Cucumber soup, finally!

There are probably only two dishes that my mom makes and likes, and I would go very far to avoid them. One of them is called "mlečne ugorke", which translates directly into "cucumbers with milk". The dish is considered a specialty in Prekmurje, the small flat part of Slovenia where I come from. Basically, one slices cucumbers thinly, then you mix them with yogurt and spices, maybe a touch of sour cream, and that is it. It is eaten cold and is considered super refreshing in summer months. That is, unless you are like me and cannot stomach it.

Ranting aside, this cucumber dilemma has been nagging me for years, and both my parents and I accepted that there is no point in fighting laws of physics here.

Then I went to NYC for work, Jasna came along, and one day we went for lunch together to a brand new cafe in our NYC office. When a new cafe opens, the staff is super motivated and the food is usually superb. That was definitely the case in NYC, anything we tasted well exceeded expectations.

One of the soup choices was of a surprisingly appealing pale green color. Cucumber soup! Jasna loves cucumbers, so she immediately got a bowl. There was something about the look of the soup that made me try it, too.

Ingredients remove much of guesswork

Wow! The taste had a nice hint of spice, sweetness and sourness were nicely balanced and it was supremely refreshing. The soup made me realize how good cucumbers with milk could have been. Jasna and I decided that we could eat this soup regularly.

The challenge was on: How to replicate the recipe? Our kitchens tend to be very generous when it comes to sharing recipes. There is only one catch - they give you an industrial-size recipe which can be challenging to scale for home use. Thankfully, every dish has a label listing the ingredients so that people can obey their dietary restrictions. I took a picture, and the rest was to be a process of trial and error.

Yesterday, I decided to give the soup a shot. I used three regular cucumbers, peeled, one apple, peeled and cored, a thumb size piece of fresh horseradish, peeled and chunked into smaller pieces, fat-free yogurt, a tablespoon or two of sour cream, a quarter of a large sweet onion, four cloves of garlic, juice of two small lemons, a teaspoon or so of dry dill, and a good pinch of salt.

I put all the ingredients in the blender and blended them at a slow to medium speed. I eyeballed the amount of yogurt needed so that the soup was of a nice thick and a bit chunky consistency. I highly recommend to put the yogurt in first, at the bottom of the blender jar,  to help the blending process.

The soup was even better then next day 

The result was quite stunning. I think it is the horseradish and apple that make a huge difference. The horseradish does add a deeper flavor and just the right hint of heat. If you remember to make and refrigerate the soup a day ahead, you will be rewarded as the flavors will meld nicely. 

Hazelnut gelato

After returning from a trip to Slovenia and Croatia, I have been wondering why it is so difficult to get good hazelnut gelato in North America. Or at least so it seems. And when you do find it, detecting hazelnut flavor requires some imagination. Not so back in Slovenia. There, one can even purchase prepared hazelnut filling for potica, which our friend transformed into a delicious ice cream. After trying that ice cream, the quest was on. Am I able to recreate the same intense hazelnut flavor with ingredients available to me in SF Bay Area?

Proper atmosphere for enjoying the gelato

It turned out I already had a collection of recipes for gelato, so it was the matter of choosing one as a starting point. I decided to go with a recipe from Martha Stewart's haydays, probbaly beause it seemed most hazelnut intense. However, each and every recipe requested that one grinds hazelnuts, brings them to a boil in milk, let them steep for 2 hours, and then to strain out the solids. If all I needed was some hazelnut flavor, I would have simply used hazelnut essence that one can buy at Whole Foods. I decided to put my Vitamix to work, just like when I make hot chocolate. And I could still add some hazelnut essence!

Start by blending 1/2 lb roasted hazelnuts in 3 cups of whole milk. This time I used roasted Oregin hazelnuts from Trader Joe's. It would have been even better if I roasted some fresh hazelnuts myself. Run the blender at the highest speed for a couple of minutes until the hazelnuts are completely emulsified, what you get is hazelnut milk.

Transfer the hazelnut milk into a saucepan, preferably one with rounded bottom edges, but any good pan will do. Bring the mixture to a simmer, occasionally scraping the edges with a heat-proof spatula. Remove the pan from heat.

In a bowl whisk 5 egg yolks with 2/3 cup of sugar. Continue whisking when the sugar has dissolved and the mixture turns pale yellow. I find it that taking a short break here and there lets the sugar dissolve faster, which speeds up the process.

In the next step we need to mix the hot hazelnut milk with the egg mixture and make sure to avoid scrambling the eggs. Start by adding a small amount of the hazelnut mixture to the eggs while stirring the egg mixture - I use my Supoon. This way the mixture will warm up and the temperature shock will be smaller. Add some more hazelnut milk, keep stirring. When you have added about 1/2 of the hazelnut milk to the egg mixture, pour the egg mixture into the remaining hazelnut milk in the pan. Now you have a custard mix that you need to warm up so that it thickens.

Purists and Michelin-star restaurants would, at this point, strain the mixture to remove any scrambled egg bits. I did not want to remove any of the hazelnuts and I did not want to make additional mess, so I skipped the straining part. I always make this choice and it always works out well.

Cook over medium heat, stirring and scraping constantly until the mixture thickens and will coat the back of a wooden spoon. Do not let the mixture boil. For this step I believe one needs to be pedantic. I really do stir continuously with my supoon/spatula, and I use my instant thermometer to make sure the temperature does not go over 175F. The truth is that 180F or 185F is still OK, but I like to maintain a comfortable margin for error.

Hazelnut gelato mixture chilling in an ice bath

Transfer the custard back to the bowl and stir in a cup of heavy cream (optional) and a couple of tablespoons of Frangelico (optional), and a few teaspoons of hazelnut essence (optional). Now you have the gelato mixture that is ready to be cooled down.

Place the bowl in an ice bath for an hour or so until it is cold. Walk by every now and then and stir the mixture, but do attempt to restrain from snacking on the mixture, unless your design is to consume the custard. It is ridiculously tasty. This way it will chill faster than in your fridge. If you are not making gelato right away, transfer the bowl in a fridge or even a freezer for up to an hour or so.

Gelato ready for consumption

You can freeze the mixture as is and get a tasty frozen brick. Even a simple ice cream maker to finish the gelato will mix in some air and the mixing will prevent large crystals from forming. The result is a smooth and light texture.

I wonder what would happen if one cooked this custard in the oven and chilled it. Are we marching towards hazelnut creme brule?

Burgers from the Balkans - čevapčiči

I am learning that BBQ is traditional for memorial weekend. So it is time to pay tribute to čevapčiči or ćevapi, as they are commonly called in Serbia and Bosnia, where they consider them a national dish. Chances are you have heard of Korean BBQ, and chances are that you have not heard of Serbian BBQ. Which is unfortunate, the pleskavica burgers, simply have no competition, period.

