Dark Rye Bread and Corned Beef Tongue

delicious with slices of warm corned beef tongue topped

with barbecue sauce, Dijon mustard, and creamy horseradish

Rye bread is not one of my favorites specially the sour dense variety but I was willing to give it a chance to wow me. I baked a small batch and surprisingly this time, it did. I used a 3 to 1 ratio of rye/bread flour with a rye sponge in place of sourdough starter. The dense dark bread has no flavorings nor seeds like caraway that in my opinion mask the earthy somewhat smokey flavor of rye flour. I love that it has a bit of chew and is sweetish too. I prefer the bread untoasted with just a little butter or duck liver paté and with corn chowder, but I love it even more with thick slices of corned beef tongue.

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Corn Chowder

Chowder at Its Corny Best That's the title of the article for the Vegetarian Corn Chowder recipe by J.M. Hirsch published in this week's Washington Post food section. I recreated the recipe and I agree this is the best corn chowder. It does not have bacon and has whole milk instead of heavy cream resulting in more intense corn flavor. And it's timely that today it's raining the whole day and the temperature is a very nice 60F (16C) outside, the best time to have this end of summer corn chowder.

Ingredients: 7 fresh ear corns, 4 cups whole milk, 2 TBS olive oil, 1 diced large yellow onion, 1 diced large russet potato, 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves, 4 minced garlic cloves, salt and pepper. To prepare: in a large pot over medium-low heat, heat the milk until bubbles just begin to break the surface. Meanwhile cut the corn kernels, reserving the cobs, set the corn kernels aside. When the milk is warm add the cobs and cook for 10 minutes, this will flavor the milk. In a saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat, add the onions, potatoes and thyme and cook for 8 minutes, then add the garlic and cook for a further 1 minute. Remove the cobs from the milk and discard. Add the potato onion mixture to the milk, increase the heat to medium, then add the corn kernels and cook for 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy.