Cafe Maplethorpe Blog

Normally baking day is Monday. Unfortunately I have been spending my Mondays–for several weeks in a row–at the Summerside branch of OKTire. The combination of 17-year-old driver and 10 year old car is not a good place to be, especially if you have limited funds and even more limited time. This winter we have replaced 3 tires, had the car towed twice and personally rescued the car and teen driver twice. It really helps to have a mechanically-inclined husband with lots of tools and gadgets.

Despite the aforementioned husband, I have spent so much money at OKTire this winter I should just give them my ATM card and pin number. This Monday was relatively pain-free, just an annual safety inspection.

So this week, baking day is Tuesday.

I am, as usual, already behind before I even get started. I have a LIST of things to complete before the restaurant opens, and it is long.  When the alarm clock rang at 4:00 am, I got up. Lots of work to do and no backsliding today.

It is really dark at 4:00 am and the house is quiet. I enjoy this time of day, and I enjoy working alone. Once the bed and breakfast guests are here in the summer I will change my schedule and bake in the afternoons or be extremely quiet in the early morning and not wake anyone upstairs who is on vacation. But this morning I can bang around all I want. I weigh flour and start the mixer for a double batch of bacon bread first. While it is mixing I proof the yeast for 100 dinner rolls. We will need enough for the cafe for the coming week and extra to stockpile for a big supper we are catering a week from today.

CBC has interesting programming on in the middle of the night, broadcasts from the BBC  and Radio Australia, stories of the Roma in the Czech Republic and albinos on the run in Tanzania. Who knew that May is Zombie Awareness Month?

By 7:00 am when the rest of the family is getting up, the bread and rolls are ready to be panned and I feel accomplished. The bacon bread, in particular, is always a big hit for sandwiches. When you toast it for breakfast, it fills the house with a comforting bacony smell.   The recipe is surprisingly simple. (The hardest part is actually having some cooked bacon on hand–every scrap of ours is usually snarfed up as soon as it is cooked. Bacon leftovers? Never!)

Bacon Bread

makes 2 loaves

1 and 1/4 cup warm water

1 tablespoon dry yeast

3/4 pound cooked bacon, finely diced

3 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons salt

additional flour as necessary

1. Mix warm water and yeast, set aside 10 minutes to proof.

2. In the bowl of a standing mixer with a dough hook, put in flour, bacon, oil and salt.

3. Add water and yeast, then mix at medium speed for 5 minutes. If dough is too thick, add additional warm water. If too thin, add small amounts of flour until dough is smooth and elastic.

4. Transfer dough to a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Let rise to double in size. (How long this takes depends on the temperature in your kitchen-usually 1 to 2 hours.)

5. Punch down dough and divide into 2 pieces. These can be placed as free-form rounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet or placed in greased loaf pans. Let rise for 1 hour.

6. Bake at 400 degrees (F) for 30 minutes.

This recipe was adapted from The Easy Way to Artisan Breads and Pastries by Avner Laskin.

That’s it for now. More to do before we open at 11:00.

As promised, here are photos and the recipe for grilled PEI eels. They have been on the February supper menu as an appetizer and have been selling well! We’ll see the end of the eel at month’s end as spearing season is over. I prepare them (more or less) as you would enjoy them in Japan, with a rich, sweet kabayaki sauce. (Recipe for sauce below.)

Step 1: This assumes you have some eel. The eel should be skinned and gutted, with the head removed. You will need to remove the spine. To do this, insert the blade of a sharp knife under the spine. Run the blade along the underside of the spine from the head of the eel toward the tail.  (Where the head used to be toward where the tail used to be–they are long gone.) It may help release the spine to make lateral cuts along the sides of the spine down the length of the eel prior to running the blade under.

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Step 2: Once the spine has been removed, cut the flesh into uniform 4 inch pieces.

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Step 3: Skewer the eel fillets. (This keeps them from curling during the cooking process and makes them easy to handle.)

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Step 4: Steam skewered eel in a bamboo steamer for 20 minutes. (Put steamer lid on top first!) Check the water level in the wok occasionally and add more water if necessary to make sure it doesn’t run dry.

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Step 5: Remove eel from steamer. Grill eel skewers under a broiler (toaster oven is good for this) or on a grill, liberally applying kabayaki sauce, until desired carmelized exterior has been achieved.

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Eel is often eaten on a bed of rice, but it is delicious atop a salad or by itself!

Kabayaki Sauce:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)

1/4 cup white sugar

Method:
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan. On the stovetop, bring the sauce to a boil. Let boil for approximately 5 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Cool and pour into squeeze bottle.

I was a member of Weight Watchers many, many years ago. Back then the program was much less flexible than it is today and there were many foods that we were told just not to eat. Any. Ever.

Forbidden Foods

For each of the banned foods, however, someone had come up with a clever substitute. For example, peanuts were forbidden, but we were given a recipe using canned button mushroom caps. You were to bake them in the oven until they became shriveled and dry, looking amazingly like a peanut! Then you sprinkle salt on the ‘mock peanuts’ and enjoy! I remember this so clearly these many, many years later because the taste was so bad that the adverse sensory experience is seared in my brain for all time, like a tiny internal tattoo.

