To Belgian Waffle

I have a history of preferring turkey sandwiches and cold pasta for breakfast.  Savory reigns in the morning.  And I lived a number of years quite content with this, until one day I came face to face with a certain waffle. 

The Belgian.

The kind of waffle which wears a crisp outer jacket covering its delicate, chewy insides.  Possessing crunchy burnt caramel pockets.  And tasting ever so slightly of pretzel.

It borrows the satisfying crack of a crème brûlée and the chew from a fresh yeast roll.  All the while never forgetting it’s a waffle.  And reminding that Belgians don’t have to be slapped with whipped cream to be fun.

I’ve started to refer to the action of cooking them as “to waffle.”  To Belgian waffle.  As it ensures both breakfast and merriment occur.

To waffle an actual waffler is needed.  And some yeast.  And pearl sugar, which can be a bit persnickety to procure.  Plus the restraint to wait overnight.

But to waffle is worth it.  And the goods needed to do so can be ordered online.  Breakfast will be filled with flour and joy and debatably unnecessary verbiage forevermore. 

The Belgian Waffle

Adapted from Sweet Amandine by way of Formaggio Kitchen

Ingredients:

2 cups bread flour, divided

1 tsp instant dry yeast

¼ cup whole milk, room temperature

1 egg, room temperature

1 tbsp plus 1 tsp dark brown sugar

¾ tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

½ cup pearl sugar

Instructions:

The night before:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together 2/3 cup of bread flour and the yeast.  In a separate small bowl, mix together the milk, egg, and 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp lukewarm water; add to the yeast mixture and stir to moisten.  Sprinkle the remaining 1-1/3 cups of bread flour over the top, but do not mix it in.  Cover and let sit for 60 to 90 minutes, until the batter just starts to bubble up at the edges of the bowl.

To the batter, add in the brown sugar and salt and (with the paddle attachment) mix on low until just combined.  With the machine on low, add in the honey and vanilla, and then the butter 2 tbsp at a time. When the butter is incorporated and the mixture has come together, switch to a dough hook and mix on medium-low, stopping to scrape down the sides occasionally.  This will take 4 or 5 minutes.  It is done when the dough stretches, rather than breaks.

Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight.

The day of:

About 2 to 3 hours before you want to eat waffles, take out the dough.  Let it rest a few minutes, until it becomes just a little pliable; then use your hands to mix in the pearl sugar. Separate the dough into 6 equal pieces and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise.  (The directions say this takes 1-1/2 hours, but I’ve found it takes closer to 2 to 2-1/2 hours in my house.  It might be a little colder here.  To speed up the process, place the sheet on top of a warm stove.) 

When the dough is puffed up and soft and pillowy (see here), you are ready.  Heat a stovetop waffle iron (aka the waffler), greased lightly with canola oil, on medium low for a few minutes (about 3) and then flip it and heat the other side for another minute or 2 more.  (Have a regular iron?  See here.)  Add one dough ball to the center of the iron, close the iron, and cook for about a minute. 

Take a peak inside, the waffle should have started to brown and should not stick to the iron.  Flip the iron and continue to cook until the waffle is sufficiently golden and crispy.  (Flip the pan again, if the other side needs more color.)  If the waffles are browning too quickly, turn down the heat.  The entire process should only take a few minutes.

Repeat with remaining dough balls.  (You can keep the cooked waffles warm in a 200-degree oven until all are finished.)

Makes 6 waffles

Notes:

-If you are in the market for a waffler, they are much cheaper on Amazon.

-I’ve successfully made this recipe with active dry yeast, too.  You’ll need 1-1/3 tsp and you’ll have to bloom the yeast about 10 minutes in whole milk (same amount as listed) that has been heated to about 100 degrees.  In this case, you’ll mix the bloomed yeast with the water and egg mixture before adding it to the 2/3 cup of flour.

-You can freeze the waffles whole and warm them again in an oven, though admittedly they lose some of their chewiness the second time around.

- I like these guys with a little butter and maple syrup (though they don’t really need it).  I’ve also enjoyed them with a thick, heavily reduced apple cider. Bacon would likely be a welcome addition here too.

-Weight equivalents are available here.

The Sound of It, Whole Wheat Duck Egg Fettuccine

If I have a few unspoken for hours on a Sunday, I’ll make pasta.  Fettuccine is the preferred meditation.  Something about the thick strands. Or maybe I just find attempting angel hair causes the release of too many four-letter words.  That level of delicacy often has me swearing like a sailor.

