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Corny

Stumped for inspiration, yet finding myself in the kitchen armed with a spoon and a bowl, I turned my attention to the Foodin’ Challenge List!

Today’s spectacular triumph: cornbread. Cornbread is so easy I feel a bit embarrassed about listing it anywhere even tangentially connected to the word “challenge”. It’s easier than muffins. It’s easier than garter stitch. It’s easier than growing mint.

Perfection: what a bore.

Mix your wet, mix your dry, bake. DONE. That’s it over-simplified. I pinched this recipe from The Curvy Carrot, via foodgawker. Mods: hmm, didn’t measure my cheese, so I think I ended up with less. Next time, more cheese. Also, I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I Just used the ol’ regular-milk-curdled-with-lemon juice trick. I think that barely counts as a mod, since everyone knows about that, right? I also threw in half a cup or so of frozen corn kernels. That was a seriously good move.

My GOD this is some tasty business. It’s got a texture like a coarse, crumblesome, savoury cake, and I’m really excited about all the other flavourings I’m going to add next time I make it. Cheddar, jalapenos and cherry tomato halves! Roast capsicum and crumbled feta! Chives and roast garlic! It stands alone, but the texture begs you to serve it with something thick and hot like baked beans, ratatouille, or whatever — which would be why it’s traditionally served with chilli, of course.

Care for a wedge of AWESOME?

I can see why people would be tempted to add sweet things to it: there’s lots of recipes for sweet cornbreads with lemon and blueberries and such out there. But honestly, if you’re not matching it with cheese and something lush and savoury, you’re missing out.

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2012 03 27 bethini Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Keepin’ it small

Today is Sunday and I’m moving slowly and small-ly. Partly because of…

Don't be fooled: that is a razor-sharp nose.


…who has been living with us this week. A hairy brown peanut of cuddles and wags. But it hasn’t been all peaches and farts around here: on Wednesday night we were treated to three renditions plus encore of her rarely-heard HOWCK-SPLAT solo concerto for nauseated dog. As a result of far too little sleep, Thursday was spent sitting on the couch, comforting the still-delicate hound while staring into space. (I don’t know how parents of newborns survive. No wonder the economy’s in the shitter.)

And then last night one of the neighbours had some friends over for dinner: their departure, after this dog’s bedtime, outraged her so that she barked every thirty minutes or so all night. Not a long spree of barking, just an offended “brouf, brff, brff”, so that M and I were regularly updated on her annoyance level.

So: slightly sleep-deprived and in the company of an indignant hound, today I’ve been doing small things. Sometimes food bloggers go all out and make seven-layer meringue tarts with whipped beet filling, presented as a dinky little image of a recipe card and pictures that would make you weep with the futility of your own pathetic attempts. Not me. I made a salad.

Aforementioned salad.

I bought some pretty chillies and then tooled around with the macro setting:

The hotter the chilli, the closer to God.

I put all my weekend things on the couch and took a photo of them:

My life is so awesome.

And then I chilled. I hate being tired: it makes me cranky and sad. Yesterday (while very tired) I tried to figure out why, but didn’t really get anywhere. I did nudge up against the frightening thought that maybe the world is a crueller, colder place than I think, and I exert a lot of energy to keep up the facade so when I’m tired it crumbles CRUMBLES and I see the horror of the world for all it truly is. Totally bogus: my life rocks. But cut my sleep into a smattering of 20-minute chunks and suddenly it’s tears in the supermarket because I don’t know what flaxseeds are, not really. In light of this shift towards the “incredibly poor” end of the judgment spectrum, I’m slowly learning that tired days are days for cutting myself some slack: instead of trying to function normally, or even normal-ish, I give up and sit down. No shame there. You want shame? I got yer shame RIGHT HERE (by which I mean elsewhere).

There’s ratatouille in the oven, slowly baking in anticipation of hungry workers needing nourishment all week. (Me and M, that is, we’re the workers around here, not that bourgeois brown hound you see above.) Not pictured; mug of tea and five crackers with peanut butter and apple slices. There’s knitting and a Helen Garner book and a sooky brown dog. Look upon my couch, ye mighty, and despair.