Čevapčiči and pljeskavica are pretty much the same dish, just that the meat is shaped differently. But first, how does one pronounce it? Chevapchichi is my best guess for transliteration. To hear the pronunciation and to see what I believe is a traditional way to make them, there is always a YouTube video available. Note, the comments in that video are embarrassing, it will take forever to forget the wars in the past.

One can get very wrapped up in a debate about what kind of meat to use. For example, in Muslim parts, minced pork would definitely not be a good candidate. My favorite combination is to combine ground beef, ground pork, and ground lamb, one part each. But sometimes one doesn't have the three kinds of meat available, or maybe you want to make čevapčiči a bit leaner. Using just ground beef will do just fine.

I used 2lb of 85% lean ground grassfed beef. I added one finely minced onion, a 3-4 minced garlic cloves, and a bunch of spices. Note that my spices are anything but traditional! I use about 2 tablespoons of each korean chili, california chili, ancho chili, and ground cumin. I also added about 1 tablespoon of ground coriander, and around 1 tablespoon of salt. I have learned that adding a bit of liquid helps with the mixing and also with cooking - I usually add a few tablespoons of water and a bit of vegetable oil. Mix it all up well and you get a mixture looking like a well seasoned hamburger.

The one and only way to make sure you seasoned the meat well is to make a small patty and pan fry it in a small pan. It will only take a minute or so per side, and it totally worth doing. Correct the seasoning if needed, but remember you cannot take spices away, so it is better to start with less salt and then you can add more if you wish.

Next, let us shape the meat into a small rolls. Having your hands wet will help prevent the meat from sticking to your hands and the shaping will be easier. For one čevapčiči roll you need a few tablespoons of meat - try out and you'll see what works for you. Making čevapčiči too large will make cooking harder, so going on a small side is just fine. I think I made them too large this time :)

At this point you can let the meat rest for a while, or let it in your fridge for a day. If you kept čevapčiči rolls in the fridge, let them warm up to the room temperature, it will help them cook more evenly. That will help the flavor, but you can also cook čevapčiči right away. Preheat your grill, set the heat on medium and cook them about 3-4 minutes per side. The time really depends on the size of čevapčiči rolls, temperature of the meat, and your grill. If you grill is too hot you will burn the meat on the outside and have it raw in the middle. The same can be the case if the meat is too cold.

I like my steaks medium rare, but minced meat I cook well done, and create juiciness by adding spices, onion, and liquid to the meat. It's all about salmonela and other nasty bacteria. On the steak, these will grow on the top of the meat, so grilling will kill them. For ground meat, it is all mixed up, so the bacteria may be everywhere, so the only way too cook it is to make the meat well done. Or to use sous vide, which I have not tried yet for cevapcici, but I do intend to.

Back at home we would consume čevapčiči with ajvar and kajmak and vegetables. And some crusty bread, of course. If we made them in the patty form, they would be called pljeskavica, which just had to be eaten in a special bun called lepinja. Here in the US, ajvar is very easy to get, kajmak is possible but harder, so you can recreate the exeprience if you wish. Or you use them as a meat part of your dish. For example, last time I added čevapčiči to gnocchi in tomato sauce, and the result floored our Korean friend.

The wonderful celeriac

I was looking at my food pictures and decided it was time to do some catch up. Celeriac is out of season now, unfortunately. But the fall is coming, and with it the goodness of root vegetables.

Jasna introduced me to this strange root. Her family would make celeriac salad as fllows: Boil celeriac root, peel it, cut into small cubes, mix with dressing made of lemon, oil, and heaps of garlic. Let is stand in the fridge for about a day or so, and then eat. Extremely tasty, highly recommended.

That was the only use of celeriac that we have known of. As much as I liked it, peeling the cooked celeriac was a bit messy, and it was kind of hard to find. so we made it only occasionally. What a giant mistake that was!

Cooking experimentation became more of a norm for us, and I got into a habit of calling on my pal Google to help me explore what one can do with certain ingredients. We also discovered Milk Pail market in Mountain View, which carries all sorts of great things in addition to their sinful collection of cheeses. They seem to be a reliable source of celeriac!

Here are two ways to prepare celeriac. First, we will peel it. The simplest way is to make a cut at the top where the leaves/stalks grow, and create a flat surface. The flat surface will keep the root stable on your cutting board while you use your large knife to cut off the skin. You can't really peel it too thin. It seems wasteful, but the surface is not smooth enough for that. The same peeling technique works great for other things such as squash, though for butternut squash there is no substitute for a vegetable peeler.

Peel our celeriac root

Now we have our root peeled, looking white and great. One easy way to consume it is to eat it raw. We were surprised how tasty it was, so this is now our favorite way to eat celeriac. We grade it with the food processor, and mix it with our favorite dressing, and when we have the time we let it stand for 1/2 hour or so, so that the root strands soak up the dressing. Leaving it in your fridge overnight works great too.

Our standard dressing consists of the spectacular pumpkin seed oil from my uncle's farm, salt, and lemon. That is it. Here is the result.

Celeriac salad

If you want to cook celeriac, you can sautee it. First cut it into small cubes - if you have two flat surfaces, you can cut the root into slices, then stack the slices and cut them across:

Then cut it cross-wise, and the cubes will appear. Alternatively, attack one slice at a time. It will be slower but therapeutic.

Heat up your favorite pan, use your favorite oil or butter, and at a medium heat saute the root, stirring periodically. Here I sauteed it with some onion and garlic, and I also added some cut up king oyster mushrooms. Season with salt early in the cooing phase - the salt will help draw the water from the veggies and will aid caramelization. The dish is done when you decide it is done, and before the vegetables are burned. You can cover the pan if you wish. This will speed up the cooking process, but will yield a different texture because the lid will trap the water in the pan. Let me repeat - do not crank up the heat way up, medium to medium-high heat is what you want here.

I made this for breakfast along with some scrambled eggs. You can use it as a side dish for almost anything, or mix it with quinoa or buckwheat groats, or pasta.

No-knead sourdough bread with steel-cut oats

When we first arrived to Canada, we encountered several disappointments. By far, the biggest one were the washing machines. Back then, the front loaders had not made the voyage across the big pond yet. So we were sentenced to destructive 20-minute top-loader cycles. I can say that pretty much every European we have met shared our dismay.

At the top of the list of disappointment were potatoes and bread. Since this is a food blog, potatoes will earn their own post of three, in due time. Today, we focus on bread.

Truthfully, good crusty bread was available in Waterloo, just that the supermarkets in walking distance from our place didn't carry it. You had to know about the little German bakery, make a trek there, and empty your bank account for a loaf of bread.

This started my quest, I was determined to make good bread at home. Years had passed, I got good in making wheat-free soda bread, we discovered very good heavy 100% rye bread and so on. The art of proper home-made bread eluded me until my friend Walt pointed me to a NY Times article with a recipe for no-knead bread.

