In Celebration

I had a certain something last week, so some friends of mine treated me to a very special cake to celebrate.

It's from Fol Epi, one of the few places in town I trust not to include wrong foods.  They make the most amazing things, like this devilishly divine raspberry chocolate cake.  They even mill their own flower there and  often donate the excess bran to local farmers.

What a treat to be able to eat yummy cake!

Wild Cranberry Mead Recipe

This blood red mead is perfect for the holidays... be it a spooky Halloween trick or treat, or a festive December red, this is by far one of my most favourite wild brews.  

I used wild yeast already in the honey and fresh fruit to get the fermentation going.  Unpasteurized (aka, the stuff the bees make before commercially processed) honey is just teaming with wild yeast, but it doesn't ferment because the moisture content in honey is too low, but once you add water... things get a little more lively.  There is also wild yeast living on the skins of the cranberries, that way if the honey yeast doesn't get going for some reason, the cranberry yeast can take over.  

Wild yeast is unpredictable compared to laboratory prepared strains that you can buy at your local brew shop.  But that's one of the things I like about it.  I celebrate the fact that every batch is different.  So long as the cranberry juice only contains cranberry juice and the honey isn't pasteurized, it's almost impossible to avoid fermentation.  Just be certain to stir it often otherwise it might get mouldy, especially at the start.

Wild Cranberry Mead

2 cups raw honey

1 cup pure cranberry juice (pasteurized is fine, but additives may inhibit fermentation.)

1/2 lb fresh or 1/4 lb dry cranberries

8 cups water (boiled and cooled to room temp)

• Get a wide mouth bucket or crock (that will hold liquid), at least 2 gallons volume.  Clean it well.  Also get a large wooden (or plastic) spoon and clean that too.  Wash your measuring containers.  And...wash your hands, and... anything else you can think of.
• Combine the honey with 2 cups lukewarm water, mix until honey is dissolved.  Add the honey water with all the other ingredients into the bucket, stir vigorously.
• Cover the crock or bucket with a cotton or linen towel to keep the bugs away, but let the air in.
• Stir vigorously at least twice a day.  More often is fine.  
• It should start to change after about 4 days.  The smell will be a bit yeasty or tangy, it might start getting a slight fizzing sound when you stir it.  Eventually, there should be some froth on the top, a little or a lot depending on the kind of yeast you captured.  In about a week to 10 days, the fermentation will start to slow down.  
• Strain out the berries (save the berries to eat on yoghurt later) and give the mead a taste. 
• Now it's time to choose
• You can bottle it now if you have some high pressure bottles (like beer bottles, or beer bottles with the flip top) for a less alcoholic, sweeter and fizzy drink.  It's a cross between a mead and a homemade alcoholic soda.  Very nice, but the alcohol does sneak up on you so make certain you have a designated driver appointed before you start on the mead.
• Pour the liquid into the bottles.  Make certain they are bottles that can handle the pressure otherwise...a big boom and a bigger mess.
• Place the cap on the bottles and leave in a room temperature (or slightly cooler) place for a few days.  Check after day 2 to see if they are getting fizzy yet.  It may take as long as a week, or you may get a huge soda fountain by day three.  When they are fizzy enough, move the bottles to the fridge until you are ready to drink.  Personally I like them best at room temp, but putting them in the fridge slows the fermentation.
• If you would like a dry mead then rack the mead.  Pour the liquid into a half gallon jug with a small opening and an air lock.  Leave it for a few weeks or a few months before bottling.  The longer you leave it the (in my opinion) better it will taste.  Once it's finished fermenting (no more gas is escaping) then you can rack it again into a different jug to restart the fermentation, or bottle it.  If you feel the need to taste some at any step, just replace the same volume with honey water of a ratio of 1 part honey to 4 parts water.

If I remember right, this made a bit more than half a gallon, but some of it evaporated during the first stage of fermentation and the rest got drunk at some point.

