Delicious & Dragons

From leavened bread to unleavened one, I was in the mood for some wheat tortillas. Turned them into two dishes, a plate of fish tacos with sriracha mayo, and some goat cheese quesadillas. Happy with how both turned out.

It’s been a while, but there’s something relaxing about baking bread, so it’s nice to return to it. And, I never get tired of the little moments, lifting the cast iron pot to see how far the loaf has risen, hearing it crackle when you take it fresh out of the oven to cool, that sort of stuff.

No, I’m not dead. Yes, the food’s still good. No, this is still not pizza.

Just some pork shoulder rubbed with sugar and salt, and roasted low and slow with cumin and beer until fall apart tender. Pork with sauce and rice are an easy match.

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Making round discs of baked dough while simultaneously avoiding the daunting task of actually making pizza.

With some red kimchi and a light smear of cream cheese to offset the intensity of the sweet sour and salty flavors.

Saw some red cabbage being sold and decided to give it a try with fermenting it. One of the results – A burger with a spicy kimchi mayo. Tasty, even though the difference between red and regular cabbage are mostly optics.

Just trying different combinations. This one’s whisky, dark chocolate and caramelized white chocolate. Can’t complain.

The benefits of having leftovers is you can start throwing them together and see what comes out. In this case a dessert that is, for lack of better term, crazily decadent. The Kouign-Amann are best though when they are freshly baked, so I suppose I have to invite the rest of the party next time so they make short work of them while they’re still hot.

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It must have been boredom, or the urge to tackle one last challenging thing before the year ends, or maybe I was feeling a bit festive, or all the above, but I decided to go for the granddaddy, the big kahuna, the BBEG of layered doughs – puff pastry, in the form of the sugar and butter bomb that is known as Kouign-Amann.

It starts out innocently enough, mix the dough, make sure the gluten develops well so it can stretch, shape the butter into a square block, be amazed and alarmed at the amount of butter. Let the dough rise, chill the butter. For now they go their separate ways. It’s only once you set up those two to meet that the intricate dance of dough rolling starts. You see, if the butter is too hard and too cold you can’t roll it and tear the dough, if it’s too soft it will melt and seep together. The temperature has to be just right. I gave it my best, threw it into the oven and watched it rise. Quite literally, as the view straight into the oven completely took my attention for 15 minutes straight as I gazed at the bubbling dough. Once done, pull quickly from the mold before the caramel hardens, let it cool for as long as your patience allows and dig in. As you can see, I got impatient with chilling the dough, so things got a bit melty, leading to less distinct layers, but the result is still quite phenomenal. The crunchy, caramel-y crust on the outside is an absolute treat. But don’t eat those thingies if you plan to be active afterwards.

And so ends the year, a bit sweet, a bit salty, a bit messy, twisting and turning like dough in a mold (hm, that analogy is kinda clunky). Let’s see what the new year brings, hopefully a bevy of new delights, culinary or otherwise.