We were at the local weekly CSA share distribution at Havana Outpost’s outdoor area one recent Saturday.

A table had been set aside for us to lay out baskets with samples of homemade breads and vessels of butter, honey, and seasoned olive oil to eat with them,

                                                                                 copies of our leaflet.

and Debra’s big Chinese garden basket.

Our purpose was to let more people know about the bread baking class we offer.

And to let them taste what breads are taught:

                The easy, non-threatening No-Knead Bread. Artisanal in look and structure, made with the Fundamental Four bread ingredients-Flour, water, salt and yeast, its dense, chewy crumb, crisp crunchy, crackly crust, and big uneven holes like those in Ciabatta make it great for pastas, soups, stews, toast, and the best French Toast. This is the Bread of Dreams for many and has the added feature of being quite adaptable. When making this bread for my son and his friends to take  camping, I’ve loaded it with raisins that keep it moist days longer, though it doesn’t always last through the trip to the camping site. Shredded sharp Cheddar or diced black olives are other variations on the simple and effective theme. It is really not kneaded, but requires planning and a substantially longer rising than more conventional breads.

               Greek Crusty Country Bread-- χωριάτικο ψωμί, pronounced hoh-ree-AH-tee-koh psoh-MEE or Pstomi, is the other bread taught at these sessions. Illustrative of a more conventional bread making technique, it adds to the Fundamental Four Honey, Milk, and Olive Oil.  This has become the standard all-purpose bread in our home. Though not as versatile in what can be added, it is an excellent bread for Tuna sandwiches, Grilled Cheddar and Bacon with Honey Dijon, fresh Mozzarella with Tomatoes and Basil leaves, PB & J, or for morning toast. It also is excellent cubed for stuffings or as croutons for Caesar Salad or a -Panzanella.

                       Both are wholesome-

                                                     free of the additives found in mass-produced bread,

                        economical-

                                                      both cost under $1.00 to bake,

and stress reducing to craft.

                 The lessons, conducted in our apartment on St. Felix Street in Up-And-Coming-Fort Greene, (Italics as mandated by the Borough President’s Office), are for beginning bread bakers including those intimidated by the mystery of bread and those discouraged by past failures. The sessions run between three and four-and-a-half hours depending on the temperature that day. Classes are small- no more than four at a time, and include lots of hands-on instruction, underlying theory, printed handouts, videos, suggested books and web sites. The open time in bread baking allows for discussion, questions & answers, and eating bread. Honey, butter, preserves and coffee/tea are served so no one is driven mad with hunger by the aroma of baking bread. Each apprentice goes home with a warm loaf that she/he has baked.

            Get in touch with us via email:  Chefwoo2@aol.com and we will set up a date for you to start baking your own bread!

photos & video by Lisa Cohen

       

Albert's Landing

Far from Brooklyn in miles and years, Debra and I once lived on the East End of Long Island while I learned my craft. I hesitate to call it East Hampton for that area's reputation of snooty wealth, BMWs, mansions and wild drug-and-champagne orgies behind the high hedges of Georgica Pond. The East Hampton I knew is where I sweated in the steamy noisy kitchens of the Stephen Talkhouse, the Porterhouse Inn and a few other kitchens willing to hire a novice who knew only the rudiments of restaurant cooking. My Hamptons was one of sharing a small house on Abraham’s Path and the apartment over Marley’s Stationery, late night beers at Ambrose’s Tavern, 60-hour weeks in-season, collecting unemployment off-season. My girlfriend, now wife, shared those living quarters while waiting tables. She has roots there and in Toronto. Mine are in Gotham.

I, for one, declared my intention to never visit again.

My last trip east was a mostly unpleasant affair- forced to witness the aggressive commercialization while on the heart rending drive to a funeral.

Funerals, weddings and Thanksgivings can bring out the worst of long-held animosities; at them, gestures and words, glances and silences passed among people well-acquainted carry the memories of ancient bruises, are fraught with slights real and imagined, never free of old shadows, every interaction cast in negative light, allowing no possibility for fresh communication.

My hesitation stemmed from both my more recent experiences there and from the pronounced chilliness of the welcome I received on my first visit; I had been unprepared for the pickup trucks fitted with shotgun racks, the CAT Diesel baseball caps worn by year-round residents, the stunned silences that greeted me on entering Ambrose’s - one of the local bars frequented by baymen, construction workers, landscapers and mechanics. These were the women and men whose roots reached deep in the waters and soil of the Hamptons, the people whose sweat and grit and muscular pride went largely unappreciated by the Summer Folk. The dependence and resentment of these two groups was mutual, but they shared a skin tone that I did not.

