Kefir Sourdough

 

So this was a hard-core home baking session. With home-made Kefir yoghurt starter, and hydrated with home-made Kefir, too. 

Starter: 

1.2-1 Kefir/flour, in a jar, with a cloth over the top to catch any extra yeast but keep out bugs. About 8 hours saw it triple in size - I was taken aback, I tell you. I used 100g of each but found I had to splosh in a bit more Kefir because it was too dry.

Combine: 

• 500g flour 
• The 200g - odd of starter 
• Salt 
• Sugar - about 2tblsp (not sure if I would use again, was pretty sweet) 
• about 300g more Keifr 
• Good glug-glug of olive oil 
• splash of water for extra as the dough was thick, might increase Kefir next time
• (Our flour consistently absorbs more moisture than in standard recipes)

First and second resting period: 

After about an hour, give it a good pummel. Put it back in it's comfy greased rising-bowl and cover until it's healthily doubled in size. This one took about 6 hours. 

Pummel massively. Not much more flour needed, pretty independent-minded dough, this. Line Dutch oven with baking paper, put formed loaf in. I greased too, just in case. Allow to rise again. (about 1.5h) then cut a couple of slashes over the top ('for steam', apparently, though I think it's more for looks) before putting it in to bake.

Bake for about 30 minutes, covered, in a 215 oven. I feel perhaps it could have done with a touch more, in retrospect, but it did sound hollow when tapped. 

Leave to cool for at least an hour before cutting, or it will be squishy. 

Fluffy, squishy, pretty moreish. Technically it is a 24-hour Thing (possibly more, depending on conditions) but not actually all that much prep time, just waiting for yeasty stuff to work. Kinda fun. 

Schnitzels

 

This was Flash's dish of the day, and extremely tasty, not a crumb left over. Flash may have been a bit shell-shocked at how long the process takes, but he did it. 

• Trim your pork loin
• cut into 1.5cm slices 
• beat flat between clingfilm 
• season with salt and pepper on both sides 
• dip each in flour, egg and then breadcrumbs 
• shallow fry 
• serve with baked potatoes and carrots 

San Choy Bau

Arizona's dish of the day. Tasty, and the mince was squishier than is usual, which helped it sit on the lettuce better. 

 

Salmon with kale coleslaw, rice and fried aubergine

 

Bunny made even kale tasty! Mmm delicious. 

Pineapple chicken-in-a-bag with rice

Lara's dish of the day. The in-a-bag thing was easy to manage and it was nice and soft. Pineapple, peppers, onions, etc. Got a thumbs-up. 

 

Pumpkin soup and chickpea and feta salad

 

Here's Coco's dish of the day, with the chickpea and feta salad again and a stonker pumpkin soup. We don't have a recipe because she 'Yolo'd it'. There were some nice spices in there. 

Polly's Passion Cake

Used to make this all the time in college. The recipe is from a friend of mine who lived on this, beansprouts and lentils, with some custard and baked potatoes thrown in. It's hard being a vegetarian when you don't like vegetables. Anyway, 'passion cake' is AKA banana and carrot cake. Easy and fail-safe. 

Dry ingredients:

• 280g plain flour 
• 1 tsp bicarb
• 2tsp baking powder 
• 170g brown sugar 
• 1 tsp salt 
• chopped walnuts to taste 
• Cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice to taste

Wet ingredients: 

• 3 medium eggs 
• 2 ripe mashed bananas 
• 2 medium grated carrots 
• 170ml vegetable oil 
• Sometimes add molasses or golden syrup to taste.

Prep the two batches, combine.  180 cook 40 mins, cool before turning out. 

Chicken and pearl barley stew

 Things I discovered with this dish: 

• It is now very hard to buy any chicken pieces with bones in them in Australia, apart from wings, drumsticks, or whole birds. 
• Pearl barley cooks well when boiled up in a fair amount of stock and then left for several hours, then finished off with a little more heat. 

