Taste the Capers

As a teen, I used to love to watch Jeff Smith's Frugal Gourmet on public television. I learned so much from him. Yes, I was the teen who thought nothing of spending part of her Saturday afternoon watching a cooking show twenty years before the Food Network made cooking shows cool. Luis would say I was a nerd, but I prefer to think of it as a food lover in training.

When I was growing up, our household was very meat and potatoes. Rice was so foreign to me that I felt like a gourmand whenever I made it as a side dish for a meal. So, you can imagine that the mere thought of the some of the foods that the Frugal Gourmet made were the ultimate in cuisine in my mind.

I remember one show in which he cooked a dish with capers. I had never even heard of capers before. I had to look them up to find out what they were, and I could not image how they tasted. It was probably another ten years before I had the courage to buy a small bottle of capers. I was scared to try to cook with something I had never had before. For months, that little bottle sat in my refrigerator, chiding me for my lack of culinary adventure every time I opened up the refrigerator door.

When I finally had the courage to open the bottle and cook something with those capers, I was testing my culinary wings. It was a pasta dish. I could not tell you what the recipe was exactly, but I can still taste that first bite of a caper, all briney and vinegary. It was a huge step in my culinary development.

I do not pretend to be a fancy chef. I like food and I love to prepare it, but I have yet to cook with truffles or many of the haute cuisine recipes I find in my monthly issue of Gourmet. However, no tuna sandwich is complete to me without capers anymore, and for that I say thank you to the Frugal Gourmet.

I still feel a little exotic every time I open those small bottles, though.

Now I am thinking of making Pasta Puttanesca for dinner.

Artisan Bread in .......

Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day. No knead bread. So many shortcuts.

How long does it take to make a good loaf of bread? Even Luis seems to be under the misconception that it takes gobs and gobs of time every day. It really does not if one is willing to embrace modern technology. Yes, I resisted for years. No, I do not mean a bread machine. Bleh. Throw those things out. Inferior crusts, poor crumb. Used one for a while, and while it was better than store bought, the amount of real effort that good bread takes is so little that using a bread machine makes no sense.

I mean let technology handling the kneading for you. I mixed and kneaded by hand because that was the traditional thing to do. Then I got the Kitchen-aid mixer a number of years ago and tradition flew out the window when I saw how easy and effective that machine was at mixing bread dough.

Straight French baguettes? About 5 minutes of actually working with the dough.

Honey oat bread takes even less because I only have to shape one loaf, not three.

Sourdoughs are easy. They maybe take 10 minutes of actual work putting the ingredients in, maintaining the starter and shaping the loaves. The ten minutes is spread out over a couple of hours.

The Kitchen-aid handles the mixing, and I load the dishwasher, make lunch or do other housework while it kneads the dough. Rising happens without any effort on my part. Pop the dough into a lightly oiled container, cover and let it do its thing.

Bread is easy! Try it! It does not take a herculean effort to make breads. The hardest part is learning to shape, but boules are so easy and a great place to start. Skip the peel and shape onto a little parchment paper. You can slide that into the oven with the bread and not have to worry about deflating your loaf as you put it into the oven.

You can always expand into trickier breads if it appeals to you, but basic breads are just that. Basic. Anyone can do them. Try it. Do not let these shortcut bread books and bread article trick you into thinking that regular artisan breads are difficult. They are not.