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2012 03 25 bethini etc. Comments (0) Permalink

Page flips

The Volcano Lover: A Romance – Susan Sontag

See, here’s why I love libraries. Book shops you gots to spend coin, so you get a bit risk-averse and you’re more likely to go with what you know. Second hand book shops, less so (less coin, so less risk) so that’s a bit better. Libraries: zilch. And if you work at a uni and have a brace of libraries at your whim, well, you’re laughing. So I picked up Sontag’s The Volcano Lover at random. I didn’t read the back because it was all quotes from other people (“slippery, intelligent, provocative” and “a banquet of a book”) and I don’t get much out of such blurb-substitutes; I liked the cover, and the font, and the whole book had a nice, well-thumbed feel to it. Plus: library means free. So I borrowed it and damned good it was too. Thing is, if I’d read a blurb, I probably wouldn’t have bothered it, because it’s not at all the kind of book I normally read, and therefore I would have missed out. I like that. Low entry cost = more likely to take a gamble on not liking it = a chance to explore new stuff. It’s good for the brain, that kind of gamble. So, The Volcano Lover is an historical novel, about the lives and loves of Sir William Hamilton (an English diplomat stationed in Naples). But that is too brief an explanation: it is also about the love between he and his second wife, Lady Emma Hamilton; and the love between him and Admiral Horatio Nelson (in a strictly platonic sense); and the love between Lady Emma Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson. But then that description excludes his passion for collecting, his elevating taste, his beloved Vesuvius, his first wife Catherine, the French revolution, the occupation and briefly Republican state of Naples — there is a lot going on in this book. But it’s only now when I think about it I realise how much: what a broad, tumultuous, ongoing world this book shows. The people are astonishingly vivid: you feel like there aren’t really any baddies in the book, just people who do questionable things for understandable reasons (understandable in the context of their personalities and circumstances, I mean). There’s empathy and compassion for the humans crowding this book: it’s exciting and engaging, challenging, sad and really, really interesting. I really enjoyed the introspective parts of the book, where the perspective of the collector or lover were reflected on. One of the back cover not-blurbs says the author has “produced something lovely and substantial, and shown us how we might free ourselves”. I liked that. It was beautiful, entertaining and dramatic; it was insightful, intelligent, provoking and gave me a lot to think about.

Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco

In finishing this book, I’ve finished my more-than-a-year-long Eco binge. This is the last one I’ve got on the shelf, and I’ve been in Eco-land for quite some time now. This is a pretty intense book, but like all of Eco’s stuff, it’s tremendously rich and deep and satisfying. So there are three editors at a publishing house, who are a little bored with all the occult stuff they’re working with, so they start feeding scraps of the occult manuscripts and scraps of mass culture and established facts into a program which begins randomly linking things together. From these random associations, the trio develop a plan that spans centuries and empires and has a centuries-long goal of domination and power. And then people start getting killed, and they realise the plan might have struck a little closer to truth than they intended. It’s pretty exciting and full of lush, diverse, interesting language, moods and settings. But it is also long and that’s what I had a bit of trouble with. About two-thirds of the way through I started feeling bogged down, having trouble keeping track of all the details of the plan they had developed. I had a break and then had a bit of trouble getting back into it: then I set my jaw, narrowed my eyes, brushed my hair and decided to finish it. I went back a little and found the thread again, then charged ahead. And it was totally worth it. It’s such a rich book. There’s a lot to chew on: themes of finding or making meaning in a potentially random world; finding meaning in life; history and heroics, both personal and global; and making connections to people, making connections between events and changes in the world. See? Lots going on in there. A really good book, but a long one and one that needs you to pay attention.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
So on a recent flying visit to the library — I was there for a meeting that wasn’t held there and was on a different day altogether, talk about a planning fail — I paused by the sorting shelves and scooped up a bunch of books to take home with me. One was The Volcano Lover (see above), another was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I like the way books arrive in my reading line of sight: in this case, I liked the cover and remembered an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer I liked (about another of his books, Eating Animals), and figured these were as good reasons as any to borrow it. Dudes, it totally rocks! What a great book. So the narrator is nine-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was killed in the September 11 attacks. As the book unfolds and he pursues a mysterious key he finds in his father’s possessions, you get to experience Oskar’s grief, confusion, and fascinating and clever mind as he comes to terms with what happened and why. It’s beautiful. The story of the family grows and blooms, and you’re experiencing these revelations with Oskar, and you’re feeling his confusion and frustration and fear as he goes. Never — not even once, not even just a little — does Foer allow the narrative voice to stray into twee, patronising territory; not once does Oskar feel like a narrative tool or plot device. I loved it. I had to really tear through it, too: a day or so after I started reading, I got an email from the library that another user had requested it, so I had to get it back sooner than anticipated. I roared through it in about three days, and I can testify that it is totally readable and digestible in such a short period.