That was a true revolution! The bread came out of the oven crackling, to quote the same friend Walt, who also supplied me with a container of wonderfully aged sourdough starter. I tried several recipes from breadtopia.com, and our staple soon became sourdough bread with steel cut oats.

Quite a sight, ha? And so trivial to make. Even my mom admitted the no-knead method was far superior and much less work than anything she had tried. My mom can and does bake very well!

Put 1/2 cup of steel-cut oats in a large bowl. I like to use a glass bowl because my plastic wrap sticks much better to glass than it does to steel. Add 12 oz of warm water and stir. If you heat the water too much, you will kill the yeast in the starter. Add some sourdough starter, and mix it all well with a Danish dough whisk if you have one. If you don't have one, it is $8 very well spent.

I hear you screaming. HOW MUCH SOURDOUGH STARTER? The breadtopia dude, who I think really knows what he is doing, uses 1/4 cup of sourdough, or 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast if you do not have sourdough. I definitely suggest one does not use more than 1/4 tsp of instant yeast, otherwise the bread will taste very yeasty. Jasna will confirm that from suffering through my early attempts. Sourdough starter, at least mine, is much more forgiving. I usually eyeball it, and am pretty generous, often using a cup of starter. I suggest you start with 1/4 cup and then experiment. Starters do differ, and you may not want your bread to be super sour. My starter is nicely aged - I have had it for about 5 years, and Walt claimed it was already 40 years old when he gave it to me. It has a mellow flavor, a nice hint of sourness, and is super vigorous, so I just love using it.

Danish dough whisk

I have never heard of a Danish dough whisk until I watched videos on breadtopia.com. It really looks like a bent hanger, and I bet you can make one yourself. I started out without it, then I saw it was $8 and bought it immediately. The whisk makes mixing of the stiff batter much easier. Additionally, it must be one of the geekiest kitchen gadgets, so everyone should definitely have one. Just imagine the powerful impression you are making on people visiting your kitchen.

Back to making bread! We just mixed water, steel-cut oats, and a mysterious amount of sourdough starter. Now we add a combination of flours. I like to use 1.5 cups of white flour and 1.5 cups of gluten free flour I buy in Costco. I like the gluten-free flour for its flavor - it is a mix of a variety of bean flours, and potato starch, and probably more interesting things. Sometimes I use 1.5 cups of buckwheat flour, and sometimes I use 1.5 cups of rye flour. You get the pattern - 1/2 of the flour is white, and one can play with the rest. All together 3 cups of flour works well.

Add 1 to 2 teaspoons of salt, and stir everything using the geeky dough whisk. When everything is nicely incorporated, you are done. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, place it somewhere cool, and wait.

The dough after 12 or so hours

After 8 to 18 hours you will be ready to work the dough, have it rise again, and then bake. At that point, you need about 2 hours of time. You'll be busy maybe for 20 minutes during that time, but you have to finish the bread. Well, you could do the second rise in the fridge and make things even more flexible.

Note that the rising time really depends on the temperature, your sourdough, humidity and so on. For me, overnight seems to work perfectly.

I flour the surface of my giant cutting board pretty thickly: I usually use 3 heaping tablespoons of flour that I spread with the back of the spoon across a large rectangular area on the board. Then I place the risen dough from the bowl right in the middle of the flour. The dough will be like a thick mud, so I add another tablespoon or two of flour on the top and smear it around. I stretch the dough into a rectangle and fold it. I repeat that a couple of times - this is an important step because this helps with gluten creation. I suggest watching the breadtopia dude how he does it, and then find your own way.

After a few foldings, I knead the dough ball it until I use up all the flour I put on the board. The dough is fairly wet, so it picks up the flour pretty fast. This is just my way of using up the flour and minimize the cleanup.

Lightly grease another bowl. The one that you used for rising will be dirty. Shape the dough into a ball, and stretch and fold the ball a few times. The dough then goes in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap for the second rise.

The second rise will take between 1 to 2 hours. For me it is always about an hour, maybe a little less. In about 30 minutes I start preheating the oven to 500F, along with a heavy pot with a lid. Make sure that the pot and the lid can take the 500F temperature. Glass lids often cannot handle that kind of temperature and may shatter. I usually use a cast-iron pot because it retains the heat very well, but I have had very good results using regular pots.

Preheating will take some time. If the oven doesn't go all the way to 500F, I suggest cranking it as high as you can.

When the dough doubles in size, it is baking time! With your kevlar oven mitts, take the pot out of the oven, close the oven door, remove the lid, and fold in the dough. Make sure that the surface you put your pot on can take the high heat. A wooden cutting board is a good choice. Make some cuts in the dough so that your bread is pretty. Here is what I do:

Cover the pot, put it back in the oven, and set the timer to 30 minutes. The wet dough will generate steam inside the covered pot and the effect on the crust will be the same is it is in commercial oven where they steam the bread while it bakes.

When the 30 minutes are up, remove lid from the pot, reduce the heat to 450F, and bake for another 15 minutes.

I usually put the lid somewhere out of the way - remember, it is VERY hot - and put a towel on it, reminding myself that I must not pick the lid with my bare hands. If you have kids, the lid, and later the pot are not something they should be able to get close to.

After 15 minutes, the bread is done! Turn the pot over and the bread will fall out very nicely and easily. The pot should not need any significant cleaning.

Cool the bread on a rack and then eat it. Jasna and I cut the loaf in smaller chunks and freeze them. After thawing the bread will taste great.

Addendum!

This remains my favorite bread recipe. However, I changed it a little bit, so let me record the ingredients and the procedure, briefly.

• In a large bowl mix:
• 1 cup steel cut oats
• 14 oz warm water
• 1 cup sourdough starter (you can use less) or 1/4 tsp of instant yeast
• Add 3 cups of all-purpose flour or bread flour, preferably with high protein content
• Add 1 to 1.5 tsp salt
• Mix well, preferably with your geeky Danish dough whisk
• Cover with plastic wrap, let rise in a cool place for 8-18 hours or so, until the dough approximately doubles in volume
• Turn on a well floured surface, stretch and fold the dough a few times, knead in the flour from the board. Use enough flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the board.
• Put the dough-ball in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise until it doubles in volume, for about an hour or so.
• In about 30 mins put a heavy pot with a lid in your oven, set the heat to 500F. Make sure the pot and the lid can take such heat. If needed, a lower temperature will work, but you may need to adjust the baking time.
• When the dough has about doubled in size, place the dough into the preheated pot, score the dough with a paring knife, cover with the lid, and bake for 30 minutes. Use heavy duty gloves/mitts. 
• Remove the lid, reduce the temperature to 450F, bake for 15 minutes.
• Turn the bread out the pot, cool on a rack.

Addendum 2!

Last year we acquired a grain mill. Sounds excessive? Maybe 😊

We did some reading and realized that commercial flours, including whole wheat ones, are processed quite heavily and depleted of many nutrients. That made us think, even though our bread and flour consumption has been quite low. The second part of our motivation was that we wanted flours that are hard to purchase - quinoa, millet, split pea, beans, lentils, ...

