The Experiment

Every Spring I begin waking up at the five o’clock hour.  It could be the earlier rising sun or the joy of being out of the gloom of winter.  But I believe it has more to do with my mind and body anticipating life on the schooner, lighting the wood stove at 4:30 to begin a long and adventurous day of sailing and cooking. 

This is also when the dreams begin.  Feeling like a dog running in its sleep, I dream of pork roasts refusing to temp beyond 105 degrees, of mountains of over-proofed dough sticking and deflating all around me, and sauces curdling while my back is turned from the stove.  Cooking nightmares rank among the worst dreams I’ve had, and ones about the schooner always reflect my real life fears. 

Trying a new menu or recipe on the schooner has its limitations and drawbacks.  The first is that there are a finite amount of provisions.  Due to humidity and space constraints, I don’t really want to carry an extra twenty-five pound bag of flour on board.  Rowing out to the store is not always an option.  Secondly, if I try something new and it just doesn’t come together, a meal may be short one course that night.  So last summer when I considered making croissants before breakfast, images of exploding buttery dough followed by sad sailor faces haunted my imagination.  I also have a tendency to stray from a baking recipe, even on my first go around.  Those of you who remember the great sourdough starter disaster of 2004, I am sure you can relate.  The following experiment may be as much about practicing self control as it is scientific.

I haven’t made croissants since “laminated dough day” in culinary school.  Anyone who has made this dough from scratch can surely relate to my hesitation of attempting it in a hot, pitching galley with few controllable variables.  If I can practice working with the dough at home while simulating less than ideal conditions, then perhaps I’ll feel confident enough to make some buttery flaky pastries for our guests this summer. 

Step one: find a recipe that fits with my cooking style.  That part was easy.  Tartine, a pastry book by a couple* who own a San Francisco bakery and cafe, has a straight forward but detailed recipe using quality ingredients and allowing time to maximize flavor development. 

Step two: using the scientific method, establish a control group and a series of experimental groups.**  The control group involves using a fully functioning refrigerator, freezer, and oven that operate at exact temperatures, using the conditions specified in the recipe.  The experimental groups involve varying temperature and time conditions, from an oven that won’t heat above 350 (those rainy mornings can be a drag), to rolling out the dough in a 90 degree prep space (still not sure how I am going to simulate this condition), and chilling without the use of a freezer.  And then...?  Am I supposed to fix those problems?  We will have to see how they turn out, and then figure out how to compensate to yield more consistent results.  Other variables, such as putting shims under the legs of one side of my prep table to simulate heeling over, may just have to wait.

Step three: gather ingredients, turn on music (this is called negative control, having no effect on the result, at least I assume so), and apron up. 

Because I only have one kitchen and a single set of equipment, I must perform my control group first, with the successive experimental groups in the following days or weeks.  The side benefit is enjoying (hopefully) perfect croissants first.  Then oddballs to follow.  

 

Without going into too much detail, the basic idea behind laminated dough, or puff pastry, is a base dough slightly sweetened and with a long slow ferment rolled with many layers of butter.  The layers of fat combined with added yeast make for a high rise of flaky buttery baked layers of pastry.  This particular recipe has me fold the dough like an envelope (two folds, making three layers) four times.  Anyone want to venture a guess as to how many layers that makes?  (and yes Dad, the answer is an odd number)

What happened with the control group:

Rolling out detrempe (that is the base dough, and this is the easy part)

Spreading butter over 2/3 of the rolled out dough

The second envelope fold, butter fully enclosed

After the third fold

After four folds and an overnight to rise, cutting to form croissants

Rolling croissants, remember to stretch the tail as I roll

Long and slow rise

Baked and cooled just enough to....

Eat! With truffle honey and soft ripe cheese

The next phase is to repeat the process shown above with the different variables.  I made a large batch of the base dough and froze it so that the results will all be based on the final few stages of making the croissants.  Stay tuned for some funky looking pastry, hopefully they will still be edible, and even more so educational!


