Dripping

Nothing better....

Last week was sweat equity time here in NJ as Luce’s Gluten-Free Artisan Bread moved a step closer to production. Plumbing and Electrical work had left the factory floor covered in concrete dust, which can only be removed with effort: broom-sweeping, shop-vac, finally wet mop. The Eastern US sat in a plume of tropical air, with temperature and humidity both in the mid-80’s. Ergo, every day my clothes ended up wetter than a toddler on diuretics.

I’m not complaining. Physical work makes me happy. This month it has also helped move me from a place of emptiness and loss towards optimism and fulfillment. Besides, getting drenched in the afternoon reminds me of that adventuresome climb in Vermont this past July, and of the fruit story I left unfinished - at least in this my blog.

Recall the thunderstorm and the mushroom hunt, the hypothermia, the bad-judgement buying frenzy, the quarts of dead-ripe raspberries in a hotel room.... So .... picking up where I left off .....

It’s hard to imagine a more complex delight than cultivated red raspberries. Picked at the peak of ripeness, they’re a perfect balance of tender and seedy and sweet and sour, with a dusky dry exterior and pops-in-your-mouth moist interior. They are immensely fragile, which means they’re often harvested firm but unripe - a situation that makes for delightful jams and tart fillings - but they are far tastier perfectly ripe. However: woe to the picker who harvests dead-ripe raspberries carelessly. Or the consumer who buys roughly-handled fruits.

Bruised raspberries are the most mold-susceptible fruit I know, especially if they’ve been refrigerated or otherwise chilled. A moldy raspberry in my cereal leaves a lingering evil flavor, hence I carefully root out and discard every one I find, in every purchase I make.  

Several berries in my Vermont harvest were white-tinged by the time I stepped from the hotel shower. I was certain that mold spores had dispersed through the lot, so there was little I could do to save them. I tried to recall why I’d bought so many, but all I could mentally reconstruct was a vague desire to have a huge bowl of crunchy granola heaped with them. But who wants granola for dinner in a foodie town like Brattleboro Vermont? OK - I could cook them. But how, in a motel room? Maybe .... Microwave???

Sugar is necessary when cooking berries

Microwave ovens and red raspberries are two thoughts I have difficulty connecting, if only because my first moments with these fruits predate even 1960’s “radar ranges”. 

My father planted raspberry vines in our rural Ohio back yard in the early 1950’s, shortly after he built our house. He must have felt about them much the way I feel about them, since they’re a crop that requires lots of labor - far more than he had to spare after coming home from a long day’s work in the steel mills. I suspect he imagined my brother and I would be eager helpers - little farmers-in-training. We weren’t. I loved eating them, but had no fondness for harvesting under the hot summer sun, or cutting back year-old stems, or training prickly new canes for the next season, or picking off the hundreds of Japanese beetles that raspberry foliage attracts.

It was my mother who waved profit-motive at me, suggesting I go around the neighborhood peddling whatever I could pick. This became my first financial enterprise. I got 30 cents a quart.

(Perspective: gasoline was 25 cents a gallon, a new house in our neighborhood ran about $8,000 and my father made $7,000 per year.)

I ended up not having to do much market development. After knocking on many doors and being rejected by all comers, I came to the winner - a woman who would buy everything I had, every time I visited. I don’t recall how many seasons this went on - at least two or three - before I decided to pursue a “real” job and leave berry-picking behind. 

This was our 17th anniversary dessert

Often I’ve wondered what that woman did with all those berries. My mother did very little with the quart or two a week I saved for home use. Her raspberry cooking can be summarized with a single word: raw. Once in a while she made jam, but the treats I’ve come to love as an adult - pies and cobblers and cake-fillings and custards - were most definitely not part of Mom’s repertoire. 

Some form of cooking was required to salvage my Vermont bounty, and I had but a single instrument - a microwave. Crossing my fingers, I poured all the berries into a paper bowl, shoved it into the ‘nuke, and, guessing, zapped for two minutes. What came out was a steaming, blood-colored, seed-studded syrup. I thought, “This doesn’t look so bad,” and added several packets of sugar (thanks for the coffee bar, Hampton Inn), stirred, and headed out with Leslie to our fave Brattleboro dining spot, the Top of the Hill Grill.