I scooped up some duck eggs at a recent Formaggio Kitchen trip.  Duck.  A four-letter word much more suitable for pasta. 

It’s entirely unnecessary to use such eggs of grandeur in this setting.  But there is something lovely about the sound of duck egg pasta.  And—if you’ll allow me to get overly precious—the whole wheat flour used here is from Misty Brook Farm, a local.

Misty Brook grows and mills heirloom Red Fife wheat in Barre, Massachusetts.  And while whole wheat pasta can be gummy and heavy, old Red Fife wants none of that.  It’s a hard red spring grain often used for bread flour.  Here the pasta emerges nutty and earthy, speckled with hazelnut-colored flecks. 

It also requires less than a minute of cooking once tossed in a pot of water.  And it made for the most incredible Tuesday night dinner, paired with linguiça, chickpeas, a little garlic and sherry vinegar, and a shaving of pecorino.  A roll this pasta was born to play.

So three duck eggs replace the standard four chicken.  Two parts whole wheat to one part white flour.  Sheets of pasta cut whisper thin.  No swearing.  Just fettuccine fork twirling.

Whole Wheat Duck Egg Fettuccine

Ingredients:

3 duck eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

pinch of salt

fine cornmeal, for dusting

Instructions:

Place the eggs in a food processor and add the flour and salt and pulse until it comes together and forms a rough dough (you may need to add a little water to soften it, I added about 3 tbsp). The dough should hold together when pressed into a mass and should be soft, but not sticky.  Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest about 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into manageable portions (4 to 6 pieces) and pass each piece through a pasta roller or press.  (I use a Kitchen Aid attachment and start at “1” and then pass the dough through until setting “6.”)  You want it as thin as you can get it without tearing.

Cut into strands (I used the fettuccine cutter attachment).  Hang the strands over a clothes drying rack, broom handles, chairs, whatever works, to let them dry out slightly.  (Dust whatever you are using with flour to prevent sticking.) 

After the pasta becomes a little less soft and flexible (though you should still be able to bend it), dust it with cornmeal and shape the strands into little nests.  At this point you can store them in the freezer for awhile or in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Makes enough for 4

Notes:

-If you don’t have duck eggs, you should be able to substitute 4 chicken eggs.   Add a little flour or water if the dough is too sticky or too dry.  (Usually I don’t have to add any water with this ratio if I’m using 3 cups of all-purpose flour.)

-The linguiça was also from Formaggio.  Incredible.

Blackberry Lemon Verbena Cheesecake, and all that Americana

If I could rewind, I would not have inquiringly flipped the latch on my springform pan causing the liquid contents to ooze slowly, unstoppably out. Slow as molasses, equally as messy, and just as painful to watch.  If you are one of those people who chirps about reframing things, you might call this a teachable moment.  I am not that together most of the time.  

In fact, sometimes I land on the side of catastrophizing, so I'm deeming this incident The Great Cream Cheese Flood of 2012.  I stood just staring at the puddle of cheesecake on my floor for quite a while. Yes, on a Tuesday, at roughly 9 pm, a good deal of wasted dairy threatened to take me down.

After I cleaned bits of eggy cream cheese from my cabinet doors, floor, and the crevice between my stove and sink and collected myself, I got to work on round two.  Ding ding ding … The Cheesecake: 1, Emily: 0

I intended to make dessert for a fourth of July party and it would have been simply un-American to show up cheesecakeless.  We are fighters.  We love Rocky Balboa.  We wear tiny cutoff shorts with the pockets showing.  We get red-faced about second Amendment rights.  We are a people that love dessert.  And so I went back to the grocery store, and reloaded.

Thus, this is not a cheesecake for weaklings.  There seems to be a good deal of praise devoted to cheesecakes that are "light" and "airy." This is all fine and good and could probably be labeled “progressive.” I do not want a cheesecake like this. I want one that is thick and luscious.  One that will knock me out with her American thighs.  And this cheesecake is all of those things.

A sliver is all you need to feel wholeheartedly satisfied.  The cake is simple and honest and I love it for sentimental reasons.  The base recipe I used comes from my Great Aunt Rose.  It won me over as a favorite dessert at family holiday gatherings a few years ago. And when I asked her for the recipe she said, “It’s good.  But it’s a pain in the ass.”  And then forked it over. It’s actually not too terribly difficult to make, but you do have to pay attention to it. And if you open your springform pan prematurely you may find yourself swearing like a sailor.

