How to Feed Your Animal: No Leaven Left Behind

“I don’t care how good the bitch is, don’t let me keep any,” my mother said as she walked into the kitchen.

This was a few weeks ago.  The back story.  I had traveled home to Syracuse with two quart containers of sourdough starter, a scale, some rice flour to prevent sticking, and—what shall now be known as—my “travel” bench scraper. 

The starter? Destined for my brother, visiting from D.C.  The gang of baking oddities?  Tools for making sourdough when traveling.  My mother?  A woman who knows her weakness for bread.  And who—only in the right company—will curse for comedic emphasis.

The thing about starter is, well, to put it in unladylike motherly comedic terms: it’s a bitch.  When Dave brought some home from Canary Square, it came labeled as such.  Bitch. Written in block letters on a piece of masking tape.  A point quickly reinforced.

A starter requires daily feeding.  If you are not careful, you can overfeed it.  Which is what happened when I was home.  The bitch expanded, popped its top, oozed out of its container (so much that it tipped sideways), and covered an index card that had installation measurements for my mother’s new door. 

Hence her quote.  She has yet to get a dog, so she definitely isn’t going to be tied down by sourdough.  No matter how good.  

And it makes very good bread.  The recipe I use faithfully is from Tartine Bread, a cookbook from their San Francisco bakery.  Their country sourdough requires 8 to 10 hours start to finish and involves 15 pages of instructions.  (In fact, I am not going to write the instructions for fear of carpal tunnel.)  Instead, I have included a picture of the final product (starter itself isn’t going to win any beauty contests).  Suffice to say if you enjoy making bread, I highly recommend the book.

In the meantime, here are some tips for feeding a sourdough starter.  Which, it turns out, is a lot like the parenting you’d provide a small child (minus the bit about ‘nam).  Though you might want to think of a name other than bitch.  My brother started to refer to his as “Animal.”  Which is very appropriate.  Brother, this is for you.

How to Feed Your Starter Your Animal:

Replace what you take. 

To feed your animal (which I keep in a plastic quart container), remove about a third of the starter and replace it with roughly the same amount of a mixture of flour and water (about 60/40, respectively).

Use what you have.

No need to feed with bread flour, AP will do.  Or use bread flour, if that's what is around.  Whatever.

If you don’t feed it, it will die.

Starter becomes cultured with wild yeast and bacteria.  These things need food.  If they don't get food, starter will die.  The end. (You should feed the starter once a day, if kept out at room temperature.)

Mistakes will be made.

It’s pretty hard to kill a starter, unless you utterly neglect it.  A healthy one will double in volume after a feeding.  If yours doesn’t perform this parlor trick, it may not be strong enough to raise bread.  Try taking out more of your starter, and feed it again with more flour and water.  When it floats in warm water, it is ready for bread making.

This is like ‘nam.  There are no rules.

Trust your instincts. Does your starter seem a little wet?  (It should resemble a loose dough.)  Add a bit more flour.  Traveling from Boston to Syracuse?  Best to slightly underfeed it, so the starter does not crawl out of your bag and all over your car. 

Plan ahead.

If you will not be regularly baking bread, keep it in the fridge and feed it about once a week.  Remove the starter two days before you intend to use it.  Feed it once or twice a day, so it gains strength.  And be sure to feed it about 8 hours before you plan to use it.  It’s like training for a sports event.  Properly hydrate and eat enough carbs.  (If I don't have time to bake bread, I'll take the starter out and let it come to room temperature before feeding it.  After that leave it out and feed it daily or put it back in the fridge.)

Notes:

-The starter you use in a bread recipe is called a leaven.  It naturally raises your dough.  There are detailed instructions for making your own starter culture in the book.  You can also always make a new friend with someone that has a starter.  I had a generous boyfriend.

-These instructions work well for my Boston-grown, Canary Square-birthed starter.  (It’s coming from a persevering place, fueled by good beer.) I don't always get a chance to make bread regularly, so I've adapted my instructions as such.  Dive right in and experiment.

-I have nothing but love for this starter, despite its moniker.

-It seems Martha has published Tartine’s recipe.

-A special shout-out to the Quicks, whose baby bun is no longer in the oven.  May she have many good loaves in her future.  Lots of love, new family of three.

Romancing Dinner, a Cauliflower Sandwich with Raisin Caper Sauce

Bluefish.  Donut peaches wrapped in prosciutto, glazed in maple, and grilled. Butter lettuce with buttermilk basil dressing.  Heady Toppers from Vermont.

Homemade hot dogs in buttered, pan-toasted brioche buns.  A bottle of my favorite rosé, ZeC Vin de France from Château Tour Grise with “House of the Rising Sun” in the background.

Steamed pork and cabbage dumplings. Spicy beef tongue. Sautéed bitter melon. Hot tea and a Tsingtao in Chinatown.

Paper-thin radish rounds with raw tuna and fluke, sliced by a knife made by a man in Japan. Eaten at 10 pm in the dark on a patio table with the light of a half lit lantern.

Handmade fettuccini tossed with cooked down fairytale eggplants and heirloom tomatoes.

Fried cauliflower. Fried Japanese sweet potatoes so hot they blister the inside of your mouth. Charred octopus and dirty rice.

Cast-iron cooked rib-eye with a salad of tomatoes, peaches, and torn basil.

A bottle of bubbly from the Loire as dinner. Overlooking sailboats.

Fried chicken skins.  Grilled romaine salad.  Chicken liver mousse on toast. 