In time, I hope to scale up the recipe for a 5 gallon batch, but since there is so little time left 'till the end of October, I thought I would share the smaller recipe now.  Brew it this week, and it will be ready for drinking by Halloween (or Guy Fawkes) night.  Or better yet, brew it now and rack it for bottling in late december just in time for Holiday giving.

Affordable cooking: $2 for the cranberry juice, another $1 for the cranberries, and about $2 for the honey. That's $5 for the equivalent of 3+ wine bottles worth of mead.  If I were to buy that much mead here (when I can find it) it would cost at least $75 plus tax... so yes, I think it's affordable.

Vegan Friendly?  No way!  Honey is from bees, bees have faces...Get a good old fashioned glass of wine for your vegan friend and save the mead for another time.

Possible allergies: Some people have sensitivity to yeast and honey. But not many other allergies here, non of the regular chemicals used in commercial alcohol.  

Happy Mead Maker

Where I make mead; pear and rosemary mead; and quince and spice mead.



Mead is a magical elixir made from honey.  Among other things, it's know as the drink of the gods.  It's said to have the power to grant you insight into the unseen realm - which is surely true if you consume enough of any alcoholic drink.

Then again, the bees are said to travel between this world and the next, as messengers to the gods and the dead.  That's one of the reasons why the mythology of bees says we must tell the hive the household news each day.  Imbibing a drink made from the nectar of such supernatural messengers must grant some special powers, if only temporary.

I have read about mead from time to time, in poetry and literature, but always believed it was far too complex for me to try making.  Until recently, none of the local shops carried it, or if they did, it was beyond my price range.  But recently, I've grown more enamoured with the idea of mead.  I have found numerous mentions of mead through my research into medieval and iron age cooking.  Giving my new found courage (and decent level of success) with fermenting and increasing desire to keep bees, I have decided it is time to try mead.

I first tried some mead at a medieval event, it was berry mead and to my taste, it was very sweet.  But good, and surprisingly strong alcohol content.  But still a bit yeasty (I get flushed from yeast) so I imagine it would have been even better with another racking and 6 months more ageing.  Then I discovered some mead in a liquor store.  Two brands from Vancouver Island, actually - although it was all fruit and berry mead, with only one bottle of spiced mead, which was as close as I could get to unflavoured.  So I brought a bottle of spiced mead home and have an oz of it every now and again.  It helps settle my stomach if it's still upset at bedtime - an added benefit.

Deciding that yes, I like mead, it is now time to make some of my own.


Following the instructions from Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, I combined 1 part raw honey with 4 parts room temperature water, mixed very well and left in a wide mouth container, stirring at least three times a day, for about a week until it looks like there is yeast active (small bubbles, froth, taste and smell).  Then it goes in a jug with an air lock to bubble away.  Once it's finished bubbling, I'll taste it and rack it (move it into a different jug with an airlock to aerate the mead and re-activate the yeast).  I don't know how long I'm going to age the mead before bottling, there are some meads that age for years before bottling, others are drunk in a matter of weeks.  I think it will depend on what else is going on in my life and how it tastes to determine when I'm ready to bottle it.  For these first few stages, I have it upstairs at room temperature, but once I rack it, I think it will go downstairs where it is cooler.

The first batch looked good, so why not try some more?

I had a hand full of pears that missed being made into Parry this year, so I thought why not pear and rosemary?  It's a good pairing - ha ha - as I've used this combination as a sauce for pork.

The quince tree only had two quinces.  Quite frankly, I can't seem to like quince very much, it's kind of coy tasting and very strong smelling.  But I don't want to waste them, so I decided to try for a Quince Poudre Douce tasting mead.  Quince, pepper, ginger, cinnamon stick, and some anise (because they look so pretty).

pear and rosemary

 To make flavoured mead, at least according to Sandor Katz, is to slice up your fruit very fine and add them to the mead during the open vessel stage.  Proceed as per normal mead, and strain when you put it in the jug.

quince and spice

The fruit has natural yeast on it, so it will usually start to ferment faster than honey on it's own.  However, certain processing and herbicides in commercial fruit may have adverse effects if you are capturing wild yeast like I did, so please use organic or home grown fruit.