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2012 03 20 bethini etc. Comments (0) Permalink

That time of year

Every second person I speak to has too much of something. After I finished the fantastic backyard plum crop, my Mumini brought me a share of white-fleshed nectarines that one of her coworkers had dropped off — my share amounted to about 3kg. I gained about the same of fresh homegrown apples in the same manner, I’ve procured half a kilo of assorted cucumbers, and last night I scored a bag of fresh passionfruit and a huge tub of basil pesto. Envy me.

A cri de couer from some friends saw me valiantly rescuing them from their tomatoey burden: I could only manage 4kg, but they had found other channels too, so it was okay. This time of year is the best. (Well, now I think about it…soon the figs and quinces will be ripe at Mumini and Dadini’s place, and that’s an even awesomer time of year. So maybe that time of year will be the best.) (Oh, and then when the frosts are here, that’s so pretty, and cold nights are wonderful. So that time of year is also the best.)

Tomatoes: I had many. This happened.

Big red pot full of savoury abundance!

It’s a family rule: when tomatoes drop below a certain price, you buy up big and make Hot Stuff. The rule is something like twenty cents per flagon. My Nanini made up the rule, pre-metrics. So now I just go with the spoonfully rule: “If tomatoes are really cheap, or someone gives you heaps of them, or if you just want some Hot Sutff, buy up big and make Hot Stuff. If they were given to you, skip the buying stage.” Catchy. Hot Stuff is a tangy, spicy-sweet tomato relish, It’s incredible with a sharp cheddar and crusty bread. Or Kraft Singles and Tip Top. Or a spoon. Whatever you’ve got.

The Ancient Family Recipe is called Hot Stuff because one year my Nanini misread the recipe and put way too much ground chilli in it, so her kids just called it That Hot Stuff evermore. True story.

It’s super easy, but I warn you: it makes your house smell of savoury deliciousness — onions, vinegar, spices, all boiling away. If that sounds too pungent for you, then you should drop the whole thing and go back to your pussy willow sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I’ll be over here, stirring regularly in savoury steam. Take 3kg tomatoes and 4 big brown onions, peeled and roughly chopped. Cover them liberally with salt and sit overnight. Next day, strain off all the juice that comes out, and boil the resulting red stuff with 1 cup of brown vinegar for half an hour. Add around 650g of brown sugar…

ZOMG

…or a bit extra for a slightly more satanic tang, plus a teaspoon or so of ground chillies. I used cayenne pepper and paprika, and I’m pretty generous with my portions. Keep it boiling for another half an hour, and it’ll go dark brown and sludgy.

