Experiment and failure

So, lately I have been making cornmeal pancakes every so often. They're quick, easy, and as long as I have cornmeal, I almost always have all the ingredients on hand. A little while back, I decided to try making chocolate cornmeal pancakes, just for funsies.

The batter never looks terribly appetizing (It usually looks like yellow barf.), but it looked even worse when brown.

Even from the batter stage, things looked ominous.

Frying did not improve things.

It made them look like flattened dog-poo.

The final result was pretty disappointing from both a flavor and aesthetic standpoint. The pancakes didn't taste terribly chocolate-y, and they looked very, VERY unappetizing. If there is a next time (which I don't think there will be) I will try adding a lot more cocoa powder, but this experiment has dampened my enthusiasm for further un-researched forays into the culinary unknown.

No Knead Bread

I thought I would document the no knead bread that I have been making since we moved away from our fabulous bakery/coop. Its a pretty simple recipe and open to alot of adjustments. I showed daddy how to make it when they visited us a while ago and he could probably also chime in with ideas.

Time: 31/2 hours (10 minutes of work)
Makes: 1 loaf.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 Cups Water
  
• 2 tsp Yeast
• 2 tsp Salt
• 3 1/2 Cups Flour (I usually use 2 of WW and 1 1/2 of White but you can mix and match)

1. Mix the water, yeast and salt. Don't worry about proofing it or anything.
2. Stir in the flour. You don't need to worry much about this step just get it all wet. It could be that if you stir it alot now it will make a more holey/crusty/chewy bread and less sandwichy but I am not sure. The dough should still be pretty wet and sticky after mixing. You might need to add water or flour.
   
3. Rise it in the bowl for 2 hours or so. It should not spring back when you poke it. I usually rise it in the microwave since that stays warm and isn't drafty. If you want to accelerate the rise you can turn it on for a minute at the start.
4. Make the loaf. This is the only tricky part so I made a video. Basically get your hands wet and stretch the "skin" of the loaf a bit to make the crust. Technically, I believe this is called cloaking. I think the less you disturb it at this point the airier the bread will be. If you want you can also slash the loaf to make it pretty. Use a sharp knife or a pair of kitchen scissors.
5. Let the loaf rise again. After 20 minutes turn on the oven to 400 or so. When it is hot put in the bread and bake for 35 minutes. When it is done it will sound hollow when you tap it.

Thats it. Basically all the bread we eat these days is made this way. The recipe seems to be very forgiving to sloppy measuring and experimentation. We have made oat bread by leaving out a little flour and adding a cup of oats. Sunflower seed bread by adding sunflour seeds at the start. Change the character by how much you stir and or cloak the dough. Adjust the temperature for different crusts. Put a pan of water in the oven for a crunchier crust.

Happy New Year's Noodles

Happy New Year to everyone!
We are enjoying settling back into our house after two full weeks in Minnesota. Our family has begun celebrating our family Christmas on New Year's Day, and I wanted to come up with something that honored the traditional southern black-eyed peas for New Year's. More importantly, we're trying to cook out of our pantry this new year. So, we had a great long-time favorite: Thai Peanut Noodles, enlivened with silly measuring units, green peas, and lima beans.

Thai Peanut Noodles, for those w/out measuring spoons:
1/2 package thin spaghetti (we use only 100% whole wheat)
1/4 cup peanut butter (or just a hugely full big serving spoon)
1 1/2 jiggers soy sauce
1 1/2 jiggers sherry
1 1/2 jiggers tomato paste
1 big tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon chili paste with garlic
juice and zest of one lime (or 1 1/2 jiggers lime juice)
1 jigger olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, diced or pressed
1 coffeemug full of lima beans, frozen
1 coffeemug full of green peas, frozen
1/2 handful of chopped peanuts (optional)
2 scallions, sliced (0ptional)

1. Heat a pasta pot full of water until it boils. Cook the pasta until it's done. If you want, steam cook the lima beans and peas in a steamer basket on top of the boiling water. This didn't work so well for us, so I ended up dumping the peas and limas in for the last 3 minutes to boil with the pasta. Strain out peas and limas (or if you're lucky, just remove your steamer basket), then save 1/4 cup of pasta water for peanut sauce. Drain spaghetti and return to pot.
2. In a small saucepan, over medium heat, cook garlic for 1 minute in olive oil. Remove from heat.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients for the sauce. Mix well. Return to low heat but do NOT let the sauce boil. (If you do let it boil, the PB separates out, and the soy sauce turns bitter)
4. Dump the peas, limas into the pasta, and toss all of it with the peanut sauce.

Enjoy!