Ohm Cookin' (Part 3: Ohm-Made Soup, Bread, & Dip)

For the third major foray into cooking on the Friggin' Electric Stove, I chose a simple meal of spicy chic pea and kale soup, a French baguette (insert Flight of the Conchords lyrics here), and Tuscan white bean dip. I say simple because it's fairly easy to bake bread and cook beans on any FES. The only subtlety involves cooking the garlic without burning it.


The soup is based on a recipe our friends Pat and Barb introduced us to a few years back, which uses turkey sausage instead of kale. I also amped the peppers, garlic, and cumin for this version.

The baguette is a no-knead recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. There is also a great article in the December 2008 issue of Mother Earth News, which is where I first discovered this great book. It includes the basic method was well as a few recipes. I recommend buying the book, however. 


Basically, one just mixes up a big tub of bread dough (enough for four loaves), lets the dough rise for a couple of hours, and sticks the tub-o'-dough in the fridge until you want to make a loaf. 



Master recipe:  Boule (Artisan Free Form Loaf)


3C lukewarm water
1.5 tbsp granulated yeast (1.5 packets)
1.5 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
6.5 C unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose flour
cornmeal, whole wheat or rice flour for peel


Mix it up, plop it in a 5.5 quart fridge container.

For this baguette (text amended from book):

1. Prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with whole wheat flour to prevent the loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven. 

2. Sprinkle the surface of the dough in the tub with flour, then cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-sized) piece with a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on four “sides,” rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn’t need to be incorporated. The bottom of the loaf will flatten out during resting and baking. 

3. Once it's cohesive, begin to stretch and elongate the dough, dusting with additional flour as necessary. Form a cylinder 2 inches in diameter. 

4. Place the cylinder on the pizza peel. Let it rest uncovered for about 20 minutes. Depending on the dough’s age, you may see little rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking. 

5. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone on the bottom rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on the top shelf. 

6. After the dough has rested for 20 minutes, paint water over the surface using a pastry brush, which will allow the slashing, serrated knife to pass without sticking. Slash 1⁄4-inch-deep cuts diagonally across the top of the loaf. 

7. Slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about a cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 18 minutes, then take out the broiler tray and move the loaf to the top shelf, and bake another 7 minutes. 

8. Remove the loaf from the oven, it will audibly crackle, or “sing,” when initially exposed to room temperature air. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack, for best flavor, texture and slicing. The perfect crust may initially soften, but will firm up again when cooled.

The white bean dip is pretty simple. I used dried cannelloni beans (white kidney beans), but any white bean will work. You can also use 1 16 oz. can of beans, in a pinch. Soak the beans overnight. Cook for a couple of hours with a little olive oil. Drain the beans and reserve a little of the water for thinning the dip. Puree the cooled beans, thinning with the cooking water to an agreeable consistency, and flavor with whatever you like. I used roasted garlic, fresh basil that I had frozen this summer in olive oil, salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of garlic powder. 

Roasted garlic: 

Bake a head of garlic wrapped in tin foil for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Allow garlic to cool. Cut off the top of the head and squeeze into the dip.

The soup begins with cooking 1-1 1/2 cups of dried beans (after soaking for at least three hours) until soft (but not canned-mushy). 

Clean and chop into 1-inch pieces one bunch of lacinato kale (about 5 ounces).

Flavoring for the soup is two or three jalapeño peppers, a teaspoon of fresh rosemary (half a teaspoon of dried), 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground cumin, and 10 [sic] cloves of garlic, smashed with the blade of a knife and coarsely chopped.

In the soup pot of your choice, sauté the garlic in a couple tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat for a couple of minutes. Be careful not to burn it. If using an FES, be prepared to remove the pot from the heat if it's too hot. FES.

To the garlic, add 1 small can of diced tomatoes (or equivalent peeled fresh, if you have it), and the other ingredients.

Add the out-of-focus chopped kale, bring to a simmer, and cook for five minutes.

Add the chickpeas, and about three cups of veggie broth. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, and cook for about ten minutes. Right before serving, add 2 or 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice. Pour you and your lovely partner a glass of wine.

Enjoy this meal and the three days of leftovers it will provide (more like three weeks for the dip).