I added the blackberries because I wanted something to cut through its richness.  And though I’m not usually a fan of their big, brutish drupelets, the container I picked up and sniffed smelled slightly of cassis and this was enough to change my mind.  So with a newly found vision of cold cheesecake topped with a crown of glossy blackberries, I came back swinging.

And number two, oh she was a knockout. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how many dropped cheesecakes you can take, and keep baking.

Blackberry Lemon Verbena Cheesecake

Adapted from Aunt Rose

Ingredients:

For the crust

1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

¼ cup sugar

the zest of one lemon

pinch of salt

pinch of ground ginger

pinch of ground coriander

½ cup butter

1 egg yolk

a generous ½ tsp vanilla extract

For the filling

40 ounces cream cheese (5 packages), softened to room temperature

a generous ½ tsp vanilla extract

the zest of one lemon

1¾ cup sugar

3 tbsp all purpose flour

¼ tsp salt

4-5 eggs (1 liquid cup full), at room temperature

2 egg yolks, at room temperature

¼ cup heavy cream

splash of orange blossom water

For the blackberry top

about 25 ounces of blackberries (or roughly 3-4 cups), divided

2-4 tbsp lemon juice (depending on how sweet the berries are, start off with less)

about 1/3 cup of sugar (also depends on the sweetness of the berries)

pinch of salt

2 tbsp Crème de Cassis

3 sprigs of lemon verbena

Instructions:

For the cheesecake

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the first six ingredients for the crust in a medium-sized bowl and then cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.  Add in the vanilla and egg yolk; mix until the mixture is fully moist. (It may help to do this with your hands.)  Place a little more than 1/3 of the mixture into the bottom of a nine inch springform pan and bake until golden brown, about 8-10 minutes.  Let cool.  (If it's hot in your kitchen you may want to put the rest of the mixture into the fridge while the bottom bakes.)

When the bottom crust has cooled, lock in the sides of the springform pan; butter the sides, and press the rest of the crust mixture from the bottom up the sides, up to about one inch in height. (Not all of the cheesecake will be covered with crust; see a side view of the finished cheesecake here.)

To make the filling, beat the softened cream cheese until creamy and velvety smooth in a stand mixer; add the vanilla and lemon zest and then add the sugar, flour, and salt gradually while the mixer is running on low speed.  Then add the eggs one at a time, while the mixer is still running. Fold in the heavy cream and orange blossom water. Pour the mixture into your springform pan (it will nearly fill the pan; don't be alarmed).

Bake at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes (my instructions say 12) and then turn the oven down to 300 degrees and bake for 55 minutes more.  Place on a wire rack to cool.  After 30 minutes, gently loosen the sides of the pan with a knife.  After 1 hour, remove the sides of the springform pan.  Allow to cool two hours longer before placing in the fridge to chill.

For the blackberry top

Line the top of your cheesecake with a layer of fresh berries. You can stagger and stack them a bit to create some height, but a slightly haphazard little pile is all you need. 

Place a few handfuls of the berries into a saucepan.  Add in the lemon juice, sugar, and salt and cook on medium heat until the berries start to burst and let their sauces out and then add the Crème de Cassis. Cook until the mixture starts to thicken; it should look thick and glossy, but still be spreadable (this will take about 10-15 minutes).  Add a little more lemon juice to the pan to thin out the sauce, as needed.  Once at the desired consistency, drop in your lemon verbena sprigs and take off the heat to cool slightly, about 5-10 minutes. Strain out the seeds; reserve for another use or discard.

With a pastry brush, gently brush the strained blackberry syrup-glaze over the top of the berries.  Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes one cheesecake (should feed about 12-16 people)

Notes:

-I love lemon verbena in the summer. It’s a good counterpart for the blackberries and a natural here, playing off the lemon zest and ginger and coriander in the crust. I might even add it a little sooner to the pan to extract more of its flavor next time, but I wasn't sure how it would fair and I didn't want verbena to overpower things.

-You can spread the strained, sweetened seeds on toast.

-More about Crème de Cassis, including tips on how to use it courtesy of Formaggio Kitchen.  You can't go wrong with Kir in the summertime.