By the way, right about now you should have a bunch of jars boiling in a huge saucepan of water. I think the rule of thumb to sterilise jars is to boil for at least ten minutes: I wasn’t doing anything else anyway, so I boiled them for forty minutes while I was doing the rest of the Hot Stuff. After that half hour is up, pour yourself another cup of brown vinegar, add a dessertspoonful of mustard powder, a couple of tablespoons of curry powder, and two tablespoons of cornflour (AKA cornstarch) and whisk it all together. Pour this into your Hot Sludge, stirring constantly, and watch it thicken and go darker still. Cook it for another few minutes, stirring stirring stirring. Then ladle the hot Hot Stuff into the hot, clean jars, and leave it to cool. Don’t ladle hot Hot Stuff into cold jars, for the love of garlic. They’ll crack and it’ll go everywhere.

Bottled abundance: bottled awesomeness.

I’ve got about two litres stockpiled now and I’m feeling pretty damn smug. In autumn last year, we bought loads of cucumbers and beets and pickled those, and discovered you can totally make tomato relish with unripe tomatoes as well. I am saving jars and waiting for more friends burdened with horticultural exuberance. bethini to the rescue!

I admit to gloating a little. I'm only human.

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2012 02 28 bethini Cooking Comments (0) Permalink

Black Coffee update: Sipping Quietly

Black coffee continues apace! Seems to be knitting itself. I tried searching for ways in which it is like actual coffee, for the purposes of contorting a simple, pleasant pattern nickname into a lengthy metaphor that groaningly weighs this post down into the depths of pundom. Then I stopped. Thank me in the comments.

Black Coffee, in repose

Like all black knitting, it’s tricky to photograph with any detail, but the light this afternoon was ideal, so snap snap. The pattern’s simplicity is satisfying: it means a lot of repetition and a lot of patience. But it’s also what makes the design so good. That’s cool. Right now, I like how far I’ve got to go: I’m totally in the zone with this pattern. It’s simple enough to memorise, not so simple to bore me.

Good lighting makes happy knitting (probably)

I fiddled with the pattern so that the front and back are symmetrical, so now the side decreases slowly eat into the nearest cables. It took me a bit to figure out how to preserve the cable strip as the decreases eat into them, but I think I’ve figured it out, so hooray and STAND BACK.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading old issues of Twist Collective. Man, someone should give their photographers a big ol’ hug and a free pumpkin. Their pattern shoots are always beautiful.

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2012 02 26 bethini knitting Comments (0) Permalink

Immune to paper cuts

I’m roaring through books like you wouldn’t believe, suckin’ down sentences like an arm through a sleeve; don’t miss a word or chapter, don’t to the end skip, jump back Loretta, I gots pages to flip.

Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

I finished American Pyschoa while back and it was so great it left me hankering for more of Ellis’ slightly bleak, sharp, fascinating voice. Less Than Zero is all about rich teenagers in LA, in the Christmas break between college terms; they’re bitter and bored, already hollow and dry from an overdose of advantage and privilege. There weren’t many people in this book I liked, but it totally worked. It’s gripping, interesting and clever. It nudges themes of purposes, indulgence, and affluent atrophy but never imposes them on you. There’s one or two unsettling scenes, which I found harder to read than American Pyscho, since I didn’t have the option of attributing the horror to an unreliable narrator’s fevered imagination. Having said that, those scenes contribute a lot to the book and the characters, so the book would be worse without them.

Rules of Attraction – Bret Easton Ellis

Since I can’t get enough Ellis at the moment: Rules of Attraction is another fantastic one. This time it’s a group of students at uni, and the dynamics of their sexual relationships is the focus. The narrative voice shifts between the three main characters, and it’s really interesting to see the different perspectives on the same scene or conversation. One of the characters is Sean Bateman, brother to Patrick Bateman, the psycho of American Psycho. That was pretty cool: the events of the two books don’t coincide, but there’s an overlap. I liked that. Since American Psycho came next, I wonder if Ellis was already thinking about Patrick as psychopath when he brought him into this one? The environment is really immersive and the characters, though flawed and frustrating, are real and convincing, and ultimately you (well, I) end up caring about them. Another thing I really, really liked about this book: the way it starts and ends mid-sentence. I love that because it extends the scope of the story, making it feel like a much broader world than what you could otherwise find confined to those pages. Good stuff. Now reading: Glamorama, the next Ellis book after American Pyscho.

