There're some nice mid-eastern grocery shops around where I live, and I often find bits and pieces there - and one of the shops have got some really nice Falafel Mix that I buy sometimes. When the rest of the family are having Schitzels, Steak and Chops, I often make up a pattie for myself and for just one person, it's hardly worthy to make falafel mix from scratch - unless I can be bothered washing up, cleaning all the time or make enough to freeze...
Anyway, my excuse of buying pre-mixed quick fix stuff, but this batch is pretty good.
And when I was making my sourdough breads, I was thinking, why not use some of the mix and give it a bit of kick... So there you go....
Felafel Rye Sourdough Baguettes
100g Sour dough starter – 100% hydrate
1 tbsp salt
220g water
250g bread flour
100g rye flour
50g dry felafel mix (mix of ground chickpeas, chickpea flour, onion powder, garlic powder, coriander powder, sesame seeds and dry parsley)
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp all spice powder
2 tbsp polenta
50ml Olive Oil
Mix all ingredients and knead well.
Knead for 6 minutes and stand for 30 minutes, repeat 6 times. The dough should be pretty wet, but will be able to knead to elastic through the process.
Add olive oil around the bowl and cover with damp cloth to prove until double sized.
Shape dough and roll into rectangle sheets, roll up like scrolls, and cut slits on top.
Proof again till dough in size or more.
Bake in 230C oven for 20-25 min.
Thank you John from Eat4Fun, I indeed had great fun doing this challenge... My first ever Daring Kitchen challenge.
I had all the intention of trying out canning whilst watching Italian Food Safari, but this challenge really got my lazy butt out and moving...
I made Apple Butter as challenge called - it's a new name in Australia and here we call it paste. Anyway, it's really nice with savory - pork or using as a spread on crackers and breads.
The original Canning or Freezing instruction and recipe can be found on The Daring Kitchen Website. I encourage all to try out, even you are not interested in becoming a Daring Cook!
I made marmalade using Tangelos and they are just soooo much better than shop ones, now that they are nicely canned, they will last for quite a while without me trying to find fridge space.... I've made jams, but never tried canning....
Now, this is my apple butter:
7 Small Pink Lady Apples – they are sweet crisp and very juicy and very very much Australian – a cross between Lady Williams and Golden Delicious. I use them in apple pies, crumbles, and tarts than Granny Smith, and my family gets fresh apple juice every day, mostly Pink Lady ones these several weeks. I guess the main reason to use Pink Lady is that I have got them on hand.
125ml Cider
1 tsp Mixed Spice (clove, nutmeg, etc)
1 tsp Cinnamon powder
½ tsp ginger powder
1 tbsp brown sugar
4 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup – I’m not a fan of artificial sweeteners and would rather take the calories.
I peeled and cut apples in cubes, so they will break down quicker.
Cook with cider till they break down, and I simply mashed them with a potato masher – I suppose I could’ve used my potato ricer if I didn’t peel them first.
Add in sugar, golden syrup and the spices, keep mashing….
And cook further – I halved the original recipe, because I wasn’t sure of the outcome, so the same pot can be used again I suppose? I used the diffuser when I’m not stirring…
It’s only a small quantity so it was pretty easy to reduce, and I turned around the spoon, it’s not dropping…
It tastes quite nice on my sourdough bread, and I’m pretty sure hubby would love it with the chops or roast pork.
I’ve been doing a bit of researching about the preserving jars and unfortunately preserving is no longer popular in Australia and jars are hard to find, unless I order on line, and buy in bulks. I have made jams and chutneys etc, and made pickles with mum, but never preserved them in jars, we just made enough to go around until we need them again, or put them in freezer. So it’s a first time for me, and I’d like to try the canning option, even though it’s hard to get jars. Some forums on the internet here mentioned that you can use old jars, so I found this jam jar that was in perfect order with pop top lid, and the apple butter I made just fit into that 500g jam jar. Of course, the recommendation is always use new lids, but finding lids are not easy…
As I only have one jar, I said to myself, just try it and see how it goes, the jar was checked not leaking, and it was boiled and cleaned before I put the hot apple butter in again.
Put a tea towel at the bottom of the deepest pot I can find, and fill up with warm water – fingers crossed!
