Durum Does The Trick!!!

The constant mention of whole wheat durum wheat flour made me wonder where in the world I would source a steady stream of this if I wanted to keep to the purists version of pasta.
Turns out the answer was very close to home, less than a km away.
Durum wheat is characterized as a 'hard' wheat, very similar if not actually what we call rava. Not surprised that wiki had a nice write-up about it here. The question was how to get this ground fine. The home blender did not do a great job and rightly so. Rava is fairly hard and does not powder like sugar crystals do. The neighbourhood miller stepped in and helped out here. I got a kilo done to see what would happen.
Recipe's call for a water:semolina flour ration of 1:2. That was a little over considering how quickly rava absorbs water when making upma. The resultant dough was soft and very pliable - not fit for rolling in the pasta machine. Since the idea was to experiment, I went ahead and added about a cup of normal wheat flour. Rolling this out was a breeze. I made the easiest of the lo - fettucini with prawn and tomato's. Simple and wholesome. The garnish was some agriforma that was lying around waiting for something like this.
Moral - this is THE pasta flour to use. No going back to anything else for a while. Next stop, penne. Not sure how it'll hold up, but worth a try.

Dried Tomato flavoured Havarti

The posting here mentioned 3 new havarti's created in July. My initial plan was to age them around 2 weeks to see what would happen. Part of the excitement in getting the recipe fairly correct was tempered by a miscalculation in the salt content.

Consequence was the cheese took on a slightly different flavour about 2 weeks after drying and went its own way when it was cut nearly 3 months later. What was great was the ageing process produced lovely holes in the cheese as well as a bit of sharpness in taste which was well balanced with the creamy nature of havarti.

I was able to correct the salt content later on in another batch that should be ready by early December. This one though would need to be saved by some table salt added before eating.
The cheese experiments continue

My First Cheese Cake

Cream cheese is a weakness, especially the Philly style that you can slather on fresh onion bagels. With the missus busy with her glass, I realized there was a tub of cream cheese waiting for its bagels. with time running out, I decided to bite the sugar bullet.
Me and sweets, especially cakes are poles apart. I excuse myself at the ubiquitous birthday celebrations at work citing a dislike of commercial butter cream. At home however, temptations rule, especially cheesy ones.
The time also coincided with breaking open the second of four havarti's - this one flavoured with cracked pepper.
To prevent any further digression, lets talk about the cream cheese. The tub sized quantity and late night work was all I needed to try my hand at a cheese cake recipe. 11pm is probably not the right time to hunt for ingredients. You pretty much pick what you have. Here's a basic recipe that I used

For the base
1 packet of biscuits - the plain ones. Marie are the best, but I made do with the missus' tea biscuits
2tbsp melted butter

For the filling
The tub of cream cheese
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp coffee liqueur

Method
Crush the biscuits into a rough powder and mix in the butter to form a rough mixture. Press this into a spring form cake pan. Bake at 180C for 10mts. Remove and cool till base reaches room temperature
Mix the cream cheese and milk together to loosen the cheese. whip on low setting till the mixture takes on the consistency of a semi solid batter. Add in the sugar slowly and continue whipping till all is dissolved. Add the eggs and liqueur and beat to a smooth mixture. Pour this over the base and bake at 150C for 40mts or till the centre of the mix is firm to touch. Refrigerate for a couple of hours and eat cold - a cheese cake at room temperature is just awful tasting.
The tasting session the next morning elicited wide eyes from the missus, always a good sign for the husband.

New Cow, New Cheese

With the summer setting in, milk production somehow seems to get scarce in the local 'dairies' (if you could call them that). I was curtly shut out by my regular lady. She mentioned something about not having any extra milk to sell. Considering she sells about 300+litres, I guessed she didn't want me around. With that, my cheesemaking came to an abrupt halt. Not that I was into it full time, but the occasional Saturday or Sunday would be spent anxiously hovering around the milk vessel to make sure temperatures and times were adhered to.

Recently, I bumped into one of those cycle-borne milkmen - the kind that were in abundance when we were kids. I managed to strike a deal on sourcing a gallon every weekend. I've been sourcing for the last 3 weeks and have a pretty tidy collection going - feta, mozzarella and a couple of flavoured havarti's ageing in the refrigerator. Looking forward to at least 1 havarti a week for the next couple of months along with some cream cheese once in a while. The 3 month ageing for havarti's should be perfect. That way, I have one roll of Havarti a week for the next few months. Pure JOY!!!

