Salsa di pomodori piccante

Fresh, naturally grown ingredients

The tomatoes are coming in for summer from our favorite natural grower, Siembra Tres Vidas. Since I will be off the island for a week, the best way of preserving all of these fresh tomatoes is making a reference sauce for pasta. The idea for this sauce comes from Haiti, where the hot peppers 'come to visit', but do not stay.

Ingredients

• 1 kg fresh tomatoes, coarsely cubed
• 250 gm fresh onions, medium dice (5mm)
• 30 gm fresh garlic, diced
• 100 gm natural grown aji dulce (variant Cubanelle Pepper), medium dice
• OPTIONAL BUT ESSENTIAL: two (2) very fresh habañero peppers ~15 gm, deveined and seeded. Keep the habañeros in large pieces. (use gloves or get used to it--try to do the deveining under running water. Do not touch eyes after handling!)
• 75 gm virgin olive oil

• 320 cc red, substandard pineapple wine (12% alcohol, fruity)
• 10 gm salt (approximately 1% of tomato weight)
  
• 30 gm white sugar

Total weight of ingredients: 1815 gm



Procedure

A good dice of onions, garlic and aji dulce

Using a covered cazuela (terracotta cooking utensil), heat the olive oil with the habañero chiles until the chiles begin to fry. Continue to fry slowly, turning the peppers until their original orange color is browned. Do not fry too far or the result will be bitter. Remove the habañeros from the cazuela, carefully draining any oil on the habañeros back into the cazuela.

Habañeros before and after frying in virgin olive oil.
Keep the pieces big. You should recover them. Lost habañero pieces are dangerous.

What happened: Capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, is oil soluble. Frying the peppers extracts the capsaicinoids making the olive oil (very spicy). Browning the peppers gives a caramel, complex flavor to the finished oil.

Add the onions, chopped aji dulce, and garlic, and sautee until transparent. Then add the tomatoes and 10 gm of salt. Allow the tomatoes to stew at low heat on the stovetop until they have begun to become watery. Add the wine. Place the cazuela in a convection oven at 110C (slightly above the boiling point) and allow to cook covered for 6 hours.

At the end of this cooking period, the tomatoes will have fully integrated into the sauce. There should be skins floating in the mixture

Sauteeing the onions and garlic on low heat, then add the chopped tomatoes

What happened: The low cooking temperature assures that the volatile aromas of the fresh tomatoes is not lost. Please see the Pflug papers here.

At end of first cooking

Pass the cooked sauce through a medium food mill to retain some interesting texture. Then add (as in the instructions of Marcus Gavius Apicius) oregano leaves to taste and 30 grams of sugar. Stir into the sauce. Finish by cooking covered at 80C for 4 hours.

Food Mill

The finished, earth red, concentrated sauce

If you did not add the habañeros, add freshly sliced basil at the end of the final cooking. Basil is a very delicate herb and you do not want to cook it very long.

The finished sauce is aromatic with very complex flavors on the palate. It begins with a nose of oregano, then to the tart of the tomatoes, moving lightly to sweet, and finishes with a mild, fruity heat.

Total yield after evaporation: 500gm (27.8% of original materials)

Dulce de Leche--And the weekly bread

Milk and Honey are the only articles of diet whose sole purpose is food.

-University of California Food Sciences Department

Think about that.


A long time--

In all the world, these are the only two things uniquely intended to continue the life-cycle without interrupting any other life-cycle.

Now think about mixing them together.


Cooking with milk is prehistoric. Exodus (34:26) exhorts the Israelites not to "boil a kid in its mother's milk" hinting that milk as an ingredient was used well before the scholars codified the law. (Truly, Talmudic scholars do not fully understand this prohibition, whose discussion continues today.) In spite of the Talmudic prohibition, raw milk is a fickle ingredient for cooking. It comes fresh from the cow with all of the micro-organisms to make cheese, or yoghurt, or butter, or kefir, or be fermented into kumiss. Cooking it 'cauldron-of-hell' style on an open fire led invariably to boil-overs and a less than fresh tasting result. All of this changed when sugar was available, either as hard-to-collect honey or as cheap cane sugar from the Indes.

When this happened, the delicacy joined a new word that was just coming into being, first in Catalonia, then throughout the Spanish world: manjar. Catalonia's richest city, Barcelona, was port city to the western Mediterranean. Food chosen for a voyage into Barcelona had to be profitable for the merchant. It would be rare and expensive. The merchants labeled new foods with their place of origin "menjar dels Árabes" or "menjar dels Muslmanes", using the Latin root menducar, meaning to chew (it later became mangiare=EAT!). Thus, the signs only said: "This is what the Arabs eat". In an early bow for consumer marketing, the purchasers soon came to associate menjar with 'delicacy'. However, around this time, manjar became associated with another delicacy: Manjar de los ángeles, the food of the angels. Its ingredients: boiled milk and honey.

