Category Archives: Cooking

Never-Ending

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Even though I have consistently decluttered for several years there are always random things that elude several attempts.

031These 3 little bottles of food colouring were in my pantry until tonight.  I have overlooked them each time I have cleaned out my pantry.  Tonight I opened the wire drawer to get out black pepper to season our dinner and saw these bottles of food colouring with fresh eyes.  I do not use it in any baking and it is a long time since I have made play dough or anything else that I may wish to colour so they went straight in the bin.  The fact that all of the “ingredients” are numbers made me even more certain that there is no way that I would ever use them again.

What have you decluttered lately?  Anything that should have been binned a long time previously?

Home-made Hummus

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I was recently reading a discussion about home-made hummus and what constituted the perfect result.  I realised that I was unable to contribute very little to the discussion as I do not usually measure any of the ingredients as it is all done by taste.

When I made another batch I was careful to measure the ingredients and write down the method and here it is.

HUMMUS

1 1/2 cups dried chickpeas
3 cloves garlic (roasted)
1 large lemon (zest and juice)
60ml olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon smoky paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
1 heaped tablespoon peanut paste

Cover the chickpeas with 4 cups boiling water and soak for 4 hours.  Drain chickpeas, place in saucepan and add fresh water.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 hours or until tender.  Drain chickpeas and place in blender/food processor with garlic, lemon juice, lemon zest and oil and blend until smooth.  Add spices and peanut paste and blend.  If mixture is too thick add a little water or more oil/lemon juice if you prefer.

NOTES:  I always roast the garlic as I found the flavour is sweeter and more subtle.  I use about 1/4 cup lemon juice which is the yield from 1 of our lemons.  The peanut paste is used instead of tahini which I do not particularly like.  I use one made from freshly ground peanuts with no additives.  The salt is important to release the other flavours.  I use pink Himalayan salt.  Although I make my hummus using dried chickpeas you could also use canned chickpeas.  You would probably need 2 cans for the quantity in the recipe.

There is no right or wrong way to make hummus – it really is a matter of personal taste.

Dried chickpeas

001Chickpeas soaking

002Chickpeas ready to cook

005The final result

009This recipe makes a substantial quantity.  It keeps quite well in the fridge for a week or can be frozen.

Do you make hummus?  Any personal tips or tricks?

More Dehydrating

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Dehydrating seems to happen in fits and starts around here but I am on a roll at the moment.

My brother-in-law recently gave me a piece of home-grown ginger and I had used a little of it when I decided to try drying the remainder.

I carefully peeled it and then sliced the ginger root fairly thinly.  Here it is spread on the tray of the dehydrator.

004The process did not take too long at all. Four hours later it was dried to a crisp.

006The final step was to grind the dried slices to powder in the spice-grinder attachment of my food processor.

008It has a beautiful, pungent odour which is quite different to the purchased spices.  Next time I think I will cut the slices into slivers before I dry them and store as slivers which will be great for adding to stir-fries.

Dehydrate & Downsize

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I don’t use my dehydrator as much as I could but after my recent success of drying onion and making onion powder I decided to experiment a little further.

2015-07-29 01The labels on the commercial stock powder in the pantry reveal that the two main vegetable ingredients are onion and celery so I am planning to have a go at making my own stock powder. There is celery growing in the garden in abundance so I decided to try drying some.

001Here are the four trays filled with the stalks and leaves ready for drying.

And the final result…………

001Here is a tiny Vegemite jar which is about 3/4 filled with 37g (a little over 1 ounce) of powdered dried celery.  This is the yield from a full (albeit small) bunch of celery from our garden.  Along with some of the onion powder, this is the beginning of my home-made stock powder.

The space-saving advantages of dehydrating are amazing.  I am sure some things lend themselves to this process better than others and I am keen to discover other ways I can use the dehydrator.  One of the next things on my list is ginger.

Do you have a dehydrator?  What have you dried in it?

Kitchen News

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Tonight I have a quick update on the subjects of the last couple of posts.

The dehydrated onion has now been ground and here is the result.

2015-07-29 01This is a 450g Vegemite jar which is about 3/4 full.

While the powdered onion can be used as is, it is actually part of a bigger plan that I have.  I hope to make my own vegetable stock powder and have noted that the commercial varieties have onion powder and celery powder as two of the main ingredients.  Since I have celery growing quite profusely at the moment I plan to try dehydrating some celery, including the leaves as they have the strongest flavour.  Watch this space for more on the progress of this venture.

On the appliance front, we took some time on Monday to look for a new microwave oven.  We have chosen one and I am going to buy it tomorrow.

Finally, I am hoping to collect the breadmaker which has been offered to us on the weekend.

Onion Tears

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Do the tears flow when you start cutting up onions?  Here is a way to minimise the suffering in the long-term.2015-07-27 01I bought this 10kg bag of onions last weekend for $7.99.  I shared a couple of kilos with a friend and had used a few myself but today it was time to prepare them.  I peel and quarter the onions before chopping them in lots using the food processor.

First I filled the four trays of the dehydrator.