Passion Fruit Curd

Fruit curd is sinful, plain and simple. You're using copious amounts of cholestrol-filled ingredients and topping it with generous helpings of sugar.

The complicated taste however is definitely worth a few spoons on a cracker. We had a large number of passion fruit land up at home, courtesy of a generous grower. The first thing that came to mind was to dunk them in some potent spirits and let them stew for a couple of weeks. A majority of the fruits went into glass bottles drowned in vodka to rest for a couple of weeks.
The remainder aged in their place till they had to be either eaten or thrown away.

The idea for passion fruit curd came from a recipe on Meeta Weimar's website. She has an amazing blog with some pretty recipes. I doubt I'd have the patience to make her cakes and biscuits simply because I'm not into it at this point. What caught my attention was her recipe for fruit curd. It looked crazily simple and the wife confirmed the same.

Here is what I finally used

1 egg (the recipe asks for yolk)
2 passion fruit pulp
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter

Method

1. whisk the egg thoroughly to make sure the whites are not separate. You want the mass to be as homogeneous as possible. Create a double boiler where only the steam from the water heats the vessel with the egg and stir continously

2. Add the sugar and pulp and continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

3. Remove from the heat and add the butter. Mix to blend in the butter. The recipe asks for chilled butter, but I just used normal home made butter that was at room temperature

4. Once the mixture has cooled down to room temperature, transfer to a container and chill.

This is best eaten with a fruit bread or something that allows the taste of the citrus curd to mix with a bland base. All I had at hand were some strawberries which I drizzled the curd over. Lovely smooth taste with the crunch of the passion fruit seeds.

You could supposedly try this with any citrus fruit. Its a great appetizer to have with even plain bread.

Pita Pita

Pita's are probably the simplest breads to make. They're quick and you can have them on the table in about 3 hours flat. Simple veggies, preferably the salad types slathered with some amazingly simple dipping sauces - hummus, babaganoush, tzaziki and muhammarah are some of the common complements.
I'd made pita's about 5 years ago but was disappointed with the irregular pockets that it developed. I believe my rolling has improved since then and I can roll out a chapathi fairly evenly.
I decided to do a wheat mix, not so much to make this healthy than to have a better texture to the bread. Here's the recipe for the pita I made

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flower
1 cup water, warmed to a little higher than ambient
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp instant yeast

Mix all the ingredients till they come together. You can vary the water to suit your mix. What you need in the end is a slightly wet ball of dough. Let this double in size (about 1hr for me). Knock the dough back down, make equal size of balls (a little larger than golf ball size) and place them under a wet towel allowing them to rest for 10 mts. Pre heat the oven to the highest temperature possible (250C for me). If you have a stone, that would be perfect. I have a stoneware tava that I used upside down.
Roll out the ball of dough to the thickness of a paratha and cook in the oven for between 3-4mts. Take out the pita and place them in a paper bag for them to retain the moisture and remain soft for a while.

I made the muhammara sauce by eyeballing the ingredients - roasted red bell peppers, toasted pecans (can use walnuts), bread crumbs, garlic, olive oil & salt. The only ingredient that required a bit of prep was the pomegranate syrum that I created by slowly boiling pom juice over 15mts. Whip these in the blender till you get a smooth paste.

I created the pita pocket by just cutting through the middle of the bread.
Slather the sauce into the pita pocket and add basically any veggie you can find. I had some left over chickpea and gherkins along with a bit of thick curd.

Mungaru Male - Runny Nose & All

The unofficial announcement of the arrival of the south-west monsoons has happened - cloudy days, intermittent rain, wet apparel on the clothes lines and runny noses. Chicken soup comes to mind as a natural remedy in such situations. However, I wasnt keen on a heavy meaty broth early in the morning. Decided I'd try something lighter and quicker to make.
We've had some very good peaches available in the market over the last few weeks. They cost a packet, but taste divine. With our whacky ideas, a couple of them were dunked in vodka to infuse over the next few weeks. We've got a batch of coffee liquor and passion fruit in progress. Looks like we'll have a fair variety to choose from when the rains are in full swing.
Back to the morning preperations. I've never been a tea person, but with left over fruit offal (peach skin), I thought I'd make an exception. A peach tea seemed a good idea with muggy weather for company. Here's the recipe

2 cups water
1/2 cup peach skins (you can use the peach flesh, but I think thats a waste of expensive fruit)
1 tsp tea (any variety is fine)

Add the water to the peach skins and bring to a simmer. Add the tea and let simmer for 5mts, strain. Add a touch of honey (not too much, honey overpowers prety much anything else) and drink!