The Art of Disappearing: The Buddha’s Path to Lasting Joy – Ajahn Brahm

And now for something completely different. Stepping aside from devolution, overindulgence, and drug and sexual debauchery, here’s a book about Buddhist meditation. And a damn good read it is, too. Clear, easy language, interesting ideas and a good construction: this is great reading. I am pretty ignorant about a lot of Buddhism, especially the meditation practices, so this has been a teaching book. I worried it would be too advanced for me, since there’s a fair bit of assumed prior knowledge, but nothing you can’t figure out after five minutes with the Googles. The simplicity and clarity of the language have struck me, again and again: it’s a really easy and lovely book to read, breaking down some fairly complex ideas and encouragements to practice that could be quite challenging. Having said that, it’s worth taking your time to stop and think about what you read. It’s taught me a lot and given me a lot to chew on, regarding mindfulness, calmness, stillness and peace. Definitely worth reading.

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2012 02 25 bethini etc. Comments (0) Permalink

Coffee break

I can’t wait to see how many title puns I can make with this project. I’m knitting Black Coffee with dedication and commitment.

Update!

I had the camera out anyway and it was a beautiful day for photographing black cables.

Left: Black Coffee; Right: Roasted Coffee

There’s not heaps to report: it’s a good pattern, but there’s not a lot of variety. Not something you write home about, know what I’m saying? It’s rib, round and round in rib, with a cable row every 12 rows. It’s not exciting to focus on, but it’s great if you’re in the car, hanging out, talking or reading. If I couldn’t do those things while knitting it, I definitely wouldn’t progress as fast.

A tilt to really hook the readers.

I’m working in Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic: an old favourite, I’ve made a couple of jumpers out of it. It wears well, it’s springy, colourfast and has great stitch definition. Its biggest flaw is that it’s a bit on the splitty side. It’s a cabled yarn (if I’ve correctly understood what a cabled yarn is) and I found it too splitty to cable without a cable needle. At first this annoyed me, because it’s with pride that I have gone so long without needing a cable needle: but then I figured, who gives a fuck? This shit looks good and I’m not about to foul it up by pretending I don’t get a better result with an extra tool. Fuck that noise. So cable needle ahoy and sexy cables result.

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2012 02 23 bethini knitting Comments (0) Permalink

Epic-centre

If you felt a slight shift in the globe’s gravitational pull today, be not alarmed. It’s simply that my awesomeness has expanded to new, stellar levels and there had to be a slight planetary adjustment to accommodate it.

This weekend I made a lovely banana cake. I roasted some coffee, I dabbled with a bit of yoghurt-making. Nothing incredible. And then I ramped it up. You’ve already met the lasagna I triumphantly brought into the world. Meet its companion, born of the same electric womb.

Flognarde aux nectarines.

I am happy.

Take eight of the delicious, wonderful nectarines from the four-kilo bag of same your Mumini procured for you from a colleague, pit and roughly chop, then tumble into a baking dish, drizzle with sherry, sprinkle with sugar and let sit awhile. Whisk 3 eggs, 100mL of soy milk, a generous dash of vanilla, a tsp of baking powder, 60g plain flour and 60g sugar until smooth and well mixed. Pour over your fruit, top with toasted chopped almonds, and bake for 45-60 minutes.

I AM MORE HAPPY.

Nectarines are essentially a fuzz-less peach, and the scent of them cooking is unbelievable. Combined with the rest of the sweet nuttiness of the flognarde, the smell would drive you RIGHT OUT OF YOUR MIND with foodlust. Unless you’re as fantastic as me: then you just throw your head back and laugh, and the flognarde becomes yours to command. It’s great warm, but it’s at its best cold. And I have the strength of will it takes to wait.

My kitchen is currently the world’s centre of AWESOME.

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2012 02 21 bethini Cooking
foodin Comments (0) Permalink

Epic, layered, complex.

