The Spice is Right

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3

Day Sixty-Three + Day Sixty-Four: Rye Sour Dough
2008-03-05 18:10:00
    You may have noticed by now that we have a certain fondness for rye bread in our house. Of course, I’m trying to maintain balance in the various things I make for Project Daily Bread, but there’s no questioning what bread instantly comes to mind when contemplating what to put our deli meats and cheeses on. It’s almost Pavlovian; indeed, the merest mention of rye bread around here can set our mouths to watering.1   Now, I’d like to think it’s obvious that I couldn’t make bread every day for an entire year and completely ignore the sourdough genre. That would be incredibly remiss of me, especially since I do have a sourdough starter that I like to use on occasion. When I first started using it a couple of years ago, I was very excited.  I’d never made a sourdough bread before, but had long admired the way they tasted.  To my friend and sometime culinary partner-in-crime Katherine, I gave half my first batch of start...
More About: Sixty , Dough

TSiR Shop Now Open!
2008-03-04 18:05:00
Do you like what you’re reading here? Are you interested in some of the books you’ve seen mentioned on The Spice is Right? Why not check out the TSiR Bookstore, set up in conjunction with Amazon.com? You’ll find all the books mentioned on TSiR in the “Featured on TSiR” section, as well as several others we at TSiR are fond of. New books (and probably other food-related items) will continually be added, so take a look periodically and see if something piques your interest! Share This
More About: Open , Shop

Day Sixty-Two: Vanilla Bread
2008-03-04 01:50:00
  It looks shy and unassuming on the plate, doesn’t it? But you’d be very, very wrong to underestimate this bread. Very wrong indeed.   I’m not sure where or why or how “vanilla” came to be a term of derision, something applied only to the most middle-of-the-road, mediocre, tame things one could possibly do, say, or eat. I can only assume the ignorance which propagates this term as a sort of insult was based on imitation vanilla, at best. Because proper vanilla, in all its glory, has shades-within-shades of flavor. Add in vanilla pods and the complexities are astounding, and nothing short of it. And when you add all that to the already-moderately-complex flavors of a yeast-leavened loaf of bread, well…there’s a lot for your tongue to wrap itself around.     This recipe comes out of Tim Allen’s excellent The Ballymaloe Bread Book, and he suggests you serve it with another recipe in the book, for Chocolate B...
More About: Sixty , Vanilla

Day Sixty-One: Corn Tortillas
2008-03-04 00:44:00
    There isn’t a whole lot of show to a homemade tortilla. The magic, instead, is in the taste and the smell as they cook, and as you hover over the plate expectantly waiting for your turn to fill one up with delicious fillings to carry to your mouth.   There is also magic in how simple these are to make. These are, without a doubt, the simplest bread you will ever make—if you make them using commercially-prepared masa harina. You could, of course, go as old-school as possible and grind your own dried corn and nixtamalize it yourself, and the results would likely be quite a bit tastier. But these are nothing to be sneezed at, and indeed, you might find yourself making these quite often once you know their secret.   Corn Tortillas   INGREDIENTS     2 c. masa harina 1 tsp salt 1 1/4 warm water   PREPARATION   Mix all ingredients together with a spoon, then with your hands. Dough may require more water or more flour, the...
More About: Sixty

Day Sixty: Kimochdun
2008-03-01 18:38:00
  If you like almonds and apricots, this bread is for you. It’s got both inside, though not in terribly large numbers. They end up threaded throughout the dough like delicious punctuation marks, and can be easily avoided if, say, 90% of those eating this bread like almonds and apricots but 10% don’t. Don’t be alarmed by the size of this loaf. It’s large, but it’s light and fluffy inside. The texture is like no other bread I’ve baked thus far; it’s almost buttery, but there’s no butter involved. In fact, for the whole thing, there’s a mere tablespoon of oil. It’s completely amazing.       The recipe I used can be found in Jeffrey Alford + Naomi Duguid’s Flatbreads & Flavors, and it’s quite easy. It’s traditionally served to celebrate the ending of the holy fast of Ramadan, and meant to bring together some of the most important foods of the region from which it sprang. He...
More About: Sixty

Day Fifty-Nine: Overnight Waffles
2008-02-29 21:23:00
  I had a transcendental experience with a waffle once.   As with most such experiences, it came when I was completely not expecting it. We’d stayed at some hotel somewhere1, and as many hotels do, it offered a free continental breakfast with your stay. And I was excited, because I do like breakfast, and even though I don’t usually buy Frosted Flakes or Froot Loops or any of the other cereals that are usually available in little tiny boxes in such places, I get an inexplicable joy out of seeing them all neatly stacked on a breakfast table. Even then, I don’t usually eat them, but they’re just so cheerful. And tiny. And cute. But I’ve digressed horribly; back to the subject at hand!   This place was different than I had expected. Oh, it had bowls of bananas, apples, and oranges. It had bagels, and some muffins, and little individual yogurt cups. And of course the inevitable pyramid of cereal.   But next to all this was a...