*By Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson, owners of Tartine Bakery
**I would like to say here that my Dad should be proud.  He always inspires the little scientist in me.  Also, I expect his full critique when my research is complete, requested or not.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Growing up in New Hampshire, I always felt as though we had a small farm.  With more than an acre of trees and grass and garden, I could jump from rock to rock or swing from tree to tree all day without touching the same place twice.  I quoted Robert Frost daily as I stumbled across a stone wall long forgotten, listened to the rustling leaves of birch trees, and chased toads and snakes over the grass and into a hill thick with wildflowers.

While I fancied myself a young farmer, the reality was this.  My parents are incredibly hard working green-thumbed gardening enthusiasts, and I had enough of an appreciation of it to be nearby while all of their hard work was going on.  I walked barefoot along the edges of raised beds while my father watered in the early evening, was the first to announce (mouth crunching) the earliest of edible snap peas, and was a seeker of green hornworms lurking among tomato plants for my dad to remove (I, of course, would not touch those hungry horned villains).

Those childhood memories are the benchmark in which I have compared all gardens and yards since.  When I was seventeen, my parents moved to Ohio as I went off to college.  A scant stony acre became five flat ones, rich and dark with fertile soil.  To romanticize the grounds there was a bona fide barn, pond, and horse fences.  Yet it wasn’t the magical garden of my childhood.  It was surely easier to grow everything in the relatively flat landscape devoid of rocks and April snow and confined space.  I ate my first homegrown cantaloupe the second summer we were there, and toted a frog raised from a tadpole back to school in the fall.

Since then, the outdoor spaces to my homes have fallen short of my hopes.  Tiny over-shaded mossy lawns, one hot sunny field overrun with poison ivy and impossible to till without some serious equipment, an apartment here and there with no outdoor space, and one over-manicured yard that I did not have the heart to dismantle to become my fairy garden.

Until now.  Our new old house sits almost in the middle of a three thousand square foot lot.  It has taken me years to adjust to city living: tiny, efficient houses with even tinier yards.  No spacious houses with a room just for muddy boots and damp outerwear.   But I finally have an appreciation for it.  We have mastered living in 800 square feet of a house, and this Spring we are going to maximize the potential of our cozy backyard.  Not sure where our dirty yardwork clothes are going to hang, but we’ll find a spot.

Luckily, our outdoor space was already beautiful when we moved in, making it easy to envision our dream yard.  Our goal is to create a vegetable garden space without disrupting the mature growth of a plum tree, an apple tree, lilacs and hydrangea bushes, wisteria vines, and a hedge along the perimeter thick with irises, daffodils, crocuses, and hyacinth.  With decks in both the front and back, we'll have ample room for some growing containers and seating areas from which to admire them.

My friend and farmer Trish told me that the beauty of a small garden is the opportunity and need to be creative and make every bit of space count.  With her farmed two acres on a four acre plot of land, she doesn’t have to plant anything in wine boxes or pots, and can allow a row to sit fallow for half a season until she decides what to plant next or how to rotate her numerous crops.  While agonizing over how much of the grass to edge for our garden border, I envied her vast space.

Our true city dwelling friends of Brooklyn and Chicago have managed to grow peppers, herbs, scallions, and more in window boxes and on patios without complaint.  So I feel lucky to have this much room, even without a grove of birches or a strawberry field.

Jaimy and I have both grown vegetables before, from my gardens in Maine and Ohio to Jaimy's in British Columbia and North Carolina.  But how do things grow in the Pacific Northwest?  With some personal advice from friends and neighbors, along with a bit of reading, we quickly determined which vegetables to grow and how to best prepare the soil.  While I still can't believe that there may be more than one day a week with sun, our neighbor insists that it gets pretty hot come July and August.  So we proceed while looking doubtfully at the indefinitely rainy forecast.

This is what we've done so far:

We dug up our main growing area, added two pathways for ease of harvest and care

Jaimy dug up and edged this extra sunny spot with brick

Herbs planted in wine boxes, brought inside waiting for the hailstorm

After planting seeds and buying a couple of starts, day 4

Spinach: day 4

Broccoli and pole beans, day 12

Spinach: day 12

All veggies: day 12

The starts we have growing in the big front window include: fennel, snap peas, pole beans, green beans, mustard greens, spinach, arugula, little gem lettuce, French crisp lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, and brussels sprouts.  I've been advised to direct seed the peas and beans, so we have some seeds nestled in the ground outside as well.  Our window seedlings of the peas and beans are the backup plan/experiment.  Once we know which will grow and produce better as the summer progresses, we'll have a better plan for next year.

