fungal and games, maybe even a lesson

We like doin' it the old fashioned way here at the monkey ranch. Whenever possible, we strongly encourage making things with the use of critters! Fungus among us? Put it to work!

When my kid asks for "fizzy juice," (and there is no way I'm gonna give her a soda cuz' of all the crap in 'em), I think, why not make ginger ale? I'd give her some homemade of that as a sanctioned soft drink for sure. Boil up some ginger tea with honey, let loose a few fungi beasties and let them work wonders. Yeah......that's the ticket. A quick trip to the grocery store for ginger and the beer store for yeast and we're in business.

Simple ingredient recipes can be deceiving. Lots of time and cleaning. Finely shredded ginger, a couple of gallons of fresh water, over a pint of honey, and about an hour of boiling and you are nowhere near done. Cooked yes, ready no. Hot ginger, no ale.

After all that boiling, you need to cool it all off for the yeasty beasty so you don't kill it. Big deep sink of cold circulating water does wonders for this. Mix well, split into two batches and flavor one with some freshly squeezed tangelo plus "some of this daddy, so mommy knows we love her" (nutmeg), while making sure containers for storage are cleaned and ready. Put unflavored batch into one gallon polycarbonate jug to use as judge for baseline and measure of subsequent carbonation. Bottle the flavored batch right away. Put into oven to experience 80-ish degrees for a wee bit to help get fermentation/carbonation going. Intentionally forget about it.

Check a few times while forgetting:
2 hours and the bottle is looking rounded some.
Wow, at only 5 hours, quite a head must be forming behind that swelling plastic bottle.
At near 8 hours, very tight and swollen, check. PPPFFFFFTTSSSSSSSSS!
Nice. Seems they could go longer though. Bottle the plain batch and put back in door cracked open oven with tangelo version for storage in warm place overnight.
At 16-ish hours (next morning), wake amateur self up and check in on experiment. Bottles look good, some bubbles near the top. What is this? Small glints of green...........shards perhaps? Sh_t!

Only one had "grenaded" during the night. Luckily, I had a pan under it that caught most of the liquid. Messy and filled with glass bits, but contained in the yeasty oven. Begin clean up and put everthing in the fridge to chill and try when cold. While cleaning, pretend how CSI would have determined the burst occurred........somewhere around 4 to 5 am, rampant carbon dioxide formation put excess stress on a weak seam in the container resulting in roughly 30% volume being aspirated in characteristic array toward far wall of oven, while remainder cascades down broken shards and onto cookie pan and oven bottom. More liquid then evaporated in the dry conditions of the stove, resulting in the seeming discrepancy between bottle capacity and liquid found at the scene. Sorry, brain does these things sometimes. I contemplate how best to capture the lesson I should take from this. Got it.

Homebrewing Lesson One: Use secondary containment next time you find self behaving so casually with carbonated glass containers.

2 hours later and yummy! Nice honey smoothness and sharp ginger bite. Tangelo and nutmeg batch also very nice. Different, but Mommy felt the love.


The following day, go to grandma's to play "name that quiche." Looks like spring, smells like garlic goat. Holy mobile hen-house, these eggs were dark yellow when scrambled. I knew it would be good before I put it in the oven. I like that.


The nearly all butter crust dripped some, burning and smelling up the place. Small inconvenience. If you own a kitchen exhaust fan, perhaps you should turn it on sometime. We have these fans for this reason, amongst a few others.




Quiche came out good. Dark yolks imparted dark eggy custard. Evening light out on the deck accentuated it. Heady smell of feta and garlic was perfecto. Quark instead of cream also lent a nice tang. Whole wheat crust, flakey and buttery. All of which went rather nicely with the ginger ale. Write this one down I tell myself.




Thursday, read a tasty post about pizza and decide I can't do without. Use two pizza stones in the oven in a new configuration and play the 8 minute, 2 cheese and 4 herbs pizza game. I love it, what's not to like at that single digit speed.

Of course, the oven took nearly an hour to heat up, but you should forget that and focus on how long it took to cook it.




With pizza a huge success, I had high hopes for the bread, and they were realized. A 'normous french loaf was to be had, done in a mere 17 minutes.


I believe the homebrew russian red 22 ouncer only lasted 13 minutes, so I guess you could say the whole numbers game sped up with the double pizza stone action.



Champagne yeast is amazing stuff. For a full three plus minutes, tiny bubbles escaped from the top of the bottle before settling down. And this was 5 days after making it. Apparently refrigeration doesn't necessarily stop the fermenting with this strain, just retards it some. Probably has a point of alcohol by now, sure smells like it. Next time I'll use half the packet of yeast in this recipe. I'll also try another one and shoot for something more like ginger beer, not soda ale. A plan is in the works.



While enjoying the "fizzy juice" Aunty reminded me of the delicious tuna she had recently bought. I immediately went inside and whipped up a sammich with the can she got me. Lip smackin' albacore I'm tellin' ya. If you enjoy tuna and can get this near you, try it. Muy delicioso! I especially recommend it mixed with mayonaise, capers, freshly ground mustard seed and a pinch of salt. On homemade sourdough of course.

If you've never played with a packet of yeast, or grown your own, try it. It's fun and tasty. And possibly alcoholic.
Chow!