Day Fifty-Eight: Pain Hawaiian
2008-02-28 20:33:00
    I have no idea how often this bread is actually made in Hawaii, if at all. It seems a lot of recipes mysteriously become “Hawaiian ” by way of the addition of exotic ingredients such as pineapple or macadamia nuts. Kona coffee is more understandable, I suppose, while sugar is too generally commonplace. In any case, this recipe comes from Beth Hensperger’s the Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes, and indeed, it’s full of macadamia goodness.     Her recipe makes 3 loaves; I took the recipe down a bit so that it would only make one. Here’s what I did: Pain Hawaiian (adapted from Hensperger’s Bread Bible)   INGREDIENTS For the sponge 2/3 c. warm water (105-115F) 1 tsp. instant yeast Pinch of sugar 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour For the dough 1.5-2 c. bread flour 1 tbsp nut oil, such as almond or walnut (I used macadamia, since I’m lucky enough to have an awesome friend named Elva who lives in Hawaii and ...

Day Fifty-Seven: Janni’s Chocolate Orange Buns
2008-02-27 15:08:00
    Of course it would be very ill-advised indeed to eat a chocolate orange for breakfast. Tasty, sure…but as what we’d like to believe are responsible individuals of a certain age, surely we can’t just whack and unwrap a breakfast consisting entirely of chocolate…or can we?   If you’re someone who operates the way I do, you’ll of course determine that it is your solemn, sworn duty, and in fact is in the very interest of furthering empirical knowledge to find a way to make a similar taste sensation come alive in an at least somewhat nutritionally-desirable breakfast food. For plate and country, hear me cry: give me chocolate orange breakfast buns or give me a hammer!   Janni’s Chocolate Orange Buns   INGREDIENTS   2 tbsp orange blossom water 2.25 tsp instant or active dry yeast 1/4 c. warm water 1 c. orange juice (not from concentrate), plus more as needed 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted 1/2 c. packed bro...

Day Forty-Eight: Skolebrød
2008-02-18 19:44:00
  Hopping over slightly to the left on our globe, we come to another lovely holiday bread. Norway’s skolebrød is similar to Finland’s pulla in its reliance on cardamom for flavoring a sweetish, rich bread dough. But it is there that the similarities end, for skolebrød is the far more assertive of the two ...

Day Forty-Seven: Pulla
2008-02-18 19:25:00
    Some breads make a greater impression upon first-view than others, and this recipe for pulla yields one very good example. Or three, if you follow the recipe exactly as it’s written and don’t scale it up or down.     Be careful, though; as with many braided breads, this one can get out of hand if you ...

Thai Mocha Honey Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache
2008-02-18 16:58:00
    This was a cake I made last year for my friend Katherine’s birthday. She’s also a great fan of Thai coffee, so I thought it would be fun to incorporate some into this cake recipe, which I adapted from a recipe found in another of Nigella Lawson’s books. I love making cakes, ...
More About: Honey , Cake , Chocolate , Dark

Corn Chowder
2008-02-17 17:44:00
    I don’t need to tell you how good homemade soup can be, do I? It’s a very sad thing that, as a society, we’ve fallen out of the habit of preparing even pleasures of the most simple sort for ourselves. Homemade soup is exponentially rewarding for a comparatively small amount of effort. ...
More About: Corn , Chowder

Seared Scallops with Garlic Butter Sauce
2008-02-17 17:31:00
  The best dishes are often the simplest. It’s a chicken and egg argument, at times; are you inspired to create a simple-yet-utterly-divine dish because you’ve found some amazingly fresh, beautiful ingredients? Or has your love of simple, clean, delicious flavors inspired you to seek out the best and freshest ingredients available? ...
More About: Garlic , Sauce , Butter

Banoffee Pie
2008-02-17 17:19:00
  This is the first in a series of photos of past kitchen mischief as meted out in the Big Chef Test Kitchen. I’d never previously made a banoffee pie, but it sounded like a fantastic idea, especially when my friend Andy expounded upon the glories of using HobNobs in crust rather than the graham ...

Day Forty-Six: Thai Coffee Sticky Buns
2008-02-17 17:03:00
    I should mention, first of all, that this isn’t really a Thai recipe. Rather, it’s a bit of a hybrid project. There are several cuisines in the world for which bread does not play a very important role, or even a role at all, and Thai food (throughout all regions) is one of ...
More About: Coffee

Day Forty-Five: Tijgerbrood
2008-02-17 16:18:00
    Upon first glance, the recipe for this bread put me in mind of nothing so much as pan dulce, except perhaps for the top layer not being nearly so sweet. Sure, the recipe described it as being crunchy, which pan dulce is decidedly not…but still, the basic elements of preparation were there.     The ...