Sultry Summers - A time to wrap

The monsoons are on the horizon and Bangalore is feeling it. With cloudy mornings, muggy days and thundershowers in the evening, lunches are a simple affair at home, more so Sunday lunches.
The idea today was to make something simple and light. The first thought that crossed my mind was a burrito. But with no beans available, we settled for an alternate - tortilla chips.
Tortilla chips and salsa are as addictive as congress peanuts. Memories of the Mexican restaurants in the US are of unending bowls of chips and salsa accompanying spicy burritos, re-fried beans and guacamole.The tortilla chip seems fairly simple to make - you deep fry triangle-shaped pieces of corn tortilla's and whip up a quick salsa with ripe tomato's, jalapeno's, lemon juice and coriander.
We've got a few kilo's of ground corn flour that was made fresh at the mill near home. Looking up recipes, we decided to make the chip from scratch. It somehow did not work out as advertised in the recipes on the net. We landed up with something resembling brittle porridge, refusing to stick together in order to roll these into tortillas. We settled for polenta - seemed easier to make. The polenta will probably be breakfast tomorrow.
In all the rush to get the tortilla chips together, I decided to cut corners and make a quick wrap with lettuce, cheese and tomato's along with some freshly made chapathi's.
I made a quick layering sauce out of store-bought yogurt. Added to this the missus had some relish made last week. Turned out to be an amazing combination

Recipe for the spreading sauce
2 cups yoghurt
1tsp salt
1tsp dijon mustard (mine is still curing, so limited this to just 1tsp)
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp paprika powder
1/2 tsp pepper

Give all these a quick whisk and refrigerate about 30mts.

Smear the sauce on an open chapathi rolled out as thin as you can and add shredded lettuce, tomato's, cheese and relish. Fold like a wrap, and that's all there is to it.

The relish and yogurt makes things that extra bit nice.

Apple Cinnamon Shortbread Cookies

A couple of weeks ago I went into a baking overdrive. It was Swedish rye cookies and Carrot and Apple Shortbread cookies from 101recipies.com and two kinds of Jackfruit cakes – one with eggs and one without, all within an afternoon. The cookies were very good, but the Jackfruit cakes, I am still experimenting with. Anyway… the Carrot Apple shortbread cookies were a big hit with the family. The carrots however added only to the look and not the taste, so I decided on making cookies with only apples.
The recipe requires semolina flour and whole wheat pastry flour. I substituted chiroti rava to the semolina and Ashirwad Sharbati atta for the whole wheat flour, since the texture of the Sharbati wheat flour is smoother and softer than mill ground wheat flour. Instead of brown sugar I used grated light jaggery. Thanks to my messy kitchen which has teeny jars of leftovers from previous experiments, I saw the few teaspoons of cinnamon sugar which was previously used in the cinnamon buns. So I flattened out the dough into two rectangles about half an inch thick each and spread a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar on each of the rectangles. I then rolled the dough into tight logs and sealed the edges, covered them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for about an hour till they were hard enough to be cut. I baked the cookies for about 10 to 12 minutes till the cookies browned around the edges. Verdict - yum yum yum. For all the apple pie fans, this is a must bake.







Method:
Ingredients:
¼ cup semolina
1½ cups whole wheat flour
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup butter
½ cup peeled and grated apple
3 tsp cinnamon sugar


1. Sift together the flours, salt and baking powder and keep aside
2. Cream the butter and sugar using a hand mixer or a whisk till smooth and fluffy
3. Add the sifted flour mix and grated apple to this and mix it till it becomes a soft dough and knead for a couple of minutes till the dough comes together in a ball
4. Divide the dough into two and flatten each part into ½ inch thick rectangles either with a rolling pin or with your hands and sprinkle a teaspoon and a half of the cinnamon sugar evenly on each of the rectangles.
5. Roll the rectangle tightly along the longer side and seal the ends so that it forms a log.
6. Cover the logs well in a plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
7. Preheat the oven to 200 degree Celsius. Sprinkle some cornmeal, semolina or flour on a baking tray.
8. Remove the chilled logs from the fridge and cut it into ¼ inch thick slices.
9. Place the baking tray in the oven and reduce the temperature to 180 degree Celsius. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes till they slightly brown at the edges.

Makes about 3 dozen.

