Bread, in general

Wow, so I love bread. I'm talking about homemade bread, made with whatever you want and then eaten with jam or cream cheese with cucumbers or peanut butter. Strangely, I don't even like regular bread. I never buy it from the store, and until it occurred to me that I could make my own I never ate it. Loaves of bread accidentally purchased by visitors would grow moldy in my cupboard, despite my best efforts to eat them.

But this is different.



Everyone already knows of my love for quick breads (see banana bread, soda bread). This week I have moved on to yeast breads. First endeavor: black bread, which is basically a stronger version of pumpernickel. This bread is rather dense but still gives a nice crumb. I followed this recipe almost exactly, and was shocked by my success.

Update: I've made this bread about five times since, and I've adapted the original recipe enough to justify typing it up here. I use it so often that I keep the (modified) measurements posted on my fridge:

Recipe: black bread
(makes one loaf)
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
0.25 cup warm water
1 cup water
1/8 cup molasses
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp (28g) butter
0.5 oz (14g) unsweetened chocolate
0.5 tbsp instant coffee powder
0.5 cup all-purpose flour
1.25 cup whole wheat flour
1.5 cup rye flour
0.5 cup bran
1 tbsp caraway seeds
0.25 tsp fennel seeds
0.5 tbsp salt
0.5 to 1 tbsp minced shallot

• Stir the yeast, sugar and warm water together in a small bowl, and do not disturb until the mixture has about doubled in size and looks frothy.
• Sift together the all-purpose, rye and whole wheat flours.
  
• Melt the butter and chocolate, then mix with water, vinegar, molasses and coffee powder. Allow the liquid to cool off before proceeding to the next step.
• Add one cup of the flour mixture, along with the bran, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, salt, and shallots, to a large bowl. Add the liquid from the previous step, and the yeast. Mix.
• Continue by adding flour to the large bowl, one half cup at a time. Keep going until a cohesive mass is achieved, i.e. the dough begins to clear the sides of the bowl as you stir it. The dough should be pretty sticky, but firm.
• Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is springy/dense/until your hands are tired.
• Place the dough (should be in the shape of a ball) in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour until it has doubled in size.
  
• Gently deflate the dough, then form it into a loaf. Position your loaf in a greased loaf pan, then cover and allow it to rise (again) to twice its size. At this point you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  
• Bake the loaf in the center of the oven for about 45 minutes. It should have a deep brown crust. Be sure to check on it half-way and three-quarters through the baking time, just in case it's an early riser (HA).
  

I really encourage you all to try making your own bread--read these bread-making tips for solid advice. The one I found most helpful was placing a shallow dish of water on the bottom rack of the oven for the first 15 minutes of baking. Often I have problems with the crust hardening too soon (before the loaf fully expands), but the water adds extra moisture in the oven to prevent this.

I will continue to document my bread exploits here--in particular I'm hoping to develop some original recipes.

Bean cookies

I'll admit that when I first came across this recipe I was skeptical. Beans? In cookies? But here is the idea, and it's brilliant: instead of using one cup of butter per 24 cookies, we will use one can of beans as the source of fat. You have to admit it's intriguing.



Conveniently, my discovery of this recipe came just as I was re-evaluating how much oil and butter go into my food, and whether they are completely necessary. I have modified this recipe from the original, which came from CBC via this blog. In the past few weeks I've tried several different versions: one with orange zest and raisins, one with walnuts and chocolate chips, and Heidi's version with anise seeds. In the end I settled on an adaptation of my favorite-ever cookies, which were taken from a 1949 Brownsburg, Québec church cookbook I found in a used furniture store. They are called "dad's cookies." I'm not sure whose dad this refers to, but he had excellent taste. Additionally I've added in dates and walnuts. Feel free to modify the recipe even further.

