Food thread

[HBS Guy]

No they don’t—where would the tomato plants go?

[johnsmith]

That's not your garden, wogs have much more concrete ;)

it's not all concrete ...and i never said it's my garden.

[Gordy]

No they don’t—where would the tomato plants go?

Concrete planter toughs :)

[johnsmith]

No they don’t—where would the tomato plants go?

Concrete planter toughs :)

rubbish ... no real italian would use those unless they lived in a unit and wanted to grow tomatoes on their verandah

[pinkeye]

Concrete tubs (the old style laundry washing tubs with 2 tubs, are fantastic planters.

I don't own a BBQ.

If I cook outside I generally use an open wood fire. If I cook inside I use GAS. Occasionally I use a camp stove, powered by those little bottled gas canisters. That only happens when my house Bottled gas runs out in the middle of cooking. SIGH.

Of course Bottled gas only runs out when you are using it. That is ALMOST ALWAYS in the middle of a shower, or cooking dinner.

[HBS Guy]

No gas in Tassie.

A niece suggested I buy a big gas bottle and buy a gas stove, said that would be cheaper.

I made a note of that in the design brief for the house. Think that would be for the cooktop only.

I am more concerned to get the oven and grill at eye height—not getting any younger and the stove under the cooktop is not ideal!

[Gordy]

No they don’t—where would the tomato plants go?

Concrete planter toughs :)

rubbish ... no real italian would use those unless they lived in a unit and wanted to grow tomatoes on their verandah

Actually, something I've seen a couple of times in Haberfield and Leichhardt (wogsville) is where the entire garden was concreted over with rows of concrete troughs then entire length of a huge 1/4 acres block.

[Gordy]

:bgrin Concrete tubs (the old style laundry washing tubs with 2 tubs, are fantastic planters.

I don't own a BBQ.

If I cook outside I generally use an open wood fire. If I cook inside I use GAS. Occasionally I use a camp stove, powered by those little bottled gas canisters. That only happens when my house Bottled gas runs out in the middle of cooking. SIGH.

Of course Bottled gas only runs out when you are using it. That is ALMOST ALWAYS in the middle of a shower, or cooking dinner.

I cook on the Weber 4 nights a week I reckon, couldn't live without it.

[johnsmith]

No they don’t—where would the tomato plants go?

Concrete planter toughs :)

rubbish ... no real italian would use those unless they lived in a unit and wanted to grow tomatoes on their verandah

Actually, something I've seen a couple of times in Haberfield and Leichhardt (wogsville) is where the entire garden was concreted over with rows of concrete troughs then entire length of a huge 1/4 acres block.

they must be those wogs from the north

[HBS Guy]

Looking forward to Thai fish cakes: made the cucumber relish, hmmm tasty, dip the cakes in there ooohhhhh so gooooood!

weight out, prepared etc 60g snake beans. OK, fish, egg, red curry paste, errr fish! Frantic hunt through the fridge, fish fish. . .oh shit—accidentally put the fish in the freezer.

Sandwiches for dinner tonight! With truffled salami, maybe grilled cheese, pancetta, tomato and olive? think I will survive.

Beans and cucumber relish will survive one night in the fridge.

[pinkeye]

Looking forward to Thai fish cakes: made the cucumber relish, hmmm tasty, dip the cakes in there ooohhhhh so gooooood!

weight out, prepared etc 60g snake beans. OK, fish, egg, red curry paste, errr fish! Frantic hunt through the fridge, fish fish. . .oh shit—accidentally put the fish in the freezer.

Sandwiches for dinner tonight! With truffled salami, maybe grilled cheese, pancetta, tomato and olive? think I will survive.

Beans and cucumber relish will survive one night in the fridge.

Yep it happens.

[HBS Guy]

Yup.

[HBS Guy]

Eating a belated meal of Thai fishcakes

[pinkeye]

Since receiving my upper denture, food has been most problematic.