Outside, we also have beets, radishes, and carrots planted.  It has been seven days and only today have I started to see little green radish leaves poking through the soggy earth.  It has rained the past five out of seven days, so I imagine the carrots and beets are still hiding from the rain or the seeds will rot into the soil.  We will have to wait and see!

The big day to move starts outside is planned for April 5th, weather depending.  The last frost will hopefully be over, and we will have the first part of the week to harden off the starts out in the elements.  Stay tuned for more (and not so lengthy) updates on the yard!

How Hard To Push

There is too much noise in my head.  Do this, make that happen, work harder over there.  Since leaving one job and going out on my own a couple of years ago, I find it difficult to whittle down the possibilities.  When I worked in a restaurant, the potential was not even on my radar.  Backbreaking, sweaty, exhausting, hard work.  But simple.  I knew what each day would look like, (a ridiculously long day), and I found comfort in that. 

Now every day looks different.  Sometimes I am cooking in Seattle, but often in another state with a whole new crew, along with Jaimy of course.  Some mornings begin with collecting eggs and cutting heads of lettuce and fennel bulbs from dewy garden beds, others begin lighting a wood stove and watching bald eagles hunt (or scavenge, really) for their morning meal.  Distractions include setting sail or watching a herd of elk cross a river.  Other times I am setting a stage for a celebrity chef, hundreds of audience members wondering when I’ll step aside so that Bobby Flay or Emeril can make their entrance.

These past few years have been a revelation.  Having committed to the culinary world for a profession continues to be the best difficult decision I’ve ever made.  But now I am coming to bear the full weight of what it means to create my own job.  And it is completely narcissistic.  I am not an employer trying to make payroll for dozens of hardworking cooks and servers.  I am simply trying to make it so that at the end of the day, I only answer to one person.  Me.

But me has been asking a lot of questions lately. 

“What have you actually gotten done today?” 

“Why are you spending hours researching food carts, when did you decide to do this?” 

“How is anyone ever going to find out about your services if you lock yourself in the office all day?”

Jaimy and I talk about our long term careers often.  Where do we see ourselves in a year?  In five? Ten? Thirty?  How do we plan to get there?  I often feel that we need a timeline, a bullet point list, and specific if-then analysis directly linking every single action we take to our future.  Control.  That noise in my head?  It sounds a lot like trying to control something that doesn’t want to be confined by my brain. 

Most will agree that everyone works best with a plan.  Creating goals and a path can be fun, and it also gets everyone on the same page.  But once the planning session is over, Jaimy is able to move on.  His mind finds peace in the present.  I marvel at this ability, explaining the constant stress discussion going on in my mind to him.  He tells me not to force it, just to open myself to the opportunities and allow it to happen.

Which leads to the question, how hard to push?

My business training taught me that we must focus on what we are good at, and find ways to get the other stuff done.  Whether it is hiring someone else to do the accounting, bringing in a gardener to tend the veggies, or even enlisting help to renovate an outdated living space, we can’t to everything ourselves.  It is inefficient and can be crazy making.  But I ignore the logic.  I want to dabble in everything, but also be an expert at it.  In a given day I decide that I would like to be a master gardener, a wine expert, teacher, interior designer, carpenter, bookkeeper, writer, chef, prep cook, and dishwasher. 

A friend says I should go on Top Chef, and I think, “YES!”  The neighborhood pea patch is looking for a new volunteer organizer, and I think, “I am the man for the job!”  A prize is being offered for the best literary work submitted to a magazine, and I think, “THIS is what I’ve been waiting for!”

So before I do it all, I will take a moment.  I’ll look out the back window at the freshly turned soil lightening in the afternoon sun and I will not begin sowing rows.  I’ll turn my head from the dishes in the sink.  I will not check my inbox, and while I’m at it, I’ll consolidate the recently collected tax documents and put them away.  I will close the artisan bread book and guide to molecular gastronomy and slide them back on the shelf.  And I will breathe.  And not push.  Not today.