The only Latin Americans who feel they are on equal (or maybe a bit superior) to angels are the Argentines, and notably they are one of the few countries that truly follow the most natural practice of making manjar de los ángeles, or dulce de leche. The recipe allows fresh, unpasteurized milk. There is no corn flour (Cuba), dark caramel (Colombia), or mixing of goat and cow milk (Mexico). The recipe is a national standard that is available for your personal download and printing. This clever use by the Argentine government of the Internet to virtually publish useful information saves immense amounts of time in the government's printing office, thereby allowing it to physically print virtually worthless bonds.

Using fresh milk available from our favorite natural grower, Siembra Tres Vidas, we used this modified Argentine recipe

• 100 units fresh milk
• 24 units cane sugar (modified upwards from 20 parts. See discussion.)
  
• 1 units invert sugar syrup (modified downwards from 4 parts.)
  
• 0.05 sodium bicarbonate (speed Maillard reaction)
• 0.06 vanilla

Even though I had sufficient invert syrup to meet the original recipe, it was a dark syrup. As this was the first calibration run, I wanted to observe the natural color changes as the milk evaporated. Later runs should use more invert sugar to prevent crystallization.

Comverting the ratios as follows:

• 1 liter milk (1000 gm)
• 240 gm white sugar (Snow White--still packed in Puerto Rico and the original sugar made by Serallés...)
• 0.5 gram sodium bicarbonate (Baking Soda)
• 1/2 a Dominican vanilla bean (see more of the story below)

Set the milk in a 3-liter double boiler and allow to reach its maximum temperature. This will normally not exceed 95C. When the milk reaches 95C, add the 240 grams of sugar and weigh the total pan. At this point you have 1000 gm of milk and 240 gm of sugar for a total weight of 1240 grams. Dulce de Leche is a condensation process that needs to proceed until the remaining dulce is at least 70% solids (70 on the Brix scale). If you have a honey refractometer, you do not need to weigh the pan and compute the evaporation.

Weigh the milk and heat to the steam temperature (~92C) then add sugar

When you start, you will have

• 240 grams of sugar
  
• About 11.5% solids in the whole milk (sugars, fats and proteins) = 115 gm

This means about 355 grams of solids that should be about 70% of the total weight. This means a final weight of dulce de leche when done of 500 gm, or half the original milk weight.

After one hour of cooking, about 30% of the water will have evaporated. At this point, add the bicarbonate of soda. A good amount of fizzing will occur, indicating acids are being reduced. The reduction of acids allows a much more rapid browning of milk proteins, without having to raise the temperature to the 'cauldron of hell' stage.

Add baking soda (NaHCO3) and watch the fizz

Now it becomes a game of patience. Keep gently stirring the milk and sugar every 10-15 minutes. Using steam as the cooking medium eliminates the possibility of milk proteins of coagulating and creating lumps in the finished dulce.

After about 40% of the liquid has been evaporated (45 Brix), add essence of vanilla, or in this case, one-half of a natural vanilla bean from the island of Dominica. (You buy these well away from the tourist track in Saint Thomas from a nice lady who can also turn your son into a goat.) Fresh picked vanilla beans have such an aroma that the entire kitchen turns into a candy reverie.

The nice lady in Saint Thomas who sells natural vanilla beans from abandoned plantations in Dominica

Keep stirring, and finally add the invert syrup when solids are reaching 65-70%. Invert syrup is composed of glucose and fructose that will disrupt crystallization of the pure cane sugar. See here.

For this batch, I computed a target weight of pan and dulce of approximately 1240 grams. This point represented where the solids would be 75-80%. Again, there is a good deal of estimation in this. It is best to use a refractometer.

Stir frequently and keep the steam jacket filled

Look closely at the color change in the last 30 cc of evaporation. This happens in 15-20 minutes in a steam pan. Be careful!

The progression of the dulce is shown below. Overall time is about 4 hours to make about 500 grams in a test batch.