The food I'd normally cook has become a goal , and I had my first bit of actual steak the other night. A little bit of eye-fillet , combined with a couple of Brown mushrooms. It was YUM.. and I'm getting better at handling these new choppers. But, I have been leaning on soft stuff, pretty much. Have cooked some mind-blowingly good Barra. Oh Oh...
So anyway

Last night now I made myself a spicy fish veg and noodle soup.

I had 4 small sweet school whiting fillets...

I regularly make a tomato - based sauce, which has proven deliciously versatile. Its just tomatoes, which I chop up and add to fried shallot, chilli, ginger, curry leaf, and this time turmeric. With the usual black pepper and salt. A bit of garlic chives.. A bit of water added.. some raw sugar,, and there you go. Simmer down and use as a base for more dishes.

I have a neighbour who has given me some of the most gorgeous Tahitian limes, and so I decided, rather than make an Italian style pasta dish, I'd make this soup, using the aforementioned tomato base, adding lime juice, dash of fish sauce, some green beans and a bit of zucchini , using Spaghettini ( Barilla)... finer, and cooks in 5 mins max. Didn't need ANY additional chilli Whilst preparing soup have Whiting sitting in lime squeezes and b lack pepper.

Just sauteed the green veg in a little bit of sauce and water... till nice and SOFT, added the rest of the sauce, the dash of fish sauce, and a sprinkle of cumin, and simmer. Cook noodles (spag) and also place whiting into soupy sauce to just simmer oh so lightly.

Put herbs from garden... Thai Coriander and Viet mint, a squeeze of Lime juice into bowl, lightly drain off noodles and add to bowl. Then add gorgeous fish and soup top with more herbs and devour.

That was SO GOOD.

[HBS Guy]

French onion soup some time this weekend. Tomorrow to Willunga Farmers Market to see if I can find some decent stock—Campbell’s stocks are tasteless crap.

What stock should I go for, beef seems the one most recommended.

[pinkeye]

French onion soup some time this weekend. Tomorrow to Willunga Farmers Market to see if I can find some decent stock—Campbell’s stocks are tasteless crap.

What stock should I go for, beef seems the one most recommended.

Well yeah I'd probably choose a beef stock, if everyone is a happy carnivore.

Actually.. late last night early this am I was cooking up a chicken soup/stock. Oh yum. Just two drumsticks.

I mean a spicy clearish soup. It had everything I adore plus, fresh torn up kaffir lime leaf, lime juice and zest, and homegrown lemongrass and chili...
by the time it was finished I just picked out the bones, and made myself put what was left into two separate containers, and froze them.
That took A LOT of willpower.

[HBS Guy]

[pinkeye]

:bgrin

oh yeah.
Tonight I sauteed some thinly sliced zucchini in soy sauce... and added one of my chicken stock containers. I added some spaghettini ... and voila' .....

yummiest chicken noodle soup.

[HBS Guy]

My sister says she eats a lot of eggs so just before I left for Tassie I bought chicken eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs and put them in the fridge. She didn’t eat the quail eggs for some reason, too fiddly or some other weird hippy-shit reason.

I see some very thin pasta, vermicelli maybe, cooked with a sauce made from little bit garlic, a shallot or two, passata. Put the pasta on the plates, make some little pockets in it and pop a peeled softboiled quail egg.

Do you know how HARD it is to neatly peel a boiled quail egg? Almost impossible! Fragile!

[HBS Guy]

Lovely breakfast of dry roasted cherry toms, ’shrooms, bread with 2 slices smoked salmon, poached egg. Now having a cup of coffee then on to the Farmers Market. Need bread, some fruit and see what else is on offer. Love the fig and fennel sourdough!

[johnsmith]

Lovely breakfast of dry roasted cherry toms, ’shrooms, bread with 2 slices smoked salmon, poached egg. Now having a cup of coffee then on to the Farmers Market. Need bread, some fruit and see what else is on offer. Love the fig and fennel sourdough!

had pancakes for brekkie today ... I like mine with just a sprinkling of icing sugar

[HBS Guy]

Lemon juice then sugar?

