Sunday, August 31, 2008

Baking bread and other kitchen projects

You know, I never thought I’d be one of those people who prefer to bake their own bread to buying it. But somehow I became one of those people. Today I am making whole wheat sandwich rolls and one loaf. I probably wouldn’t except our leftovers demand bread: I made some really great baby back ribs the other day, spice rubbed and then cooked at 200 degrees for about 12 hours. Didn’t even need sauce, but I made some anyway. The point is, I always make too much, the Costco package of ribs has three full racks. So Dave picked off all the rest of the meat and now he wants a pulled pork sandwich. It’s the least I can do for him. The rolls are baking right now and starting to smell good.

I’m also making cherry-plum syrup today. So many of my projects are a domino effect of other projects, and this one is a classic. I might have mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was using up extra cherries by glace-ing them. The by-product of that was about a quart of cherry syrup. I also had way too many black plums, so I threw those in the blender the other day to get a nice puree, to maybe make freezer jam. I had to use that puree by today so decided to cook it together with the cherry syrup. I’m thinking that it will be great with duck or pork, as well as on yeast waffles. I think I’m going to end up with about six cups, so I will probably pour it into jelly jars and process it.

Project #3 today is a beef chuck roast. The other day I rubbed it with a spice rub of red chile, oregano, cinnamon, cocoa, allspice, thyme, garlic power, etc. Now it gets to slow-cook in the bottom oven for 10 hours, and I’ll pick out all of the meat and turn that into chili. I have some ancho chile paste in the freezer, I think left over from making enchilada sauce, and it will help make a nice rich chili. Good thing it’s a long weekend, we might have time to eat some of it; Dave is leaving on business on Tuesday so we’ll be stocking the freezer with chili for his lunches in the future.

I also have to finish baba ganoush with squash and eggplant, but I need to go get more garlic and lemons for that.

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