Last weekend made me feel like a Seattleite more so than ever before. On Saturday I had dinner with my friend Eric at Mamma Melina. This fine fair Italian restaurant is located near University Village. It was a warm and sunny Friday, so we spent the early evening walking around and shopping in order to develop a strong appetite. Mamma Melina has their own wood fired pizza ovens, so I knew I had to try one. I had the Melina Pizza, which is a mushroom truffle pizza. It was delicious! Eric had the gnocchi, which was in a sauce that you would typically find on penne alla vodka. I think I liked his better than mine...
After dinner we felt like watching a movie, so we rented Waiting for Superman from Amazon.com. It's been awhile since I have had such a strong reaction to a film that I have seen. This particular documentary is all about our broken education system in the U.S. Not only was the film educational, but it is incredibly personable. The individual personal accounts of children trying to apply to schools because their current public school is so terrible, was very gut wrenching. I think everyone should see this movie, but definitely have a box of tissues nearby.
On Sunday I went to Madison Park with Martina and Jackie, two of my friends that I studied abroad in Italy with. We got some handmade ice cream from Scoop Du Jour Ice Creamery before heading down to the beach. This particular beach defies the typical definition of a beach because it's a beach mainly made up of grass, with a little bit of sand. Also, when I think of a beach, I think of ocean water, but this particular beach is on Lake Washington. My friends and I sat on some towel, soaked up some sun, and did some reading. It was the perfect summer day.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Fresh Food
During Friday's Anthropology of Food class we watched the film Fresh, which is quite similar to the popularized Food Inc. The point of both films is to encourage people to think about the food that they are consuming and where it's coming from with Fresh focusing more on the farming/agricultural side of food politics.
Our professor brought us a lovely spread to nosh on while we watched the film. She first prepared us a salad with lettuce, roasted beets and caramelized onions straight from her garden, which was accompanied by some goat cheese and a simple balsamic vinaigrette. Her husband bakes bread as a hobby and made us two loaves. One loaf was a Kalamata Olive Sourdough and the other was a Rye Sourdough with Caramelized Onions. Now, I've tried a lot of bread over the course of my lifetime and let me just say...This was the best bread I have ever eaten! No joke.
Before we started Fresh, we watched the video below, which shows how to make no-knead bread. The video coincides with this article that was written in the New York Times a few years ago.
You can follow the link in the article to make their version of no-knead bread. Just this morning my professor sent us her husband's version and it's conversion in sourdough bread. See below for the recipe.
Converting this method to sourdough:
1 cup of sourdough
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 T salt
1 1/2 c water (rye or whole wheat flour may require the addition of a little water)
Tips:
You can make this from a mix of flours, but you should try it first using just white flour so that you get a sense of how wet and sticky the flour should be. It is much wetter than your typical bread dough.
A good rhythm is to take your sourdough starter out of the fridge in the morning and start feeding it, stir in a half cup of flour and some water a couple of times in the day and let it get nice and bubbly. Mix up your dough in the evening and let it rise slowly all night. Bake it in the morning.
Variations:
Onion rye: replace 1 cup of white flour with 1 cup of rye. Stir in a shallot chopped finely and also caraway seeds, if desired.
Olive bread: pitted kalamata olives with white flour.
Cheese bread: Add a cup of grated sharp cheddar to white flour.
Fruit and nut: you can stir in chopped dried fruit and nuts.
Our professor brought us a lovely spread to nosh on while we watched the film. She first prepared us a salad with lettuce, roasted beets and caramelized onions straight from her garden, which was accompanied by some goat cheese and a simple balsamic vinaigrette. Her husband bakes bread as a hobby and made us two loaves. One loaf was a Kalamata Olive Sourdough and the other was a Rye Sourdough with Caramelized Onions. Now, I've tried a lot of bread over the course of my lifetime and let me just say...This was the best bread I have ever eaten! No joke.
Before we started Fresh, we watched the video below, which shows how to make no-knead bread. The video coincides with this article that was written in the New York Times a few years ago.
You can follow the link in the article to make their version of no-knead bread. Just this morning my professor sent us her husband's version and it's conversion in sourdough bread. See below for the recipe.
Converting this method to sourdough:
1 cup of sourdough
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 T salt
1 1/2 c water (rye or whole wheat flour may require the addition of a little water)
Tips:
You can make this from a mix of flours, but you should try it first using just white flour so that you get a sense of how wet and sticky the flour should be. It is much wetter than your typical bread dough.
A good rhythm is to take your sourdough starter out of the fridge in the morning and start feeding it, stir in a half cup of flour and some water a couple of times in the day and let it get nice and bubbly. Mix up your dough in the evening and let it rise slowly all night. Bake it in the morning.
Variations:
Onion rye: replace 1 cup of white flour with 1 cup of rye. Stir in a shallot chopped finely and also caraway seeds, if desired.
Olive bread: pitted kalamata olives with white flour.
Cheese bread: Add a cup of grated sharp cheddar to white flour.
Fruit and nut: you can stir in chopped dried fruit and nuts.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Darwin's Darkest Hour
My Biocultural Anthropology professor is speaking at a conference for the weekend, so class was cancelled on Thursday and Friday. Our alternative assignment was to watch this film instead. I watched it curled up in bed with a mug of tea. If only it were always this easy to get credit for a class...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)