Cracking more code
We're thinking of doing a banh mi smorgasbord for a July 4th weekend BBQ. I got a cookbook in the mail and tried its recipe, and sure enough, lovely porpoise-shaped crusty rolls for sandwiches.
All I accomplished today was the roll, not any of the recipes for pâté or one of the Vietnamese-style sausages or cold cuts. So I just made a basic ham sandwich with garden tomatoes and sweet pickles. For the spread I used ordinary mayo tarted up with some homemade sweet hot chile sauce, which was great.
My lurking neighbor makes a fabulous wild-yeast sourdough that's nice and chewy, really my favorite bread. I don't know how to make that kind of lovely artisanal bread yet, but it turns out that all the basic instant-yeast breads are pretty easy. For banh mi, you don't really want a seriously crusty, chewy bread anyway.
I tried to order some Kaiser rolls through the mail but thought I had failed, so I found a recipe and ingredients and was about to try them next. Today, however, a dozen Kaiser rolls arrived, so we'll need to work through those before I bake. My lurking neighbors having absconded to their Oklahoma cabin for several weeks, I don't have as much help eating this stuff as I might usually have. They really need to get back here. Anyway, we're going to make hamburgers this week with some of the rolls, and in the meantime have found room in our tiny freezer for the rest. We don't trust ourselves with a big freezer. We've seen what happens.
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4 comments:
" We don't trust ourselves with a big freezer. We've seen what happens."
So what happens? We would be lost without ours.
Yeah, I love my freezer.
Kaiser rolls are far better than generic hamburger buns; brat buns better than those fragile generic hot-dog buns. They have taste and texture and they hold their contents.
Raven: what happens is that the freezer fills up instantly with stuff that gets forgotten in there and never rotated out and cooked. We can't be trusted. I'd kind of like something in between, though, a bit bigger than our small fridge freezer compartment but not as big as a giant chest. Too often I find myself tempted to ask neighbors to hold something for us for a few weeks, which is silly.
James: The banh mi rolls came out so well that I'm encouraged to try the Kaiser rolls, including the fold technique needed to get the star pattern. I've received by mail a kind of barley malt that's said to give the dough the right taste. But it's going to have to wait until we clear some of the vegetable bounty from the garden and get these frozen Kaiser rolls out of the freezer and consumed by guests.
Yesterday I started to experiment with additional sandwich fillings for the leftover rolls, including some BBQ pork, mayo doctored with both hot sweet chili and Sriracha, tomato slices, and soy sauce. The rolls were even better one day old, split and toasted. We're thinking they might make good hot dogs with brats.
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