So we took a plunge and after almost a year, I am still certain that was a good decision. Aroma of freshly milled wheat is something everyone should experience! The flavor of our bread went up quite a few notches. Probably the most impressive change is in pizza dough - not just the flavor, but also the consistency of the dough is out of this world, despite being whole wheat.

We adjusted our bread recipe to used whole wheat flour. We still use 3 cups of flour, which we obtain from milling 2 cups of grains. The usual combination includes 1.5 cups of hard winter wheat berries, either red or white. The remaining 1/2 cup is what we play with. The most popular choice seems to be millet, but we also use quinoa or buckwheat.

We also upped the amount of steel cut oats to 1 cup. I tried that once as an experiment, looking for adding more fiber to our bread. The result was, in opinion, superior, so 1 cup of oats is the new standard.

Addendum 3 (May 2020)

The next iteration of this recipe is 100% rye bread. For a while we stopped baking bread because we had to go gluten free. The go-to recipe for that period were gluten free muffins. Super tasty, but we missed the bread crust. When we were able to relax our diet somewhat, we tried 100% rye bread with such good result that we make it regularly now. We buy a large bag of rye berries, they mill really easily, and the taste is anything but the bitterness I remember from rye bread. We also switched feeding our sourdough starter with rye only, and the started has been doing just fine.

The main difference seems to be that the dough is wetter. I may need to play with the amount of liquid - but so far, the wetness of the dough has not cause an issue.

Summary:

• 12 oz of warm water
• 1 cup rye sourdough starter
• 3 cups of 100% rye flour, highly recommended to mill it freshly from 2 cups of rye berries
• 1-2 tsp salt
• 1 cup oats, steel cut are the best, rolled work too
• First rise: Mix everything up in a large bowls, cover with plastic wrap, let sit for 24 h
• Add some more rye flour, about a cup or more, mix/knead the dough in the same bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for another 1-2 hours
• Place a covered pot in the oven, heat to 500F
• Place the dough in the pot, make a few slits, place the cover on the pot, and bake for 30 minutes at 500F
• Remove the cover and bake for additional 15 minutes at 425F
• Cool in a rack. Eat. Slice and freeze what you have not finished in a day.

Addendum 4 (August 2021) - 72h rise whole grain walnut bread

Gluten remains a challenge, so we have largely been making stove-top gluten-free flatbread: Millet and buckwheat flours have worked really well. But, we missed regular bread so I started to poke around: I read that gluten tended to be much less of a problem in Europe, and a speculation was that it was because the wheat had not been that heavily modified, and that it had less gluten. So my interest turned to less or not modified grains such as spelt, kamut, emmer, enikorn which apparently have a different kind of gluten or sometimes less gluten. Then I came across articles (example)  mentioning that long cold rise resulted in shorter gluten strands, making the bread easier to digest. And of course, the one and only Kenji Lopez-Alt, has already posted about his experimentation with long rise.

So I gave it a shot, and the result so far has been very encouraging. The bread is beyond tasty, and it appears to be much less troubling, if troubling at all, when it comes to our gluten sensitivity. Here is what a four-days affair looks like:

1. Feed the starter: mix 1 part water, 1 part water, weight wise, and add 25% weight wise of sourdough starter. Cover loosely and let rise at the room temperature for about 24h. This gives you levain.
2. Mix together the following:
1. 500g flour, freshly milled. Einkorn and emmer have worked best for us, both flavor wise, and gluten sensitivity wise, with eiknorn becoming our favorite.
2. Add 8-10g salt and mix it with the flour.
3. 300-350g cold filtered water
4. 150g levain
5. Optionally: 1/2 cup steel cut oats. 
3. Fold the mixture a bit, it will start developing some strength.
4. Transfer to a bowl (oiled, optionally, or use the same bowl), cover with a lid or plastic wrap, and let rise in your fridge for about 72h. 
5. Take the dough out of the fridge, and leave it to reach about the room temperature.
6. Knead in a handful or two or walnuts, and optionally add more flour if the dough is too wet to knead.
7. Let rise for about 2h, it should about double in size.
8. About 45 mins before the bread is ready, preheat the oven with a heat-proof pot and lid to 500F. I used an cast-iron dutch oven.
9. When the bread is ready and oven and pot pre-heated, fold the bread some more, put it in the pot, and bake covered at 500F for 30 minutes.
10. Uncover the pot (use oven mitts!) and bake uncovered at 425F for another 15 minutes.
11. Cool the bread on a wire rack, and exercise restraint when eating it.

Artichoke Caponata

Jasna and I went to graduate school at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. We arrived in Waterloo before RIM aka Blackberry was a success, which means we experienced Waterloo before its high-tech boom. Even for two graduate students who came from a non-first-world country, Waterloo was a dingy place. We were longing for all things related to home, and one day someone pointed us to a tiny hole-in-a-wall store called Vincenzo's. They carried Fructal's fruit juices, something every Slovenian appreciated deeply.

So we visited Vincenzo's. The store was tiny and packed beyond what should be legal. But they did carry the good stuff, and we became regulars. We were not alone in thinking that Vincenzo's was making a big difference in a town with extra wide road shoulders that can accommodate Mennonnite buggies. Since then, the Caccioppoli brothers took full advantage of the influx of money and consequent upscaling of Waterloo. Their store has moved twice, and is now as spiffy as any high-end market in Silicon Valley.

We loved Vincenzo's sandwitches. In fact, we still love them and get them every time we are in Waterloo. A standard ingredient for sandwiches was an addictive spread/dip called artichoke caponata. One cold purchase that dip on its own at a ridiculous price, which we did, despite being poor graduate students. One day, I realized that the jar of caponata had a label on it, listing the ingredients. That was the last time we helped Caccioppoli brothers make handsome profit on that particular item.

The list of ingredients was super simple: mayonnaise, asiago cheese, and artichoke hearts. So I went to Vincenzos, got the cheese and artichokes. I made the mayo in our food processor, added the shredded cheese and drained artichokes to the food processor, ran the machine for a minute or so, and made the caponata. It was exactly it!

You may ask about the proportions. Frankly, I don't record them and wing it every time. The recipe is very tolerant of variations. Even a caponata recipe I found on the web specifies a large range for how much mayonnaise one should use. I prefer more cheese and artichokes, and just enough mayo. I vastly prefer marinated artichoke hearts, and I like fresh asiago over aged one, but all of that is akin splitting hairs. The result is beyond tasty and is also very versatile. You can spread in on a piece of bread and optionally add a piece of ham, or you can use it as a vegetable dip, or add it as cold sauce to steak or braised beef.

While we are at it, let me put in a plug for home-made mayonnaise.