Recipe: Dad's bean cookies with dates and walnuts

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp baking soda (or 1 1/3 soda + 2/3 tartar)
1/4 tsp salt
one 540-mL (19 oz) can of white kidney beans or navy beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup applesauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg*
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
3 tbsp whole flax seeds (optional)

• Preheat oven to 350°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Combine the beans and applesauce in a food processor and mix until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla and brown sugar, and mix again.
• In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, coconut, baking powder, baking soda, salt and flax seeds.
  
• Slowly pour the bean mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir until almost combined. Add the dates and walnuts and mix again until everything is evenly distributed.
  
• Form the cookies by scooping out large spoon-fulls of dough and placing them on the cookie sheet. The cookies don't spread much while baking, so you might want to flatten them a bit before putting them in the oven.
• Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown.

These were completely delicious, and I promise they taste nothing of beans.

* to make this vegan, replace the egg with one tablespoon ground flax seeds and three tablespoons water, as explained in this post. It works just absolutely fine.

Soup

So for about the 18th time since I've been in this God-forsaken, pestilential country, I'm sick. Stuffy nose, hacking cough, sinus headaches, sore throat, the whole works. I think I slept like three hours last night. Now as everyone knows, when you're sick, all you really want is for your mummy to come and take care of you, but my mummy is 6000 km away and I don't have the money to fly home for the weekend. Not to mention sinus headaches combined with cabin pressure changes = head explosions (aka the worst pain I've ever experienced). My parents aren't particularly sympathetic, either. It's all "You aren't washing your hands enough!" and "You're going to get swine flu and die!".  So I'm more or less on my own on this one.

So, two things make me feel better when I'm sick. The first one, for sore throats and stuffy noses is as simple as honey, lemon juice, ginger (dried or fresh, but I only have dried), and hot water. And stirring. So I did that a couple dozen times yesterday.

And the second one, I guess, is mainly due to my dad. Now, my dad isn't a superstitious person. In fact, he's probably one of the most rational people I know, but he insists, with evangelical fervor, that the only thing for a cold is chicken soup. I've never been particularly impressed by the fluids argument of colds (you know the one, flush it out by drinking 13 litres of fluids a day), and I'm a little skeptical of most cold remedies. I'm usually of the opinion that there's pretty much nothing you can do to help you cope with a cold other than just wait it out. In fact, my mum has always said that it takes three days to catch a cold, three days to have it and three days to get rid of it, and I've found this to be true no matter how many glasses of OJ or bottles of Robitussen I down. But, I think that good nutrition is important to keep your immune system in the fight and so that you don't get struck down with bronchitis (the horrors!) for the rest of the school year.

However, having said that, I must admit that I have approximately zero money right now and as such my cupboards are filled with rice, pasta, lentils a single onion and very little else. My fridge contains 2 very sad looking carrots and most of a packet of butter. So not a whole lot there on the vitamin C front.

However! I might have just lied a little because I do (actually did, because all this went down yesterday) have two chicken stock cubes and all my spices and an enigmatic package that I picked up in Sainsbury's labelled "Soup mix" which is actually a mixture of lentils, split peas, barley, oats and macaronis. So I had the makings for soup and, even though I usually roll my eyes whenever my dad mentions the words "cold" and "soup" within a minute and a half of each other, I decided to go for it.

My dad makes soup with a stock that he makes by boiling the carcass of a chicken we've previously roasted and eaten. He's old school like that. Elizabeth and I have done it with two frozen chicken thighs. But, as I mentioned, I don't have money and was in no mood to venture in to the wide world in search of meat, so I stuck with the stock cubes. Hey, lentils are protein too, right?

