How I cooked my blues away

It was a good day.

It was a Saturday, and I had to work on Sunday, so I only had one day to have fun. My wife announced that she wanted to do some gardening.

I would rather watch socks tumble in the dryer than do gardening. So I decided to kick back and relax the best way I know how. I decided to cook.

I hadn’t done any serious cooking in a long time, the kind of cooking that takes all day. And I had a whole day in front of me — or to be honest, I had an afternoon and an evening, and I had to shop for ingredients in the early afternoon.

But still. I had several hours.

I quickly determined to cook a chicken on the grill — and not only cook it, but to smoke it as well. I hadn’t done any smoking in months, not since a brisket I cooked while the temperature was still cold.

I had recently found a package of pumpernickel flour that I had totally forgotten I had in the pantry, so I decided to make a loaf of pumpernickel bread.

And the next day was my wife’s turn to bring in snacks for her church. She wanted to spend time in the garden and I wanted to spend time in the kitchen, so I offered to bake something for her.

“Great,” she said with suspicious alacrity. “Here is a recipe I want you to make,” and she showed me a recipe for vanilla cream cheese pound cake.

I agreed happily, and set out to cook.

The bread took the longest, and the time spent waiting for the dough to rise could be used to make the chicken and the pound cake, so I started with it.

I looked up recipes for pumpernickel online and in my many cookbooks and was shocked by what I found: They all say you should use molasses, many also say you should use cocoa and nearly all also said you should use mashed potatoes. One suggested potato flakes, instead.

I am not going to use molasses or cocoa to make pumpernickel bread, and I am certainly not going to use mashed potatoes. My ancestors in the muddy fields of Lithuania did not use mashed potatoes to make pumpernickel bread, probably, and neither will I.

So I turned instead to the recipe on the back of the bag of pumpernickel flour. No cocoa, no molasses and no mashed potatoes. OK, that was easy.

I mixed together all the ingredients to make a dough. Then I threw out the dough. My eyes aren’t what they used to be and the type on the back of the bag seemed intentionally small. What I thought said 1½ cups of water actually said 1¼ cups, and rather than try to figure out the proportions of two different types of flour and yeast to add to make it right I thought it prudent to start over again.

Note that I mentioned two types of flour. Most pumpernickel breads (but not the heavy, dense Westphalian pumpernickel bread) are made from a combination of pumpernickel flour — it’s actually a whole-grain rye flour — and all-purpose flour.

The recipe I made calls for two cups of all-purpose flour and just one cup of pumpernickel, resulting in a mildly flavored loaf. That’s fine with me. It was terrific.

Let me restate that. It was terrific, but way too salty. Next time I make it, and there will definitely be a next time, I’ll cut the salt back by half.

While the bread was rising, I made a marinade for the chicken.

It’s the season for fresh herbs, and I had several choices from the garden (yes, the garden that only grows because my wife tends to it). The rosemary hadn’t come in yet in a sufficient amount, but we had plenty of thyme, oregano, tarragon or basil to choose from.

I skipped them all. We also had a big hunk of fresh ginger in the fridge, so I grated it. Then I grated some garlic and mixed them both into softened butter. I rubbed the ginger-garlic butter onto the chicken and splashed some soy sauce on top.

Then I soaked some applewood chips in water for smoking. Apple creates a mild-flavored smoke; I didn’t want the smoke to overwhelm the other flavors.

While the chicken was marinating and the dough was rising (or maybe cooking by this point), I started in on the pound cake.

It’s a straightforward recipe, if you have the ingredients: It calls for cake flour, cream cheese, a vanilla bean as well as vanilla extract (I used Tahitian vanilla extract for an ethereal floral flavor) and turbinado sugar — Sugar in the Raw — as well as the expected butter, eggs and salt.

The recipe calls for baking spray with flour, but I just buttered and floured the pans, and that worked fine.

Actually, it worked better than fine. The recipe is by Ina Garten, and her recipes are consistently first rate. It may be the best pound cake I’ve ever made (though I also make an exceptional French version by Hubert Keller). It may be the best pound cake I’ve ever eaten.

The chicken was also stellar — my wife said it was the best I’ve made on the grill — and other than that thing about the salt, the bread was also great.

It was a good, good day.