asparagus stromboli

I made the King Arthur Flour asparagus stromboli over the last few days, and we ate some for lunch today. It was good—definitely something worth making again.

The recipe was fortuitously brought to my attention while we had about 1.5 lbs of grilled asparagus in the fridge, and if a recipe is sent to you just as you have the nonstandard ingredient it calls for, then you almost have to make it, right?

I say “over the last few days” because we grilled the asparagus on Thursday, caramelized the onions on Friday (which we spread out with the asparagus), made the dough on Saturday, and assembled and baked the stromboli on Sunday.

The dough I put in a bag and refrigerated after the first rise, and every 8 hours or so, I’d deflate it. One thing I would change the next time I make this: if I refrigerate the dough, then I’ll let it warm up while I have it rolled out. I assembled the stromboli with straight-from-the-fridge ingredients, and it took nearly three hours to rise. Another “problem”: I definitely overloaded the stromboli with ingredients. I don’t think I would change that, though.

Also, the dough was excessively wet and tough to handle. I measured a bit fast and loose, though, so may have added a bit more water than the recipe recommended.

luxurious weekend lunch

cream of tomato soup, HCE, p 130-131
salmon roasted in butter, HCE, p 583
roast asparagus, HCE, p 258-259
Jim Lahey’s no-work bread, HCE, p 833
chocolate-caramel tart, HCE, p 940 (chocolate tart crust, HCE, p 930; vanilla pastry cream flavored with chocolate, HCE, p 943; chocolate glaze, HCE, p 921; creamy caramel sauce, p 922)

• cream of tomato soup: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious.
• salmon roasted in butter: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious, though I think I like grilled salmon much more, both in texture and in flavor.
• roasted asparagus: I followed the recipe exactly. Again, it was delicious. Again, I prefer grilled asparagus to roasted asparagus.
• Jim Lahey’s no-work bread: I followed the recipe more or less exactly. (The “more or less” refers to all the travel and associated temperature fluctuations it experienced during the first rise.)
• chocolate-caramel tart: This was the most difficult. I’d never made anything like a chocolate tart before, so nearly all the steps were new. I pressed the tart crust (quite unevenly, unfortunately) into a round cake pan rather than rolling it out and placing it into a tart pan. Baking that was straightforward. Making the pastry cream was also easy, and it turned out excellent. Making the caramel was the biggest challenge, and one that I didn’t entirely overcome. I thought that I followed the recipe exactly, but clearly not. At first, the caramel wasn’t browning, even though it was nearly at the target temperature (245 F). Then, all the liquid evaporated and I was left with a grainy sugar-cream paste. Finally, the sugar melted rather suddenly and browned. When it cooled, it was hard. I’d gone past soft caramel and made a hard candy. Next time, for the caramel, I’ll heat up the sugar until it’s a light caramel, and then I’ll add the cream; hopefully, that will make a softer caramel. Finally, making the chocolate sauce went well, though I accidentally used granulated sugar instead of confectioners’ and nearly double what the recipe called for. This made for an extremely sweet and slightly runny chocolate glaze. Because it was poured on top of the tart, I think this was more a change of style from the original than an actual mistake.

salmon teriyaki and stir-fry asparagus

Salmon and asparagus just seem to go together, to me. This is almost certainly because I grew up eating them. A lot. I finally made a salmon and asparagus meal (it’s probably been years since I had one, honestly), and it was as good as I remembered.

I got both recipes from Bittman. The salmon teriyaki recipe is in The Best Recipes in the World (p 255), and the stir-fry asparagus is in How to Cook Everything (p 259).