We almost never keep a jar of mayonnaise in our fridge. Usually the jars are too large, and few store-bought mayonnaises can compete in flavor with Tommy mayonnaise we were using back in Slovenia. Well, that was true before we discovered the Korean supermarket that carries Kewpie mayo from Japan. That one is a force to be reckoned with.

I still tend to make the mayo when we need it. This way there is no need for me to plan ahead, we make only as much as we need. Most importantly, we are reminded that mayonnaise is nothing but an emulsion of oil, lemon juice, mustard, and egg yolk. Pretty much 100% fat. Making it yourself really curbs the consumption!

Another good thing about making your mayo is that you can choose what oil to use. Olive oil yields mayonnaise with a very strong olive-oil taste. Vegetable or avocado oil have much more neutral taste, giving one much more freedom to add spices to affect the flavor. On the other hand, the home-made mayo does contain raw egg yolks, which presents a risk that some people are not willing to take.

The procedure for making mayo is really trivial: To the bowl of your food processor add two egg yolks, a tablespoon of Dijon style mustard, a pinch of salt, and juice of one lemon. Pulse a bit until everything is mixed up well. While the machine is running, drizzle in SLOWLY the oil. About one cup will be the right quantity. You will hear it when the mayo thickens - the sound that a food processor makes is quite distinct. Stop the machine, taste the result and adjust the seasoning if needed.

This is a very basic mayonnaise recipe. You can add spices, herbs, and/or garlic, roasted or not, and you can combine different oils for different results. Lately I have been using 1 part of olive oil and 3 parts of vegetable or avocado oil.

Summary:

• 1 cup mayonnaise (vary to taste)
• 2 cups shredded asiago (vary to taste)
• 1 cup marinated artichoke hearts
• 1/2 cup roasted garlic (vary to taste)

Method:

Mix and chop all ingredients in a food processor until artichokes are chopped pretty finely.

Sour dough sour cherry pancakes

Sunday breakfast! What to make? For many in the US, pancakes seem to be the ultimate treat. At the same time, we did not grow up with pancakes, and frankly we do not even know what the Slovenian word for pancakes is.

Of course, this is a good reason to give pancakes a try and develop an appropriate appreciation. I have made several successful attempts, but the memorable "mmmmm, this is so good" experience has been elusive. The key was a hint from Heather, the spectacular product manager on my previous project, and exactly the kind of a person you just want to work with. Heather wanted to make sourdough pancakes, so I gave her some of my nicely matured starter. Of course, that was something that I, too, needed to try, being keen on sourdough anything.

I found a recipe on the web, and gave it a try. The result was very good, but still lacked the wow factor, so I decided to experiment. To my big surprise, one attempt was all it took, and here is the record so we can repeat the experience.

First, sift dry ingredients into a bowl: 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 TBS sugar. A separate and taller bowl will contain wet ingredients: Lightly whisk two eggs - let me put in a plug for the best whisk I have ever owned; it is on a smaller side, perfect for a home kitchen, and is unbelievably easy to clean. Add 3/4 cup of milk, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and whisk again. Then whisk in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of melted extra virgin super duper coconut oil from Nutiva. I suppose butter would do as well.  Finally, add about 1 cup of stiff sourdough starter, and slowly whisk again to incorporate.

Get a jar of sour cherries in syrup, and drain the fruit so that you can work fast when the pancakes are cooking.

Preheat your griddle on medium-high, with a bit of high-smoking-point oil. Lately I prefer avocado oil. I learned than one can easyly overheat the griddle and make the oil smoke, so I use oil that can withstand high heat. I also tend to pay a lot of attention, so I do not have to clean the griddle and start again.

Once the griddle is hot, gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. The consistency should be a bit thicker than heavy cream. You can correct the consistency by adding milk by a tablespoon, or by adding flour by a teaspoon.

Use about 1/4 cup of the batter for one pancake, or if you like to improvise like me, simply spoon out the batter until you think you have enough for a pancake. I find it that 2-3 spoons work great.

As soon as the batter for a batch of pancakes is on the griddle, add a few sour cherries to each pancake - for the pancakes I made, 5 cherries appeared the right quantity.

After about 1.5 to 2 minutes, the pancakes will be golden and the cherries will set into the batter, flip the pancakes over, and again cook for another minute or so, until golden. If your heat is too high, the pancakes will burn on the outside and will not cook on the inside. Patience!!!

Repeat the routine until all the batter is used up. All that is left is consumption! Jasna's likes a spoonful of chestnut honey on top of her pancakes, and I enjoy maple syrup. We skipped the butter or coconut oil, and nuts and fruit, we even skipped the whipped cream. But you don't have to!

Leg of lamb

I like lamb. I prefer the Australian and New Zealand variety, as they tend to be grass fed, and they are less fatty than the American or Canadian lamb we have tried.

This is a short note on making lamb sous-vide, simply because what just came out of the plastic bag was too good to forget how exactly I made it.

I got a boneless butterflied leg of lamb, about 5lb or so. I always take the time and trim it - take off the outer layer of fat, and I also cut away as much of the internal fat as I can, definitely all the large chunks. This too, at least in my experience, not only reduces the amount of saturated fat one consumes, but also reduces the gamy taste.

Once the lamb is cleaned, it appears like a large collection of chunks that are barely held together. Take advantage of the many surfaces of the meat being exposed, and season it. This this time I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, rosemary powder, oregano powder. Also good is a combination of ground cumin, chili powder, e.g. korean chili, or ancho chili, or New Mexico chili, and always garlic. You can also smear crushed garlic all over the meat.

I season the meat quite liberally.

For easier handling, and later cutting, I tie the meat together using butcher's twine. YouTube is your friend is you want to learn how to tie a piece of meat straight from LeCordon Bleu.

The meat goes in a plastic bag. Add a chunk of coconut oil, or some olive oil. Vacuum seal with manual pulsing so that the oil is not pumped from the bag, clogging your vacuum pump.

Cook in a 140F bath for 8-9 hours. I tried different time/temperature combos, and this one works best for my taste. The result is a beautiful medium-rare to medium lamb that is very tender but not mushy. Dry the lamb with a paper towel, and torch it to sear the outside. If you don't have the torch, sear the lamb quickly in a hot heavy skillet.

I like to serve this with horseradish sauce: Take a 1.5 inch chunk of horseradish root, clean the dirt away, peel the skin, and grate it on a fine microplane grater. You may find yourself crying while you grate, and that is OK, the horseradish is helping you remove stress hormones and other things from your body. I grate horseradish straight into a bowl, and then place the bowl for about 10-15 minutes outside, on the fresh air. That will remove lots of harshness. You can also stir 1TB of lemon juice into the horseradish to slow dow the oxidation.

Just before serving, mix a few TBs of sour cream and a small pinch of salt with the horseradish. You just made creamed horseradish. I like to add a touch of lemon if I didn't add the lemon before venting the horseradish.

Slice the lamb, serve it with a dollop of the creamed horseradish and a slice of crusty bread. Or use whatever other combo you desire. Here is a simple appetizer-style presentation.