Weight in pan (gm)	Estimated % solids	Temperature C	Notes	Time
1000	11.50%	20	Fresh Milk
1240	28.63%	90	Add sugar	11:34:00 AM
901	40.62%	92	Add bicarbonate-fizzing	12:27:00 PM
793	46.15%	92		12:52:00 PM
687	53.28%	92	Dropped Thermometer in tank	01:26:00 PM
613	61.34%		Added invert syrup	01:48:00 PM
560	67.14%			02:04:00 PM
525	71.62%			02:21:00 PM
506	74.31%			02:31:00 PM
486	77.37%			02:58:00 PM
476	78.99%			03:10:00 PM
468	80.34%	91	Repaired thermometer	03:24:00 PM

The finished dulce de leche while at 60C. At this temperature it is still fluid; as it cools it became nearly solid.
Excellent in an Italian espresso for an adult velvet sugar bomb. Or pour on vanilla ice cream. Or spread on bread, which reminds me...

The weekly bread

This would be a biga based bread in two sub-batches. The intent was to split the original biga, making it the 'mother' of two 2.4 kg batches. Splitting the batches permitted pacing the dough to the makeup bench and the single oven. Having only one oven means that bread near the end of a batch is over-risen and usually good for pizza.

The biga was a 55% AR dough:

• 450 gm of WW flour
• 550 gm of Amapola Harina por Pan
• 8 gm of Fleischman's IDY yeast dissolved in
  
• 600 gm of water at 40C with
  
• 10 gm of invert syrup
  

This was allowed to ferment overnight for 13 hours. Then the resulting ~1.55 kg biga was divided in two.

Mixing and rising

The final dough was made to a 60% AR recipe in a 2.4 kg batch. Per batch:

• Final total flour: 1.5 kg (the biga already has 500 gm)
  
• Final total water: 900 gm (the biga already has 275 gm)
  
• Salt per batch: 30 gm (2% of flour weight)

To make the total weight, add the biga to an additional 625 gm of water and 30 gm of salt and mix on first speed until the biga (and its yeast) are liquefied. Then add the additional 1 kg of flour and mix for 7 minutes on first speed.

Take the finished dough, round it on the bench, and place in a 6-8 quart sealed tub for first rising.

The biga after 13 hours. Very firm yet yeasted.

Dough after first mixing, then after first rising (1-hr @ 35C--sunny)

The second batch was prepared in the same way, but one hour behind the first. This allows one to rise while the second is still in preparation.

Allow to rise 1+ hr, then knock down and allow to rise another 30 minutes before forming

Forming and Baking

The batches divided into 100 gm rolls and 400 gm small loaves.

• Divide dough and form boules. Allow to rest 20 minutes at about 27C.
• Bench boules into Kaiser knots and pistolet rolls, let rest 10 minutes.
• Bench loaves into mid-length loaves, not baguette. Let rise 30 minutes on flat.

The rolls were baked at 225C for 14 minutes. The loaves were baked for 20 minutes at 225C, then allowed to cool on the hot baking stones to improve the crust.

100gm divisions, ready for rounding

12 pistolet, 12 Kaiser knots, 6 loaves

Splitting Sugars--Art, Artisans, Assembly Lines, and Andersen's

What does this have to do with splitting sugars? I had a friend who, during trips up the coast of California would always send this postcard. The back was simply inscribed: "we are splitting atoms in Buellton".

Living in Los Angeles as college students many years ago meant the long Friday night drive to visit high school friends in Berkeley, Santa Cruz, or San Luis Obispo. As today, we searched for the quirky restaurants where the owner was behind the stove or behind the bar (Hungry? Eat at Whizzins!). One of the staples was Andersen's, the temple of split pea soup.

Anton Andersen, founder of the said restaurant, was a renowned chef who had grow tired of the incessant pressure of New York hotel kitchens and decided to move west. He and his wife bought a spot of land and a small building in Buellton, California. With their last savings they christened a new electric stove and opened their doors to the world. The business? Logically, it was called Andersen's Electric Cafe (1).

Andersen, understanding the art of the great kitchens, donned the apron of an artisan, and began preparing split pea soup from scratch. Truckers and highway travelers of the 1930's began to tell friends of the hospitality and great pea soup in Buellton. Anton began by buying 50 pounds of peas a month, soon it would be a ton. By the time struggling physics students were heading north on route 101 to enjoy a bowl of soup, the third generation of owners were cooking 50 tons of split peas into soup a year on the premises. There was still the mix of art, artisans, and whimsy at the restaurant. Besides the kiddie park and wild animal park, the owners became enamored with parrots, and straightforwardly built an aviary adjacent to the kitchens.

Unfortunately, the vagaries of civil aviation ended the fancies of the owner and his family in 1980. For the trustees of the estate, there was only one 'reasonable' path, and that was to maximize the value of the Andersen's brand. Art and artisans were forgotten in favor of the assembly line. The classic recipe was sold, analyzed, dissected, scaled up, made 'shelf-stable' all under the skilled hand of "The leading North American co-pack manufacturer of aseptically manufactured products" (Only American Industry can think up such mission statements*). Food became 'product'. Cooking became easier if all one had to do was assemble fewer and fewer 'products' to make a meal. Eating? There was time to be saved there too...for what, I do not know.