A couple of months ago my wife was invited to her family reunion on that East End. Eager to attend she was, I think, surprised at how little it took to convince her curmudgeon husband to agree to accompany her. Both our children, now grown, and the irrepressible Dot joined us on the morning train to Amagansett. Vaughan Allentuck has a lovely home there and was so kind as to put us up and loan us her car.

Later that day, with dark foreboding, I helped unpack at the edge of the beach.

It melted away within seconds of my first introduction.

Rick Bock
copyright RBock

Rick and Vanessa Bock had done much of the heavy lifting of organizing the confab and it must have been an exercise in herding cats. The welcome extended to us by him and by his wife, Vanessa, was warm, immediate and unreserved; they are sweet and funny both, despite his affection for the Red Sox. The welcomes of the rest of my new-found family were equally warm.  

Vanessa Bock and Fred Bock
copyright RBock

              I felt chastened.

                                                                                                                                                                                                       

The party was held on a strip of hot beach called Albert's Landing.

Wide enough for the pickup trucks to bring the grills, clam shucking table, folding canopies, coolers, trestle tables and so on for the 40-50 born Bocks and Bock out-riders who braved the absurd heat on that day, it is sparsely peopled, ignored by the Summer Folk who prefer the Ocean side.

copyright RBock

copyright RBock

There was food and beer aplenty to awaken  memories shared and refreshed, and to ease connections forged, invitations extended, skins burned. Chips, avocado dip, coleslaws that would put a Church Supper to shame, cruel but justified grilled clams, potato salad, grilled kielbasa, cookies, brownies, pastas from Tortelloni Salad to Sesame Noodles, were laid out on the long tables and we stuffed our faces under the canopies. Burgers and hot dogs were offered, of course, but I hovered greedily by the table where the clams were shucked. Sweet, briny, so fresh they were a delightful al dente. While Dot and Sarah were hazed into eating their first raw clams, that flavor brought me back to sitting beside Big Ed Bennett on Beverley and Ed’s back porch, reaching into the pail of ice for the grey top necks, peeling back the shells and sucking back clam after clam, washing them down with cans of beer pulled from another pail of ice while Beverley and my wife shook their heads behind the screen door and exchanged smiles. Beverly and Ed are both gone now, and I wonder what shared sunny afternoon will survive me.

Clam Tasting
Sarah & Dot
copyright RBock

Brothers-
David & Fred Bock
copyright RBock

As an out-rider I was struck by the similarities among members of this extended family- the noses shared by some cousins, the sad eyes of another, overlapping group, the two main body types of the Bock men; one thick-chested and brawny, the other leaner, narrower through the chest, wiry rather than bulky; both strong, both manly.

The Bock women seemed to share, for the most part, strength of hip, thigh and calf - a sharp, highly female taper from hip to ankle. One woman so resembled my sister-in-law Cindy, that I, without my glasses, wondered briefly how she’d gotten shorter.

Aunt Carol & Tucker

The Guest of Honor was my wife’s Aunt Carol. Seventy-five, gently, proudly, with an ease earned over generations, holding her great-grand son, she looks enough like Beverley, my late mother-in-law, to confuse me. I wondered whether two Bock brothers had married two sisters.  I learned later that both brothers, of the same wiry body type had married two women unrelated to each other yet similar of face and form.

Tucker, a most amazing two-year-old, charms all he meets. I look forward to seeing him grow, if only from the other end of the island.

It was later in the day, the sun just starting its Pyrrhic, most ferocious blaze as it drifted to the horizon, when the lobsters were brought forth. There was a lobster shucker hard at work for the benefit of some, but I carried my own paper plate to the sand, plopped myself down and pulled apart the tastiest lobster I’ve ever eaten. Not quite as hard of shell as wished, but cooked in sea water, the sweet richness of the meat needed no butter or lemon to bring me to ecstasy. Even the tomalley was savored, the shoulder meat just inside the shell picked out, and, in a tacit gesture of thanks to Debra for having brought me to this day, I gave her a chunk of the tail meat.

