Every Fiber of my Being - Cortni Frecha

Sunday, February 05, 2012

first mash beer notes

Here’s the airlock, bubbling 12 hours after we cast the yeast.

5 lbs. ground malt
2.5 gallons water
3.3.lb. can extra light malt syrup
.5 lb. smoked malt barley
.35 lb. chocolate malt barley
3/4 tsp. smoked paprika
Hallertauer hops 1 oz. boiling, 1 oz. aroma
Cascade 3/4 of one .5 oz. pellet - finishing

Mash the 5 lbs. of grain in 2.5 gallons water:
This required two pots, as we don’t have one big enough. With grains we must have had a volume of three-plus gallons. Bring to 120º and hold for 30 minutes; raise to 150º and hold for 10 minutes; raise again to 158º and hold an additional 15 minutes. Sparge (strain and rinse) into a container, or actually into a pot to be boiled. This is the “sweet wort.”

From here I adjusted the liquid: instead of having 1.5 gallons to start with I had almost double that. I extracted the chocolate and smoked malts separately in a saucepan and poured the resulting dark liquid into the wort pots. I put all the boiling hops in one pot so I could sparge only that into the fermenter, keeping the other cooking vessel separate to cool and add to the fermenter before casting yeast.

Boiled the first bunch of hops flowers (from Mountain Rose Herbs) for 40 minutes, then added the aroma hops and boiled for 18 minutes; adding finally the finishing hops for 2 minutes at end, then sparging immediately.

We are using the yeast from the previous batch in this one, so we have a quart of beer & yeast reserved to add to the cooled wort.

Original gravity 1.050
70º. We cast a quart of yeast sediment/beer dregs from our previous batch, bottled today.

Beer brewing 201

We have embarked on a new phase of brewing. Today with a fair bit of effort and a HUGE mess in the kitchen, we made a batch of beer that is 1/2 grain mash and 1/2 ingredients that were pre-processed.

By pre-processed I mean that before I’ve made beer with 3.3lb or 4 lb. cans of barley malt syrup, which is reduced from a mash such as the one we made today. The cans are easier because you just open, pour into a big pot with lots of water, add other flavoring adjuncts as desired, boil with hops, cool, add yeast, ferment and bottle. It’s already a bit of a production.

So the difference today, using many of the kitchen’s large vessels, was to slowly heat milled barley to release sugars and dextrins - fermentables and unfermentables - which then being boiled, make the sugars converted to alcohol by the yeast.

We started with 5lbs. of barley, from the brew store, and had to put it in two pots with a total of 2.5 gallons of water.

And we had a batch of beer from 2 weeks ago that needed bottling, and was occupying the bucket destined to hold today’s new batch of beer.

There’s a lot of cleaning and sanitizing of equipment and bottles to avoid random contamination in the beer. We haven’t been brewing for a while, probably a year or two. So everything was dirty!

We bottled 5 gallons of Porter with chocolate, coffee and licorice for flavoring in addition to black patent and crystal malts. It’s a decent brew, not stellar, but may improve with clearing and carbonation. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies with molasses clove variation

Flourless Peanut Butter cookies

1 cup peanut butter - smooth or crunchy
1/2 cup sugar (or less) - originally 1 cup!
1 egg

Combine ingredients, mixing well. Even if a little moist at first, this will stiffen slightly to make a good dough consistency for rolling into balls if you like. Flatten these with a fork moistened with water.

Bake at 375 F for 10-12 minutes, cool slightly on cookie sheet before moving to plate or rack to cool.

Molasses Clove Peanut Butter cookies

This variation on the above cookie substitutes a tablespoon or so of molasses for some of the sugar. Add about 3/4 teaspoon of ground cloves. The peanut butter stands up to these two flavors and so you don’t have to be too shy.

Notes
I have been reducing the sugar in this recipe a little more each time. It seems to be just fine.

