h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I still haven't worked out what the surprise is, by the way, unless it's the fact that it actually comes out okay after looking so completely ballsed up in the preparation.

Tortilla

That's the Spanish type, not Mexican. Like a cross between a very thick omelette and Pan Haggerty. Slow-fried onions, parboiled spuds and a handful of spinach, all bound together with eggs and cooked, very slowly, in a frying pan on both sides. Perfect for when you come home from the pub with the galloping munchies

I can't remember when I've used so many eggs in such a short space of time. Three for breakfast yesterday, scrambled, six in the tortilla, two in the lemon pudding, one more for breakfast this morning, on toast, fried, and there'll be at least one more, possibly two, to coat the chicken Kiev this afternoon, before rolling it in breadcrumbs and deep frying it.

Breadcrumbs

No, three in the lemon pudding!

I always find that if I'm going through a spell of trying out recipes, I tend to use far more eggs than normal. This all sounds very delicious though.

I can, regrettably, confirm that chicken thighs do not a great Kiev make.It wasn't a complete nause, but they're too small and to uneven to take a decent amount of the butter (the rest of which I've put in the freezer for further use), even after flattening with the rolling pin. But it was an interesting experiment.

As for the lemon pudding, if I make it again I think I'll put it in a blind-baked pastry case. It would definitely benefit from a bit of added heft in that respect. It is quite, quite delicious. Almost a lemon curd on the bottom.

Cold weather increases appetite for cholesterol rich foods.

Long abstinence makes strong cravings.

Betcha can't eat just one!

I ate two Which leaves four

Current kick with me, since I'm getting a good crop, tempura eggplant slices, tempura batter, 3 heaping tbspn sifted wheat flour, 1 heaping tbspn sifted fine corn meal, 1/8 tsp Rumford's baking powder, mix dry ingredients thouroughly, add one egg, mix thouroughly, add sufficient beer to make the mix liquid enough for dipping, dip 1/8 inch slices of eggplant in batter, drop into skillet with about 3/8 inch of pre-heated oil, turn with a fork when the batter begins to brown around the edges.

The tempura eggplant will float on the oil when done.

The batter recipe is sufficient for about half a standard supermarket eggplant, cut into quarters lengthwise before slicing.

Since the beer tends to go flat quickly, its best not to make up larger batches.

That's enough for a substantial platter.

If you want more, make a fresh batch.

I'm using peeled white eggplants that need to be peeled since the peel is a bit tougher than that of the common purple eggplant.

Served with a tarter sauce dip, can be mistaken for tempura fish, an effect I've seen artfully employed by one of the best Chinese restaurants I've frequented, using the unpeeled, long and slender purple oriental eggplant.




As a garden plant in my climate (the Salton Sea area, southern California) the white eggplant is a year round producer that stays in production typically about 3 years.

Bread made with cider barm.

Before the era of microbiology bread was usually made by the sourdough method, or with either the foam from beer as it's fermenting or the sediment from beer after it's been drained from the fermenting vessel, because in both cases it contains live yeast. They didn't know it was yeast because Louis Pasteur hadn't been invented yet, and they called it Godisgode (God is good). Well, anything that gives you both beer and bread must be so good that it comes direct from the Almighty, right?

So now I'm working at a cider brewery I have a ready supply of both the foam and the sediment, so yesterday I took a couple of small Mason jars of froth off the top of one of the fermenters, and this morning I did a bit of research.

It seems that most recipes call for turning the barm (for that's what it's called) into a starter, to be kept going like sourdough starter, or for making an overnight sponge/poolish, which is a bit of a drag because I need to make bread today. So I've taken half of it and tried using it as normal yeast in my usual bread recipe, and used the other half to make a starter.

The normal bread hasn't risen as quickly as when I use dried yeast, but that doesn't mean it won't rise as much. Theoretically you could prove a dough starting with only one yeast cell, but it wouldn't be very good and it'd take a while. Next time I'll use more barm, because I really want to see if the taste of the cider gets into the bread. In the meantime I'll give it more time to prove and bake it later this evening.

The starter, though, is looking like Mount Etna It's going to overflow the jug I'm keeping it in if I don't take some out. Perhaps I shouldn't have used quite so much flour and water. And barm. Still, there's a vigorous fermentation going on, which is a good sign, and it smells just the way it does inside the fermenter I'm going to hazard a guess though that as it ages and starts to develop its own characteristics and a sourdough acidity, that flavour might disappear

Updates will be forthcoming.

Incidentally, when I searched for 'bread using barm', this was the third result in the list http://www.carllegge.com/2014/01/cider-barm-sourdough-bread/

So, do we get to call you barmy now?

Oh, I've been guilty of that for many a long year

One more thing. There are some people working on the unit next to the brewery, building an indoor climbing... thing. This weekend they decided to have a party on some of the land outside, and got a whole pig to roast over a pit

I had some of the meat, in exchange for a case of cider, and I also brought home some of the skin.

I've just made pork scratchings

Whole roast pig

I think the last (only?) time I had that was my Grandpa Hopper's 70th birthday party, sometime in my teens. That was also the year I learned that sitting on a stump with canvas shoes on, swinging your feet next to the fence, isn't very smart if the bottom wire is live...

Now that's the sort of neighbors you really want

Amy
We have all done it.
Nah can't feel anything...
ArGH!!!!

The ones with the whole hog - yes

Those with the electric fence - not so much

is good



F S

'Twas a family reunion, and the fence surrounded my aunt's horse pasture, but yeah...

So have you made a loaf or some barmcakes* then Gosho.

*Baps, Muffins, Breadcakes, Rolls depending on your point of location

I will be making some barmcakes for sure When I lived in Lancashire they were one of my favourite types of bread roll, although I doubt any of the ones I bought at the time were actually made with barm.

I did *sort of* make one yesterday actually. The dough I leavened with the straight barm took a very long time to rise and looked like like it might not go much further, by which time I'd noticed how well the starter was doing, so I cut a lump off the dough, took a few spoons of the starter and a few handfuls of flour, and worked those into the dough I was going to use for the loaf. The lump of dough left over was left to rise a little more then baked as an oversized roll. I ate half of it with my dinner - a chicken and mushroom stew. It was rather doughy and heavy, with a flying crust, and there was taste of cider in it, but it was still quite tasty

Was *no* taste of cider in it

I'll definitely use more barm in the next batch of dough.