For the fruit mead, I used less honey as the fruit already has plenty of sugar.  I did 1 part honey for 5 parts water.

These are just small batches one gallon, or in the case of the first mead, half a gallon.  These tastes combinations may be completely horrid!  But from what I've read, if the mead tastes terrible, leave it for six months to four years, and it could improve... or else, you may have killed the offending taste buds in the interim.

During the open pot method while I was stirring three times a day, I was amazed with how the smell of the fruit mead changed.  At first the pear and rosemary smelt horridly medical, the rosemary was overpoweringly antiseptic. But after a couple of days, the smell of the herbs subsided and it started smelling strongly of pears left too long in the sun.  By the end of the week, it was quite pleasant smelling, a nice balance of herb and fruit, although it tasted overpoweringly of sweet and yeast at that time.  The quince and spice started out smelling of nothing at all, then after a day it started smelling of sickly sweet quince.  The quince smell grew sweeter and more pungent until it was rank, almost rotten, on the fifth day.   I almost tossed the batch, but instead on the 6th day it suddenly didn't smell revolting any more and started to smell like pepper with a hint of quince.  I didn't taste it when I put it in the jug, but I think it will be okay...

...eventually.

This process is simple, albeit fruit fly generating.  I can't believe I ever imagined it would be difficult.  It is a nice way to use up small amounts of fruit, berries, and other goodies laying around.  I'm looking forward to finding out how these little experiments taste in a few months time.


I think that making mead at home is an affordable way to make a nice sipping alcoholic drink.  Considering it costs about $25 for a 750ml bottle at the local liquor store, as opposed to the $12 starting price for a drinkable plonk (wine),  you don't need much honey to make a bottle of mead.  About 1/2 to 2/3rds of a cup aught to do it, which is about $1.30 per homebrew bottle of mead.  Would be less if you make mead from gleaned fruit and use less honey per water ratio.  Although making mead doesn't take much active time, it does require a lot of waiting, I'm told, to make a good mead.  So perhaps it is worth the extra twenty three dollars not having to take up space and carboy waiting for the mead to age.

Honey has many health benefits and mead also has a long tradition of healing qualities.  I only know some of the cultural mythologies that surround this elixir, but I suspect there are some scientific studies out there for those who care to look.  Of course, like all alcoholic drinks, moderation is key.  A little everyday is said to help your health, however, too much... well, you've all seen the government warnings I'm sure.

Allergies:  Homebrewing something like mead is nice because you can avoid a lot of allergies like sulphites (or was that sulphates?), extra ingredients, and can brew it long enough so that all the yeast is exhausted.  Keep in mind, some people have negative reactions to honey and alcohol.

Medieval Ginger Bread Recipe

It's funny.  When I imagine gingerbread, I think of a sweet, hard cake or cookie like substance, shaped as cute little people, houses, rounds, with icing and colourful candy.  The thing I don't think about when people say the word gingerbread, is... bread.

But that's exactly what gingerbread was in the middle ages: Ginger Bread.  That's two words, not one, to indicate that literally, there is ginger, there is bread and they get combined somehow.

Reading the book Pleyn Delite, by Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, I came across a delicious looking gingerbread recipe from the Middle Ages.  This book contains all sorts of recipes from historical sources, including a lot of the recipes in the original text, and the modern day translation.  What I love best about this book is that the authors actually cooked a lot of these recipes.  I suspect that this is not the norm when translating historic cooking techniques into modern methods.  But these two have done a really good job of it.

I've tasted a few dishes cooked from the Pleyn Delite (which I say in my head as Plain Delight) and loved most of them.  This gingerbread, I didn't love as much.  I found it too crunchy, but I'm in the minority on this one.  Everyone else has gobbled it down, making me fend them off with a fork and a cunning plan to have enough left over for the photograph.

