Chloe Cullen's Blog, page 12

Self-Taught Homework #8: Bread space

You somehow found a way to make the meditative art of bread baking stressful.

Since you’ll be traveling on Thursday and leaving the state, you decide to tackle all three desired breads in forty-eight hours.

In some ways, you fail.

In other ways, you get that bread.

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Night #1

That weekend, Luke made a focaccia on his own. It was something he always wanted to learn, an elevation for cheese sandwiches or a perfect addition to someone else’s dinner. Baking bread expands a gifting inventory. Inste...

Self-Taught Lesson #8: The bread formula

Bread is one of our oldest, cross-cultural foods. When fire was invented, shortly after followed bread.

But bread across the world, or across one bakery, can vary extremely.

How do you determine whether a bread rises into the classic rounded loaf, like a sourdough, or whether it stays flatter, like a focaccia? What about sweeter breads, like brioche, compared to chewier and richer breads, challah?

The general formula that I’ve gleaned is this:

flour + liquid + a bit of salt + rising agent = brea...

Dinner Party #8: A bready pivot

I’m not sure if part of me just doesn’t want this series to end, or if the more I dig into this series the more I realize that I don’t know (likely both).

With that said, I’m expanding this project out three weeks to accommodate shellfish, desserts, pork, beef, and this week’s speciality… bread!

This may be an exercise in patience, but there are plenty …

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Self-Taught Homework #7: Fish are friends?

Fish week: always poorly timed.

One week you’re making yourself cross-eyed writing out a “statement of purpose,” a paper that induces a mindset of certainty in your qualities and ambitions until you hit send and pass it along for someone else to decide.

Another week you started your week on Wednesday, the third day of the new year. In a firework conclusion of a year, you hold a baby then leave for the city where you hold a small dog named Cricket and dance to Abba in someone’s living room where ...

Lesson #7: The return of the fish

Please let me just say it’s so good to be back in my cookbooks looking up how to cook. There’s something about returning to your own kitchen, or perhaps just being in a kitchen providing for two people, that makes risks more available.

Fish, truthfully, are easy to prepare. They’re quick to cook, don’t require hours of thawing and marinading, and are pretty good for you. The fillets wrapped in parchment paper or foil with a little olive oil and herbs? Couldn’t be easier.

They’re also quick to go...

Bitchin' Kitchen Q&A: "There's a lot more than the recipe itself" to cook online

Amanda Dreyer and Erica Maddox have curated their hybrid cooking/baking Instagram, Bitchin’ Kitchen, for three years in two cities. Starting in the pandemic, they used their Boston kitchen to experiment with the viral recipes from social media. Though rarely seen in their videos outside of their hands, Amanda and Erica have formed an Instagram profile that reflects a healthy and breezy lifestyle.

That’s the official blurb.

The unofficial blurb is I met Amanda and Erica almost ten years ago in co...

Substackers Against Nazis

There are so many things I love about Substack as someone who is a small, small drop in the ocean on this website. I’ve been able to build out my own portfolio and act as my own reporter and editor on topics and ideas that only I want to take a chance on. I’ve been able to think bigger within features on this platform to expand this out to a multimedia online magazine in the new year. The features for writers, in addition to the great range of smart, smart writers on here, is amazing.

However, i...

A Missed Homework Assignment

The aching scratch and accompanying phlegm nested in my throat like distant relatives at a family reunion whose faces you know and names you can’t remember.

The concentrated headaches, the dehydrated eyes, the sneezes like tree-throwing tornados, I mislabeled as allergies from the two dogs and three cats newly introduced at my parents’ house.

I’ve never had allergies, but doesn’t everyone have sniffles in December?

Of course, it was not a cold or allergies or even, God willing, the flu. It was th...

The Best of 27

Yesterday was the last day I was 27, and I found a long hair growing from the left side of my chin and a scratch in my throat.

Today, that throat scratch is COVID, and the hair was plucked absentmindedly watching a movie.

All of us, if lucky enough, have one way to leave 27, and this was my destined way out.

December often becomes a purgatory of “Best of” lists and “Looking ahead” resolutions. Both erase the month of its rightful haze of last-minute hustle, laziness, and illness.

So, in chronolog...

Self-Taught Lesson #6: How to use your noodle

You may, if you’re like me, be surprised to discover that there’s much more to pasta than you might think. Sure, you can mentally imagine spaghetti and meatballs all covered with cheese, but we are limiting ourselves.

Think, really think, about pasta. All the forms, all the dishes. Stir-fries. Rigatonis. Dumplings! Rice noodles! Pierogis! Grain is invaluable to all cuisines and is our gateway to so many different cuisines. (This raises the question of considering a rice and grains week in the ne...