Breaking Bread with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio iPhone App

As a follow up to the piece I wrote on Michael Ruhlman's Buttermilk Dinner Rolls, I wanted to write about my second attempt at bread making. I made a garlic rosemary boule, once again inspired by Ruhlman, but this time I used Ruhlman's Ratio application for the iPhone. This app is a compliment to Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio, which if you aren't familiar with is a must have for any serious cook. It provides simple ratios for 28 key recipes for things like breads, pastas, cakes & cookies, sausages, brines, soups, sauces, custards, and more.

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio Application for the iPhone

Ruhlman's Ratio app made it very easy to make the bread. Not only does the app provide you with the ratios for many common recipes but it allows you to easily adjust the amount of a given ingredient and then it automatically calculates and converts the other ingredients in the ratio. The Ratio app includes instructions on how to make the dish and also offers ideas to modify the dish (like adding rosemary & garlic to to the bread ratio like I did below).

I followed Ruhlman's bread ratio (5 parts flour to 3 parts water) and used 567 grams of flour, 340 grams of water, 11 grams of salt, and 3 grams of yeast. Yes, those measurements are in grams, Ruhlman suggests using a digital kitchen scale for everything you cook, especially when baking.

I wanted to make a flavored loaf so I also threw in some chopped rosemary and roasted garlic cloves . I combined all the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid and mixed them until a dough formed that could be stretched to translucency.

I left the dough in the mixer, covered it, and let it rise for a couple hours until it more than doubled in size. After the dough rose, I kneaded it by hand for a few minutes, formed it into the shape I wanted and put it into a dutch oven (another tip from Ruhlman). I baked it covered for 30 minutes and then removed the lid and cooked it until it looked like this:

Garlic Rosemary Boule

The bread was pretty good but I am not sure how much I liked the crust from the dutch oven. The top crust was nice but I didn't really like the bottom of the bread. I'd be interested in trying some other pans to see the difference.

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio application is definitely one of the best apps I have for my iPhone. Have you tried it? I'd love to hear some of your success stories!

Camp Bacon at Zingerman's

This event is too good not to write about, a weekend long celebration of bacon! Zingerman's, which I also wrote about here, is bringing some of the biggest names in bacon to Ann Arbor, MI (I know, I hate Ann Arbor too - go Buckeyes!) for a weekend full of bacon festivities. Tickets for the all day bacon class are steep at $150 but I'm sure it's an experience you'll never forget. Highlights include:

• Bacon tasting with Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig
• Bacon curing demos with Allan Benton from East Tennessee
  and Nick Spencer from Chicago
• Hands-on pancetta-making class with Herb Eckhouse
  from La Quercia in Iowa
• Camp Bacon T-Shirt!!!
• Bacon cooking demo with James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and chef Molly Stevens
• Plus breakfast and lunch from Zingerman’s, a free copy of Ari’s Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon, a free t-shirt and more!

Following the class there is also a Bacon Street Fair to raise money for the local 4-H program. A $5 donation gets you tastes of bacon from some of America’s best—Nueske’s, Benton’s, La Quercia, Ozark Mountain Trails and more, plus bacon-cheddar scones, bacon-apple coffee cake, peppered bacon farm bread and other bacon based baked goods from Zingerman’s Bakehouse; bacon based games for kids, book signings by Sarah Katherine Lewis, Molly Stevens, Ari Weinzweig and more!

I'd love to see Michael Symon, Jonathon Sawyer and some of the other chefs in the Cleveland area get together in celebration of not just bacon, but the entire pig! What do you say Michael???

Red Potatoes with Arugula (p. 163)

This post has been sitting in blogger for almost two months half written. I made this dish way back when I made the whole grilled snapper and I didn't find it to be a very exciting dish so I've been putting off finishing. I decided it was finally time to finish it off. So without further ado...Iron Chef Michael Symon's Red Potatoes with Arugula (p. 163).

Potatoes in a bed of arugula, about as artistic as I get

This is the second recipe in a row that involves few ingredients and is very quick and easy to make. You know how to boil potatoes, right? In this case simply wash a couple pounds of red potatoes, add them to a pot and cover them with warm water. As always, add kosher salt to season the water when cooking potatoes, it helps increase the flavor of the potatoes without having to over salt your final product.