If you have leftovers and you'd like to freeze the lamb, I recommend creating lamb goulash. Let's leave that for another post!

Torch versus pork tenderloin

Pork tenderloin is an annoying cut of meat. Very annoying. It is supposed to be simply delicious. Yet it has a tapered shape, so it doesn't cook evenly. If you make it into medallions, they are so very easy to overcook and dry out. You can butterfly it, pound it out, make a roll, and roast. And again chances are it will turn out dry and stringy.

In other words, pork tenderloin is a challenging piece of meat to cook. When you are in a hurry, or when you have a time, making it well requires skill and practice. I admit that I pretty much gave up it. Much embarrassing for someone who pretty much grew up on pork and potatoes.

Every pig has two tenderloins only, so the cut is precious. Years ago, I was very surprised to see the large numbers of tenderloins available in the stores. So I googled "number of pigs slaughtered per year" and learned that the US alone processes more than 120 million pigs. That is one pig per about three people in the US. Or 240 million tenderloins, which means almost one per person in the US. We better learn how to tame that beast of a cut.

A simple sous vide setup

In waltzes the sous vide circulator. The circulator is, in principle, a surprisingly simple device. It consists of a heater and a small propeller that moves the water around. And a thermometer and a fancy logic device that makes the circulator actually work. The goal is to cook the food at a very precise temperature that is much lower than the temperature of your skillet or the temperature of your oven. It also turns out that a few degrees make a big difference in the texture of the meat you are cooking. If you are curious, the Modernist Cuisine web site has a nice article on why sous vide reigns supreme.

When you cook sous vide, the food goes into a plastic pouch. So, I trimmed the tenderloin to remove the tough silver lining from the surface, seasoned it with salt, pepper, the ever more omnipresent Korean chili powder, and I added some ground thyme. For fat, I added a tablespoon or so of coconut oil.

It is best to vacuum-seal the bag. One, the cooking will take place in a water bath, so one better takes measures to prevent the water from invading your food. Second, the closed bag creates a very humid environment. That, in combination with the low temperature of cooking, will lead to an incredibly moist result.

The unappealing tenderloin after a 2h bath at 140F

My sous vide setup is really basic. I used a food-grade bucket to which I attach the circulator. The bucket needs water, of course, and a pouch with the food. I cover the bucket with plastic wrap to keep evaporation under control. My European background makes me cringe when I think of the energy inefficiency of the setup. One day, I dream, I will find an insulated bucket that will be at least as aesthetically pleasing as my plastic bucket. Given that I am an engineer, my aesthetic standards are not quite at the Steve Jobs level, but I still refuse to use a blue cooler that I bought in a sudden energy-guilt attack.

The tenderloin takes 2-3 hours to bathe at 140F. Many people prefer 135F, which is still high enough to eradicate the bacteria. My mom was visiting, and pink pork is not what she is used to, so I went with 140F. The bath renders a perfectly fine tenderloin lacking any appeal. Seriously, I wonder how sous-vide was even discovered, given how critical appearance is for the food. Would you really believe that a wet chunk of meat has a potential to be delicious?

Today we know, that searing the meat is mostly for looks and for the crunchiness of the crust. Searing in the flavors, not so much. And the best searing apparatus is a torch. I love my source of flames. No matter what you do to it, the flame doesn't go out, it is very light, the flame is trivial to regulate, and the fuel is both cheap and easily accessible. Most importantly, the sound of the torch transforms the kitchen into a true cooking adventure.

Torching the tenderloin!!!

I dried the tenderloin with a paper towel to remove as much moisture as I reasonably could. No worries if the meat is not completely dry, the torch will take care of that. The meat goes into a cast-iron pan, which is generally indestructible and help ensure that your kitchen does not end up catching fire. Just be careful that you don't melt away the seasoning on the pan. As long as you point the torch to the food and move it around, all will be good. Use tongs to turn and hold the meat, searing your fingers would make you miss that delicious tenderloin for sure.

You will know when the searing is done. The unappealing slab of meat will yield place to a deliciously looking tenderloin, waiting to be sliced and salivated over.

The torched tenderloin

When you slice the meat it becomes obvious why sous-vide, and why torching. Even the picture below can communicate how juicy the meat is, and how evenly cooked it is. Moreover, look at the very thin rim of overcooked meat around the edge of each slice. This is the result of searing with the torch. If we cooked the tenderloin in a pan, or if we baked it, that rim would extend pretty much to the center of the meat, resulting in unappetizing dryness.

BBQ-ed dungeness crab

Dungeness crab is readily available in SF Bay area, confirming this is one of the more fortunate places on the planet, not only in terms of technology job opportunities, but also in terms of abundance of top-quality produce.

Here is a trivial way to prepare dungeness crab. No fuss, and a very tasty outcome.

Start with fresh crab. Local Asian stores have them available pretty much all season at somewhat reasonable prices. Our skinny friend Sujeong claims the right quantity is one crab per person, and I will not object. It is wise, though, to have modest plans for consuming much else.

I am very aware of perennial debates about what is the best way to kill the crab to minimize its agony. Some advise to whack it with a bat, some suggest a needle, some say just plunge it in a big pot of boiling water. I suggest you do whatever you think is appropriate. Last time I cooked crab they showed no signs of life by the time the water was boiling, so I was able to bypass the dilemma.

Bring a large pot of salted water to rolling boil, and drop the crab(s) in the water. Let them cook for about 5 minutes max. I use long tongs to extract the crab from the pot, and I let it cool for a few minutes in the kitchen sink so that I can handle the crabs easily with my bare hands. 10 mins or so should suffice.

After that I clean the crab using a technique very similar to what is shown in the video above. I like to cook the crab first to have it retain moisture, but you could clean it first and immediately cook it on the BBQ. Once the crab is clean, you can tear the legs from the body to make further cooking easier. If you wish, you can crack the legs slightly to let any liquid drain out, and to aid with peeling the shell off when you consume the crab. This will result in a different texture of the meat than if you leave the shell intact. I prefer it that way, but the final call is yours.

Toss the crab is a bit of oil to prepare it for the barbecue. I use oil with a high smoking point, such as avocado oil that decomposes at 500F. Frankly, I see no point in using extra virgin olive on the BBQ just to have it decomposed in a second. Place the crab on a medium heat BBQ for about 3-4 minutes per side, lid closed. 

The crab... There was barely any left to make a picture

When the crab is done, put it in a large bowl. Sprinkle the crab with a pinch of salt and a good pinch of korean chili powder. Add a tablespoon or so of coconut oil. For years, we have been using the extra virgin coconut oil from Nutiva. 

Put the bowl on the table and dig in, use your hands. Refrain from throwing the shells over your shoulders, only Asterix and Obelix are allowed to do that, and only when they devour boars.

If you insist, of course you can use melted butter with garlic or whatever other dip makes you happy. The trick with the coconut oil, korean chili, and salt is that some of it sticks to your fingers when you eat the crab, and adds to the taste of the crab. No need for anything else. 

