Slow Greek Fast Food

As you know, I went to the Carrboro Farmer's Market this morning; and I picked up a pound of ground lamb that I wasn't sure what I was going to do with.

As I had a long drive home, I thought about trying my hand at one of my favorite pseudo-Greek foods; gyros. I knew I had seen my man Alton Brown do a Good Eats episode about them, but I couldn't remember much about it.

Some gyro recipes I saw called for beef and lamb, or pork and lamb - I just kept it simple - just the ground lamb. I actually followed Alton's recipe for the meat near verbatim....spiced it fairly heavily with garlic, majoram and rosemary. The whole mix went in the food processor until it was a paste. I rolled it out and squeezed it tight with plastic wrap.

For the tzatziki sauce I strained the yogurt over a tea towel clipped to a bowl and let it drain for a few hours. The resulting thick yogurt was mixed with chopped cucumbers, garlic, olive oil and a little vinegar.

The meat was a major pain in the rear. I have a Ronco rotisserie that normally works pretty well, but I don't have the 'cage' accessory. I needed something to bind up the meat while it cooked. I tried improvising with wire, but it wasn't working. After that I formed it into a loaf and tried to broil it, only to find my oven's broiler is dead. Finally I broiled it with a propane torch that I had purchased awhile back to fix some plumbing issues at the old house. (:D NEVER give up!) After I got a nice char on the outside, I finished it in the oven, which by now was pre-heated.

I gotta say, it turned out really well for all the trouble. The flavor was spot-on, majoram works a lot better than oregano I think, and the rosemary is really nice too. The texture was a little off with a tendency to crumble more than slice, but not bad at all. Jennie really liked it and Lucy ate it without being asked.

No knead Dutch Oven Bread a big hit at my house

I got a Dutch Oven because cast iron rocks, and I wanted to try my hand and real baked beans.

But as is the case with a new kitchen toy, I had to find some other uses for it.

Last year I got on a pizza dough kick, and was making it every weekend. I learned a lot about the process, and one of the things that I learned was that I really hate kneading, (I'll come back to that) and that I want to void the warranty on my oven (and probably my homeowners policy) by breaking the latch on my oven door so I can cook at 800 degrees using the cleaning cycle, but the wife thinks that's a very bad idea.

Back to kneading; I don't have a mixer. If you wanna get me one, that'd be great - but as of yet, any kneading I do has to be done by hand. I knew from pizza dough that kneading was one way to form gluten, but not the only way - you can also let time do the work for you if you're going for open crumb, chewy kinds of breads. So when I saw my man Alton Brown make a no-knead 'sourdough' (not really a sourdough at all) in his dutch oven I was intrigued.

I was searching for that recipe, in fact, when I stumbled on a very similar variation with a video.

Easy, cheesy, right? Well - yeah, pretty much. There's some things missing in the video that are important, like letting it sit for awhile after the loaf is formed, and I think Alton's temperature works better. But this recipe is very forgiving. I've let it ferment anywhere from 8 to 20 hours, used more and less water, used bread flour, AP flour and I eyeball salt and yeast. Always seems to make something edible.

I haven't found a way of doing it that doesn't make a mess in the kitchen, but that's a small price to pay for fresh bread that's this easy.