I suspect their plan was to finish it off quickly so that I would be forced to make a second batch if I wanted to take any pictures for the blog.

Before I write the recipe for medieval gingerbread, I feel compelled to confess that not much is changed from the version in Pleyne Delite, except maybe the quantities of the spices and wording.  It's a difficult recipe to improve on.  I would change a bit of the method if given a second chance to make this - which I may just be strong armed into doing.

Medieval Ginger Bread

Bread crumbs - about a 1 lb loaf of bread dried and finely ground
a generous teaspoon of ginger powder
a generous pinch of cinnamon
a dash of ground pepper or a pinch of Poudre Forte
1/2 cup of honey

• In a large pan, bring honey to boil, remove from heat.  Add the spices and stir well.
• Add the bread to the honey a little at a time, return to medium low heat if needed, stirring well after each handful of breadcrumbs.  When the mixture is really thick and hard to stir, turn out onto a layer of parchment paper.  spread it out evenly as best you can, then put another layer of parchment paper on top.  Use your hands or rolling pin to smooth out the gingerbread to make it as even and as thin/thick as you like.  Thinner is better in my opinion. 
• Leave covered to cool for about an hour, cut into shapes.  You want to do this today and not a few days from now, trust me.  It gets more difficult as it ages.

This keeps well at room temperature for several days and travels well in a bento box, just wrap with a bit of parchment paper and you are good to go.

Affordable cooking? - Very much so, provided you use bread that would have gone to the chickens/garbage otherwise.  Not so much if you are buying bread or bread crumbs just for this recipe.  

Cooking for your Vegan friends? - It can be made vegan friendly by replacing the honey with a different liquid sweetener.  

Cooking for Allergies - not many allergies here at first glance, but it's good to be careful about the ingredients of the bread crumbs (commercially made usually contain soy and other problems), spices (sometimes processed with oils or lecithin which can include soy).  Just remember that your ingredients these days, have ingredients lists of their own.  With that in mind, this is a very flexible recipe.  You can choose any kind of bread, be it gluten free, yeast free, whatever you  need.

Medieval cooking: Poudre Douce and Poudre Fort recipes

Here's a couple of recipes I brought back from my trip to the 14th Century.  Poudre Fort and Poudre Douce (or strong powder and sweet powder).  You can use these two powders in just about anything.  The Fort or strong powder, I use for cooking meat, fish, veg, rice, soups, and anywhere else one might use pepper in modern cooking.  The Douce or sweet powder, I use for bread making, just about anything dessert, or even sprinkling on fresh fruit.

Poudre Fort

1 pinch powdered ginger
2 pinches of powdered cinnamon
about 4 to 8 Tbs peppercorns ground fine (at the medieval camp I did this by hand, it wasn't too time consuming)
1/4 tsp sugar (any sugar will do, so long as it's in granular/dry form)

• Pulverize into powder anything that isn't already, and blend well.  Keep in an airtight jar on the counter so it's always on hand when you need it.

Feel free to alter the ratios or add other spices like nutmeg to taste.  This is just the recipe that was passed down to me by an expert medievalist (I'm thinking that's probably not the right word for it, but it will serve till I can think of a better one).

Poudre Douce

1 recipe of Poudre Fort (see above)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (yes, we are doing cinnamon twice)
maybe a pinch of nutmeg or allspice
More Sugar (any dry sugar, powdered, granular, date, palm, beet, &c.) - I tell you how much below.

• Pulverize into powder anything that isn't already.  Mix together all but the (extra) sugar
• Guess about how much spice you have here (by volume) - probably getting close to a 1/4 cup by now.  Add an equal amount of sugar to the other spices.  So, if you have roughly 1/4 cup of spices, then add 1/4 cup of sugar.  If you have 4 Tbs of spices, then add another 4 Tbs of sugar.
• Mix everything together really well, keep in an airtight jar on the counter so you can use it always on hand.