As afternoon ended we prepared to leave, fried and sun-stunned.

copyright RBock

Finally, with lingering good-byes and promises to see each other again, wading through the luscious exhaustion after a day at the beach, the toddlers were rinsed of sand, the toys gathered, we brushed sand from our feet, got into our cars and left. The red sun was cooler and less threatening, its anger spent.

Tucker & Cake
copyright RBock


Rick is my wife’s cousin, the award-winning photographer who graciously provided many of the shots on this page.
For more of his great photographs visit:

http://rickbock.com/

Debra's Garden

Tomato Flowers

Tomato Plants

Green Cherry Tomato Clusters

Ripening Cherry Tomatoes

Some of the tomato plants in our backyard stand over six feet high today.  Studded with delicate yellow flowers where more tomatoes will spring forth, they are supported by a series of sticks and inverted U Trellises. Two of the Cherry Tomato plants have given us a handful of remarkably sweet, crisp, marble sized balls of surprising intensity. They were sliced in two, salted and peppered and splashed with Debra’s best Extra Virgin, not the pretty-good stuff she gets from Trader Joe’s on Atlantic & Court, but the impossibly fragrant, green-tinted, faintly  bitter nectar she hoards in a black tightly-stoppered flask kept in the pantry far from the heat and humidity of the kitchen.

Evander Exercising Patience

The Cherry Tomatoes grow in cascading clusters.  They seem to show a hint of blush overnight, a deeper red a day or two after that; but it is the tomatoes of deep Chinese red that reward an excruciating wait.  The flavor of those is so complex, so fruity and mature, anyone will forswear the dreadful balls of plastic tray, cello-wrapped, and spray-painted Styrofoam that used to pass for tomatoes in our supermarkets.

Fraternal Twins

The larger Patio Tomatoes, shining and glossy, bulging in their greenness, hold the promise of what we both think is a perfect meal:  thick slabs of garden-fresh tomato, thinly sliced Vidalia onions, freshly ground black pepper, slightly tangy mayo and a pinch of Jennifer’s Celery Salt, all on slices of my sourdough rye,  just three hours from the oven if I can keep my wife from it that long.

 While I prefer an icy cold beer to complete the feast, Debra needs only an equally chilly glass of milk to send her into closed-eyed sighs of fulfillment.

(I, too, understand hoarding. The jar of Celery Salt is kept on a high shelf in our cupboard - too high for Debra to see at first glance, but close enough to the front that I can deny having hidden it).

Plum Tomatoes

Plum Tomatoes grow in a window box. Meaty and satisfying, they are wonderful in salads or sliced and grilled on backyard Pizza.

Frying Pepper

The Madding Crowd

On a low shed stand the many pots holding a riot of herbs. Basil, Thai Basil, Pepper Basil, all great with their neighboring tomatoes. Also vying for space - Sage, Thyme, Oregano, Dill, Italian Parsley, Coriander and Rosemary . This last is a curious plant, too woody to eat comfortably; we use it for its perfume and for its flavor once removed. Tossed into a pan when finishing sautéed chicken breasts or pork chops during that low-heat covered stage, Rosemary sprigs yield up oils that give food a subtle under note. Many herbs can be employed so, but Rosemary seems the most assertive. When I have no garden fresh herbs and purchase some at the market, I will lay some past-their-prime sprigs on charcoal when barbecuing chicken both whole and sectioned, cover the grill for a few minutes and have meat more subtly, more urbanely smoked than with Hickory or Mesquite.

Pesto-To-Be

Pesto is the great joy to come from Debra’s herb garden, so she pots several Basil plants each spring. We pinch them back to make them leafier, use some sliced over those tomatoes, pizza or Focaccia, and, when we have enough leaves, pluck, puree with pine nuts and Parmesan, that outrageous Olive Oil, garlic, walnuts and sea salt. It is sauce so good over linguine, mixed with aioli or straight mayo as a sandwich spread or salad dressing. It can be jarred and bring a bit of summer into a chilly winter evening.

 

Charcoal Grill / Smoker

Well, my birthday was celebrated two days early to accommodate everyone’s work schedules, so on Sunday morning, I ate a fine brunch with my wife, daughter, son and his lovely girlfriend, all seated around the back-yard table. After the B-day cards were opened and laughed over, the gifts came out-first four beautifully wrapped bags of wood chips (Mesquite and Hickory) which made sense given my love of flavored-smoke barbecuing, and then… a box containing a fitted cover for, now get this, a fire box-equipped Brinkmann Grill/Smoker!