To make cinnamon sugar:
Mix 6 tablespoons of castor or very fine sugar with a teaspoon of finely ground cinnamon. Store in an airtight container

Sunday Lazies

Sundays are meant to be siesta filled. At least thats what a majority of folks seem to practice. With the cousin at home, that was excuse enough to get going with pizza's. Its been a while since we had them and considering my cheese-making's gone into cold storage for a while, I thought I'd get my hands dirty.
Peter Rheinhart mentions that pizza dough needs to be made a day in advance. Kinda late for that considering Saturday was eventful enough for a 10pm lights out. Had to make the most of what I had. Used normal flour, wheat and rye to get going. By 7am,I'd got my initial dough together and let this develop for the next 6 hrs.
The toppings were simple - milky mushroom (with hilarious packaging), green peppers & onions. The terracotta pan served as a stone.
The pizza's came out well done, the crust being a little chewy. A so-so effort I'd say considering pizza making is rocket science at home anymore.

Home Alone

With Rahul working late and Arnav away at his grandparents place, I got so engrossed reading that time just passed by without making the slightest of sounds. There was no desire of venturing out at 8:00 for a dinner out or ordering out, so I decided to do what the husband does - look into the refrigerator - see what has to be finished and then decide on the recipe. With carrots, radishes and some frozen peas, I thought about a salad with some leftover bread - dumped the idea as quickly as I thought about it since eating raw radishes wasn’t exactly my idea of pleasing the palate. The Sichuan pepper which I had been in search of for the past year and a half and finally found was staring at me accusingly stating that I hadn’t yet touched it after all that I went through to find it. So it was time to make the amazing Chinese five spice powder which was so freely available in all supermarkets in the US but you just can’t find here. The mortar and pestle got from Coorg was useful to grind the Sichuan pepper, fennel seeds, star anise, cloves and cinnamon. I always feel the stone ground spices are better than mixer ground ones - more oils are released with the pressing and tearing the spices. I used roughly the same quantity of each of the ingredients except for the cloves which I feel is a stronger spice and so could mask the aroma of the others.

Made ribbons of the carrots and radishes with a vegetable peeler and dunked them along with peas in boiling water for about a minute. Then fried about half a teaspoon of sesame seeds in about a teaspoon of oil and tossed the vegetables in it with half a teaspoon of the five spice powder and some salt. The subtle aroma of the sesame seeds with the spice was delightful with an accompaniment of brown rice cooked with salt and lemon peel.

No Idiot Box, No Problem - Mango Panacotta

No television at home for the last 4 months means there's been so much time available for experimenting with food. With the mango season in full bloom, other fruits seem to have taken a backseat.
A simple mango panacotta seemed to be an easy enough way to play around with what was available at home. I'm no a dessert person, but panacotta allows you to enough leverage to create something unique everytime. This one was simple enough to create in under 20mts (though it set for 4 hrs).
A touch of nutmeg makes a world of difference to anything sweet, no exceptions here.

Sun dried tomato and pumpkin risotto

TGIF... so goes the saying. I wholeheartedly believe in this. The kitchen's always the place to be - either dreaming up new recipes or throwing away the spoils of summer.
This evening we decided to make risotto to complement the excellent baguette the wife had made the day before. Its been a while since I've come back to risotto. The earlier attempts were desperately trying to get the flavouring ans stock right. This time there was more time to contemplate what needed to go into the dish.
Started out with boiling half a pumpkin which I thought would give it a good orange hue with a hint of sweetness. Turns out the pumpkin lost almost all its colour and hardly had any taste left. Combined a chunk of this with some freshly dried tomato (last batch before the rains here) and gave it a quick whisk in the blender.
I've got a packet of Italian arborio sitting up in the pantry waiting to be used, but didn't want to use that precious cargo before I got my recipe right. I chose the highly versatile short grained (idly) rice that is a perennial in any South Indian home.
A dash of garlic in a little olive oil with the pumpkin-tomato puree and half a cup of rice got things started. Stock was replaced with plain hot water, poured a cup at a time every 6-7mts until i was able to completely cook the rice. An addition of some agri parmegiano grand padano completed the pot.
The dish was served with home made baguettes and fresh butter. Lovely taste with the tomato giving it a beauiful yellowish-brown color. Next time the original arborio comes out with some mushroom and parsley.

The Rice of the Incas

Quinoa (spelt Kin-vah) has been a traditional South American staple for centuries. Its supposedly as common as our millets here. The missus and me, being frequent visitors to Heidi Swanson's website, where she uses quinoa extensively, often wondered what it would be like.

I happened to lay my hands on some red quinoa in the course of my travels. After a packed Saurday night schedule, neither of us were in a mood to make anything elaborate for breakfast. I took it on myself to try out this cereal. The instructions said it could be treated as rice and cooked as such.