2012-02-02 01When the onion is thoroughly dried I will grind it to make flakes/powder.  It takes up very little space and stores well.

I bagged the remainder of the chopped onions in as many ziplock bags as I could muster.  I do not buy ziplock bags.  I collect mine through “dumpster diving”.  There are people in my office who bring 2 Weetbix to work for their breakfast in a brand new ziplock bag, tip them into a bowl and toss the bag in the bin.  If I open the bin and the discarded bag is on the top I simply bring it home and wash it for reuse.

Anyway, I digress – the chopped onion is in ziplock bags.  I pack 150g which is equivalent to a medium onion in the small bags and 300g in the larger bags.  I ended up with 10 small packs and 7 large packs of diced onion.  Because I packed the diced onion fairly flat, it is easy to break off a section if you only want a small amount of onion.

2015-07-27 03I sliced the remaining onions by hand and they are packed in the red lidded container.

This means that that I will not need to chop or slice an onion for several months.

End of Life

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Before you start offering condolences, it is not a person but a couple of my kitchen appliances.

In the past week or two both the microwave and breadmaker have ceased to function.  GMan and I are planning to go to the appliance store tomorrow to purchase a new microwave.  I have previously had a Panasonic and from what I can see from my research we will probably buy another similar one this time.

Through the wonders of social media I have discovered that a friend has an unwanted breadmaker languishing in a cupboard which she has kindly offered to me.  I am not sure when our paths will cross so in the meantime GMan decided to have a go at mixing the dough using the dough hook on the KitchenAid mixer and baking it in the oven.

I think this is what success looks like.

2015-07-26 02He baked it in this cast iron Dutch oven.

2015-07-26 01It is a little more time-consuming than the ‘set and forget’ breadmaker but will suffice until we replace the breadmaker.

Although we have managed to bake bread and create meals using alternative methods, there is no doubt that both the breadmaker and microwave definitely have a place in my kitchen.  In fact, I would not hesitate to replace most of my appliances as they perform a valuable function.

What about your appliances?

Gluten-Free Pasta – An Update

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post about making my own gluten-free pasta which includes the recipe.

004The fettucine and lasagne sheets were packaged and frozen for later use.

003I made a large dish of lasagne last week and GMan declared that it was really good.  That is high praise indeed, especially since he can happily eat conventional pasta if he wishes.

Tonight was the big test when I boiled the fettucine to add to sliced sauages in a spicy sauce.  I made sure the water was at a rolling boil and I added the frozen bundles of pasta.  Once it had come back to the boil it was only about 2 minutes until the pasta was ready.  My worst fears of a gluggy mass at the bottom of the saucepan were not realised and I will definitely continue to make my own gluten-free pasta.

No Waste

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One of the challenges of growing your own food is dealing with the gluts of produce which invariably occur.

The issue today was passionfruit.  We planted a passionfruit vine about 18 months ago and in now covers a large section of the perimeter fence of the chicken run.  For several weeks now I having been collecting and eating passionfruit almost every day but today I decided to store some for when there are no fresh ones available.

001My efforts yielded 2 trays of passionfruit pulp to be frozen and stored for later use.

The vine appears to have 2 different types of fruit on it.  One of them is a common purple passionfruit but the other are much larger and are yellow when ripe  and the pulp is a very bright orange and has a somewhat different flavour.  You can see the different skins in the compost bucket in the following photo.

002These will go back in the compost and eventually be added to the garden beds to grow more food.

Made from Scratch

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I have previously written a post about making your own pasta from scratch.  Barely 6 months after I wrote this post I made the decision to eat a gluten-free diet for the sake of my health.  The pasta making attachment has languished at the back of the pantry and I keep promising myself that I will try making my own gluten-free pasta.  Well yesterday was finally the day.

After searching the internet and using some ideas gained through making other gluten dough such as pizza bases, I decided to give it a try.

Here is my recipe:

2 cups gluten-free flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
10g psyllium husk
3 eggs
25ml water
25 ml olive oil

2012-01-31 01Combine the dry ingredients, add the eggs and then gradually add the water and oil.  The mixture will not roll into a ball as it does if using wheat flour but it should be damp enough that you can squeeze it together in your hand.  Mix thoroughly for about 3 minutes.  Cover bowl with a damp teatowel to retain the moisture and work as quickly as possible.

Take a small ball of dough and knead well in your hands, press out into a thick disc and feed through the pasta roller on thickest setting.  The dough will crumble but persevere and do it several times until the dough starts to feed through in sheets.  Continue to fold and feed through until you have a good consistency and then feed it through progressively thinner settings.

003Once you have the thickness that you want you can cut it into lasagne sheets or attempt the next step of making fettucine.004It is certainly more difficult to make than conventional pasta but I am hoping it will be worth the effort.  Both the lasagne sheets and fettucine have been frozen so the final verdict will be when they are cooked.  I am very confident that the lasagne will be successful but I will have to wait and see with the fettucine.

Based on what I have done so far, I would say that this has been a worthwhile exercise and I will tweak the recipe further if required.

Watch this space………..