Soup is one of these amazing dishes that literally cannot and should not be made the same way twice. So I'm going to tell you how I did it, how I might do it again, how you could do it, etc. but you should really just follow your instinct (and your cupboards) when you do it yourself. So here goes:

Soup (this time)
One or two onions, chopped
A couple cloves of garlic, chopped
Some vegetable oil, or butter
Stock cubes of your choice (2-3)
A couple of carrots, chopped
Soup mix (see above), or else any combination of the following: lentils, split peas, pearl barley, regular barley (? not sure what the difference is), rolled oats, (pasta). (I usually really hate putting pasta in soup because it inevitably gets really soggy and disgusting, but if you really REALLY have to then I guess it's ok. I'll just pick it out.)
About a cup full of rice (oh yeah, I don't have any measuring utensils here, so a "cup full" literally means find a cup or mug and fill it with rice. Ditto "big spoon" and "little spoon" for future reference).
Some frozen corn
Some frozen peas
Any other frozen vegetables you would like/have in your freezer
Various herbs spices, optional (I used garam masala, cumin powder, whole cumin seeds, mustard seeds, kalonji (black onion seeds), dried ginger, paprika, turmeric, oregano, "mixed mediterranean herbs" and fresh thyme)

Now I'm not really going to do a blow-by-blow style recipe, but more of a story, because it's so changeable that things don't always have to happen in the same order. So be warned.

Usually I would fry the onion(s) and garlic in a little oil before adding the stock to that, but I forgot this time, mostly because I was foggy-cold-brained. So I filled my pot up with water and added the "soup mix" (you would add the lentils and split peas now if that's what you're using). I won't tell you the whole long story, but suffice it to say that in general I don't really like mushy foods, so I would save the rice for a bit later, and if you're using pasta, put it in right at the very end.

Notice how you (slash I) added the lentils to water, not to stock. This is because I think that when you add the stock too soon, the water boils off and leaves it too stock-y and then it's really hard to get the balance right again. So I boil the lentils and things in water and add the stock and spices closer to the end. Some people would argue that if you do this then the lentils don't soak up the flavour of the stock, but I've never noticed a difference doing it this way and I DO notice a difference when the end result is either too stock-y (because too much water boiled off and wasn't replenished) or too watery (because too much water was put back in).

So back to the story. Boil that soup mix until the lentils are starting to get soft, or you get impatient, which ever comes first (it was definitely the latter for me, resulting in a somewhat crunchy, but still edible soup). Add your stock now, or later, whatever. I think I did it at this point, but can't really remember. Anyways, I also added the onion and garlic which I had forgotten to fry, along with the carrots. And then I added the rice. Although, with hindsight, I probably should have put the rice in first and let it cook a bit before adding the vegetables (I ended up with slightly crunchy rice and slightly soggy carrots, but, again, it was still delicious). Also from now until the end, keep adjusting the spice/stock/water levels, until you are happy with the result. I just put about a shake or two of each kind of spice/herb and added more of whatever I felt was missing. I put some pepper in too, which I forgot to mention in the ingredients. And if you do add more water to top up the stock, you'll probably want to add a bit of salt too (I don't care about the evils of sodium, soup needs to be salty).

So! Now you've got a pot full of stock, pulses, rice, vegetables and spices. Keep it boiling until everything is the desired tenderness. When everything is juuuuuuuuust right, add your frozen vegetables. Bring the soup back to the boil and when that's done, the soup is ready.

My dad will leave his pot of soup on the back burner of the stove (or occasionally in the fridge if there's room) for days and bring it up to a boil everyday for about 10 minutes, thereby killing off any germs. I prefer just to portion mine out and freeze it, but different strokes for different folks. Here are my (ginormous) portions (I only had two clean tupperwares, ok?) ready to go in the freezer (with lids). Oh, I should mention that if you're freezing or even refrigerating this (or anything, really), you should let it cool down to room temperature first, because if you put hot things in the fridge or freezer, 1) it will heat up everything in there already, encouraging things to go off sooner and 2) it will heat up the air in the fridge/freezer, making the cooling device turn on and your electricity bill skyrocket. So I hope you don't get sick any time soon, but if you do, at least you'll be prepared now!

Applesauce

Last weekend I went apple-picking.