I'd decided to try something simple which wouldn't overwhelm the grain. I tossed some onion and garlic into a soup pan and then mixed in the quinoa, toasting it well in the olive oil. 2 cups of water and 20mts later, my grain was cooked, with a translucent look. I added some newly bought grand padano, toasted pecan halves and pine nuts and fresh coriander.

The texture was nutty with a delicious bite, but certainly something that is an acquired taste. The olive oil and salt balanced the nuttiness with the cheese providing just the right amount of sourness.

This is definitely wort exploring more. Apart from its obvious health benefits, its a great texture grain to add into any salad.

My first Baguette

With the missus getting really good at breads, I decided it was time I did some experimenting of my own. My bible on this has loosely been The Breadbakers Apprentice. The problem is the time you need to invest in getting the traditional process completed - about 20hours, of which you need to be in the vicinity for the last 6. Given work schedules, this is only possible on the weekends.
I wanted to see if I could get this done in the course of a work week.
The original poulish was kept for around 14hrs and the rest of the ingredients were added in using a slightly modified recipe found here.

The resulting bread was ok, not great, but just about ok. The adage 'Practise makes perfect' is definitely true in this case. All in all, the left overs of the baguette go into making some perfect summer gazpacho - now thats something I'm really looking forward to.

Lazy Fridays

The best part of Friday evenings is that you don't have to run against time to get something ready for dinner. Its also a great time to get into the kitchen to get those biceps working and work up some fresh pasta.


The fun thing about pasta is that you can use pretty much any veggie as a filler with minimal fuss. Come to think of it, you're having chapati's with veggies--very Indian.

Its also simple food to chomp on when you have guests, great for kids to experiment with (different shapes) to keep them occupied enough to eat it as well.

I personally love fresh pasta with a dash of olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper, hydrated sun dried tomatos and a generous sprinkling of romano. Way to my heart....

The Havarti Chronicles - part 2

So here I am, a few months after my first attempt at a hard cheese.

Delighted with my second attempt. The cheese is edible! and just about aged - around 4 weeks. The difference being the constant monitoring over the first few weeks to make sure there was no mould developing, once the mould developed, cleaning it, rubbing with olive oil and tightly packing it in clingfilm. This demands that I increase my production to be able to sample more batches and improve on where I need to. Plan to increase batch size to at least 3 litres and build the necessary equipment to manage it – maybe even a cheese press :-)

Thrilled that simple buttermilk can help create this kind of texture and taste. This one is haphazardly infused with fresh basil - as an afterthought so its not very uniformly distributed.

The challenge is to get fresh milk, being summer there seems to be a sudden shortage at the local cowshed's.

Gone Crackers at Midnight....the Cinderella Chef

The wife and me have a strange problem on our hands. Junior has suddenly advanced his bedtime by nearly an hour. That means we've got that much less time on our hands in the evening to sit back and chat.
Junior has also grown up a fair bit. To him, if he's gonna sleep, so too must the parents. Were both pretty tired by the end of the day and land up napping with him.

On one such night, I got up at around 11.30 and for some strange reason wandered into the kitchen (where else!) half asleep. The missus was in lala-land so didnt want to disturb. Looked around and suddenly felt hungry. The oven was inviting and thats all I needed.

I've always had an urge to make my own wheat crackers. The salty stuff that's passed off as 'saltines' is much too drab after a while where all you can taste is the salt and buttery biscuit. Scrolling through the recipe library at home, settled on one that seemed fairly easy.
I havent copied recipe's before but the missus insists that I should. So here goes

3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
3 tbsp water

This makes about 20 9-inch long crackers (around 3/4 inch wide). The recipe called for pre-heating the oven to 180C while I was mixing ingredients.

The recipe is a scaled down version of the original so I guess that threw the water measure out of whack. Anyways, landed up with at least 3 more tbsp of water to get the dough to be pliable enough.
the recipe also called for the rolled out dough to be not more than 1/8 inch thick.
At 12pm, i wasnt going to try and get that done with the conventional rolling pin. Eyes fell on the ever dependable pasta machine. Rolled it out to the 2nd mark on the machine - same as i would for all the regular pasta's as well.

Once done, the sheets went into the oven for 10 mts. seems that was a little too long so landed up burning the first batch. Brought the timer down to 7mts - just right. As a side, I roasted some peppers as well with a thought of creating something later.

Had a peaceful bite before tucking on for the night.