Set the timer for 30 minutes and waited until it cooled a bit before I took out my first “baby”… Pressed down the pop top, and it stayed down…
It worked, I couldn’t believe my eyes, but hubby said, what if I want it tomorrow? I guess we will just have to open the jar again very soon….
And I’m sure that I will be collecting jars from now on, we might get a good crop from our apricot tree again and this time when I make apricot jam, I don’t need to give them away to anyone I can find who would take them of me!
And for marmalade, this is the recipe I used.
I bought a bag of tangelos from shop for 99C, quite a lot of them, so I varied the quantity a bit and voila!
Cook the peels first...
Lovely Jam!
Once there's a nice plain dough for any keen baker, the choice is endless.
The best plain dough for my breads so far is the Pain Viennois Dough recipe I got from Emmannuel Mollois, and I've made my adaption version using some wholemeal flour, and have since reduce the quantiy to:
200g strong bread flour
150g wholemeal flour
160ml milk
1 egg
40g butter
30g sugar
5g salt
2 tsp fresh yeast
for a normal every day loaf and been using the bread in plain toast, basically everything.
Today, whilst making bread again, I thought, it's the last week before we are going on our holiday, why not make a bigger loaf and without the wholemeal flour.
And half way through, I changed my mind, so I end up with 2 loaves, one plain, one Cinnamon Caramel Fruit Twist loaf, hubby just loves his cinnamon fruit breads...
For today's 2 loaves:
For the dough:
480g strong bread flour, extra for dusting.
60g butter
250ml full cream milk
2 large eggs (59g)
3 tsp dry yeast
40g sugar
5g salt
For the filling of one loaf:
2/3 cup mixed dry fruit with peels
4 tbsp brown sugar
40g butter
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp all spice powder
extra cinnamon powder and raw sugar for dusting.
Syurp wash made from hot water, sugar and gelatin.
Method:
Heat milk up and then cool back down to around 40-45C.
Add in dry yeast and wait 10-15 minutes for it to get frothy.
Put salt at the bottom of the mixing bowl (make sure it’s away from the yeast), add flour and sugar and make a well in the middle.
Add yeast mixture liquid – I’ve used the bench top mixture for this recipe, but you can use hand….
Turn the mixer to low spead with dough hooks, start kneading till a soft dough is formed, add eggs, one by one till dough is smooth
Keeo the mixer working the dough, gradually add soft room temperature butter which was broken into small cubes, and until all lumps are gone and dough is smooth, that will take around 15-20 minutes.
On a nice clean bench , spread some dry flour, and knead with the help of a dough scraper if you need to use one, as the dough can be wet and sticky.
Set the dough to rest for a while in between kneading, until the dough pass the window test.
Get a big bowl and grease the bottom a little, put the dough in.
Cover the dough with cloth and leave it to proof for 2-3 hours till it's double the size.
Knock the bubbles back, cut the dough into 2 portions, the plain loaf takes 3/5 and the cinnamon loaf takes 2/5.
Grease tins, shape the plain dough and leave it for proofing.
Using a rolling pin, roll out the smaller dough, until it's quite flat and spread on the fillings (melt butter and work it with the brown sugar and spices, mix very well).
Spread on the sugar butter mix first and then the mixed dry fruits, roll up into a long thin log, twist and form a hook shape, cut sides so it shows the layers.
Leave in another greased loaf tin, cover both tins with clean cloth and proof for another 2 hours (it's cold in my house, probably not so long in warmer environment.
Brush both on syrup wash. Spread on more cinnamon and some raw sugar on top of the fruit loaf.
Bake in preheated oven 190C or 375F for 25 minutes.
The bread is really light and fluffy!
So happy with the tast and submit this to Yeastspotting!
It's an classic dessert, the humble bread and butter pudding, very English, or shall we say, very Australian.
Great for the cool wet days and I happenned to have 3/4 loaf of my normal Eggy Loaf left so before I make another loaf of bread, I decided to use it in a dessert tonight.
Chocolate & Raisin Bread & Butter Pudding
1/2 Cup Raisin
100g dark chocolate (I use 70% cocoa Lindt's)
50g softened Butter - enough to butter all slices of bread
600ml Milk
4 eggs
12 Slices of Bread (it can be white bread, raisin loaf etc)
2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp cinnamon powder
4 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp rum
1 tbsp golden syrup
Method:
Grease an Oven dish (mine is oval, 18cm X 25cms).
