’s close.

Hand-kneading – with the help of a dough-scraper, using ‘lift, flip, slap’ and/or ‘hand-wringing’ ways – is easy and satisfying. It’s even easy when someone forgot to add all the flour.

I love the sound of the dough slapping down on Richard Bertinet’s ‘lift, flip, slap’ method that I learned from watching a video on gourmet.com. The slapping part isn’t particularly loud. There is just a nice satisfying *Plop* as the dough hits the board. (»»»)