It was amazing how much like raspberry jam that paste tasted, as I discovered when we returned. Packed in a zip-lock and transported all the way home to New Jersey it still tasted good - and it lasted several days in my refrigerator while I played around with uses. A spontaneous slathering on 10% milkfat yoghurt was hands-down the easiest and richest, but it worked in muffins and on a tart as well. 

The one treat I most looked forward to eluded me - but that was because I ran out of berry sauce before I got there. That treat - crepes - occupies my thoughts now as the Northeast’s fall raspberry season approaches.

Crepe ingredients. Top: Potato starch, buckwheat groats, almonds
Middle: Xanthan gum
Bottom: Medium egg, milk and cream
Missing: sugar and salt

Red Raspberries are interesting fruits. Some varieties produce twice a year - July and September/October. In fact they can be the last soft fruit of the season, peaking in the days just before frost.

With this in mind I’ve worked up on a crepe recipe, using buckwheat flour. Few grains have an assertive-enough taste to match up with a fruit like the raspberry, but buckwheat (not a grain, really, but an herb) does. It also makes flour that holds together with only a dab of xanthan gum.

I like to lighten my Gluten-Free crepe flours with starch (potato starch or modified tapioca starch, or a blend of the two, is best), then make the flavor more complex with nut flour. Almond complements buckwheat nicely. Also I grind my own buckwheat flour, using groats from Bob’s Red Mill and a burr grinder from King Arthur Flour. Generally I make a blend that’s 1/2 fine and 1/2 extra-coarse, so there’s interesting chew in the finished product. For the crepe recipe that follows, the amount of groats I used was so small and the number of almonds was only 4, so I decided to use my spice grinder (actually a cheap coffee grinder) instead.

Crepes are whipped up from ratioed ingredients: 1 part eggs, 1 part liquid, 1/2 part flour. Ratios are weight-based, but I’ve done a bit of conversion to help out those among you who’ve not yet sprung the 10 bucks for a kitchen scale. (I like to keep my desserts small, so I always use medium eggs.) A medium egg weighs 45 grams without the shell (about 1 and 1/2 Oz.). My crepe ratio therefore is: 1 medium egg : 45 grams (1 - 1/2 oz) milk : 22 grams (3/4 oz) flour. 

Finished crepes with ingredients 

(PS: Crepes taste best if you use heavy cream blended with whole milk.)

A full recipe follows. Oh - and that elusive créme fraîche? I find it at Trader Joe’s.

Two-Bite Buckwheat Crepes with Raspberry-Créme Fraîche filling

Yield: two 8” crepes

Ingredients:

1/2 pint red raspberries

1 TBLS granulated sugar

2 tsp buckwheat groats (or about 12 grams buckwheat flour)

1 1/2 tsp potato starch

4 almonds, chopped coarse

Pinch (@ 1/16 tsp) Xanthan gum

1/2 tsp granulated sugar

Pinch salt

1 medium egg

2 TBLS Whole milk

2 TBLS heavy cream

4 TBLS créme fraîche or whipped cream

+/- 1 tsp unsalted butter, for griddle

Procedure:

Set aside 8 - 10 of the raspberries. Taste one. Smile.

Place the remaining raspberries in a microwave-proof bowl. Sprinkle with the 1 TBLS granulated sugar. Microwave on high for 1 minute 15 seconds, or until berries are reduced and beginning to foam. Stir, and set aside to cool.

Chop almonds coarsely. Put almonds and groats in a spice grinder and run until blend is smooth, stopping occasionally to scrape any flour that sticks to sides. Add potato starch, sugar, xanthan gum and salt, and pulse to blend. Pour into medium bowl.

Add milk, cream and egg to flour. Whisk until very smooth.

Heat a crepe pan or griddle to medium high. Melt a thin layer of butter in pan, then ladle 1/2 the batter into pan. Immediately swirl the pan to spread the batter thin and wide. Allow to cook until crepe has just turned dry all over, then flip and cook other side. Set aside on tin foil or a plate. Cook second crepe.

Smear each crepe with 2 TBLS of créme fraîche. Divide cooked berries between crepes. Roll crepes and dust with confectioner’s sugar (optional). Decorate with the reserved berries and serve immediately.