Bring the water to a boil and cook the potatoes until they are tender, probably a little more than 30 minutes. Be careful not to over cook the potatoes or you'll end up with a messy, soft final product. The potatoes should not be crumbling or falling apart, rather they should still have a little bite to them. Once the potatoes are done, carefully drain them and let them dry. Once dry, cut the potatoes into slices around a half inch thick, or whatever your desired size is. You can also peel the potatoes if you chose, but I prefer to leave the skins on since that's where most of the nutrition is.

Simmering sauce

When the potatoes are getting close to being done, it's time to start the sauce. The sauce is a simple combination of heavy cream, Dijon mustard, and homemade chicken stock.

A quick note on chicken stock - don't buy the stuff in a can or even cardboard container at the grocery store, if you don't have time to make stock, you are better off just using water rather than stock from the grocery store. The stuff in a can at the grocery store is full of sodium and has very little taste to it. Don't believe me? Taste the stuff in a can next time you have some on hand and then compare it to water. I bet the biggest difference you'll notice is the salt. Still don't believe me? Read Michael Ruhlman's thoughts on the subject.

Combine the three ingredients in a large sauce pan (the potatoes will be added eventually) and reduce the mixture until it starts to thicken, 5 minutes or so. Once the sauce has reduced, gently mix in the potatoes, along with the butter, salt, & pepper.

Not as pretty as it looks in the book

Keep the heat up and bring the sauce up to a simmer and add the arugula, stirring gently until the arugula cooks a little and begins to wilt. Remove from the heat and serve immediately.

You've seen this picture before

Like I mentioned earlier, I served these Red Potatoes with Arugula (p. 163) along side the whole grilled snapper way back before Easter (as you can tell by the tablecloth on our table). Everyone I had over for dinner really seemed to like the potatoes but I thought they were just OK. It reminded me of a warm German potato salad, which I typically don't like. My wife makes an awesome cold potato salad in the summer. Even though I'd much rather eat her potato salad, I definitely recommend giving this dish a try if you are sick of the typical mashed or roasted potatoes. The arugula is a nice addition to the dish and helps bring some additional nutrition into your diet.

Cost

I will provide the approximate cost for each recipe in the book, as well as the source of the products used. 

It cost about $5.42 to make Iron Chef Michael Symon's Red Potatoes with Arugula (p. 163).

Red potatoes - $2.42

Heavy cream - $1

Chicken Stock - $1 (I used, and recommend, homemade)

Arugula - $1

Misc (salt, Dijon mustard, butter, pepper) 

I purchased all ingredients for this recipe at Heinen's.

BBQ Smoking & Heinen's Gift Card Winner

I had my smoker working double duty today and we'll be enjoying its hard work all week.

Sweet & Spicy Smoked BBQ Pork Loin

I started with a pork loin from the pig I bought from Bluebird Meadows last fall. The loin actually had the baby back ribs still attached when it came from the butcher so I trimmed those off and was left with a beautiful roast that had a bone running through the middle. I always make my own rubs so I mixed one up with sugar (white and brown), a couple of different paprikas, "homemade" chili powder, homemade "seasoned salt", garlic, onion, allspice, cloves, and a few other spices. I generously applied the rub to all sides of the roast and put it on my Weber kettle grill at 230 degrees for 4 hours or so until the meat reached 140 degrees. After letting it rest, I sliced some of the roast and served it with grilled asparagus for dinner tonight. There will be plenty of tasty leftovers for at least another meal or two.

Chili Rubbed-Smoked Turkey Breast

We don't buy much deli meat because it's full of sodium, water, nitrates, and other stuff we try to avoid while eating. During my last trip to the Westside Market, I noticed some nice looking turkey breasts at Kaufmann Poultry that I thought would be great for some homemade lunch meat. Since I had the grill going low and slow, I decided to throw one of these on too and it couldn't have been easier to do. I used the same rub I used for the pork loin and added it to the smoker once the pork was about half done. After a couple hours it was done and I sliced it nice and thin. The meat is delicious and juicy. So much better than any turkey you can find at the grocery store and so much better for you!

Ok, enough about what I've been up to, on to the winner of the Heinen's giftcard. Random.org says.....

Lucky 24

Commenter #24, Chrissy, please email me so I can send the gift certificate to you. I will pick a new winner if I haven't heard from Chrissy in a few days.