The Dragon Sleeps






I sat in rare silence for a few seconds, letting rapidly fading grey cells make the connection, then gasped and tearily grinned while my bear of a son hefted the huge crate out to tableside. The bi-lingual instruction book was a bit daunting, so I declined Ursa Not-So-Minor’s offer to help me assemble it right then and asked him instead to lug it back inside.


A quick aside now to again thank the little people who made real the dream of this closeted suburban-patioed Grill Master wannabee: Sarah and Daniel who have surmounted my parenting, Dot for furthering that process in Daniel, Amanda who has been charming, funny and unobtrusive, and most of all-Debra, whose patience and love sustain me in all things.
You will all, from this time on, be subjected to more smoked foods than anyone should eat.


Marco & Jennifer, our neighbors, came down later with young Evander, whom we refer to as our Starter Grandchild. Marco generously, and a bit hungrily, I thought, offered to assist in the next day’s assembling of the smoke belching Leviathan which Vegetarian Jennifer eyed warily. She doubtless feared the clouds of second-hand meat smoke filling their apartment. Maybe eucalyptus branches from time to time?


Next day dawned overcast and I, impatient and fearing rain, decided not to wait for Marco to return from work, dragged the crate back out to the yard, laid down cardboard to prevent scratches, and took the first bite of the elephant. The instructions called for the work of two people but with much strain, balancing and several wrong turns, I was able to have the grill on its legs and 85% done when Marco came down to help finish the job. His aid, trouble-shooting and his sharp second set of eyes were a big help. I covered the grill, went about my day and was awakened later that night by a tremendous rain and thunder storm.


When the city dried off, I went about curing (tempering and cleansing paint fumes, etc, left from its manufacturing and storage) the fire box and cooking chamber. Curing required 11.5 lbs of charcoal and 3 hours of heating, maintaining two different sequential temperatures, and then several hours of cooling. Despite starting at what I thought was a reasonably early hour, my Inaugural Meal was pulled from the grill later that summer evening with the aid of a flashlight.

                                                  Duplex Chicken Legs


Chicken Legs seemed a good choice for smoking in what was really an experiment to determine how the grill worked and what to expect in the future. In addition to being economical, a small loss in case of catastrophe, it was also a dish I’d cooked many times on my old grill and it had the added benefit of not involving a great many steps where variations might skew the data gathered. When experimenting with food, K.I.S.S.
After brining the leg quarters in a salt/garlic/peppercorn/Adobo solution I rinsed and dried them well and rubbed them with a Cajun Seasoning developed at the Empire Diner. I had soaked two handfuls of Mesquite chips in water, drained them and wrapped them in double-thickness aluminum foil. The packets were then perforated five or six times each to allow smoke to escape and tossed onto the ash-covered coals in the fire box. The legs were placed on the cooking chamber grates nearest the fire box; three on the cooking grates and the other three directly above them on the warming grate. This duplex cooking let me place all the meat as close to the heat/smoke source as possible assuring more even cooking times for all of them.


SmokeStack




None of the six websites I read suggested precise cooking times and the given range of temperatures ran from 150° to 275°. Ever the Gemini, I opted for about 225°- low enough to give the smoke time to do its magic and

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Looking Good

high enough to allow us to eat sometime that same night. I hoped for the best and was rewarded with thoroughly cooked, moist, lightly smoked legs with caramelized bits of spice and the usual chewy skin and novice-scaring pink interior that comes not from undercooking (they reached 170° on my trusty digital thermometer) but from both brining and smoking. Think about the pink meat of smoked ham or of brined corned beef and pastrami. My only quibble was that the smoke flavor though just right to Debra’s palate was not as strong as I’d aimed for. It was when cleaning the cooled ashes the next morning that I found the source of the problem; the foil I’d wrapped the wood chips in was not as thick as it might have been and so disintegrated soon after coming into contact with the hot coals. This accounted for the short heavy burst of smoke I’d seen after closing the grill. The resulting smoke, though heavy, dissipated too quickly to permeate the flesh and left it only lightly coated in its flavor and resulting complexity. I will use either a stronger foil or one of Debra’s stainless steel baking pans if I think I can get away with it.
The legs were very good warm that night, cold the next lunch, and shredded into a smoked-chicken salad the third day.
All told it was a successful first try and I looked ahead to the next, more challenging smoking--Grill Smoked Pork Shoulder.

Sourdough!