I am sharing one of my best recipes for ‘gluten-free sandwich bread.’ As anyone who eats gluten-free bread knows well, it just isn’t like “real” bread. Gluten is the star of “real” bread, and this just doesn’t have any. It is really mock sandwich bread, sort-of like the mock peanuts of my early dieting years. BUT! It isn’t too bad. The flax seed is nutritious and gives the bread a nice look, but isn’t essential if you don’t have any. Hardly anyone has buttermilk any more, but adding some lemon juice to white milk works fine.

The usual disclaimers for gluten-free bread are necessary:

• For sandwich-size bread use a small (length) bread pan and mound the dough up fairly high–it is going to rise, but not much.
• If you have an old-style automatic bread maker that makes tall, round loaves, try that.
• Let the loaf cool completely before slicing.
• Slice it thin, and it helps to toast it.
• Freeze what you aren’t going to use in a day or two.
• Keep experimenting until you find the taste and consistency that you can enjoy for life.

And unless you have a life-threatening allergy, eat a peanut when you feel like it.  Canned mushrooms are for pizza.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup warm water

1 and 1/2 tablespoon active dry yeast

2 cups brown rice flour

1/3 cup potato starch

1/3 cup potato flour

1/3 cup tapioca flour

3 and 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum

1/4 cup coarse ground flax seed

1 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk mixed with 1/4 cup lemon juice)

1/4 cup (2 ounces) butter, softened

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 eggs

Method:

Grease one bread loaf pan and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

1. Mix warm water, yeast and sugar in a measuring cup. Let proof for 5 minutes.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix rice flour, potato flour and starch, flax, xanthan gum, tapioca flour and salt.

3. Pour yeast water into flour mix along with eggs, butter, rice vinegar and buttermilk. Using a dough hook, start mixing on lowest speed.

4. When wet and dry ingredients are mostly combined, stop mixer and scrape sides and bottom to make sure all dry ingredients are mixed with wet. Return to mixing on medium speed for 3 minutes.

5. Form dough into loaf with your hands and place in pan. (Wet hands make this easier.)

6. Place the loaf pan with dough into a large plastic bag and secure with a twist-tie or knot. ( This will help keep the dough moist during the fairly long rising time.) Put in a warm place for 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours. The loaf will increase its original volume by about 1/3.

7. Bake for 45 minutes. Cool completely.

One of the most frequent requests we get at the restaurant is for gluten-free bread and rolls that actually taste and feel like “real” bread. There are over 2 million people in North America that suffer from Celiac Disease and the only treatment is a gluten-free diet. (That means no wheat, rye or barley added to any food product.) In addition to those with the disease, many avoid gluten due to various other health considerations. Today I was a guest chef on CBC’s “Maritime Noon” call-in show and one of the first questions we received was on this very topic.

We are constantly experimenting with gluten-free breads, rolls and desserts to serve at the Cafe and our goal is to make these special products look and taste so yummy that everyone will want them!

Because I didn’t bring specific recipes with me to the studio for the call-in, I offered to post a couple of recipes here on the blog–recipes that actually work, that we make and serve.

These are nice for use as a dinner roll, but can also be the base of a sweet muffin with the addition of fruit or nuts. (Think about adding blueberries and almonds, cinnamon and pecan pieces, lemon and poppy seed…)

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Grease 6 spots in a standard muffin tin or use paper muffin cups. (If you add fruit and nuts, the recipe will make more than 6.)

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter, softened

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup gluten-free flour mixture*

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup milk

Method:

1. Put the soft butter and sugar in a stand mixer and beat with paddle until light and fluffy.

2. Add eggs and beat on low speed to mix.

3. In a separate bowl, add all dry ingredients. I used a combination of soy, rice and tapioca flour. Feel free to use what you have on hand or experiment with the taste and color of the muffins using various gluten-free flours.

4. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk to the egg mixture while the mixer is running on the lowest speed. Stop mixing as soon as all ingredients are incorporated.

5. Fill prepared muffin cups to 2/3 full. Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes.

These muffins will stay fresh for a few days and freeze well if wrapped individually in plastic film.

It is the middle of winter on Prince Edward Island and what’s a locavore to do? Well, we’re trying to find ways to use locally-grown root vegetables in an interesting, new way. Maplethorpe Apple Slaw is a cool pick-me-up for your plate. The ingredients are cheap and the entire dish is surprisingly easy to make. This recipe will serve 6 or 8.

Ingredients:

1/2 medium green cabbage, washed, cored and outer leaves removed

1 large carrot, peeled

2 apples, peeled, quartered and cored

2 tablespoons whole grain mustard

1/4 cup mayonnaise

handful of dried fruit, cranberries or dried cherries, raisins or dried blueberries

Method:

1. Chop the cabbage to the desired fineness and place in a large mixing bowl.

2.Chop the carrot to same size as cabbage and add to the bowl.

3. Dice the apples. Any kind of apple will do, but some tend to turn brown–a splash of lemon juice will help keep them fresh. Add to the carrot and cabbage and mix.

4. Toss in the dried fruit, if using.

5. Final step! Mix in the whole grain mustard and mayo and stir well. Adjust the quantities to achieve the desired level of creaminess–exact amount needed depends on the size of the cabbage and carrot. If you prefer something sweeter, add a tablespoon or two of sugar.