Month: August 2024

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Frosé – the Drink that Hoist Me with My Own Petard.  And Why Open Hearts and Minds Still Matter.

This post orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished for the Camp Sier­ra Newslet­ter.

I’m a red wine girl, if I’m going to drink rosé at all, it bet­ter be a skin-kissed orange num­ber with a lit­tle min­er­al­i­ty and some get­ting used-to (like me).  And it bet­ter be hot out­side.  Don’t get me wrong:  if you’ve got some Nico­las Feuil­lat­te, I’m your huck­le­ber­ry, but I gen­er­al­ly do not “do” the pink stuff.  In the words of the great Madeleine Kahn, it’s so … “ordi­nary.”

So it was with a sense of snob-like supe­ri­or­i­ty that I turned up my nose at the “Frosé” offered to me by the cutest Cuban wait­er ever in a Mia­mi brunch hotspot. Frozen Rosé?  Thank you, but no.  I’ll have a Sancerre, please.  I’m not a farmer.

Appar­ent­ly, he’d seen the haughty likes of me before and sim­ply replied, “I’ll just bring you some, any­way,” and off he went.  I’ll cut to the chase:  I had three glass­es, the wait­er and I became besties, and he even gave me the recipe.  I learned all about his life, how he land­ed in Flori­da from Cuba, and we even hung out after brunch and danced to the live sal­sa music.  I’m now a life-long lover of frosé, have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the Cuban spir­it, and can do the merengue.  Win-win.

When we’re kids, we are always so ready to believe we don’t have all the answers. That’s what makes chil­dren open to new expe­ri­ences in a way that adults are not. Don’t lose that curi­ous spir­it. Try the thing you thought you would hate, and don’t wor­ry if any­one’s watch­ing. It’s not your busi­ness what they think of you.

THE RECIPE: Here’s how to make Frosé. Pour a bot­tle of hearty rosé into ice cube trays and freeze.  The alco­hol con­tent will make the cubes a lit­tle soft, but they’ll freeze to a slush like con­sis­ten­cy suf­fi­cient to get them out of the con­tain­er.  Freeze about 8 ounces of hulled straw­ber­ries (or you can sim­ply pur­chase frozen ones).  Add the frozen berries and the frozen wine to a blender, with 3 oz of fresh lemon juice and (option­al) 4 oz sim­ple syrup.  Blend.  You can drink right away, or put back in the freez­er for 30 min­utes to firm up.  If you want to make it well in advance, I sug­gest adding a 1/4 cup of vod­ka before return­ing it to the freez­er. it should be just enough to keep it from freez­ing com­plete­ly.

Note:  Gor­don Ram­say’s restau­rant in Lon­don ser­vices this in paper cups (not glass) because it takes longer to melt that way.  Can con­firm.  BTW, this is a great way to use up left­over rosé.  I always have a few cubes and a few frozen berries in the freez­er for a Frosé

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Foccacia for People in a Hurry

Big lin­er notes on this one, but I promise, the instruc­tions are what makes this easy. This is great for overnight, but it’s also a deli­cious one you can start at 10am, and bake before 3pm, and be proud of it.  I hon­est­ly can­not get my life togeth­er enough to think about bread a day in advance, but if you can, the bread comes out even bet­ter. Spe­cial shout out to Ulan for proof-read­ing this baby.

Pic­tured is a fonti­na, carmelized onions, and sliced pota­toes with rose­mary. Gone in 60 sec­onds.

The ris­ing times are based upon a warm home, so your times may vary a bit.  I use my oven as a prov­ing box (turn on the oven for a cou­ple min­utes then turn off so it’s like a hot day in there).

The dough has 5 basic ingre­di­ents and we use the “fork knead­ing” method, which is real­ly cool.  The very short ver­sion of the instruc­tions is this:  (1) mix dry ingre­di­ents with water until sat­u­rat­ed; (2) trans­fer to oiled bowl after 1 hour (with fork knead­ing every 15 min­utes); (3) let rise twice for one hour each; (4) trans­fer to 9X13 oiled pan and let rise for 1 hour; (5) dim­ple, driz­zle with olive oil, dec­o­rate and bake at 425 for 30 min­utes. 

