kefir learning

An update on my growing things inside menagerie. I have been googling and have found some information on kefir from a very enthusiastic man called Dom. I've joined a yahoo group of making kefir as well. Now I need to read at least some of the messages.

Today I drank some of the kefir drink which you strain off the grains and I liked it. A very pleasant way to substitute for expensive probiotics from the health food shop. My grains seem to be growing and I've transferred them to a larger jar and added more milk. That's three days I've kept them alive for now.

I used the chicken stock to make risotto for dinner. When we were a gluten free, egg free household, we had risotto every week. I still like it, but I love having more options on the dinner front. I used the first zucchinis of this season in the risotto. From my own garden of course. This year I have an heirloom kind called costata romanesco which has a ribbed outer. I do apologise that that sounds like a description of the fancier kind of condoms. My zucchinis were very nice and I look forward to many more this season. From my one plant. The others died.

I've just finished making up the baked beans recipe and have put it in the slow cooker to cook overnight. I had to adapt it a bit for the slow cooker and for the unhelpful measures in the recipe. It is the first time I have cooked from my Sally Fallon book, Nourishing Traditions and I have a couple of niggles. A "small can of tomato paste" is not a helpful measure in an internationally marketed book. Not that it mattered too much as we had no tomato paste of any kind in the house and I snaffled a jar of pasta sauce from the charity Christmas giving bag to use instead. I used some apple cider vinegar and presumed rather hopefully that it would not matter that it is three years old. My other niggle is that a cup is not the easiest way to measure sticky liquids like maple syrup and molasses. By standing on chairs and searching behind the old kitchen chippy chimney, I managed to find our maple syrup and molasses. I hope this recipe is yummy, as it could be the answer to using up more things which have collected in my cupboard. The odd ingredients retirement home needs an overhaul.

I bought a gingerbread man cutter because I have this probably overblown, optimistic idea that Fionn and I will make gingerbread men and send up to his whanau (extended family) up north for that day.

I sneaked a bit of weeding in before it started to rain this morning. Christy I am sorry that your garden is dry. I am feeling like we can't possibly live in the same country - there has been absolutely no need to water here and our garden produce is a long way behind yours. My raspberry plant is still only ten centimetres high. But I did find an actual fruit as differentiated from merely some flowers on one tomato plant this morning. So there is hope.

The food cupboard

I signed off my using up the cupboard project the other day because I'd had enough of it.

But since then I've noticed on several occasions that the exercise is having lasting impact. Though I am loving not trying to think of a use for the amaranth any more. I am much more aware of the full extent of what is in my cupboards and am using the range of ingredients better.

I made focaccia yesterday. What a hit! Favourite Handyman said it was the best foccaccia he had ever eaten and I think it tastes like the focaccia at Carluccio's which I used to eat when we went into London central. Which is a pretty high compliment to myself. The recipe is from Annabel Langbein's Savour Italy, which my parents sent to me for Christmas in 2001, the year we spent Christmas in Bologna, Italy. It seemed very much a kiwi take on Italian food at the time and kind of crazy to have a kiwi recipe book in the middle of Italy, but now I'm back in NZ and the holiday is just a memory, this book is just perfect.

Potato focaccia dough and toppings
250g potatoes, peeled and chopped or 1 packed C Mashed potato
1.5 C warm water
1.5 t dried yeast
0.25 C extra virgin olive oil
4.5-5 C high grade flour, extra to knead
2 t salt
a little olive oil to knead

Boil potatoes in lightly salted water until tender. Drain thoroughly, dry over heat in pan to evaporate any excess water. Mash until fine. Leave to cool for a few minutes.

Place warm water in large mixing bowl and sprinkle yeast over top. Stand for two minutes, mix in mashed potato and oil.

Sir in flour and salt, mixing until the dough just starts to come away from the sides of the bowl. The dough will be quite sticky. Using lightly oiled hands, knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour if the dough is too sticky.