Methinks this is a good step to a life of cracker & dip addiction. (Evil thoughts come to mind - of cream cheese, salsa & muhammara). More to follow on the weekend.....

Gnocchi adventures

Gnocchi, I believe is the ultimate in Italian pasta's. Flavourful and light, requiring patience to make and simplicity in presentation are its hallmarks.
I make it a point to ask the waiter at an Italian restaurant whether they serve it and if yes, I close the menu and ask for it. I've had some great gnocchi at the F&B restaurant, spoken to the chef and tried to replicate it many a time.

My attempts thus far have resulted in tough, rubbery bits of potato and flour. This time, I decided to go easy on the flour to test the other side of the recipe. Heidi Swanson in her blog talks about her method of making gnocchi. Thats what I based my recipe on this time, minus the egg and russel potato's - I dont believe the chefs in Bangalore bother much about the type of tuber they use.

With the wife busy with glasswork, cooking for lunch on Saturday fell on me.

Step1. Boiling the potatos. Thanks to that ubiquitous kitchen gadget - the pressure cooker, this got done in under 10mts. Added some sweet potato as well to the mix.
Once done, skinned and mashed the potato's with a fork to get it all together. The recipe calls for seasoning with salt at this stage, once the mash has cooled. In hindsight, I believe this most probably resulted in the mass getting gooey with all the water being expelled from the tuber.

Started off bringing the dough together by sprinkling dough over the lump of potato and gently kneading the mix with a fork. I must have used about half a cup of flour for 2 standard sized potato's

Once done, I cooked these in boiling water. Was pleasantly surprised to see them bob up to the surface in a few minutes. Of course, its not magic - they were cooked and done at the time and so the rising.

The accompaniments to this were a simple zucchini and cherry tomato combination with a cream and blue cheese sauce, which eventually turned out to be over the top. Notes to self - cut down on creamy sauces and use pesto or tomato based sauces instead, there's more you can innovate with those.

Verdict - ok for a genuine first attempt. As is evident from the photographs, the gnocchi came out gooey. I'm ok with that since I've now straddled the boundaries of flour addition quite well. The next attempt should be better.

If its Friday it must be Chinese!!

The remaining pasta dough from the previous ravioli adventure and some great bok choy and fresh looking oyster mushrooms were good enough to think 'Chinese'!!
No expert at cooking it, but had a general idea on what I wanted to make. Quickly thawed out the dough from the refrigerator. While that happened, added the ubiquitous ginger-garlic to hot oil. I'd bought some poblano chillies from the US a while ago and decided it was a good idea to experiment. I dunked one gigantic chilly in hot water for 10mts, drained, de-seeded and cut it into ribbons to add to the bok choy and oyster mushrooms. Mixed in a bit of soy sauce and was good to go with my topping.
Cut out tagliatelle-shaped noodles, cooked these in hot water and ladled them onto serving plates directly. Topped these with the veggie mix and toasted pecans and pine nuts.

Verdict - quite good. could have made do with a little oil for the noodles coz they dried out pretty quick when left on the plate.

From Sale of Stock you get......Homemade Ravioli!

The title is as cryptic as you want it to be, the food turned out to be simple.

Cooking in the work week is a stress buster for me. Fresh pasta ensures I spend at least an hour in the kitchen making up my mind on what to cook with what I have. Ever since tasting the tortellini in Toscano's, I've wanted to test whether I could do better. The gnarled pasta that was served may have been a rustic take on the pure version, but I remember more flour than filling in the dish.

Last weeks motz making yielded about a cup of ricotta - enough for about 20 medium ravioli pieces. The filling I made was with roasted onion and finely chopped spinach, mixed in with freshly made sun-dried tomato (yup, sunny days are back) and basil. As an afterthought, I crumbled some blue cheese over the entire lot.

Taste - yum!

Like Hair, only with Cheese - Braided Motz

Mozzarella, in my opinion, is the most gratifying of Italian cheese. The simplicity in texture, taste and appearance makes it an 'any time, any place' cheese.
My experiments with mozzarella have been mixed, probably one of my most successful cheeses that I have attempted.
Today being a holiday and me not having attempted a cheese in over a month, I found myself at the cowshed with the brat in tow at 7.30am
I was lucky to have enough curd at home for my starter and the whole process took about 8hrs.
This time, I was surprised at the elasticity of the finished product and quickly tried a braid - something I've only seen on TV. It was one of those wow moments, perfect braid.
Not sure how I'm going to use the braid apart from on fresh pizza, but mighty thrilled with the outcome.