Today I ticked a big one off the 2012 Cooking Challenges list: making pasta. I’ve made it before, but it was pretty wobbly and I wasn’t too proud of it. I haven’t made it solo since M and I bought a pasta-roller-dealie: we’ve been making our own pasta for ages (which is to see M has been making our own pasta for ages) and the process of rolling it out by rolling pin and drying it on the clotheshorse has been getting dashed tedious. So we invested in a cheap past roller-outer from eBay and that has renewed our (M’s) vigour for pasta-making. Hey, gimme a go at that. Heaps easier than I thought it would be!

I elected to make a lasaagna. There’s a fair bit involved, so you read to the end before you commit. I won’t have you chucking a tanty and calling me nasty names because it takes so long. Fuck that.

I should probably explain that the last time I made pasta was in anticipation of some friends coming over for tea. I’d knocked off early from work and come home to make the world’s biggest pot of minestrone and two loaves of crusty bread, and I was making the pasta towards the end of this process. I have since learned that spending an afternoon being tired and hungry (because you’re saving your appetite for the big dinner later on) does not produce optimal learning conditions. It just makes you shitty and tearful, so when the pasta doesn’t seem to be working somehow, the logical response is to shriek, fling it in the sink and use the dried pasta in the pantry that you suspect came with the house. So I was slightly hesitant about approaching this task, lest I once again have to face the unpleasant shrieking, flinging stage. Turns out that’s entirely optional.

Proto-pasta

Pasta

  • 1 cup flour
  • dash of salt
  • 1 egg
  • bit of water

Flour + salt + egg, mixed thoroughly, and then trickle the water in little by little until you get a thick, firm dough. It’s a pretty dry and heavy sucker, but it’s not like you’re going to bed with it. Knead it until it’s uniform and even, then worry that you haven’t made nearly enough and reassure yourself that you can always do with more practice and if there isn’t enough, you’ll make more.

Ball o'dough!

Run it through your pasta roller dealie or roll it out on the bench with a rolling pin until it’s translucently thin. Realise you have loads of pasta and won’t make any more today. Hang the sheets out to dry a little while you do the rest:

Delicate sheets

The big pot of ratatouille which is doubling as filling and which I forgot to tell you to put on first should be ready:

You've already done this, right?

Ratatouille you made earlier

  • 1 eggplant
  • 4 small zucchini
  • 2 purple onions
  • 2 red capsicums
  • 2 green capsicums
  • paprika
  • cumin seeds
  • salt
  • 2 tins of tomatoes
  • random chilli jam I found in the fridge
  • thyme, parsely, oregano, basil

Roughly chop all your vegetables, finely chop all your herbs, add spices and chilli jam to taste, mix through the tomatoes and about half a tomato can of water. Mix well, then bake in the oven at 200° for about two hours. DONE. Ratatouille. Now might be a good time for me to mention that this pot of ratatouille will serve for one and a half loaf-tin-sized lasagna, while the pasta listed above will make enough pasta for two. So you can chuck in an extra tin of tomatoes somewhere along the line, or you can make one loaf-tin-sized lasagna and use the rest of the pasta and ratatouille to make some sort of awesome fettuccine or something. I don’t really care. But don’t waste it, please.

Now, since we’re doing lasagna, we want cheeeeeese sauce. I use soy milk for mine, since moo milk makes me sick. But the basic formula is still the same:

I like this bit.

3 tabs of butter, bubbling away;

Roux roux roux your boat

Add 3 tabs of plain flour and make a roux. Stir it for a bit over heat, giving it a chance to become smooth and cook slightly. Then start trickling in milk, stirring more or less constantly, until you have a thick, warm sauce. A good rule of thumb is 1 tab butter + 1 tab flour + 1 cup milk; I used less because I wanted a super thick sauce. I also would normally add a little salt, but I had plans along the lines of a shitton of parmesan, which brings its own salt to the party. Oh, parmesan. You so crazy.

Bring it together, bitches

Gotcher pasta, gotcher red juicy ratatouille, gotcher cheese sauce. It’s hammer time. Get them all together: this is your mise en place (meez ZON playzzzz).

