Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

First, it’s important to distinguish No-Knead Bread from No-Need Bread. The former is a very laid back way to make bread if you have no food processor, stand mixer, bread machine or time. The latter is what you keep eating out of the little basket with a napkin in it, even though your pants are a little tight, just because it tastes really good, and look! There’s Ciabatta in there, too!

I have had this recipe forever, in many forms. It was sent to me via snail mail by an old friend, I found it again on line and bookmarked it, but I just kept losing it. Frankly, I don’t mind making bread that has to be kneaded either by hand or machine, but when this recipe appeared in my life a third time last week on someone else’s blog, I decided it was a cosmic sign.

It’s really, really good bread that emerges looking beautiful and crusty and artisanal, and tasting far more flavorful and nuanced than your average white loaf. It has real, shatter-y crust, and lots of texture. I really think you could pass it off as something from a bakery (which is fitting, since that’s where the recipe came from). Best of all, you really need nothing but a bowl, some plastic wrap, two towels and a big pot with a lid. (Well, and an oven). No hard labor, and easy clean-up.

When I was very young, one of my favorite books was The Campbell Kids at Home. While it may have lacked the pathos of another favorite on my list, The  Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, I found it equally fascinating. The narrative was slight, no more than a frame story, but I read the recipes over and over again, and I considered it my cookbook.

The Campbell Kids at Home was published in 1954 by Rand McNally; the back cover lists it as one of its “Famous Book-Elf books,” and it was just one of dozens of the Campbell Soup Company’s product tie-ins in the fifties. Part of the post- WW II surge in advertising, the company had already been involved with promotional objects since the start of the 20^th century, and you can still send in soup labels in exchange for calendars, bowls, and mugs, although the Kids themselves have slimmed down quite a bit. (The “Kids” always go by this capitalized designation; they have no first names—and they always speak as one.) While I still have the book—my older daughter also went through a period of obsession with it—I destroyed all potential (hefty) re-sale value by inserting my name into the title on the first page. (But isn’t that what we do with books we love? Don’t we want to climb right into them and join in the adventure?)

It was in the early to mid-80s and I was about 10-11 years old. When we went to the supermarket, I would always have my parents buy me the little Pillsbury cookbooks that were in the check-out line. I remember one specific of the cookbook series because I made every single recipe in it, including a chocolate pudding pie. I crushed up chocolate Nabisco wafers, made a crust, poured in instant pudding and topped it with some sort of doctored-up Cool-Whip.

Last year at Artisan, I was planning for a dessert menu change for the summer and I pictured that chocolate pudding pie. We serve modern American food – so we put a modern twist on old classics – and I knew I could make a modern version of that pie that would take people back to their childhood. The challenge was taking that pie, which at the time you were 10 was the best you’d ever had, and updating that memory for your adult palate. I kept the crushed wafers as the familiar taste, put them at the bottom of a half pint Mason jar, put the chocolate custard on top, added a croquant for texture, and finished it with a marshmallow fluff in lieu of the Cool-Whip. After toasting the fluff with a blowtorch I ended up with a dessert that was reminiscent of chocolate pudding pie and s’mores, flavors that bring back fond memories to all!

So there we are, my two children, my ex-husband and his side of the family sitting at the table. All adults ranging in age from 20 to 70.  Dinner is over, I am paying no attention to the conversation at the far end of the table when I see my nephew approaching with a bathroom scale.  I have no idea what instigated this, but it apparently involves a discussion about someone's weight.  (Not mine, I assure you.)

Now that he has our attention, my nephew puts the scale on the floor next to the table, steps on -- and tells the assembled group how much he weighs.  Mind you, this is AFTER dinner, not before, and we have all just consumed excessive amounts of bread, pasta, and other carbohydrates.