With time and practice, you will develop your own ratios for these spices.  There are many other recipes for these that have developed over the centuries.  Some completely different than the ones shown here.  

However, these are so incredibly delicious, I'm really surprised they aren't more common.

A word of caution for allergies: Some modern spices have Soy and other oils/lecithins used in the processing.  Always check the ingredients on the spice packets if you are cooking for someone with allergies.

2 recipes: hot cross buns and sourdough hot cross buns

Earlier I talked about how to convert a regular yeast bread recipe to a sourdough recipe.  Although the theory is pretty straight forward, I've always felt rather intimidated by the idea of trying it.

Finally, my desire for sourdough hot cross buns overcame my fear of failure, and I set to work converting an old favourite recipe from commercial yeast to sourdough.

This first recipe come from one of my all time favourite bread (and cake books) Homemade Bread by the Food Editors of Farm Journal   It's out of print now, but if you ever see a copy at a second hand bookshop or yard sale, snatch it up.  Not only is it full of yummy bread recipes, the decidedly sexiest attitude is always good for a laugh.

Hot Cross Buns

Easter Buns with frosting crosses - traditionally served on Good Friday

1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
2/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
2 pkgs. active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
3 eggs
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour (about)
3/4 cup currants
1 egg white
1 tsp cold water
white frosting (recipe below)

• Scald milk,add sugar, salt and shortening; cool to luke warm.
• Sprinkle yeast on warm water; stir to dissolve.
• Add eggs, yeast and 1c flour to milk mixture; beat with electric mixer at medium speed about 2 minutes, occasionally scraping the bowl.  Stir in currants and enough remaining flour, a little at a time, to make a soft dough that is easy to handle.  Beat well.  Place in lightly greased bowl' turn dough over to grease top.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1.5 hours.  Punch down.  Turn onto lightly floured board.
• Roll or pat to 1/2" thickness.  Cut in rounds with 2.5" bisket cutter; shape cutouts in buns.  Place about 1.5" apart on greased baking sheets.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
• With a very sharp knife, cut a shallow cross on top of each bun.  Brush tops wit unbeaten egg white mixed with cold water.
• Bake in moderate oven (375F) 15 minutes  or until golden brown.  Cool on wire racks about 5 minutes.  Then with tip of knife or teaspoon, fill in the crosses on buns with White Frosting.  Best served Warm.  Makes about 18 buns.

White Frosting: Combine 1c. sifted confectioners sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla and 2 Tbs hot water.  Mix until smooth.

Now, the above recipe makes a decent hot cross bun, but I do usually add spices and candied peal to it.  I also find it a wee bit sweet for my taste, particularly the frosting.

This next recipe takes a long time to make, but it's so worth it.  I recommend making the sponge in the morning, the first part of the dough late in the evening, leaving it to rise overnight, then shape and do the second rise in the morning.  The buns should be ready for late afternoon on the second day.  Doing the second rise overnight ends up drying out the surface of the buns before they go in the oven which makes them hard to cut.

It's also very difficult to photograph these hot cross buns.  By the time I have the props and camera ready, the buns are all eaten.  Three days of baking from dawn till 3am the next day and I finally learned to hide the buns while they cool so that they didn't get snatched up.  (I did a lot of test batches and testing, so I'm confident they are fantastic).

Sourdough Hot Cross Buns

A word about Sponge.  Although the word sponge can mean different things in various parts of the word, I use it here to mean a fairly active runny batter like substance made of sourdough starter, flour and water.  Make the sponge at least 4 hours before you plan to begin the bread.  I usually make mine the night before.  Mix at least 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup water (or more) and at least 1/8th cup sourdough starter.  Mix them well to make a runny batter, and leave in a warm corrner of the kitchen, covered with a cotton or linen towel.  After a few hours, depending on your temperature, the weather, whatnot, it should be bubbling.  You know the yeast is active in it.  If you leave it more than 24 hours, you need to feed it again.