I decided to ride my bike to the apple farm, which is "conveniently" located at the extreme western tip of Montreal island, 55km from my apartment. I arrived at the farm in 3 hours, disoriented and sunburned, only to find it closed!

What else could I do but bike another 10km to the next farm? This one was on Île-Perrot, another island a bit southwest of Montreal. It was already dark by the time I gathered enough apples and headed home (on the train this time). The train came from nowhere, suddenly blinding us with light in an otherwise dark and undeveloped part of the island. I heaved my bike on-board with sticky, apple-scented hands and 15kg of apples on my back.

And then I made applesauce.



Be advised that you should use sweeter apples for applesauce (i.e. not Granny Smith). I used a combination of Cortland and Macintosh.

Recipe: applesauce
6-8 apples
1/4 to 1/2 cup water (or apple juice)
pinch cinnamon

• Peel the apples, then core and cut into pieces. (Hint: this is made easier with an apple-cutter).
• Place the apples in a large pot with the water and cinnamon. The water should not cover all the apples.
• Boil until the apples are extremely soft and you can mash them up with a fork. If you added too much water you can boil it off here (as I did), or you can add water if necessary.
  
• Blend the entire mixture using a food processor or blender, until it reaches the consistency of uh, applesauce. Alternatively (if you don't have either of these tools), you could use a potato masher or a fork.
• Ladle into a jar and refrigerate.

***** You should not need to add any sugar.
Your applesauce could be preserved by following the USDA food preservation guidelines. Or wait until next week when I will surely try it on my own.

Next project: apple butter.

Walnut-fig soda bread

Heavenly?

So admittedly I had nothing to do with this recipe. I happened to have walnuts, figs and buttermilk lying around in excess, so I found this recipe and followed the directions down to the last teaspoon. I wasn't expecting much. But then, this beautiful loaf manifested itself perfectly in my oven. It turned out so perfectly that I needed to share it with you.

Next time I might experiment with some other nuts or dried fruits, and maybe add flax seeds or other grains. Oh man, the possibilities are endless. I am so excited.

Here is the recipe, from Canadian Living. A few tips not mentioned in the article: (1) Be sure not to over-mix the dough. (2) After it's finished baking, don't cut into the loaf until it is totally cooled off!

Good bye, and good luck.

Mug Cake Update

So eggs are not one of the things that I usually have hanging around the house. Milk, yes. Butter, yes. Onions, potatoes, flour, sugar, yes, yes, yes, yes. But eggs, no. So when I had a late-night (ok 7:30 in the evening, but I didn't feel like going to the stores, ok?) chocolate craving, I had a conundrum. I had all the ingredients for chocolate mug cake, minus the eggs. Well, and the vanilla, but you can't have everything. However! Thanks to my vegan friends, I had heard tell of the mythic "egg substitute". I also knew it was possible, if a bit guess-work-y, to replace eggs with things you can find around the house. Things that aren't eggs. So. I had a potential solution. I did a quick google, and found that you can replace one egg with 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp vinegar (plus some water). "Bingo!" I thought. So, I gave it a shot.

Well, the mug that I was using was a bit smaller than the one I used in Montreal, so I decided to use slightly less of each ingredient (well ok, except for the cocoa. and the sugar), and we don't have measuring utensils or a clean teaspoon, so I had to eyeball it. Anyways, my roommate and I had a brief moment of excitement when the vinegar went in on top of the baking powder and fizzed, then I mixed it all up and we were back down to business. I popped it in the microwave for a safe 2 and a half minutes (I'm not sure how British microwaves compare to Canadian ones, so I didn't want to overdo it) and sat back to watch the show.