Put dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for about 1 hour, un til doubled in bulk. Turn out onto a l,ightly floured board (surely everyone else just uses the benchtop like me though?) and divide into three.

I divided into just two and then, making one half at a time (the other half which had been left to rise much longer was still great but we don't have a big enough oven to do both lots at once), I flattened the dough into a rectangle on an oiled baking tray and rested for 10 minutes. Then I pressed it out to cover most of the tray, covered with a clean cloth and stood in a warm place 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Dimple the top of the dough with your fingers. The chopped up bits of food which I added (using up some long neglected olives and tomatoes) were:

version 1: green olives, red pepper, sun dried tomatoes, basil, oregano, then drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.

version 2: I pre-roasted in the oven some pumpkin, carrots and onion together with rosemary and oregano. Then I put that (cooled) on top of the dough together with olives, sun dried tomatoes and basil. Drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden. Remove from tray and cool on a rack.

Today I have used Hoisin sauce for the first time ever. It's in the slow cooker together with pork strips, kumara, onions, ginger, garlic and pineapple. I have no idea how it will turn out, particularly as I cobbled the recipe out of guidelines from other things. Alison Holst's slow cooker book is always suggesting prebrowning things. Which I never do. The point of the slow cooker is to make life easy, and having frying pans to be washed by 9 o'clock in the morning does not feel 'easy'. So I ignore her. I know she is a kiwi icon (is she on a stamp yet?), but I don't trust her advice too much these days. Bad advice on cooking chickpeas (just 3 hours in the slow cooker?!) and too much inclusion of premixed packet stuff. And merchandise. Brand Holst.

One more food comment today before I deal to the unholy and no doubt growing-unwelcome-bacteria food mess on the dining room floor before the baby wakes up.

Happy blog birthday Joanna. Joanna's blog was one of the first foodie blogs I took a shine to on the internet last year when I started venturing into blogland. I think it is my favourite foodie blog of all the ones I have encountered which aren't by people I already knew outside of blogland. Thank you for all you share with us Joanna. Thanks also for the links to your key posts. I'd never heard of Skordalia before and now I'm keen to try making it. Rich sauces with no egg in them but plenty of superfood garlic are very welcome to my repertoire.

zucchini pickle

'specially for Joanna. My zucchini pickle recipe comes from a wonderful New Zealand recipe book called The Cook's Garden: For cooks who garden and gardeners who cook, by Mary Browne, Helen Leach and Nancy Tichborne (three sisters) and first published in 1980. My aunt first introduced me to this book and I bought my own copy as a student in 1991. I had started a small vegetable garden at the back of our student flat and used this book for both gardening tips and recipes.

When our flat was arsoned in 1993 (burglars who got careless we think), my bedroom was gutted but as my recipe books were in the kitchen, they survived. My Cook's Garden is still smoke stained. I went on to purchase the sequel and also their bread book, though I've not been making bread for a long while.

Now I go back to this book for things like pickles and chutneys but also because there are lots of great vege-based casserole recipes which fitted the bill well for cheap student living and now for wholesome budget family cooking.

On the garden side of the book, I notice how times have changed as I read enthusiastic tributes to modern hybrid seeds. Given their commitment to good taste (as in yummy, not 'discerning'), I suspect if they were writing now, they'd be talking (re)discovering heirloom varieties.


Zucchini Pickle
1 kg zucchini
4 large onions
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1/2 cup salt
2 cup sugar
2.5 cups white vinegar
1 cup water
2 teaspoons turmeric
2 teaspoons celery seed

Chop unpeeled zucchini finely. Peel and chop the onions. Remove the seeds from the peppers and chop the flesh. Combine the vegetables in a large bowl. Sprinkle the salt over the surface and cover with water. Leave for 2 hours (I tend to leave overnight). Drain. Rinse thoroughly with cold water and drain again.

In a preserving pan boil the sugar, vinegar, water, turmeric and celery seed for 3 minutes. Add the vegetables and cook for 15 minutes. Spoon into hot dry jars and seal.