Olive Oil-Poached Halibut with Fennel, Rosemary, and Garlic (p. 180)

If you've been reading my blog since the beginning, you may remember I bought some not so fresh shrimp from Heinen's when I made Shrimp with Dill Vinaigrette (after which Heinen's sent me a gift card to cover the cost of the bad shrimp, just one example of their amazing customer service). In that post, I also discussed that it was difficult to find fresh fish in Cleveland. Well, in the five months since that post I've learned a lot about cooking fish and also realized that there is plenty of good quality, fresh fish in Cleveland. While nothing will compare to the fresh grouper I prepared in St. Martin, I have found delicious fresh fish at Kate's Fish at the Westside Market and I'm happy that I can also write positively about the some of the fish at Heinens.

Heinen's recently started carrying fresh, line caught halibut, cod, and salmon that is over nighted from Alaska. When I heard about this, I knew I wanted to try the halibut for Iron Chef Symon's Olive Oil-Poached Halibut with Fennel, Rosemary, and Garlic (p. 180). So I headed to the Heinen's in Avon. The fish counter is very friendly and helpful so don't be afraid to ask questions about how to prepare the fish, where it comes from, or for it to be cut to your exact needs. I went in on a Sunday after church and they told me that the only receive shipments during the week so my fish came in on Friday afternoon. Regardless, the fish was caught on Tuesday, cleaned and processed Wednesday, shipped out Thursday and on our dinner table Sunday. It was never frozen no disgusting chemicals were used to lengthen the life of the fish.

I ordered one pound of halibut, cut into two fillets, and asked that the skin be removed. When I got home I examined the fillets, I was pleased to find extremely fresh fish. The fillets were firm and had a slight smell of the sea, but none of the "fishy" smell that turns people off and is a sign of fish that is not very fresh. Unfortunately the people at the counter forgot to remove the skin for me and also did not cut the fillets into even sized fillets. I'll chalk that up to the fact that I went during the middle of their "seafood extravaganza" and it was very busy. Luckily, the skin was very easy to pull off. I used a knife to loosen the skin from the flesh in one corner and then used a paper towel to grab the skin and pull it from the fish.

Few ingredients let the flavor of the fish shine through

This dish is about as easy as they come so far in my mission to cook through Live to Cook. There are very few ingredients and it requires very little prep work. To get started, I quartered the fennel and shallot, smashed the garlic, and bruised the rosemary to help it release more oil.

I combined all the ingredients except the fish in a sauce pan on the stove and slowly brought the oil up to 140 degrees. In the picture below, you'll notice I used a probe thermometer to closely monitor the temperature of the oil.

Halibut poaching in olive oil

As I mentioned when I made the snapper, I find cooking fish more challenging than most foods, but I found poaching in olive oil to be extremely easy. Once the oil reached 140 degrees, I let it sit for a while so the aromatics could permeate the oil. After 20 minutes or so, I used my fish turner to gently slide the fish in. The oil looked crowded already with the aromatics so I was wondering if the fish would fit, but there was plenty of room.

Fifteen minutes later

After about 15 minutes, I pulled one of the pieces of fish from the oil and checked its temperature. It was right around 110 degrees so I placed it on a paper towel to drain and removed the fillet.

Delicious, healthy dinner

I really enjoyed this dinner, although my wife thought it was a little bland. The fish from Heinen's was very fresh and the aromatics in the oil gave it a subtle flavor of anise and garlic, while letting the taste of the fish really be the star. I served the fish with some roasted asparagus and sauteed ramps and it made for a delicious, healthy meal.

The only thing that will keep me from poaching in olive oil on a regular basis is that it takes a full quart of olive oil, which is not exactly ideal for the home kitchen. For this dish, I selected a moderately priced, Heinen's brand olive oil. I definitely would not recommend using an expensive olive oil for this preparation! So I'm wondering, has anyone else poached fish in olive oil? Do you reuse the olive oil? If so, do you only use it for more fish or do you use it for other things too? Obviously it will be scented with the aromatics, but I'm hoping the fish flavor will not linger. I saved the oil and am planning to give it a try but I'm interested in your thoughts as well.

This post was sponsored by Heinen's, which of course means I've got another giveaway for you. Instead of Viking passes I am giving away a gift certificate good at any of Heinen's 17 stores in the Cleveland area. Simply leave a comment, any comment on this post to enter. As always, I welcome multiple entries if you Tweet / Facebook about the giveaway. I'll pick a winner in a week but in the mean time, head over to Heinen's and check out some of the their fresh, Alaskan fish.

Cost

I will provide the approximate cost for each recipe in the book, as well as the source of the products used.