 

                It is now a quarter past 6 AM and there, on the kitchen counter, is my first Sourdough Bread, (or what remains after gifting a loaf to Evander and his parents, morning toast for Debra and me, and a couple of slices she took with her to show off to her Chef).

In Foreground: Two Sourdough Ryes

                It is as if all my decades of bread making led, inexorably, to this point. There is a complexity and subtlety of flavors and textures I had never achieved before- flavors that develop and change as the bite of bread passes from front teeth and tongue-tip, across the expanse of mid-tongue where it mixes with the mouth’s wet, and still again as it is crushed and ground between millstone molars; a density of crust and spring of crumb beyond previous efforts. I wonder if I will ever again be satisfied with less play of hue and contrast.

Mature Starter Fed For Use In Rye Bread

                Eight days ago I boiled bowls, spoons and Mason jars to sterilize, purify, make new, and sanctify. Using them I mixed rye flour and spring water, nothing more, and captured wild yeast from the Earth’s grain and the air around it. Not quite creating life, but nearly so, I watched the product of this mash swell and aerate, then fed and nurtured it, stubbornly ignoring the Sophie’s Choice of discarding half of each day’s new colony. That overflow I used to produce a hybrid that failed - a monster, a mutation, a bastard child that marked my first utterly failed bread in years.

                ‘We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes,’ I tell my children, and remembering this, set aside the rending of garment and gnashing of teeth. From this learning opportunity came a renewed humility and faith in the teachings of R.L. Beranbaum, and a new willingness to not stray too far from the path.  The rewards came in their time. The dough started to look and feel like a cousin of doughs I’d made before, just a tad more elastic, the gluten more developed and the aroma more mature. The four fermentations came at a statelier pace. I had to meet this less compliant bread on its own terms-only minor adjustments seemed possible, or advisable.

                And finally, the tangy fragrance blended with the familiar caramel-and-earth smell I have so often known from my oven, and a new satisfaction filled me. It seems the breads I’d made before these were instant, modern, made from mixes, a ready formula for the impatient and time-deficient. I had taken my place among the long and narrowed line of true Bread Bakers whose willingness to invest a week and more in the process yielded a fuller and more substantial food. As baking bread is more truly a human enterprise than plucking fruit or dropping prey or carrion onto embers, making sourdough - that securing of living matter from the ether, sustaining and nourishing it, urging it to reproduce, then killing it off in a final frenzied microscopic orgy -  is a deeper manipulation of the environment to generate fuel for our bodies.

                The first of these breads is imperfect - slightly too deeply - crusted, under-salted by a few grams, but I can work through these minor shortcomings. The seed starter has come to room temperature and I will expand, nourish and divide it to create its offspring. Newer generations will be raised to new heights.

The Bread Man Cometh

          Mid May of 2010: we said goodbye to the Empire Diner.

        We’d learned of the passing of the old friend, broke from our scattered pursuits and felt, separately and collectively, the need to gather.

            Two-hundred and more joined to attend the Diner’s wake. Bright yellow sunlight let us walk in shirtsleeves as we did what is right and proper at such a rite of passage-met new friends and those we thought we’d never see again, ate and laughed at tales both oft-told and new, cried and drank and cursed the fates and came, at last, to acceptance of the finality of it…

 and then returned to our lives strewn across the country and the world.

        Nearly nine months later and no new Empire had been established, though many had been considered.

            Nearly nine months later, in the tease of warmer afternoons in Gotham, (knowing that still a sudden return of Winter could quick-freeze  naïve, foolhardy robins  and leave them to plummet  like shocked, avian hail about our streets), we longed for the New that would recapture the Old.

And now a year has passed and we grow restive and hungry for the joy of cooking.

Despite-

                        Twenty friends over for a Crab and Mussel Boil in the backyard;

The Call To Table

Debra's Beautiful Settings

Bread To Be Torn by Hand

EEEK!

YUM!

                                                                           

                        Thanksgiving Feast for twenty-seven;

Another of Debra's Tables

Tryptophan Conquers All

                                                                                

                        Brazilian Feijoada for eighteen;

Sorry, Too Busy Eating To Take Photos

Still the need to flex kitchen muscles persists.

Thirteen months of gestation is long-enough!

Bread Man is now on the scene and that mild-mannered alter ego will teach you the ins and outs of BreadBaking and will share thoughts on Bread, BreadBaking, food in general and life in as strange a place as Brooklyn.

Annabel's, Leelee's, and mine