In splitting sugar: Know the art; practice as an artisan; eat as human beings.

Invert sugar syrup

Yeast is a thrifty organism. It likes to start life converting glucose to carbon dioxide and alcohol. However, yeast was never intended to digest sucrose, or regular table sugar. For this task, yeast comes equipped with at least 10 enzymes such as invertase that can break down complex sugars and carbohydrates into what yeast likes best: glucose and fructose.

To give new yeast a good start, I like to add a bit of invert syrup to the hydration water. This used to come from a wonderful sugar syrup sold in Miami as 'melao', produced in Puerto Rico. Now that we live in Puerto Rico, we cannot find melao anywhere so duplicating it became the goal.

What is the art? Table sugar is a di-saccharide, made up of glucose and fructose. The two simple sugars are held together by a stretchy oxygen atom linking the two structures (it is the dizzy atom at the center):

In water, the H2O can convince the stressed oxygen atom to let go. Water gives up one of its hydrogen atoms to the sucrose oxygen, making an hydroxyl group (-OH) and leaving an extra (HO-). The sucrose molecule breaks apart into glucose (the 6-atom ring) and fructose (the pentagonal ring). The result is invert syrup.

Simplistically, you could just mix sugar and water and wait, and wait, and wait, since the above hydrolysis reaction is somewhat slow. You could heat the water to better dissolve the sucrose, and it would speed the reaction so a reasonable amount of glucose would be ready in several days. However, the problem with hot water hydrolysis is that undesirable by-products sometimes are formed by further breakdown of the sugar. To really make the reaction move, you need to add a tiny bit of acid. The acid is a catalyst that accelerates the process by 10-100 times. The (very free) hydrogen radical (H+) in acid is a catalyst, creating many hydroxyls that can then happily split the sucrose molecule, without being itself consumed.

To make a very thick, honey like syrup.

If your 100 parts of water are 100cc and your sugar is 300 grams, you will make about 300cc of syrup with a total of 1200 calories (4 calories per cc).

• 100 parts of water
• 300 parts of raw brown sugar
• 0.5 parts of acetic acid (If you are using 5% white vinegar, use 10 parts of vinegar)

The 300 grams of sugar on the left probably cost someone a good deal of sweat in the Dominican Republic.
The container on the right is filtered water, not sweat.

Dissolve the sugar in water in a non-reactive pan. It will not really dissolve but appear as a sandy mix. Slowly raise the temperature of the solution to 100C. When the slightest, wispy bubbles begin to swirl on the surface, add the vinegar At this concentration, a slight boil will begin at about 104-105C.

At first, gritty sand. All is quiet as the temperature moves up.

Finally the wispy veil of tiny bubbles on the surface at 104C.
5cc of 5% white vinegar sets off the (mainly quiet) reaction.

Stop the boil and lower the temperature to 80C for a period of an hour. This will give more than sufficient time for the acid to work. The lower temperature precludes caramelization and off flavors. Since the quantity is so small, there is no 'vinegar' flavor left at the end of the acid hyrolysis.

Transformation.
0.87 of a mole of sucrose meets 5.56 moles of water
under the guidance of 0.008 mole of acetic acid

Example

Puerto Rico has the most flavorful citrus fruit that I have experienced. This is in spite of the fruit being scarred, scratched, scraped, and generally touched with black sooty mold. Grapefruit, orange, sweet lemon and limón trees are left untended in backyards throughout the island, making them quite natural, but also quite beat up. Sometimes you can just ask to pick fruit and share the harvest with the host. When not doing this, we buy hand picked from our local organic farmer, SIEMBRA TRES VIDAS. If you juice the grapefruit, you miss the wonder full oils in the skin. Here is a neat way to get all the flavor while using about 2-3cc of the newly made invert syrup.

• Squeeze 1 grapefruit (the amount of juice in one Puerto Rican grapefruit is deceiving. Our building's bylaws advise against juicing more than one to prevent damage to apartments below.)





• Take half the rind, cut into coarse chunks, and pound with a meat tenderizer.





• Add the crushed rind into a large cocktail shaker
• Add the juice





• Add 2-3 cc of invert syrup
• Add 2-3 ice cubes.

Shake the mixture and drink. Of course, should you wish to add the by-product of yeast and invert sugar's other adventure: rum, feel free to do so.