Day Forty-Four: Chimichurri Bread
2008-02-14 15:52:00
  I’ve seen recipes like this one for chimichurri bread floating around online, and the concept intrigued me greatly. However, it seems like the recipes you find are all geared toward bread machines, so I wanted to take this bread and make it in an oven, as I tend to make bread. So I ...
More About: Bread

Day Forty-Three: Lazy Loaf
2008-02-13 18:44:00
    This, by far, has got to be the single healthiest bread I’ve made so far this year. There is absolutely NOTHING bad for you about this bread. It’s quick in the sense that you don’t spend a lot of time tending to it, but it will still take you a good two hours ...
More About: Lazy

Day Thirty-Nine: Banana Almond Coffee Muffins
2008-02-09 14:32:00
  So, you think you know banana bread? Think again. We have a favorite banana bread recipe that I make a lot, but this…this is something entirely different. It’s got an entirely different character to it than any other banana bread you will likely have had before…unless, of course, you’ve already tried this ...
More About: Coffee , Banana , Muffins , Almond , Fins

Day Thirty-Eight: Arepas
2008-02-08 19:28:00
    I have to confess, I had a lot of fun during the last World Cup. Not because I’m a particularly big football/soccer fan, but because it gave me a chance for a self-issued culinary challenge. While the World Cup was going on, I decided that each day’s matches would help determine where on ...

Day Thirty-Seven: Naan-e Sangak
2008-02-07 14:52:00
  This bread was supposed to be rectangular in shape, but unfortunately I didn’t realize it until after I’d baked them. So it’s a bit unorthodox, but still very, very tasty. Next time I make it? Rectangles all the way, baby. They didn’t teach me all about the differences between shapes when ...

Day Thirty-Six: Pan Amasado
2008-02-06 14:38:00
  As you may have gathered, not only do we like bread, but we’re very fond of sandwiches as well. As such, breads suitable for sandwiches are a popular thing in our house. Pan amasado is the chosen representative of Chilean sandwich bread, and they’re such adorable little buns that I was very excited.   Of ...

Day Thirty-Five: Nutella Swirls
2008-02-05 18:38:00
    You may be looking at these and thinking “Say, doesn’t that look familiar?” A question to which I’d offer the answer,“Why no, not in the slightest.” The other day, when I posted the recipe for Beirut Tahini Swirls? This was Joe’s brilliant idea. It’s the same bread dough, only filled with Nutella . ...

Day Thirty-Four: Naan
2008-02-04 14:04:00
  Naan is pleasant enough in itself, and of course it’s a brilliant conveyance for the cuisine with which it’s usually served. And it’s incredibly simple to make. Like many flatbreads, it’s immensely rewarding for relatively little effort, and even when it’s quite brown on the outside, it’s still soft and tender on the ...

Day Thirty-Three: Beirut Tahini Swirls
2008-02-04 13:45:00
    Because of the way these came out striped, they rather put me in mind of pinwheel cookies—purely visually, of course. The taste…oh, the taste. They’re a bit flaky, but not to the point where I don’t think you could eat one neatly over a plate, or if you were holding it wrapped in ...
More About: Beirut

Day Thirty-Two: Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls
2008-02-02 16:10:00
    You may already have guessed that I’m a fan of bread. But one of the things I especially like is when you’re at a restaurant with nice bread, and they bring you some when you sit down. Sometimes it’s a bunch of assorted rolls; other times it’s just one really good, fresh bit ...
More About: Dinner , Wheat

Day Thirty-One: Cinnamon Bread
2008-02-01 15:10:00
    To make up for the disappointment of yesterday’s bread, I decided I needed to make something completely no-fail. I wanted something similar to a cinnamon roll, but without frosting, and in loaf form. What I came up with was this:   Cinnamon Bread   INGREDIENTS 1 c. milk 3-4 tbsp sugar 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp butter 2.25 tsp instant or ...

Day Thirty: Strawberry Bread
2008-01-31 15:47:00
    Since I’m visiting someone who adores strawberries later today, I thought I’d give this bread a shot. And the top is quite nice. It’s caramelized, and has a nice, streusel-like crunch to it. The interior kind of tastes like I baked strawberry jam into it, which make sense; if you’ve ever made ...
More About: Strawberry , Bread

Day Twenty-Nine: Molasses Multi-Seed Bread
2008-01-30 14:59:00
    As you may have guessed from the title, this particular recipe is a bit seedy. The seeds make it delicious, however…and the sweetness of the molasses makes it finger-lickingly so. I halved it, and then divided the half-recipe I was making in half again so that I could bake it in two ...
More About: Twenty , Multi , Bread , Seed

Day Twenty-Eight: Honey Graham Crackers
2008-01-29 14:47:00
    You can’t speak of flatbreads without speaking of crackers. I know a lot of people probably don’t think of them as being breads, but they are; they’re even slightly leavened. They’re certainly not cookies, or biscuits; indeed, they’re very much their own thing. And they’re terribly easy to make; much moreso than ...
More About: Twenty , Honey , Crackers , Graham