This is how you do it.  This is how you romance dinner.

The sandwich I am writing about today is special.  I had its bones scribbled down in a kitchen notebook months ago.  Months before I met the man I am now dating.  The dinners above we shared.  The sandwich recipe is his. Both the man and his recipe came to me by way of a mutual friend.  Both unexpected.  Simple in preparation.  And yet complex in all the right ways. 

A sauce of capers and plumped raisins with some jalapeño heat. Anchored by buttery cauliflower.  Topped with a sharp sheep’s milk feta.  Sandwiched between smoky homemade flatbread. 

What is listed below is my interpretation of his recipe. A meal from a man I’ve been enjoying for months.

P.s. Check out my article in the fall issue of edibleBoston.  It’s about making homemade sea salt and includes some recipes from pastry chef, and matchmaker, Brian Mercury.  He introduced me to this sandwich after we collected seawater from Maine to make the salt.  The introduction to his friend came later.

Cauliflower Sandwich with Raisin Caper Sauce

Ingredients:

For the cauliflower steaks

a head of cauliflower, you will have extra

olive oil

butter

salt

For the raisin caper sauce

about 1 tbsp butter

a jalapeño or serrano pepper, chopped with the seeds (you can remove the seeds for less heat)

salt

about 1/3 cup raisins

1-2 tbsp capers, plus a little of their brine

a few tbsp apple cider vinegar

For the flatbread

see instructions below (prepare ahead)

or use store-bought pita bread or homemade pita, recipe here

Suggested toppings

sheep’s milk feta

leaf lettuce

Instructions:

To make the flatbread (if doing so) make the dough as described here.  Once the dough has risen (which will take about an hour), with floured hands, divide it into four equal pieces.  Prepare your grill; if you are using charcoal it will take about 20 minutes to get the coals ready for grilling, but you’ll want to use a part of the grill with medium-ish heat (i.e. you can hold your hand 5 inches above the grate for about 3-5 seconds), so be sure to seek out a part of the grill that isn’t super hot. 

Stretch each piece of dough with your hands until it is about 9 or 10 inches in length.  Place it on the grill until it starts to bubble (this will take 1-2 minutes).  Flip the dough with a spatula and continue to cook the flatbread another minute or so.  (This process happens quickly.  The flatbread will only have a little color to it; it should be fully cooked, but still soft.  If you wish, you can also brush the flatbread with a little olive oil after you’ve flipped it.) 

Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough (you may be able to do more than one piece at a time, depending on if you are grilling other things as well).  Technically, this will make enough for eight sandwiches.  I put the leftover flatbread in my freezer once they cool and use the microwave to defrost them as needed.

To prepare the rest of the sandwich, slice the head of the cauliflower so that you get “steaks,” about 3-4 inches in length and no more than a ½ inch thick; it needs to fully cook in a sauté pan so the steaks should be fairly thin.  Pour a glug or so of olive oil into a hot pan and add a teaspoon or two of butter.  Place a few of the cut cauliflower steaks in the pan, but don’t crowd them.  Season with salt.  When the cauliflower is browned on its underside, flip it, and season the other side.  Cook the cauliflower until browned on both sides and fully cooked.  Don’t move it too much in the process, let it caramelize.  Repeat until you have cooked as much of the cauliflower as you want. (This will depend on the number of sandwiches you are making, figure two to three steaks per sandwich.)

While the cauliflower is cooking, prepare the sauce.  Heat the butter in a pan.  Add the chopped pepper, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally until it starts to soften.  Add the raisins, capers, plus a little of their juice, and the vinegar.  Let everything cook down a bit until the raisins start to plump, adding a little water if things look dry.  (You may also add a little more vinegar too, just taste before you do to make sure the sauce won't be too acidic, if you think it might be, stick to water.)  Taste and add more salt, if needed.  Once the sauce is as you wish—it should be salty, sweet, and have some heat to it—blend it together in a food processor or blender; here you could also add a little water (or vinegar if it needs a little perking) if it could use a bit more liquid.  Set aside.

To assemble the sandwich, cut a flatbread in half so that you have two pieces each about 5 inches in length.  Using one piece, place a few cauliflower steaks on the bottom half of the flatbread; top with a tablespoon or so of the caper raisin sauce, 1-2 ounces of feta, and a few slices of leaf lettuce and fold the top half of flatbread over the contents of the sandwich.  (If you are using pita, just place some cauliflower, sauce, feta, and lettuce in each of the pita halves.)

The yield for this recipe is variable.  You can make one sandwich and have leftovers.  You can make more than one sandwich.  (You should have enough sauce for at least 4 sandwiches.)

Notes:

-This looks like a lot of steps, but much of it is for the flatbread.  Sub in premade pita and you’ll have your sandwich in 20 minutes or so.  

-This is another recipe that’s easily tailored to preference, so treat it as a suggestion.  This is an interpretation of an interpretation of a loose interpretation of a sandwich from Clover.

-The fried Japanese sweet potatoes are amazing.  They are from Strip-T's, which has easily produced some of my favorite dishes in Boston.  Oops, it’s in Watertown. 

-The chicken skins, chicken mousse, etc. came by way of The Salty Pig.  It’s also a fantastic restaurant and worth checking out if you haven’t been yet.  Like the Salty Pig?  Try Canary Square.  They are doing some pretty amazing things. It's in Jamaica Plain.  And you should go.  Lastly, the Zec wine was from my favorite wine shop in Boston: The Wine Bottega.