Progress and Pie

Today's puzzle - what the $#@!! is going on here??? (see below)

At the present moment, writing about my business is rather like reporting the function of a healthy immune system. Things are humming along, with all the organs in the background doing their jobs. A comforting picture, but boring.

The town of Berkeley Heights New Jersey has my building permit application. My plumber is waiting in the wings, as are my equipment and raw materials suppliers. My packaging designer is on her third draft, my business partner is reviewing the packaging copy, and I’m waiting for several vendors to call me with estimates. I have finished one thing: a short promotional video, embedded here: 

So, clever music and a pretty actress (that’s my wife, Leslie) aside, there’s not much of interest going on with my business, gentle readers. So I’m going to write about pie.

Pic crust tools and ingredients chilling in the 'fridge

For the past year or so I’ve been chiding Gary Lincoff, author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, whenever he posts a pie photograph on his Facebook page. “You need to make a gluten-free version!” I nag. At which I can just about hear a big chunk of his followers saying, “Yuk!”

It’s easy to wince at the concept of gluten-free pie crusts if you’ve never tasted a good one. However, since half the effort of making a wheat flour crust consists of preventing gluten from over-developing, removing gluten from the formula doesn't create much loss.

A scant eighth teaspoon of Xanthan gum - crucial ingredient for GF crust

I’ve been rolling pie crusts since I was 4 or 5. Which is not to say I’m any kind of baking expert; I’m not. I do love pie, however, and am quick to judge crust quality. (Point of historical fact: my mother’s relatives, the Mallery family, used to have reunions every August. There was silent but intense competition among the women as to who made the best pie. Which was emphatically not about the filling, but the crust.) So when I say I’ve got a good gluten-free crust formula, please take me seriously.

Half a stick of butter (4 tablespoons)

Although I’ve blogged about pies before, it’s time to write a very specific recipe if for no other reason that Mr. Lincoff has come out with a new book, The Joy of Foraging. He’s so good at finding wild edibles there’s sure to be Facebook posts all summer regarding pies made with found fruits. I’m thinking that people like me (ie - celiac sufferers) deserve to enjoy what nature offers in final, sugar-drenched, baked form too. So here goes.

Flour

A great deal of what happens in the ideal pie crust has to do with how the ingredients are handled. Therefore, the type of flour is not totally critical. That said, I believe two things are important about flour: it needs to be Easy, and it needs to taste Good.

Unfortunately there is no single gluten-free grain flour that will make great piecrust. All GF flours are blends - grain flour + starch flour + dough enhancers/gluten substitutes. You can buy pre-mixed flours, and that’s great, but in my house there’s so many flours I can make special blends for different types of pies (more on that, below). The one thing all my blends have in common? They’re based on a simple formula: Bette Hagman’s Featherlite blend.

The late Ms. Hagman came up with this mixture decades ago. In my opinion it can’t be beat for sweets, although I sometimes modify it. The recipe: 1 cup white rice flour, 1 cup corn starch, 1 cup tapioca starch, 1 tablespoon potato flour. 

There’s an easy way to blend these dry ingredients: put them into a big ziplock bag, leave a good amount of air,  zip the bag closed and shake it like mad. Depending on the size of your bag (and your willingness to clean up should the seal fail) you can make rather large quantities this way.

Once you’ve got the flour you can focus on handling, the first step to which is, chill everything.

Thin slices of cold butter

A pie crust should be nicely flaky. To accomplish that, unsalted butter is the best shortening. Butter contains water, which, under the right circumstances, changes quickly to steam and lifts surrounding dough. As this is going on the butter melts, coating the flour grains. In combination with the naturally occurring sugars in the grains, the fat-soaked flour turns crispy. 

That’s a lot to happen all at once - or at least in fast sequence - so to make all the pieces play together it’s critical to prep them. Which is where temperature comes in. You’ll want the butter to be flat sheets, thin enough to melt fast but thick enough to perform lift. And, you’ll want the butter to be solid until the instant the crust hits the oven. That’s what keeps the most water in the butter and makes the tastiest flakes. Therefore, you want the butter to be cold throughout the crust-making process.

I keep butter, flour, dough enhancers, a wooden work surface, a bench knife and a thick ceramic mixing bowl in the refrigerator, waiting for fresh fruit. Once a harvest comes in I figure out how much pie Leslie and I can eat, and get working. (BTW - that photo at the top of the page? When I make crust on a hot day I chill the rolling board further with whatever is in the top of my freezer.)