Check out this motherfucking mise, yo.

Start laying that shit.

A little peak at what lies beneath.

My preference: red sauce, (pasta, red sauce, cheese sauce), pasta, red sauce, plain cheese. Repeat the details between the brackets as many times as you see fit. But always put sauce on the bottom of the pan, so the bottom isn’t a dry, disappointed husk of overcooked pasta. And always put plain cheese on the top. You know why.

Once I’d filled two loaf tins with layered awesomeness, I still had some sheets of pasta left over.

Hm.

Since this was my first — and, I may say, triumphant — batch of pasta dough, I was reluctant to chuck it out like yesterday’s crayfish. Instead I grabbed a pot of ratatouille that was lurking in the freezer from the last batch, threw in some chopped tomato and basil…

Waste not, BE AWESOME

Used the last of the pasta, the last of the parmesan, and the last of the ratatouille. And got two more lasagna, albeit single-serve lasanga bambini. Checkit:

Bambini deliziosa!

And the big suckah:

Dat pasta.

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit, but that’s some arse-kicking lasagna right there, m’friend. The second one is waiting, uncooked, and will be whisked away to a friend’s tonight to be cooked and shared on-site. Happy times ahead.

spoonfully tips on lasagna

  • Put red sauce on the bottom of the pan, before any pasta.
  • If you’re using dried pasta sheets, soak them in boiling water for a while before you start layering.
  • Cheese on top. CHEESE ON TOP. Whatever goes between your layers is your own private concern, but for the love of pi, people, cheese on top.
  • Freezes like a boss: lunches for weeks.

I’m asserting this is a win. I’m asserting I know how to make pasta. Cooking challenge item TICK. Next!

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2012 02 19 bethini Cooking Comments (0) Permalink

Seedy business 2: less seedy

Go to Hell, chia seeds. Stupid fad food. I’m really annoyed at the chia seed thing. Sure, they’ve got loads of protein and omega-3 and bind things together — you know what else does? Eggs. Free-range eggs from the farmer’s markets, where I’m friendly with the sellers and you can look at photos of them playing with the chickens.

A crest of glorious breadiness.

I made the same loaf of bread today, sans chia seeds. And you know what? YOU KNOW WHAT? Victory. Bam.

Thousands of seeds, none of them chia.

Those chia seeds are gone, baby. And I can make seedy bread. DOUBLE WIN.

In love with seedful things.

For lunch I had a pesto (also made by me, without chia seeds), tomato (grown by friends, without chia seeds) and feta (store-bought: chia status unknown) sandwich on my seedy bread. It was delicious and nourishing and if you ask me, chia seeds are a load of crapola.

An additional lesson I learned: if you make something crummy and get angry with the whole cooking affair, one of the quickest remedies is to immediately remake whatever it was and totally nail it. Of course if you attempt to immediately remake it and fail, you end up in a miserable feedback loop of disaster. Choose wisely.

Rough recipe

Stuff goes in:

  • 470g flour (I used a 50/50 mix of wholewheat and white)
  • 5g salt
  • 2 tsp dried yeast
  • 15g poppyseeds
  • 30g sesame seeds, toasted
  • 40g mixed pepitas and sunflower seeds, toasted
  • 329mL warm water
  • 1 packet chia seeds, discarded

Note: the seed mix can vary wildly, provided you don’t use chia seeds (grrrr); this is the blend I came up with based on what I had in the cupboard.

What you do with it:

  • Mix the flours, salt, yeast and seeds in a big ol’ bowl.
  • Add the water and mix it all together
  • Knead until it turns into a bread dough: thick, cohesive, consistent, unified, a good level of gluten development. Took me about ten minutes by hand.
  • Rise for 20 minutes; punchdown/fold; rise for 40 minutes; shape into a loaf; rise in the loaf pan for 30 minutes, then slash the top and bake at about 220°C for around 40 minutes.
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2012 02 17 bethini Cooking Comments (0) Permalink