It cost about $24.91 to make Michael Symon's Olive Oil-Poached Halibut with Fennel, Rosemary, and Garlic (p. 180).

Olive oil - $4.99

Halibut - $17.45

Fennel - $1.47

Miscellaneous (shallot, garlic, rosemary, salt, crushed red pepper) - $1

All the ingredients for this dish were provided by Heinen's.

Silver Spoon Awards Winner

I will have a couple of new posts next week including Olive Oil-Poached Halibut and Potatoes & Arugula. Heinen's is also sponsoring another giveaway, so be sure to check in Monday morning to enter!

Thank you to everyone who entered the ticket giveaway to the The 16th Annual Cleveland Magazine Silver Spoon Awards Party I wish I could give everyone tickets, but I only had one pair and the winner was.....Jyll. Congratulations!!!

To everyone else, I encourage you to head over to the Silver Spoon website and order tickets today. The VIP tickets are sold out but there are still plenty of general admission tickets. Not sure it's worth the money even thought it's tax deductible and benefits the Arthritis Foundation, Northeastern Ohio Chapter? Maybe some of the auction items will change your mind. If you are a big fan of Iron Chef Michael Symon, you'll definitely want to bid on the Iron Chef package that includes attendance to a live taping of Iron Chef in New York City!

If the auction items don't get you excited, maybe the menu for the evening will. Check out the highlights below courtesy of Poise in Parma:

• Aladdin’s Eatery: Mujadara and hummus with pita
• Angelo’s Pizza: Pizza
• Bar Cento/Bier Market:  Potato & wild ramp soup, paired with Belgium bier
• Bubba’s-Q World Famous Bar-B-Q & Catering: Smoked TurQey and ribs
• Chinato: VIP: Seafood Supplí with Tomato Sauce; Main room: Raddichio Pasticcio
• Corky & Lenny’s: Rugellach
• Downtown 140: Assortment of cheeses & house made crackers; filled salted chocolated almond cookies
• Eat’n Park: Strawberry pie and smiley cookies
• fire food & drink: Bhuna gosht served over Jeera rice with Kakdi,Tamafan Raita.
• Great Lakes Brewing Co.: Signature bread pudding and samples of a variety of GLBC beer
• Hot Sauce Williams: Ribs, pork shoulder, cherry cobbler, cabbage, coleslaw & baked beans
• Hyde Park Prime Steaks: Roasted tenderloin with au gratin potatoes, port wine reduction and truffle froth
• L’Albatros: VIP: Shrimp Mousseline wrapped in Savoy Cabbage with herb Butter; Main room: Pied de cochon, pickled vegetables and Bearnaise Aioli
• Lola: VIP: Cirtus donuts, artisnal Ohio cheese custard with sweet onion, “ham & egg” bisquits, milk chocolate & Ohio honey truffle
• Mint Café: Chicken & vegetable pad thai, chicken & vegetable red curry
• Pacific East Coventry: Sushi
• Paladar Latin Kitchen and Rum Bar: Rum glazed pork cubano; slow roasted pork shoulder served with bacon black bean and coconut rice topped with fresh pico de gallo
• Parallax: VIP: Almond Gaspacho with Seared Sea Scallops; Main room: Parallax Sushi Sampler
• Pearl of the Orient: Grilled prawns pad Thai on skewer
• Pier W: Basil grilled petit lobster tail; Hollandaise Mousseline
• Red, The Steakhouse: Thyme and fennel roasted Certified Angus Beef Filet, soft falls mills polenta, shaved fennel salad
• Saffron Patch: Chicken tikka masala, shrimp tikka, samosa, saffron rice, chenna masala
• Sans Souci: Twelve hour duck confit, ravioli tomato gastric
• Shuhei Japanese Cuisine and Sushi Bar: Sushi
• Sweet Melissa’s: Assorted desserts: triple chocolate tarte, red velvet, carrot, casatta, tiramisu, etc…
• Table 45: VIP: Braised Phillipino Pork and jasmine rice; Main room: Laughing Bird Shrimp Salad
• The Greenhouse Tavern: VIP: House made ravioli and steamed clams
• Tucky’s: Hot dogs with specialty toppings
• Ty Fun Thai Bistro: Kai kra pow; Vegetable tofu green curry; steamed rice
• VegiTerranean: Bruschetta bar & mini vegan pastries

 It is sure to be a great event so buy your tickets today!