Revival?

I’ve experienced a recent rise in foodie activity, but only shared the experience on Facebook and instagram. It’s only fair to get some of the action on here as well (as if anyone ever comes here anymore)

We recently acquired a pizza stone, so Sunday dinner equals pizza these days. Sadly #1 sprogget doesn’t like normal pizza, nor white with just cheese, so I’ve had to make her a “pizza with nothing” ie a pita bread.

Dough:

7 grams dry yeast

360 grams high protein flour

30 grams olive oil

250 grams water at 40 C

4 grams salt

3 grams sugar

10 minutes of machine kneading, rest for 50 minutes or in fridge overnight.

See you soon I hope

First attempt

White with mozzarella.

Six cheeses pizza

Six cheeses pizza

Cheese, red onions, Arched Woodwax (a mushroom), walnuts and honey

Cheese, onions, jamon serrano, parasol mushroom and ramsons pesto

Preserve Parade

Again, very erratic posting patterns. I’ve been planning for this post for about a week now and will try to type like the wind while baby’s asleep.

For some reason the project with the citrus marmalade set something off and I’ve been boiling stuff with sugar like crazy for some time now. These three were the main events so to speak.

Mango Chutney
Mango chutney is of course a classic. I just happened to have about 0.3 mangos in the fridge and couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Added onions, mustard seeds, vinegar, chili, cumin, cinnamon, ginger and sumac. Boiled for a bit. Certainly looks like chutney to me.

Eggplant Marmalade
Eggplant may not be the most intuitive marmalade material, but I’m certainly not the first to do it – in fact, I’m quite sure I’ve eaten industrially produced eggplant marmalade. It may have been from Libanon. Mine contains finely diced unpeeled eggplant, a dash of vinegar (would have preferred lemon) and half the amount, by weight, of gelling sugar. Ordinary sugar is fine too, but the gelling sugar has some pectine added to it and thus gives better texture.

Tomato Marmalade
After a burger night we found ourselves in possession of surplus tomatoes (mrs Nerdcuisine is allergic) so I made marmalade and gave most of it away. Once again I didn’t bother with any peeling. I don’t mind a bit of tomato peel and I think it adds flavor and probably pectin. Classic marmalade recipes usually use equal amounts of fruit and sugar, but that can be quite sweet, so in the eggplant recipe above I used only half as much. Even that proved too sweet with the tomatoes so I would have liked an emergency lemon to turn to, but we didn’t have any. This time I attempted to remedy the sweetness with a generous dose of vitamin C which is quite tart. For added excitement (and to go better with cheeses) I seasoned with black pepper and a sprinkle of chili flakes.

Well, that’s it for today. Make marmalade from anything, and remember that baby food jars are excellent for small batches of preserve.

First Harvest – Individual Gazpacho

The second homegrown tomato was finally ripe for harvest. In the picture it’s a bit trimmed down, since a dry spell during our trip abroad caused it to split on one side.

the term ‘individual gazpacho’ draws upon the fact that small, one helping, pies are often called individual. Only in this case it means gazpacho made with exactly one tomato. (which also means about enough gazpacho for one, not too hungry, person)

An inventory of the current stock yielded half a cucumber, a frozen chili, a small red onion and garlic, although unless your area is vampire-infested it’s advisable to use less than a whole clove. I also used olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, vegetable stock powder and fresh basil. Typical gazpacho also contains bell peppers, but I didn’t have any, so I chose to pretend a piece of chili pepper was close enough.

Cut stuff into manageable pieces and say hello to mr. Blender.

After sufficient blending and adjusting of seasoning it was time to plate. I tried two different styles and liked both, so I’m posting both.

 

I’ve gotten the feeling that Greek yogurt isn’t among the expected gazpacho garnishes (usually olive oil and croûtons, period) but since it had some heat from the chili, a bit of yogurt wasn’t out of place at all. The red leaf is homegrown basil. The containers used are a punch cup and a shot glass, to give an idea of the amount of soup teased out of one tomato.