Pork Belly, Braised Sous Vide

Pork belly! Back in Slovenia we had no use for uncured bacon. We would cure it, smoke it, bake it, render it. Especially rendered bacon makes very prominent appearances in many Slovenian traditional dishes. All of them, of course, from the peasant times where it was key to consume enough energy. Not so much these days.

But then there is pork belly. Asians have figured out it is one of the tastiest things on the planet. I remember vividly when I had it for the first time, being somewhat suspicious of eating braised bacon. Then I learned that the texture was outright screaming awesomeness.

I have been experimenting with braising pork belly Korean style, and the results have been good enough that I "keep experimenting". When a sous vide circulator joined our kitchen arsenal, pork belly was on the short list of things to try. Let me describe first the sous vide approach, and then mention what to do if you have not splurged for a water oven.

First, you need pork belly. The meatier the better, and around here this means a trip to HanKook, the top Asian market in South Bay. I think I used about 1.5 to 2lb of pork belly. Pork belly likes to bathe in a pool of spices before one cooks it. I used about 2TB dried Korean red pepper powder, and about 2TB of Korean chili paste, about 1 TB or so of garlic powder, a good sprinkling of salt, say 1tsp or so, about 1TB of sesame oil, and about 2 TB of rice vinegar. I mixed the spices in a plastic bag, added pork belly that I cut into three chunks to fit the bag nicer, and then I vacuum-sealed the bag.

Pork belly after 48 hours at 144F

Tip: When vacuum sealing a bag with wet ingredients, I always use the manual mode and pulse the pump carefully. This way I extract most of the air, yet I can make sure the liquid is not sucked out, clogging the pump.

I let the pork belly marinate in the fridge for about a day. At least a few hours is the minimum.

I cooked pork belly in 144F water bath for 48 hours. A couple of hours more or fewer doesn't make any difference, so no need to panic if it is 10pm and you want to eat pork belly in two days for an early supper.

After 48 hours, the pork belly looks kind of odd. It is not obvious it is cooked, yet it is quite clear that it is not raw. I am a bit sad I didn't take a picture of the pouch in which the pork belly was cooked. You could see that a good amount of fat, but not all, got rendered out. Will it be dry?

Torched pork belly looks much more appetizing

To make pork belly look respectable, one either needs to blast it in the oven, or under the broiler, or one needs to attack it with your handy torch. After drying the meat with a paper towel, I reached for the torch. The visual change after torching is always a surprise to me.

I tend to torch things in a cast-iron skillet. It is very unlikely the skillet will catch fire. A wood cutting board is a surprisingly good choice as well.

Once the pork belly looks that good, the only thing one can really do is slice it and consume it promptly. I seasoned the sliced pork belly with a touch of sesame oil, and I served it with a 50:50 mixture of brown rice and black rice, that I cooked slowly in vegetable stock. Then I got adventurous and added a few slices of avocado. The effect was shockingly sublime. The rice had a touch of chewiness to it, the avocado was is usual buttery-yet-somewhat-plain self, and the pork belly had just enough of spiciness to it that it paired beautifully with avocado and rice. I was not sure about the interaction of two very rich and smooth textures, but it turned out that avocado helped the pork belly reach the full potential of melting in your mouth.

As much as I like pork belly, I can only consume a few slices. What should one do with leftovers? I only torched the pork belly that I was about to slice, and the rest found itself in a plastic container in our fridge. When I wanted to consume the rest, I could have re-heated it in a sous-vide bath to 130F, and then I would repeat the pyrotechnic exercise. I was more in a hurry, so simply sliced the meat and reheated it in at a medium heat in a cast-iron pan. As long as you don't overheat it, the deliciousness will stay around.

Pork belly braised in the oven and then crisped in a pan

What to do if one does not have sous vide equipment? Start by marinating the pork the same way as for sous-vide cooking. Before braising, bake the port belly at 350F for 30 minutes, this will firm up the meat a bit.

In the meanwhile prepare the braising liquid. I like to use tomato paste dissolved in a 2-3 cups of water, some red wine, garlic, and the omnipresent Korean red pepper powder, a tablespoon or so. Add a tsp or so of salt. Do taste the liquid to see what it does for you! Optionally you can add some sugar and soy sauce, just make sure you adjust the amount of salt if you use soy sauce. Add the pork to the braising liquid, bring to simmer, and braise in the oven at 325F for 2 hours or until fork tender. Or simply have it simmer on the stove top for 2h or until fork tender.

Before serving, dry the pork belly with a paper towel and either crisp it up in a hot oven, or perform my favorite activity and torch it. I like torching because it crisps the surface, but the heat does not penetrate deep as it does in the oven. You can also crisp the meat in a hot cast-iron pan.

Pork belly cooked the traditional way will melt in your mouth and you will be temporarily transported to taste-bud heaven. Sous vide, however, elevates that to a level I was not aware existed until I gave it a try.

Coffee, freshly roasted

Summary:

• Preheat the oven to 430F (220C). I use an oven steel and let it preheat for an extra 10 minutes.
• Evenly spread green coffee beans on a paella pan or baking sheet lined with parchment
• Put the paella pan or the baking sheet in the oven, turn the vent hood on
• After 25 minutes, take the coffee from the oven, let it cool
• Optional: Clean away the chaff - I put it in the colander, rub the beans, and as I toss them I gently blow the chaff away.
• Preferably let the coffee air for about two days before using.

Clearly, my most significant achievement is drinking NO coffee while completing PhD and launching Google Music Store. Telling ya, that was all done without any performance-enhancing substances!

One sunny morning Jasna and I found ourselves eating breakfast at Coffee Shack in Captain Cook area of Hawaii. We were told that Coffee Shack was known for its excellent breakfast and for a spectacular view, and I can confirm that both were true, we went back several times. A waiter comes and asks us whether we would like some coffee. I acted as my usual self, put my nose up, and declared I did not drink coffee, and asked for tea. Jasna tends to be smarter than me, so she asked whether the name Coffee Shack meant that they had good coffee. She did the homework and knew about Kona coffee. I just tagged along.

The waiter smiled and pointed to the steep slope just under the restaurant: "Yes, we have good coffee. It comes from our plantation right here!" Jasna ordered coffee, she barely prevented me from drinking all of it, and that was it. The flavor was strong, yet smooth and not bitter, very pleasantly complex. Quite a difference from the awful bitterness people drank back in Slovenia. We became coffee drinkers, and by the time we returned home, Amazon already delivered a coffee-making apparatus.

It turned out that friendly folks at Coffee Shack are very happy to sell you their coffee beans, and that they even do mail order. We have been loyal customers - we consume very little coffee, so we decided to go with the very best. Recently, our friends Rok and Ying visited, told us about a freshly roasted coffee in a local Ethiopian restaurant called Walia, and how they learned one could buy green coffee beans from Selam Market in Campbell. For quite some time I have been tempted to try to roast coffee, but I never really crossed the threshold of looking for the beans. I went to Selam Market the next day and returned with a large bag of green beans. I expected a lengthy trial and error process, so I thought I better stocked up. 