Remove crust, butter both sides of bread, lay one layer at the bottom of the dish.
Layer with dark chocolate squares and raisins.
Lay the rest of bread covering the chocolate and raisins layer.
Whisk eggs, whisk in sugar and mix very well, add milk, rum, vanilla essence and cinnamon powder.
Pour over bread and drizzle the golden syrup on top.
Bake in pre-heated oven - 180C for 45 min or till golden.
Serve with Vanilla Icecream....
The family like roast chicken, with potato, rice, pasta, it's just an easier meat for the children and because the meat itself is pretty plain, you can basically cook it with any flavour... mix and match, more varieties... very simple as well, when the children are still young and not eating a lot, a small chicken, quick to roast and a nice dinner.
With in budget...
This one has a bit of oriental flavour so we have it with rice. Master stock can be made up from different spices... I actually use whatever on hand and whatever I can think of at times, but this is what I did this time:
Master Stock Roast Chicken
1 tsp 5 spice powder
1 tsp clover powder
2 pcs of dry mandarin peel
½ piece of brown rock sugar
1 whole chicken 1.2kg
1 Cassia Bark (or cinnamon stick)
1 knob of ginger
½ cup shaoxin cooking wine
Method
Add all the ingredients to a pot apart from Chicken,
add enough water.
Boil the liquid until it’s bubbling and add the chicken, simmer and turn sides for 15 minutes.
Roast chicken on rack without cover, in 185C for 15 minutes, turn and roast for a further 10 minutes.
Cut in chunks and serve with rice...
Thicken a bit of master stock with extra orange juice and brown sugar for dipping sauce.
Although I love my wholemeal sourdoughs, hubby's not a big fan, and we do need different breads... He's got super sweet tooth so I normally make him something sweet for his brekky.
This is one of his favourite bread:
Cinnamon Raisin Loaf
• 380g Strong Bread flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp instant dried yeast
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbsp raw sugar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 whole egg lightly beaten
• 50g softened butter
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp all spice
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Mix flour salt, all spice, cinnamon and half of raw sugar and brown sugar.
Heat milk to moderate temperature, lukewarm, add half of raw sugar and yeast, and stand for 10-15 minutes till frothy.
Rub softened butter into the flour mix, until it resembles bread crumb and add vanilla essence and egg.
Add yeast mixture and egg, and add mix to a rough dough.
Add raisins and knead. It’s better to knead 6 minutes rest the dough for 30 minutes – and repeat the process for 6 times, until it’s smooth elastic and not sticky to hand.
Leave dough in a clean lightly greased pot and cover to proof till double the size.
Cut dough in 5 different portions and roll up to smooth rolls, set in a greased tin, proof till full size.
Brush on egg wash.
Bake in 190C oven for 30 minutes.
Been doing some thing pretty random last couple of days, in regards to cooking.. Tried a few recipes and bits of this and that...
Totally random - as the teenager Bianca would say :)
I tried some sourdough breads - well, I make sourdoughs several times a week, that's the only bread I'm eating, whole meal sourdoughs, this one is not whole meal because I've decided to try out the 3:2:1 dough, which is 300g flour, 200g water and 100g 100% hydrate starter, the bread was good, but I miss my whole meal flour and other bits and pieces...
I did some Peking sauce spare ribs - nothing special, just feeling like doing something really easy and hmm... take away style, I am getting lazy.
I did my version of Har Mee (prawn noodles) today with Hokkien Mee (noodles) and curry prawn bisque (sounds weird, but I did use rice wine for the bisque and seasoned with curry powder for the Har Mee) and some how hubby reckons it's very "Noodle Box"... Really can't be bothered to take a photo of the noodles.
Roast pork in master stock. But I wasn't really happy with it, it's only for hubby and I hate pork personally myself.
Father's day brekky, the normals, scrambled eggs, toast with home made banana bread (yeast bread not the normal "cake" style banana bread) and home made marmalade, grilled tomato, bacon, mushrooms...
So the highlight for last weekend's cooking, apart from the big cake, it was actually the calamari rings and chips... I used eggs and self raising flour for the batter, coat it with bread crumbs made from my sourdough loaves and they were crispy & crunchy even when they were cool...
Well, guess I might be qualified for a local takeaway joint...