Got some lovely rich beef stock at the FM.

Also picked up the big screen print “tusker fish” I paid for last week because it wasn’t windy. (big heavy framed/glassed print, gust of wind and $300 is lying in bits on the road.)

The print:

[HBS Guy]

French onion soup is nearly ready, just 30 minutes more simmering then toast some slices baguette with grated gruyere cheese and serve. Bit of work!

Recipe: https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/browse-all/french-onion-soup-8664

[HBS Guy]

I had read rye flour was really good for this so tried it out.

Yesterday afternoon I mixed 1/4cup rye flour and a little more than a quarter cup tap water, beat well with a fork.

This morning—bubbles, yet the kitchen counter was cold overnight! (I would have done this earlier but for going to Tassie.) Going to be a great starter!

This weekend—home made sourdough I reckon!

Since I started with rye flour, an all rye sourdough sounds good to me! Maybe with fennel seeds and chopped up bits of dried figs, love fig and fennel sourdough!

Might split the starter one time after feeding it, have a rye and a wheat (well, nearly all wheat) starter.

I am going to add twice the amount of starter to each batch than I have before, get a bit more “oven spring.” Try it anyway.

Might make a 50% bigger batch of dough, hack off the 50% extra and leave it, covered, on the kitchen counter for a week, make that the starter for the next batch. That should put the sour into sourdough! (cheats add vinegar, bah!)

Sourdough is made mainly by lactic bacteria—these are on and in the grain. There is a yeast, not the friendly Saccharomyces cerevisiae that is brewers’ (ale brewers, lager brewers use a different type of yeast) and bakers’ yeast but one that is acid tolerant that eventually joins the party.

A sourdough starter needs to be fed daily if on the kitchen counter or weekly if you keep it in the fridge, don’t feed it and it dies, just like us but a lot quicker. You can freeze a portion of starter.

Another yeast or bacteria, can’t remember which, drops in VERY much uninvited and puts a smell like nail polish remover—you can only throw out the starter, it is dead as a starter.

Alcohol can also build up in a starter, also no bloody good. To avoid this, an active starter is constantly reduced to a small amount then fed again and built up by feeding it more flour and water. The water should be spring water or distilled water but I use tap water with no problems, li’l bit chlorine no huge hassle, bugs are tough!

I always put seeds on the outside of my bread, good for your gut. Probably fennel seeds for this first batch since it is fig and fennel.

“Oven Spring” happens when you put leavened dough into a warm oven: the CO2 bubbles expand and the bugs breed really fast for a while, a microscopic orgy if they reproduced sexually. For this reason bakers (real bakers, not factories making bread substitute) slash the top of the loaves: the outside of the loaf of dough is a bit dryer and harder than the inside, so slash the top and the fresh dough on the inside can rise through the slashes. Except rye—it doesn’t rise in the oven, lovely dense but leavened bread, full of flavor, the staff of life!

[Dax]

Making your own bread is an excellent idea, have been doing it for many decades and would never buy commercial bread, like my good health to much. Grind my own flour mostly from organic grains and grow a bit of wheat for the fun of it, it's so easy to grow. Also use a variety of different flours to give the bread some different flavours, but it's my neighbour who is the king of bread making. She is a wizard at it and being a European chef, makes unbelievable meals, all using no diaries, meats, salts, sugar or purchased condiments. She grinds her own herbs and spices, is also the drummer in our band. Have an agreement with her, when I'm home, look after the maintenance of her car, house and land. She cooks lots of meals for me and they are so good. She grew up in communist Hungary, so had no diaries in her life, or processed foods. Did her chef training in Hungary then escaped to Germany, where she really learnt to cook.

The amount of money you save using proper ingredients, instead of soul and health destroying chemical junk, is a lot over a year. Takes 10 minutes to make real bread, mix it, let it sit for an hour to rise, then throw it in the oven and an hour later bread. Make 2-3 loafs at a time, which lasts me a couple of weeks by myself.