Preparation

Ready to be chopped and ground

Making pie crust is yet another example of the superiority of weighing, rather than dry measuring, ingredients. Keep in mind that digital kitchen scales are now quite cheap. I see them in pharmacies for $10.

The basic weight ratio of pie crust ingredients is: 3 parts flour, 2 parts shortening, 1 part ice water.  Experience tells me I can make a quarter-sheet of mini-pies  - enough to last about a week in my household - with a crust recipe founded on 1/2 stick of butter. If I reach into the ’fridge and find 1/3 stick or 2/3 or 5/8 stick, it hardly matters. I just weigh the butter; all else follows. If you’re bad at math like me, divide the butter weight in half. That gives you the ice water weight. Multiply the ice water weight by three. That gives you the flour weight.

You can make a decent pie crust using the ingredients above, if you use good technique. However I do some modifications that work wonders. For a half butter stick quantity, I add two teaspoons of rice vinegar to the water (weighing both together), and substitute 1/4 the flour with almond meal, which I make by coarse chopping almonds, then running them through my spice grinder until they threaten to become almond butter. (Admittedly it is easier to buy almond flour, which is available at many grocery stores.) The flour should also get a scant 1/8 tsp xanthan gum, a pinch of salt, and two teaspoons of sugar. 

Butter shavings in cold flour

If I’m making a pumpkin, squash, sweet potato, pecan or “Derby” pie, I use teff flour in my featherlite blend instead of rice flour. Dark teff is earthier and rye-like; ivory teff is spicier and can have notes of fish (try it for a seafood quiche).

Technique

This is the crucial part, and the only kitchen task I try to accomplish at speed. Keeping the ingredients cold is important, and a bit challenging, especially in the summer.

Put the chilled rolling board on your work counter. Drape a couple of layers of plastic wrap - big, generous pieces at least 18” long - over the board. Set the cold bowl and a bench knife on the board. Stick the water + vinegar in the freezer.  Unwrap the butter. Measure flour, sugar, xanthan gum and salt into the bowl, and stir to mix.

The well awaits

Using the cold bench knife, slice the butter across its end into pieces @ 1/16” thick, tossing into the flour as you cut. From time to time stir the flour with your fingertips so that the butter chunks get coated and stay cold. When you have all the butter cut, toss the flour/butter lightly to distribute chunks evenly.

Using just your fingertips, press each piece of butter through the flour and against the side of the bowl to squeeze it into a big flat flake. Toss from time to time. When all or most of the butter is pressed, overturn the bowl onto the plastic sheets. Gather the blend into a mound and form a well in the center. Retrieve the ice water, punch through the thin skin of ice on top, and pour it into the well. 

First fold. Note flakes of butter and oozing water

Toss the flour that forms the “hillsides” down onto the well until the wet dough/water is covered. Pick up one end of the plastic wrap, then fold it onto the other end, enclosing the dough. Press and pound until the mix is 1/2” to 3/4” thick. Unwrap the top layer of plastic, scraping any dough that sticks back onto the dough mass, and use the bench knife to fold the dough into thirds, like a business letter.

At this moment you are probably wondering what kind of madman I am, calling what’s on your work surface “dough”. It’s a dry-on-the-outside, sticky-in-the-middle, water-oozing, semi-rectangular mass. But bear with me.

Third fold. Slowly, the mess becomes dough.

Close up the plastic again and press/pound the dough flat, trying to work the “package” so that when you fold it the next time the folds will be at 90 degrees to the last set. 

Repeat these cover-pound-uncover-fold-re-cover actions 4 to 6 times, until the dough begins to look like dough. Then wrap it up in the plastic and stick it back in the ‘fridge, where it needs to rest 6 or more hours before being rolled.

And that’s really all there is to it - with but one additional thought: When you roll the dough you’ll get better results if your rolling board is chilled and coated with a rubbed-in tablespoon or two of superfine brown rice flour.

Ready for refrigeration. Several hours of rest will allow all the water
to be absorbed and the dough will be ready to roll.

I’m not going to suggest pie fillings. That’s best left to folks like Gary, who seem to have more ideas for wild edibles than I ever will. But I will tell you my absolute favorite: wild huckleberries. I wish I had some right now!