1/4 cup sourdough sponge
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup honey/maple syrup/or other sweet liquid (I use the juice the fruit is candied in if there is any left over)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter/lard/or other fat (butter is best)
3 eggs
less than 4 cups flour (your choice but I recommend the first cup be all purpose or bread flour).
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup candied ginger (optional)
1/2 cup other dried or candied fruit or peal
pinch each nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves

• Scald milk, add honey, salt, butter.  cool to luke warm.
• In a big bowl, add eggs, sponge, 1 cup of flour, and milk mixture.  Mix a lot.  What you are trying to do here is to blend everything and activate the gluten in the flour.  It takes about 5 to 6 minutes to mix this by hand.  I do it in 2 min sessions, with a min or two rest in between.  Wooden spoon is my favourite tool for this.  Alternately, you could mix in electric mixer for 2 min.
• Add spices, and fruit, mix some more.
• Mix in the flour a little at a time until a soft dough forms.  Should be barely firm enough for you to handle.
• Place in a lightly greased bowl, grease the top of the dough, and cover with a linen or cotton towel.  Rise until double in size.  Even with a very active sourdough starter, THIS TAKES A LONG TIME SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO DO THIS OVERNIGHT.
• Punch down and break off egg sized balls of dough.  Form into bun shapes and place in a lightly greased tray or baking pan.  Cover and raise till double in size.
• Carefully cut the cross in the top with a VERY sharp knife.  Optional:brush with egg white mixed with 1 Tbs of cold water.
• Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 to 25 min.  

I'm not bothering with the egg wash (I don't like egg whites much, especially with bread) or frosting, but feel free to do it if you like.

Ideas for fruit to put in them: dried currents, dried cherries  dried raisins  dried peal, freshly grated organic citrus peal, candied peal, dried pineapples, dried anything... make sure you pit and chop up anything bigger than a raison.  My favourite is to get the chunky runny marmalade they have in Europe and strain off the juices (use this instead of honey) and the chunks of orange as the fruit for the bun.

Healthy: well, um.  I don't recommend  eating as many as I have this week.  But hey it's only once a year and when compared with commercial made hot cross buns full of highly processed ingredients and florescent coloured lemon peal like substance, YES they are much healthier.

Affordable:  I have no idea.  I don't even want to price these out, they are so delicious.  They do however help use up the left over dried fruit you have in the back of the cupboard... that's got to count for something I suppose.

These are NOT suitable to serve to your Vegan Friends because of the egg, honey, butter, &c.  See this vegan friendly recipe for hot cross buns.

Allergies: This is fairly easy to modify for allergies.  I don't recomend cutting down on eggs and butter though, it is what makes the dish.  If these are the things you are allergic to, then please make the vegain version I just linked to in the last paragraph.

 

Chocolate Avocado Pudding - Raw foods and easily made vegan

Oh the mighty avocado, what can I say about you?  Except... I really think you suck!  I mean, you're slimy,  you are green, you sort of act like a fruit, but you aren't sweet at all.  I can never tell when you are ripe.  The only thing you are good for is for sticking toothpick in and making a tree thing grow.

I'm not a fan of avocados.  

So maybe I can be forgiven for being sceptic at the idea of combining chocolate with the slippery avocado. 

Then a friend told me about this chocolate pudding recipe I had to try.  I thought  why not.  It's been over a year since I attempted to eat an avocado, so why not give it another go.

chocolate avocado pudding with avocado heart

 The link to the recipe I used is: Chocolate Avocado Pudding Recipe.  The 6Tbs of milk (which can be vegan milk substitute to make this a vegan friendly treat) adds up to just over 1/3 cup.  But I used half that and got a nice consistency.

There's no cooking, so good to serve to raw food people.  Just get stuff into blender, blitz.  Try and get stuff out of blender into bowl without eating it all.

stick some sticks on the pit and put it in water like this, should make a tree.