All of a sudden it started growing. "Not to worry," thought I, "this is to be expected." But then I noticed that the part that was growing (rapidly) above the rim of the cup looked significantly more liquid than it should. As I watched, it started spilling over the side of the cup, and with the speed and agility of a panther on meth I popped open the microwave, grabbed the mug and rushed over to the dishes drawer (yes, drawer) where I carefully held it over a plate until it stopped spilling over. My roommate Naomi was there to catch the single wayward drip. So, as the batter was still, well, batter, I put the mug on the plate and put it back in the microwave.

Naomi and I spent the remaining two minutes and seven seconds watching the contents of the mug bubble and froth, spilling over the edges of the mug and on to the plate. When the microwave dinged and we opened the door, this is what greeted us:

Well, the moral of the story is this: if you're going to attempt to make this at home without eggs, go easy on the baking powder and vinegar (I used white, btw). In addition to the aesthetic problems associated with this particular experiment, there was a distinct taste of, well, baking powder and vinegar. There are probably a variety of factors that contributed to this: the lack of appropriate measuring utensils, my perhaps too enthusiastic use of this particular egg substitute recipe, the lack of vanilla... I could go on. The cake was definitely edible, but not as delicious as I have had it, which was disappointing.

Anyways, good luck in your egg-substituting endeavors. And learn from my mistakes!

Potatich?

So, you're all wondering, where has Zoe been for the last month and a half? Well I will tell you. I've been here:

And here:

Here:

And also all of these places:

And now here I am finally settled in London. I'm going to put my obvious hat on here and tell you that things are very different in London than the way they are in Montreal, or even Toronto. They drive on the wrong side of the road, which means I nearly get killed every time I try and jaywalk because I look the wrong way (speaking of which, jaywalking isn't illegal here?). Lining up (queuing) is a way of life. And just about all vegetables in supermarkets come pre-packaged. Which means that if you are a poor student cooking for yourself, you end up with way more food than you need because it's impossible to buy one or two handfuls of spinach, say, or fewer than 3 zucchini (courgettes). Also, I basically have to speak a different language (hence the translations in brackets), even more so than in Montreal, which is pretty ironic. Almost as ironic as raaaaaiiiiiiiiiiin on your wedding day.

So, what I'm trying to tell you is that the other day found myself (or rather my fridge) with 2 onions, 3 potatoes, 2 tomatoes and 1 bag of spinach all about to go off at the same time because they were all (necessarily) bought at the same time. Well the potatoes and onions weren't about to go off, but I still had them in the cupboard. Also maybe I like to exaggerate a lot.

Also, I had invested a good 10 pounds (my Canadian keyboard doesn't have the pound currency sign and I have been too lazy to look online for the keyboard shortcut for it) in kitting out my spice box (actually a cereal box with one big side artistically cut out of it). So, being in England, the land of the curry (or something), I decided to attempt a saag aloo, or spinach and potato curry.

So here it is.

Saag Aloo A La Zoe

Ingredients:

About half a teaspoon each of: coriander seeds, cumin seeds (or a little more than a half tsp of these), kalonji (black onion seeds), black mustard seeds (or a little more). You can find all these at your local Indian grocery store, but check your regular grocery store jic. (That's just in case).

About a quarter tsp of fenugreek (semi-optional, I usually get away without fenugreek, but it does add a really nice flavour, and it was one of the ones i bought). Side note: fenugreek is one of the things in my life that I'm both inexplicably drawn to and repelled by. The way it looks is both appealing and a little revolting to me. The cerebellum is another such thing.

A few shakes of turmeric

Some of those red pepper/chili flakes, or something else to make it hot (chili powder, chopped red hot chili peppers, etc.). My hand slipped when I was pouring them in and I ended up with a lot more than I thought I wanted (maybe a tablespoon and a half? maybe 2?), but it ended up being really nice.