Once or twice I tried adding a little flour - say a tablespoon or two, which makes the cookies slightly less rich tasting. For some this is a good thing. I’ve used spelt or oat flour probably.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

yum

Shrimp & scallops steamed in a pan lightly with chopped garlic, anchovy paste, water, arugula sabbathday shakers’ poultry mix of spices: marjoram, sage, rosemary, thyme & parsley. Served over rice reheated with chopped cottage-cheese pancake (see 8/26/08, this one made with orange oil) and cheddar cheese.  Mmm, yeah with some baby arugula dressed w/olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

groundhog day

Having 6” to a foot of snow each week is beginning to feel like the movie ground hog day. But today really is ground hog day, and I don’t think there’s much question about any animal leaving a nice warm burrow, when covered by forty or more inches of snow! Between ‘bouts of shovelling I made a yummy beef stew “Gaston” based on a recipe in the joy of cooking. If I’d added the wine and the parsley, it might just be sublime.

Here’s how it’s going keeping our driveway clear:

And the view from the deck, the areas here that are not 3’ deep are where I previously shovelled.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

easily amused - sprouting

The colors of beans, light with little bubbles and rubber ducks. Well, it’s a hot day and I’m moving slow. Simple is good, even if the photo insists on being sideways!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Compote

- loosely based on recipe from Joy of Cooking

Cut up and combine in a saucepan several of the following. I like to use some dried fruit, either apricots or prunes, and some fresh, berries or apples etc. Frozen is fine too.

1-2 pears dried or fresh
1-2 apples or unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup raisins
2-3 prunes
7-8 apricots (dried)
blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants
mango

Add 1/2 stick cinnamon, 3-6 whole cloves, star anise if you like.
Simmer with some water to keep it from burning until all fruit is soft but not necessarily mushy.
Add 1/2 cup sherry or marsala wine.
No sugar is needed in this as the fruits are quite sweet. I recently made this with canned pears and used the syrup - wow it was reeaaally sweet.

Serve warm or cool on cereal, ice cream, yogurt, or use your imagination. Also good alone with a touch of heavy cream.
Can be served as a chutney with a meal.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Oat Cakes

This is my first attempt at oat cakes. They came out pretty well as a drop biscuit.

Preheat oven to 415 degrees F.
These measurements are approximate. I have the habit of putting ingredients into the bowl by eye.

Combine in a bowl:
1-1/2 c. oat flour
3/4 c. almond meal
2 Tbsp. tapioca flour
1/4 c. chia seed
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. light cream
1/4 c. sunflower oil
1/4 c. water
Drop by spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes +/-.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Indonesian Corn Chowder

Tonight for dinner I made an adaptation of the recipe I found in “The Healthy Hedonist” for Indonesian Corn Chowder. Yum!

It starts like my usual recipe: an onion, carrot, celery chopped and sautéed in oil until soft. I used “cultured carrots” - stored by shaving in the food processor and brining, then adding some chopped fresh ginger, garlic, onion and a tiny bit of hot pepper. Lacto-fermented, these have a little tang and are salty. A nice soup starter.
The recipe calls for fresh ginger, lemon grass stalks and a hot pepper cut in chunks and put in cheesecloth to infuse spicy-ness into the soup. I added frozen corn and this mixture of spices and simmered for about 25 minutes, partly covered.
The recipe calls to blend the soup and strain it. I used an immersion blender and just did some. Added a can of diced tomatoes with basil and garlic. Then instead of the recipe’s fresh cilantro and chopped garlic, I added some cilantro pesto....

I also steamed some potatoes, and so I ate the soup over some of those.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Wheat Free Banana Orange Cranberry Bread

I made this with rye flour and caraway seeds which give a little savory zing and offsets the fruit sweetness nicely. You could substitute any combination of flours to suit you.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl combine:
1 3/4 cups flour (1 c+ rye, 1/2 c corn, some oat)
2 tsps. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 tsp. caraway seed

In a second, larger bowl mash
3 ripe bananas

Add to the bananas
2/3 cup shortening: (2-3 tbsp. melted butter, 2-3 tbsp. olive oil)
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
beat until well blended, small banana lumps okay.

Add flour mixture to wet ingredients in 3 parts mixing well after each addition.
Pour into a well greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour.

Cool before slicing (if you can wait!)