My thoughts on this recipe: It's very, very rich!  Exactly the right consistency  but a bit sweet for me.  Given the age of my blender, it was a bit difficult to get every bit of avocado blended.  But all in all, not a bad dessert.  

Affordable cooking?  Not really but not terrible. About $1 for the avocado, another dollars worth of maple syrup, and almost a third dollar of other ingredients .. given that it made enough for one, or possible two people, it seems a bit steep. 

As far as chocolate puddings go, it is a pretty healthy alternative.

Sourdough Pancakes Recipe with optional Strawberries in balsamic glaze

Pancake Tuesday needs something a bit beyond the regular old powder from a box kind of griddle cake.  So today, I decided to make sourdough pancakes.

Sourdough pancakes with strawberries in a balsamic glaze
Ops,
I realized the butter kind of melted while I was taking the photo,
oh well, tastes just as good.

I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of pancakes.  American style pancakes are too sweet and fluffy.  The British ones, all flat like thick crepes that you eat rolled up with lemon and sugar, are just too big a serving size for me.  And just about any pancake are too heavy and too many.  The recipes make too much and encourage me to eat and eat and eat!

So over the last three days, I spent almost all my spare time searching for a sourdough pancake recipe that I would enjoy eating.  And what did I find?  Recipes that made way too many pancakes.

I decided to come up with my own recipe.  I wanted a runnier batter as a nod to the English Pancakes of my youth, but something that still resembled drop scones and American style pancakes.  This is what I came up with.  This will feed two greedy super-hungry people, or up to four more reserved people.  Makes just the right amount for 3 people in my opinion, with a couple of cakes left over for seconds.

The key to this is to have your sourdough sponge (or runny starter) at room temperature and well fed.  If you are making this in the morning, feed it the night before.

Sourdough Pancakes

1/2 cup sourdough sponge, active and bubbly, not too stiff.
1/2 cup milk (or milk like liquid  if you like rice milk or soy milk or whatever)
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 Tbs melted butter
1/2 tsp maple syrup
pinch salt
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 tsp water

just about time to flip now

• In a medium bowl, mix together all but the baking soda/water. It will be a bit runnier than regular pancake batter.
• Heat up the frying pan/griddle.  Make sure it's nice and hot so that when a splash of batter hits the pan it starts to cook right away, but not so hot that the grease smokes.  Speaking of grease.  I'm of the firm opinion that pancakes taste best when cooked in lard.  I like to use a mixture of about 4 parts lard and 1 part butter to grease my griddle.  But to each their own.
• When the griddle is ready and everything else is ready, mix the dissolved baking soda into the batter.
• Now ladle, spoon, poor out your batter into the pan.  Keep in mind these will spread out a bit more than you may be use to, so leave room between the cakes.  
• When the bubbles burst and don't close up again, flip the cakes.  It will take about 30 seconds to a min for them to cook on the other side.
• You can serve them as you cook them or stick them in the oven (at about 250F) to keep warm while you finish cooking the rest, then serve them all together.  

Affordable cooking: YES.  I estimate it would be at most $1 for the entire batter, so that's somewhere between 25cent to 50 cent per person.  

But it really goes better with fruit.  Since Pancake Tuesday is out of season for most fruit, add another $1 per person, then maybe a couple of rashers of bacon, so for a complete meal, including toppings, I would give about $1.50 to $2 per person.  You can cut this down a lot if you use fruit that are in season.  Maybe make an apple and rhubarb stew with a touch of honey and nutmeg instead of the strawberries imported from the other side of the world (I'm not proud of that part, but it's a holiday, and I almost never buy fruit out of season).

Here's a simple and rather healthy way to make strawberries taste amazing.  I think the first time I saw this is on a Nigella Lawson cooking show.  It may seem weird to combine these two together, but give it a shot.  Even The Ancient with his excessively sweet tooth gobbles this up like it's made of sugar.  

