buckwheat & snak log substitutes
The best part of today, even for a non-television watcher, is that Paul Henry has resigned.
More domestically, the cardy I began six months ago, is still on needles. I am about 2/3 of the way through the first sleeve. The completed back and both fronts are nestled in my knitting bag. It was all very well fancying a lighter woollen garment which was less bulky at work, but at this rate it will take longer than a pregnancy.
Yesterday I had a go at a Snak Log substitute, something I'd been meaning to try for months. Having misplaced my Edmonds book for the 31st time, I decided to start with this online recipe. I whizzed everything up quite finely with my whizzy stick machine and this meant the dried fruits (papaya, cranberry and apricot) were not specifically detectable to the boy who claims not to like them in baking or indeed on their own. I put some sunflower and linseeds in as well. Then I ground up some dark chocolate (Whittakers Ghana is on special in my local supermarket atm) and sprinkled it liberally on top instead of making chocolate icing separately. The verdict has come back very favourable from the short and fussy testers and I like it as well. Next time I shall play around with soaking the oats first. I tried it one other time in prune juice which got the thumbs down, but next time I shall try apple and blackberry juice as at least they already drink and like that.
This afternoon I made chocolate and banana muffins (sneaking in some almonds with the ground chocolate) and Fionn said that everything I had made this weekend was absolutely delicious. Which is obviously why I opted to breed. Because in amongst saying 'no!' eightyfivethousand times per day, I also cook not badly on occasion.
I took the children to see Laksmi our holistic therapist and superskilled wonderful person this week and she wants Brighid to eat buckwheat. We've been eating soba noodles which she loves. We all like them, but at $16 per kilo (ordinary insecticide version), I am wondering about getting a pasta machine and making my own. I've been reading about kasha and will get there eventually, but today I tried adding buckwheat to my cromarty cob sourdough.
I'd need to try my buckwheat sourdough again to get something I could confidently pass on as a recipe. But here is an attempt, as I know I have a few readers also in the privileged possession of Andrew Whitley's book Bread Matters. I used recently refreshed rye sourdough starter as the production sourdough instead of adding wheat etc to the rye as per his Cromarty Cob instructions (cos' I was impatient and had starter in the hot water cupboard where I was experimenting with getting it more bubbly and powerful). Then instead of 200g strong white flour and 200g plain white flour, I used 300g strong white flour and 100g buckwheat flour. I then proceeded as per the recipe, only the above measurements are still out as I added several additional handfuls of strong white flour as I went. I opted for lots of white flour rather than wholewheat as I wanted to balance out the lack of gluten in the buckwheat in terms of rising likelihood. But here it is, below, and it tastes very nice. You can see from the marbling effect that when the production sourdough and the bread dough are different colours, they never quite mix despite the kneading. Not that I kneaded much - I figured the rye doesn't like it and the buckwheat ignores it.
More domestically, the cardy I began six months ago, is still on needles. I am about 2/3 of the way through the first sleeve. The completed back and both fronts are nestled in my knitting bag. It was all very well fancying a lighter woollen garment which was less bulky at work, but at this rate it will take longer than a pregnancy.
Yesterday I had a go at a Snak Log substitute, something I'd been meaning to try for months. Having misplaced my Edmonds book for the 31st time, I decided to start with this online recipe. I whizzed everything up quite finely with my whizzy stick machine and this meant the dried fruits (papaya, cranberry and apricot) were not specifically detectable to the boy who claims not to like them in baking or indeed on their own. I put some sunflower and linseeds in as well. Then I ground up some dark chocolate (Whittakers Ghana is on special in my local supermarket atm) and sprinkled it liberally on top instead of making chocolate icing separately. The verdict has come back very favourable from the short and fussy testers and I like it as well. Next time I shall play around with soaking the oats first. I tried it one other time in prune juice which got the thumbs down, but next time I shall try apple and blackberry juice as at least they already drink and like that.
This afternoon I made chocolate and banana muffins (sneaking in some almonds with the ground chocolate) and Fionn said that everything I had made this weekend was absolutely delicious. Which is obviously why I opted to breed. Because in amongst saying 'no!' eightyfivethousand times per day, I also cook not badly on occasion.
I took the children to see Laksmi our holistic therapist and superskilled wonderful person this week and she wants Brighid to eat buckwheat. We've been eating soba noodles which she loves. We all like them, but at $16 per kilo (ordinary insecticide version), I am wondering about getting a pasta machine and making my own. I've been reading about kasha and will get there eventually, but today I tried adding buckwheat to my cromarty cob sourdough.
I'd need to try my buckwheat sourdough again to get something I could confidently pass on as a recipe. But here is an attempt, as I know I have a few readers also in the privileged possession of Andrew Whitley's book Bread Matters. I used recently refreshed rye sourdough starter as the production sourdough instead of adding wheat etc to the rye as per his Cromarty Cob instructions (cos' I was impatient and had starter in the hot water cupboard where I was experimenting with getting it more bubbly and powerful). Then instead of 200g strong white flour and 200g plain white flour, I used 300g strong white flour and 100g buckwheat flour. I then proceeded as per the recipe, only the above measurements are still out as I added several additional handfuls of strong white flour as I went. I opted for lots of white flour rather than wholewheat as I wanted to balance out the lack of gluten in the buckwheat in terms of rising likelihood. But here it is, below, and it tastes very nice. You can see from the marbling effect that when the production sourdough and the bread dough are different colours, they never quite mix despite the kneading. Not that I kneaded much - I figured the rye doesn't like it and the buckwheat ignores it.
Comments
I'm with you re Paul. He made me cringe more often than laugh.
Now, as for buckwheat noodles - our local CHinese veg shop has packets of them for 99c. They packets are small, but it takes only two to feed all of us and Grandpa and have leftovers. No doubt they are full of all sorts of pesticides - but would you like some?
~Rachael