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In Australia, we’re moving solidly into summer now (forecast to be 30C today!) so I’ve had my first Bircher (ish) muesli of the season and it occurred to me that someone might be interested. Possibly not many people in the northern hemisphere, but hey, next year, right? Watch me see if I can create seasonal tags!

So, what I did last night:

½ cup of rolled oats
¼ cup of water in a bowl, covered overnight in the fridge. (other recipes I’ve seen say you can do this for an hour, but really, who gets up that early? :P)

In the morning I mixed in:
½ a cup of yoghurt (I use natural pot set, because I can afford it, and it’s pretty common here. You could use whatever you fancied)
½ a grated apple (I’m a Granny Smith girl)
And topped with whatever fruit I had to hand. This morning it was strawberries, but I’ve used dried fruit to great success, too. I seem to remember the original recipe I had mentioned chopped nuts, but I’ve never quite been that organised; also, an amount of honey, but with the apple, I found it sweet enough without it. YMMV ;)

meghanc

I recently accidentally left some no-knead bread (standard recipe--4c flour, 2c water, salt, yeast, bit of sugar) standing for about 48 hours (about around 65F) instead of the suggested 12-18. I figured that I'd bake it anyhow, because if it sucked, I'd only lost a couple cups of flour, and if it was okay, I'd still have bread, even if it wasn't as good.

Turns out that it wasn't as good--it was way better. From now on, all my no-knead bread will be done like this. The interior of the bread has more holes, and the overall texture is fantastic. If you're a no-knead fan, I strongly suggest giving this a try. I've also been baking the bread significantly longer than called for--I do it on a cookie tray, not a dutch oven, and am leaving it for nearly an hour and coming out with gorgeous, golden bread. It's harder to cut, but has a better flavor.

After this, I left it rise for three days, which gave a much flatter bread, almost like focaccia, with a *very* holey interior and a slightly tangy, sourdough-esque taste. My family is split on this--my partner and I really like it; our daughter, not so much. I'm hoping to experiment further, as I'd like to find the sweet spot of having a rounded loaf with a very irregular, holey interior.

Has anyone else tried this? What've you been doing?

meghanc

Given the amount of cooking I do, I have a fairly small kitchen. Given the amount of kitchen I have, I have a *remarkably* small amount of cupboard space, and what there is is hard to utilize.

I have two of the bog-standard double-door cupboards, and those are fine. I mean, smallish, but okay. I also have one single-door cupboard that has a smallish door opening, but is set sort of on an angle. I tried to explain it, then decided to just draw you a picture. My cupboard does this:

(Since I forgot to label it, I'll mention that the door is the diagonal line of the big cupboard.)

So that's the cupboard situation. The big cupboard just kills me, though. I'd put in a lazy Susan, except that the door is so small that putting one in would mean that I'd lose over half the space in the cupboard (because, obviously, the plates could be as big as the door, and all that space on the sides would be wasted.)

My current system involves buying things and tucking them into the cupboard and resigning myself to spending ten minutes foraging for whatever I need. Surely there's a better way, right? And, um, surely one of you knows it? Because I could really use some help here.

meghanc

It's the time of year when brussels sprouts* start appearing in the markets near me! This is awesome, both because I love brussels sprouts and because I can buy them for under a dollar right now, and frankly, anything that I can buy a pound of for under a buck is something that we're going to eat a lot of.

The downside to brussels sprout season is that I have very few recipes for them, so I always end up either making them twice and calling it a year or making the same thing over and over (and over and over) again.

My very favorite brussels sprout recipe is this:
Heat oven to 425F/220C. Take a rimmed cookie sheet and drizzle it with olive oil. Clean your sprouts, ripping off the manky outer leaves. If the sprouts are of average size or bigger, cut off the stems and chop the sprouts them in half--if you've lucked into the adorable tiny sprouts you find sometimes, go ahead and leave them whole, just cut off the stems.

Blot the sprouts dry, then put them on the baking tray and roll them around a bit so that they're slightly oily. Put them into the oven for about thirty minutes, until they've gotten brown and are slightly crispy where they're touching the pan. Remove the pan from the oven, push all the sprouts into the center of the pan (not mounding them, but just consolidating them,) and then sprinkle them with (lots of) parmesan cheese. Back into the oven for another five minutes or so, then eat, salting them if you're into that. (I am totally into that.) If you're not into cheese, you can skip that and just squeeze a little lemon over them.

These are so good that even my seven year old will eat them and ask for seconds.

I've also done this thing where you sautee bacon and garlic, remove it from the pan, and then cooked halved sprouts in the bacon fat until they're browned. Then you toss them with bacon and garlic and then sprinkle them with either cheese or a tiny bit of maple syrup.

Anyone else have favorite brussels sprouts recipes? Please give me more reasons to buy sprouts before they go back out of season.

*Brussels sprouts feels so wrong. I always want to call them brussel sprouts, which is not technically correct but at least looks less weird.

meghanc

We're hitting that time of year where certain people (me) go insane trying to see how many jars of delicious things they can fit in their pantry. This summer's been sort of crap, though, and my pantry is shockingly empty.

What should I make?

So far this year, I've only done jams. (Blackberry lemon, peach-raspberry, and strawberry.)

Last year, I did the obligatory jams, plus a lot of applesauce, salsa, pickled cauliflower, roasted peppers, onion and rosemary confit, marinated mushrooms, and quite probably some stuff that I'm forgetting. The onion and rosemary confit was a total disaster and will never be made again. Peppers and mushrooms were incredibly delicious and are definitely going to happen again, as will applesauce.

But what else? I'm willing to try just about anything, and suggesting things like "what about peaches" is totally useful, too. That said, I'm particularly interested in non-jams--I mean, we eat a lot of jam, and I give a lot away at Christmas, but it's fairly easy to come up with ideas for jam, you know? Savory suggestions are super-awesome. Possibly if I end up making your suggestion, I will try to send you a jar. (Once I've made sure that it wasn't a total failure.)

I do not have a pressure canner, though I do have a pressure cooker, which some sources say you can use for pressure canning. (But not all sources, and I'm bummed, because part of the reason that I'd wanted one was because I'd read you could use it for canning. If anyone has thoughts on this, input would be awesomes.)

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Avocado on Toast

Recent Entries

Bircher-ish museli

Revalation about no-knead bread

Cupboard Space

Brussels Sprouts

Canning and Preserving

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November 2010

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