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What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I have a homebrew apple wine and hydromel (beer-ish ABV mead) that came out decent after a few months of aging.
This weekend I went to a kind of extended family pre-Christmas party (since people live quite far apart and celebrate Christmas separately, they decided a couple years ago it would be nice to meet up before Christmas). On Friday, we had lutefisk, which, honestly, I've only had a couple of times, and it's... Okay-ish? I've heard it said that it's the kind of dish that you either hate or love, but for me, it's neither. Not something I would personally choose to serve for a feast, but not absolutely awful either. Also, it comes with a lot of sides that, I have it on good authority, are the main part of the meal for a decent amount of people who eat it.
Since people were traveling, it was a two-day event, and on Saturday, the table was divided in two: various forms of pickled herring on one side and a kind of tapas with cold cuts of meat and cheeses on the other. Not being overly fond of cured fish, you can probably guess where I chose to sit. My favorite is fenalår; you can buy it in small packages pre-sliced, which is what we did this time, but for actual Christmas we're getting a whole leg, from which you can cut your own, thick slices.
Overall, it was a nice weekend. Even if not all the food was amazing, the company was, and that's the most important thing.
It turned cold in England, so I've been having porridge which is a wonderful comfort food. I'm only having tiny amounts because I'm not up for eating much food at the moment. But porridge with a good molasses syrup is a great breakfast. And because I'm only having a tiny amount it's helping kickstart my appetite.
I can't drink cold drinks, and that's pretty weird because I live on them. So I've been experimenting with hot squash (not so nice) or herbal / fruit teas (nicer, but I'm taking some time to get used to them).
I've been baking a lot of sourdough. I finally got my technique dialed in for the most part and I've started experimenting with my own recipes going by feel for hydration. Best so far was a loaf I did with rye, chia seeds, ground flaxseed, and nutritional yeast. Absolutely heavenly dipped in olive oil, with a little vegemite, and topped with even more nutritional yeast.
What's the difference between nutritional yeast and regular yeast?
Nutritional yeast is often used as a cheese substitute for vegan foods, including a cheese-like popcorn powder. This doesn’t directly answer the question, but you can imagine eating regular yeast that way — it probably wouldn’t taste very good.
Nutritional yeast is purely for seasoning, it's deactivated and doesn't raise bread, and has a consistency more like parmesan.
Any chance you'd share the recipe?
It's a little involved and it'll be a best guess since I didn't measure anything while making it. Requires a Dutch oven.
400g bread flour
100g rye flour
100g sourdough starter
20g chia seeds
20g ground flaxseed
30g nutritional yeast
10g salt
10g MSG (optional)
10g brown sugar
~300ish g water, that's the one that'll need a little experimentation, I'd say just add water until you get the consistency you're looking for and then a touch more for the chia seeds to absorb.
Feed the starter at least five hours or so before making the bread. Mix flours, chia, flax, and nutritional yeast together with water, let it sit covered for an hour to autolyse. During that hour, measure out your starter, mix it with the sugar and an extra 20g each of rye and white flour and enough water to bring it to about the consistency of your dough, probably about 30g, keep it in a warm but not hot place if possible.
After the hour passes, incorporate the starter, salt, and MSG into the dough, and work it into a ball. Let it rise, covered, until doubled in size, typically overnight, but if you can keep it around 85F/30C it should only take four hours or so. An hour in you'll want to do some stretch and folds where you just stretch out the side of the dough and fold it on top of itself, turn 90 degrees and repeat 3 times. I like to do this two or three times, an hour between, but that's probably not necessary.
After it doubles, turn it out gently on to a floured surface and shape it again into a ball, again gently so as not to pop too many bubbles. Let it rise again for an hour, or overnight (or for up to two days) in the fridge, the longer, the sourer. If you do the final rise in the fridge, make sure the dough is covered.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 500F with the Dutch oven inside. After 30 minutes, remove the Dutch oven, place loaf in, cut a line or x in the dough with a sharp knife or razor, put the lid on, and bake at 430F for 25 minutes, then take the lid off and bake for another 20 minutes at 410F or until golden. Let cool for a painful, painful 3 hours before enjoying, or it'll be a gummy mess when you cut into it.
It's getting colder and I've been sick the past week and a half, so my partner and I have been cooking a lot of comfort food.
It's pork and beans season! I don't buy/cook a lot of meat these days but winter wouldn't be winter without the occasional ham hock (I think this cut is known as "pork knuckle" in the US) braised in coffee and tomatoes and with a whole load of beans in there too. I've got one in the oven right now. It'll cook most of the day then I'll pull the hock out, shred the meat from the bone (with a spoon if it's been cooked enough) and mix it back in before serving with rice and grated cheese. One day-long cook with a good sized hock and maybe 1.5kg of dried beans will make at least 4-5 meals for two people, so the freezer will be full this evening too. That takes a bit of pressure off the christmas food bill - not to mention the electricity bill for cooking - which is nice.
It's bloody cold today so having the house full of the smell of slowly cooking, rich, spicy pork is making life a bit easier.
Very happy to write up a recipe if people want to hear one. This is one of my most comforting comfort foods.
What I haven't been drinking is coffee. I've been trying to reset my caffeine addiction over the past few days. Yesterday was the first day in decades (literally) that I didn't have a drop of coffee. I did, admittedly, have a cup of green tea both yesterday and today though once a headache started forming. Otherwise I'm doing and feeling really good, and I am sleeping a lot more deeply at night. I'll keep this up for a few more days and then resume coffee at a more moderate consumption level.