Given the above lack of bone-in thigh pieces, I prepped this in several stages (bone-in drumsticks are a bit messy to eat in a stew): 

Stock and meat prep (earlier in the day): 

De-bone drumsticks, make stock from bones and some skin with a few of the usual suspect veg and good seasoning, simmering gently as per normal. Meanwhile soak meat in strong brine. No need to cut up. 

Pearl barley

As above, boil up for an initial gentle roll in your fresh and very well-seasoned stock, and leave. (Still early on in the day, looking at a couple of hours here). Heat up again later and finish up as desired. 

The rest

Mirapois veg, plenty of it, good seasoning, one chili (or as desired), fresh oregano or other herbs as wished. Fry off the meat, deglaze the pan. Add meat, veg, herbs, and glaze to pressure cooker with a splash of white wine and pressure cook for 30 mins. 

Then 

Gently strain the cooking juices from the solids, return juices to pan and thicken with some cornflour. Add the pearl barley to this 'gravy', check it's cooked and thickened/stewy to your liking. Gently add the cooked veg and meat, as it'll be pretty damn soft and you don't want to mush it. Serve in bowls with a sprinkling of cheese. 

Hearty and bloody tasty, and probs not bad health-wise either. 

Banoffee pie

 Why don't we have this on the blog? Because it's too easy?  I don't know. 

I usually made Banoffee with a blind-baked sweetcrust pastry base, then two tins of the caramel (or one, if you're not so sweet-toothed), then sliced layered bananas all over the spread toffee, then Chantilly (or just plain whipped cream). 

(Sweetcrust: about 250g plain flour, 125g butter (cold, cut up), 100g icing sugar, 1 egg, sometimes some lemon zest, splash of ice water or so if needed, pinch of salt. Or can decrease the sugar, replace the egg with water, use caster instead of icing, but whatever you do make sure you touch that butter as little as possible and crumb it into the flour and bind quickly. Also useful to roll out between cling film or baking parchment: it's always floppy.) 

However Flash made it the other day and instead of baked crust, used a biscuit and butter base, and frankly I think the nutty flavour went better with the caramel and banana. Plus it's even easier. 

As a side note, if you don't have access to tinned caramel, you can boil a tin of sweetened condensed milk for 45 minutes or so and it'll turn into caramel. I used to do this because condensed milk is about a quarter of the price of caramel. Now the part I can't afford is the calories on my tummy more than the pennies from the pocket. 

Lara's Creamy Basil Pasta

 This has fast become her speciality. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 packet of pasta 
• 1 jar pesto 
• 2 pack chicken thighs 
• spring onions 
• parmesan (a fair bit) 
• fresh tomatoes (2 or 3) 
• fresh basil 

For six people: 

• Grill a couple of packs of chicken thighs, well seasoned. Cut into bit-sized pieces when done.
• Prep chop: fresh tomatoes, spring onions. 
• Cook pasta (Lara prefers spirals) 
• Mix all ingredients, plus a jar of pesto, a good shlurp of cream, some fresh basil, a good amount of grated parmesan. 

Serve. 

Waffle cones (for your ice cream, and other)

 This recipe comes with the waffle iron. Still practicing with these ones. 

• Zabaglione up two eggs and 1/2 cup caster sugar

Add 

• 1/4 cup milk (scant),
• vanilla 
• 1/4 cup melted butter 
• 1/2 cup plain flour 
• 1/4 tp salt 

Then put 2tbsp of mix in middle of pray-greased iron and cook. Roll around the mould immediately upon turfing. 

Now when we say 'cook' it's quite tricky. We found: 

• The above mix might be a bit runny, try making it a bit drier. 
• The waffles don't cook evenly, try moving them about and turning them over half way. 
• If you squish it together instantly the mix pours out of the sides and they become too thin. Try cooking it for a few seconds as is, then gently lowering the top, then squish. Then flip. 
• Once you open it, they tend to shift so you have to be pretty confident that they're nearly ready before you peek. On the other hand you don't want them to burn. 
• It's a good trick to have a 'roller' and a 'cooker' because they harden up so quickly it's hard to put the iron down in time before sorting them out on the mould.
• This amount of mix makes a LOT of thin waffles, but perhaps if it were thicker there might be closer to 10 than 15.