1 onion, chopped into medium-sized pieces

3-4 cloves garlic, minced (or garlic paste)

2 medium potatoes (the waxy kind? I don't know, the ones I used were the kind with the nice soft skin, not the kind with the really dirty skin), chopped into about 1cm cubes

2 medium tomatoes, chopped about the same size as the potatoes. (I just used regular plain old, not fancy plum or anything, but you can use what you like. You could also use canned tomatoes, or, in a real pinch, tomato paste+water. Or just leave them out I guess, but they're really nice. You know what? Just go out and buy some tomatoes, they're good and good for you.)

Most of a bag of spinach, or as much as you want to put in? I don't know how big the bag was, and I've already thrown it out. Sorry.

• So. Get out a big pot with a lid. It doesn't actually have to be too big (you're not making 15 gallons of soup), just big enough. As Elizabeth will tell you, I'm terrible at guessing the right size pot for whatever I'm making and, as usual, I chose too small for this one. Oh well, that's why God invented lids, so you can just squish everything down to fit.
• Put your whole spices (that's everything from coriander to fenugreek) in the pan (with no oil) and put the lid on. Heat on a med-high heat until things start to turn brown and smell really nice and spicy. Actually, scratch that, you won't be able to tell the colour or the smell very well because the lid will be on. Heat on a med-high heat until the mustard seeds start popping (you'll be able to hear it). Remove from heat immediately and (leaving the lid on) set aside until the popping stops. Empty them into your pestle and mortar/spice grinder/deep and narrow bowl with a strong spoon and grind to a sort of powdery consistency (or as close as you can get to powder with a bowl and spoon like I was using without driving yourself crazy). No biggie if there are a few whole seeds still, or even if you can't be bothered to grind them, but it really does make it nicer!
• Side note on spices: it's really best to buy whole spices and toast them and grind them as you need them. If you can't be bothered though, by all means by pre-ground spices, they just don't last as long or taste as fresh. But they do have a time and a place! For reference, you don't usually need to grind mustard seeds, kalonji or a few other spices, but it's easier to do all the spices at once. Coriander I would grind if possible, along with cumin. Fennel too, although not every time. Fenugreek you could probably go either way with.
  
• Put some vegetable (not olive) oil or butter in the bottom of the (now empty) pan. It should be enough to cover the bottom, plus a tiny little bit extra. Fry the onions on low or medium low (it will depend on your stove) until they're translucent and beginning to get a bit of colour.
• If you like the way garlic tastes (nice and spicy!) when it's almost raw, add it after the potatoes. Otherwise, add it now.
• Add the potato chunks. Stir every so often until they're almost cooked. With mine, they kept sticking to the bottom and making like a crust on the bottom of the pan that was threatening to burn and ruin the whole thing so I took a couple of extra steps: I scraped as much as I could off the bottom with the big spoon, I added a bit more butter and then scraped again and finally I added the tomatoes too early. You could "deglaze" (the technical term!) with a little bit of lemon juice (which I didn't have), but I figured that tomatoes are pretty acidic (right?) so I just used them. Damn! I guess I could just have used the tomato juice and saved the tomato chunks for the right time! Oh well, it wasn't ruined. The important thing, though, is to add whatever you're using to deglaze then scrape like crazy to get all the stuff off the bottom.
• Add the turmeric and chili flakes.
• Add the tomatoes and stir it up to get all the stuff off the bottom.
• Add the spinach on top of everything (don't attempt to stir unless you're certain you can do it without flinging spinach everywhere. I learned that the hard way.) Instead, turn the heat down as far as it will go (or even turn it off) and just push the lid down to steam the spinach on top of the potatoes and tomatoes.
• Keep an eye on it, and when the spinach has wilted enough, give it a good stir and get it all mixed up more or less evenly (can be harder than it sounds).
• Taste it and see if anything needs adjusting. I added a bit of salt to mine, but you might think it needs a bit more heat (chili flakes or black pepper) or more cumin (this is the time and place for that pre-ground cumin!)
• Serve with rice or your choice of Indian breads.

What's that? Why yes, yes that is my very own GAS STOVE. You say you'd like a better picture of it? Of course!