Green coffee beans spread on the baking sheet

Here is what green coffee beans look like, this is about 5oz. I asked my friend Google to point to instructions for roasting coffee beans and I found quite a lot of pretty consistent information. Pretty much everyone recommends to get a popcorn maker and use that for roasting beans, and some even recommend using a heat gun! Many people describe in detail the transformation of coffee during the roasting process. It all looks very doable, but it does require practice and it all seems to be error prone, even if one purchases a dedicated coffee roaster.

I gave it a try and roasted coffee in my wok on the stove top. Those web sites were not joking, the transformation is really interesting. The coffee about doubles in size, it makes cracking sounds in two places in the process. The amount of smoke generated surprised both me and our fire alarm. Of course, I roasted at too high heat for too long and ended up burning the beans. Oh well. I discarded that batch promptly and tried again, this time being much more careful. This time the result was quite uneven, but the coffee that I brewed from those beans was very good. 

The unevenness and the anticipated lack of consistency made me consider shopping for a popcorn maker, or even a dedicated coffee roaster. Remember, tools are good!!! Argh!!!! ... said Tim the tool man. Then something clicked. Everyone was recommending to roast at a very high temperature, yet some listed average internal coffee temperature for different stages or styles of roasting. So being a researcher and all I thought - all one really needs to do is to bring the internal temperature to what it should be, and my oven very happily heats up to the desired temperature.

Coffee after half and hour at 435F

An experiment started. I set my oven to 435F convection, spread the beans on a baking sheet, and put the sheet in the oven. I did use parchment paper simply because I like to use parchment instead of cleaning the baking sheet. I decided I would roast the beans for about 20 minutes after the oven reached 435F, and in the subsequent experiments I converged to 26 minutes at 442F. I also remembered to turn on the ventilator in the range hood, which proved to be a good move. I was curious what would happen, because Sweet Marias, the Cadillac of sources for green coffee beans, claimed one needed a perforated baking sheet to allow movement of the air, and that roasting in the oven would produce uneven results. But they roasted at 500F for 15-20 minutes. 

Coffee bean chaff, removed

I was surprised with how evenly the coffee was roasted. In the picture you can see how much chaff is attached to coffee beans. So the next task was to remove the chaff. I happen to have two metal colanders, so I transferred the coffee in to one and after it has cooled down enough to handle with hand, I started to stir and rub the beans. And when I got bored with that, I would pour the beans from one colander to another. I read about that in one of the web sites. I suggest one does that over a sink, unless you enjoy your place to be super messy.

Cleaned coffee

I found out that the chaff goes away quite easily, but not completely. Here is what the result looks like. See how some chaff is still in the cracks? I decided the chaff would be filtered away when I was making coffee, so not a second of sleep was lost due to my coffee not looking exactly as clean as the coffee from Coffee Shack.

With some more experimenting I decided that the coffee really does need to degas and that the peak flavor develops in about two days after roasting. Your personal preference will come in play here.

Our excellent retro-grinder

Let me quickly describe how we make coffee: We use a hand-cranked ceramic burr grinder one can get for $35-$45 on Amazon. It takes about a minute to grind two scoops of coffee beans, which is Jasna's and mine combined daily consumption. An electric grinder of equivalent quality would be several hundred dollars, and it would consume tons of our non-existent counter space. So we went old-fashioned, much to a surprise of our guests, who, I am sure, find us a little quirky, yet tend to appreciate the quality of coffee, and the meditative aspect of the brewing process :-)

Ground coffee in the upper chamber

For the brewing, we use a siphon where we replaced the original cloth filter with a glass rod Corey filter one can get on eBay. It is much easier to clean than the cloth filter, and people say that cloth traps some of the coffee oils. Speaking of clean-up, I clean the siphon in about one minute, and I am still puzzled with people complaining it is a lot of effort.

The way the siphon works is very neat. One places the ground coffee in the upper chamber of the siphon with the filter already in place. Then you set the upper chamber in the stand so that you can fill the water in the lower chamber.

I always fill the bottom chamber with boiling water because it takes quite some time for the water to heat up. I read that some people believe pre-boiling the water deprives it of oxygen, which results in inferior coffee. The scientist in me has a difficult time believing such a claim, the water boils one way or another. 

Siphon with the water pushed up

When the water is in the lower chamber one sets the top chamber on top of the bottom chamber, creating an air-tight seal. The whole contraption then goes on the stove burner at a medium heat. As the air in the bottom chamber heats up and expands, it pushes the liquid to the top chamber. At that point it is good to lower the heat a bit. Apparently the siphon keeps the water at exactly the right temperature for coffee brewing, a few degrees under boiling. Moreover, some of the air is pushed from the bottom chamber, and that air creates bubbles that mix the ground coffee with the liquid continuously.

We brew our coffee for 2.5 to 3 minutes. When one removes the contraption from the stove, the air in the bottom chamber starts to cool down. That creates vacuum, which sucks the liquid from the top chamber back down. The glass rod has an uneven surface, which acts as a filter, so no coffee grounds make it to the bottom chamber.

Air bubbling in the top chamber

I learned the hard way that the coffee should not be ground super finely. One time the glass filter clogged up and the force of the vacuum broke the glass in the bottom chamber. Thankfully, a replacement was not hard to find. It took me a while, though, to formulate a guess (or should I say hypothesis) for what happened. 

The resulting coffee tends to be very smooth and clean. I really like it that there are no filters to throw away. Most of all, the whole process is like a lab experiment and I always loved to do those. There are much prettier-looking siphons out there, and one day we will acquire one to appropriately wow ourselves, and our visitors. 

Coffee back in the bottom chamber

One of these days I intend to try pour-over coffee, which some say is the superior way of making coffee. But that will take the time as it seems that one needs to carefully experiment. Maybe coffee is not such a trivial thing after all :-)

Update, March 2022

I continue to roast our coffee and have settled on Sweet Maria's as my source. Ethiopian coffee remains my favorite. With our new oven I adjusted the roasting temperature to 430F (about 220C). I have replaced the syphon with pour over as the preparation method of choice. I use the water at 200F, and the coffee to water ratio of about 1:17 - for a gram of ground coffee I use 17g water. That may sound excessively finicky, but using a scale is quick, helps with consistency and predictability, and it also prevents me from overflowing my cup. The most significant upgrade has likely been the coffee grinder as I switched to 1ZPresso JX with a remarkable difference in grinding speed, uniformity of the grind, and of course coffee flavor.

A much improved coffee grinder

Sweet Maria's was kind enough to include their roasting card in my latest order. Here are the photos - they do demonstrate that coffee roasting is quite easy.