Here are complete instructions:

  1. 10:00 am.  Into a stand mix­ing bowl, add the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents.  If you don’t have a mix­er with a dough hook, a reg­u­lar large bowl will do.
    4 cups flour / 515 grams –Bread flour is great for this, but A/P will do very well
    2 tsp fine sea salt
    2 tea­spoons instant yeast
  2. Add 2 cups very warm water and mix with dough hook until ful­ly mixed and there are no dry bits.  If you are mix­ing by hand, use a rub­ber spat­u­la.  Regard­less of your method, you will have a pan­cake batter‑y dough.  It’s 89% hydra­tion, so it’s not going to be firm and will not look pret­ty.
  3. 10:30am Cov­er the bowl with plas­tic wrap or a plas­tic store bag, or (if you’re not an eco-ter­ror­ist) a damp kitchen tow­el (with a rub­ber band around it), and let sit for 15 min­utes.

    [If you plan to bake the bread the next day, place dough in a very well greased plas­tic con­tain­er with a lid and refrig­er­ate.  I use olive oil – and lots of it – and I also grease the top of the dough.  Let sit for 12–48 hours, then skip to step 7].
  4. Let dough sit out in a warm room and use the fork knead­ing method to turn the dough on itself, every 15 min­utes, for 1 hour. This will make a total of 4 kneads with the fork. Fork knead­ing:  using two fork, go around the bowl,  lift­ing the out­side edge of the dough and guide the dough to the cen­ter.  Do this eight times (takes about 1 minute).
  5. When you’ve fin­ished the knead­ing the 4th time, you should see that the dough has lots of yeast stri­a­tions.
  6. 11:30am.  Grease a clean bowl with olive oil or neu­tral oil.  Scrape your dough into it, rub oil on the top of the dough, and cov­er.  Let rise until dou­ble in size. About an hour.
  7. 12:30 pm.  Deflate the dough, and then use the fork knead­ing method, and let rise again in the bowl, about an hour.  If your dough is com­ing out of the refrig­er­a­tor, it will prob­a­bly take 2–3 hours for the same rise.
  8. 1:30 pm.  Lib­er­al­ly oil (and I mean lib­er­al­ly) a 9 x 13 pan with olive oil.  Trans­fer the risen dough to the pan and, stretch it so that it attempts to fill the bot­tom of the pan (it won’t).  Cov­er pan and let rise one hour.  Even­tu­al­ly, the dough will relax and make it to the cor­ners (or you can push it there).  In the mean­time, prep your top­pings, if any.
  9. 2:30pm Once the dough has risen, and cov­ers the pan, you’re ready to dim­ple, dec­o­rate, and bake.  Pre­heat the over to 425.  Grease your fin­gers and with the tips of your fin­gers, dim­ple the dough (like you are play­ing piano).  Driz­zle dough with 4 table­spoons of olive oil, press in your ingre­di­ents (or just sprin­kle with sea salt), and bake for about 25–30 min­utes, or until gold­en.  Serve imme­di­ate­ly, or let cool, uncov­ered, then wrap in paper.

Notes:

  • If you are going to use cheese along with oth­er ingre­di­ents, put the cheese on the dough as the first lay­er, rather than the last.
  • This makes a thick, sand­wich style focac­cia.  If you want thin­ner, use a cook­ie sheet.
  • The more oil on the bot­tom, the crispi­er it will be, but don’t go crazy.  If you don’t want to use lots of oil, use parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • You can put almost any­thing on focac­cia, but watery veg­eta­bles make for sog­gy tops and burnt veg­gies.  Con­sid­er roma toma­toes (less water), and dry­ing out things like egg­plant and pota­toes, before top­ping them on your dough.
  • We tried this at high alti­tude, and it worked with the fol­low­ing changes:  addi­tion­al ½ cup water; slight­ly short­er rise times, and greased parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • Note that I pre­fer cooked veg­eta­bles, but if you like raw, use raw.
  • Some of my favorite top­pings
    • Fonti­na, caramelized onions, pota­to, rose­mary
    • Rose­mary and salt
    • Shal­lots and moz­zarel­la
    • Piz­za style:  moz­zarel­la, toma­to sauce (or toma­toes), and ricot­ta
    • Sauteed mush­rooms and thyme (then dot with gor­gonzo­la when it comes out of the oven.
    • Parme­san and herbs.