Strawberry side dish for pancakes

Strawberries (at least two berries per person)

Balsamic vin

• cut the strawberries into fairly small chunks, make them irregular shapes to maximize on the surface area.
• drizzle a small amount of balsamic vin on the strawberries
• mix
• if you put too much vin, add a tiniest pinch of salt, and mix again
• let it sit for at least five min while you cook the pancakes
• done

It is so sweet and so easy.

Sugaring on the farm

We live on the west coast of Canada.  It can be very beautiful here, the winters are obscenely green.  This year is nothing special, with only a light dusting of snow one morning, enough to shut down half the city.  If we didn't have the alpacas in the yard, we would have to mow the law every week.

When I hear about the snow storms in the rest of the country, I have have great envy (I love shovelling the driveway) and I often wonder if this little island is really part of the Nation of Canada.  We don't eat French Fry Soup, we have to drive forever if we want to go skiing, and maple syrup?  Well, what's that?

Alrigh, alright, we know what maple syrup is.  It's that very expensive stuff they ship from back east.  Tastes like liquid heaven.  It comes out of a tree like this:

Well, the other day I saw some Vancouver Island maple syrup for sale.  Vancouver Island maple Syrup?  I laugh a little.  Where you going to get the sap?  From Big Leaf Maples?

Yes, exactly, that's exactly where the sap came from.

The syrup from the Big Leaf Maple is more flavourful than regular (number 1) syrup from Back East.  It tastes like it has melted butter in it, and just a hint of lemon.  It's really amazing.

So, why not make my own?  I have a couple of acres of woodlot, and the local shop sells spiles.  So, into the woods I went.

From 4 trees I'm getting about half a gallon to a gallon of sap a day.  I bring it home and boil it down.

I'm using my maslin pan which is narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, specifically designed for boiling down jam.

An then, by the end of the day...

It's more sugary than regular maple syrup, so I might have boiled it down too much.  Oh well.  It's not going to last long.

Sort-of Sorted Brioche

I do not know what is more attractive, a man who loves cooking or a British accent. Lucky for me I don't have to choose.

The fellows at Sorted, a rather impressive cooking site, show how easy and manly it is to love creating food. They even have their own cook book, Beginners Get ... Sorted .  I can't wait to try some more of their recipes.


Since I'm in the middle of a bread obsession right now, I started with a Brioche recipe.  Although, probably not the correct definition, a brioche is a sweet, light, eggy bread that tastes FANTASTIC!

I made a few changes to mine (oh, golly, gosh, gee, you say?).

Making this brioche all started when I saw dried pineapple in the store.  I thought to myself, Mmmmm... sure apricot goes well with chocolate but pineapple would be exactly that holiday flavour I'm looking for.  

I also have not yet found a chocolate chip that tastes good and has no soy, so I got a dark chocolate bar and  chopped it into chunks.

Most of the chocolates from Denman Island Chocolates are soy free and tastes amazing, just like chocolate should.  It's my first time cooking with it like this, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  The taste is more intense than I remember chocolate chips being, so I wouldn't put as much chocolate in it as the recipe calls for.

While I was mixing up the dough I felt that it needed some vanilla extract.  Only when I got to the cupboard, there was also almond extract - so I used half a tsp of each.

I don't have any sugar in the house right now (Almost never do, except for the hummingbirds) so I used an equal amount (by volume) of maple syrup instead. 

The other thing I didn't use is a mixer.  

Sure, I have one, but I haven't used it in over two years.  I just find cooking by hand to be so much more satisfying.  The mixer is currently in the pile of things to sell, although mixing this by hand is giving me cause to reconsider.  

Check out the Sorted site and the video for brioche when you have a chance.  

I look forward to making more goodies from their site.  Just in case they are reading this, please do some recipes with chestnuts!  

Allergy friendly: as I've shown, the filling can be changed easy enough, but people with egg and yeast allergies as well as on glutin free diets should probably avoid this one.

Vegan friendly: not easy to make this vegan due to butter and eggs playing such a vital part in the structure of the bread.  But some kinds of vegetarians might be able to enjoy this - check before you bake this for them.