Sunday, February 01, 2009

light returning

The chickens tell me the days are getting longer. Slowly their production is inching up from the dark tunnel of no eggs. This year they went from a fall moult directly into the darkest month and then a cold spell. Who would want to give birth to an egg every day under those circumstances? So now as the angle of the sun rises a little and it’s no longer dark at 5:00pm, we get four or five eggs a day instead of one or two. I celebrated this morning with belgian waffles using two large eggs and three bantam eggs (small). The waffles were moist and light - yum!

I, too, am feeling a little more elastic. I can feel my sap beginning to rise to the call of spring. In my woodsy walks with the dogs I see some buds considering the idea of swelling: blueberries and swamp azalea. At home I want to plan changes to the garden, sort my seeds and order some, strategize on where to start seeds indoors as my sunny windows are full of geraniums.

Monday, December 29, 2008

burdock and carrot fries

A friend made me these and I’m hooked! The combination of the tart burdock and sweet carrots with salt is great. An interesting and healthy variation on french fried potatoes.

Julienne cut some carrots and burdock root into 1/8” x 4-6” strips. Put 2-3 tablespoons of high-heat cooking oil in a frying pan - preferrably iron. Add the carrots and burdock and a couple of healthy pinches of sea salt. Stir fry on medium high heat adding salt once or twice until veggies are well wilted and slightly caramelized. Cool and eat.

Burdock root is available in the produce section of health food stores or Whole Foods. It’s the plant that grows its seeds in the original velcro seed ball with all the little hooks on it.

I think I’ll try it with Rutabaga next.

Addendum: Burdock and carrots is better. Rutabaga is not bad but I still like turnips raw with salt best!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Apple cider & sauce

I bartered with Old Frog Pond Farm - our eggs for their drop apples. This afternoon Mark and I made cider from most of the 1/2 bushel bag using the Norwalk juicer/press. Pretty yummy! We think we’ll harden a quart or so of the gallon of cider we got. I also made a quart plus of applesauce. Also yummy. I think I shall get more apples!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

gathering energy

I’m looking forward to making a batch of kimchee soon. I went off of it for the summer, too busy, too hot. Now I have a yellow beet, some sweet turnips, dried seaweed, cabbage and all the paste ingredients: garlic, ginger, onion and hot peppers. Yum, can’t wait for the color and the zings of flavor and digestive health food. Here’s a photo of the last jar I made back in March which lasted me through early summer. Mmm, I put fennel in that one too.

Waffles

I recently learned that if I grease my stove-top waffle iron before each waffle they no longer stick. Now I eat waffles whereas before I only pined for them!

Based on a recipe in “The Joy of Cooking”
in my “Belgian Waffler” makes 3 full waffles - feeds 2 hungry people
Preheat waffle iron while mixing batter.

1 3/4 cup flour*
1/4 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp sugar*
2 tsp baking powder
3-5 eggs
1 cup milk, yogurt, cream, water or some combination of these
2-3 Tbsp oil
1Tbsp lemon juice

Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and set aside.
Separate 3 eggs. Add all remaining ingredients to the yolks. If using more eggs, add the whole egg(s) to the wet ingredient bowl.
Beat whites until stiff but not dry. Beat yolk mixture.
Add yolk mixture to dry ingredients with swift strokes barely mixing. A few smaller lumps unmixed are okay.
Fold in egg whites.
Pour batter onto (greased if necessary) waffle iron and cook until waffle is somewhat brown.
Serve with syrup, fresh fruit, jam or yogurt. Maybe all three!

* A note on flour and sugar: I vary my flour intake so that I am not eating as much gluten as all wheat would provide. I use a mixture of rice flour and corn flour or corn meal with a little tapioca flour which seems to add elasticity. For sugar I use a less refined type such as turbinado sugar or succanat: evaporated cane juice.

I have experimented with this recipe now using additional eggs as suggested and varying the consistency. With 5 eggs the waffle is very moist and springy- almost like a popover consistency.
Today I added a little orange oil and some miso to the wet ingredients, then threw in a little mild, fine grained seaweed into the waffle itself on the iron. The excellent result was slightly more savory than usual, but still yummy with some syrup. A nice way to get some extra nutrients from the sea in breakfast!