Because in my effort to share more, I just had to write a few down:

GARLIC QUARK AND FETA QUICHE

2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 stick butter
1 cup ice water
pinch of salt

chop butter and freeze. put flour into food processor and pulse with salt briefly. add butter and pulse until crumbly. remove from processor and gently mix in water until it begins sticking together. stir and handle as little as possible. gather into a ball, wrap and place in fridge for a few hours.

small head of broccoli
small yellow onion
2 small carrots

saute in olive oil, onion and carrots first, then broccoli until tender. remove from heat.

8 ounces garlic quark
6 ounces grated feta
2 ounces grated dry jack
4 eggs

mix together and add veggie saute. shape crust into desired dish and fill. bake at 400 for first 15 minutes, then 350 for next 30-40. let sit for a minute before cutting. breathe in tangy garlic goat on buttered wheat. eat.


and just because I love a nice pizza pie:

2 CHEESE + 4 HERBS PIZZA

sourdough crust
tomato paste
3 ounces colby jack cheese
2 ounces dry jack
pinch of rosemary
a few sprigs of parsley
a couple of big-leaf thyme branches
one nice stick worth of oregano leaves

shape dough and smear with paste. add the cheese and top with minced herbs. crack some pepper over it. let rest for 20-30 minutes before putting on extremely hot stone (500-550). bake for 8 minutes. eat half before putting on plate.

mas fuyu, por favor

Huh? What the hell is that a picture of you might ask? It is the inside of our worm bin, ready for a new batch of semi-rotted plant material (read: the inevitable fruit gone mushy or rank). If this were one of those photos where someone had drawn animation on top for that comic book-like effect, there would be a tiny message spelled out in individual coffee ground particles on the skin of some sweet potato that reads: NO MOR PURSIMNS! PLEEZE! or DON'T YA NED MOR COUGH-EE?

Two years ago, in a stupid decision (mine most likely) we put the worm bin outside so that it would not be a source of entertainment for our then rug-monkey. Problem was, red wigglers don't like it hot or cold. They prefer the ambient temps found in our local fog, and not much on either side of that. When we rescued them from their abusive outdoor conditions, the population in the bin had been reduced drastically. With them now safely inside, and with an injection of new annelid genetic stock, our "Wriggly Ranch" is now back on line, with a growing population when fed regularly. I'm back to feeding them about once every week or so, as they will only eat roughly their own body mass in food per day. If you "only" have a few hundred (500? who really knows, they're hard to count as you can imagine) then they are more fun than functional and it takes more than a few days for them to go through one day of compostable kitchen waste. They have their routine fare; coffee grounds, various peels and ends of things like potatoes; but I was afraid if I gave them persimmon again it might erupt in some bizarre protest. You see, after my last post, there were STILL 5 gooey fuyus on the counter, waiting for a purpose besides being fodder in the worm bin. I needed to try something new. No way around it, I'm going to ingest these frickin' fuyu if it kills me.

I went with the blended theme from last time as a base to start with. I was imagining something along the lines of a smoothie with fresh ground spices creating something reminicent of a chai tea, but with chocolate. I peeled the fuyus, plopped them in the blender and gave it a whirl. Mmmm, baby food. It was time to play spices. I had my lovely assistant to help me add and pulverize the spices that flowed out of the cabinet and into the mortar. I started with a few cardamom pods, peeling away the skins and mashing the seeds.

"What do we add next Daddy?" she asks, grabbing the pestle and clutching it in her hands. How about some cinnamon honey?

"Oh yeah!" BASH BASH BASH, SCRRRAAAAAAAAPE, BASH BASH.

"What do we add next?" Some clove. THUMP, BASH BASH.

"And now Daddy?" Uh, how about a little ginger? The bottle gets turned past horizontal in her little paws, resulting in at least a full teaspoon dumped in. She begins shaking her head: "yeah, I like ginger, but not too much cause it's really really spicey." Not TOO much honey? Here let me have that bottle, thanks. SCRAAAAAAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE, THUMP.

"What's next?" Mmmm, black pepper. You know how to handle the peppermill, give it a few cranks over the mortar. SHICK SHICK SHIIIIICK SHICK.

The kitchen now smells like we're swimming in chai tea. Perfect. Now for some chocolate. I hand this to the monkey, counting on an ample addition of powder to our mix. FWUMPF!

SCORE! At least two heaping tablespoons of the chocolatl are now added. I look at the powder mix we have going, give it a whisk with a fork a few times and sample it by licking the tip of my finger and dabbing a taste on the end. The monkey, seeing this licks two full fingers and most of her palm, then begins to put her whole hand in the mortar for a fistfull of the concoction, until she looks up and sees my reaction. Thinking twice about the possibly forfeited spice grinding rights she now enjoys, she gives me a coy smile, dips her index finger in and says "I was just being silly."

It tasted nice and chai-ee, so I added some more chocolate (almost always a good decision, right?) and pondered how to mix it into the persimmon without it clumping. I drizzled some vanilla soy milk into it while the monkey whisked away. We poured the resulting syrup into the blender, added some sugar and hit play. It needed a bit more soy milk to get it circulating freely. When finished, I gave it a taste. Yummy? Well, not quite. It was a touch frothy in consistency, and along with the aromatic cardamom fumes it was somewhat hard to get down. I was about to ditch the couple cups in our compost bin outside, maybe even pour a bit in the worm bin for experiments sake. I thought about my options. Then I poured it into a few ceramic cups and put it in the freezer, intuiting that making it colder might somehow help while I thought some more.

A few hours later it dawned on me. Dilution is the solution to your polution (A joke saying I heard from my days working in the environmental field) We needed more mass, like at least 25% more. And of course, in the form of more chocolate and ginger. Scharffen Berger chunks, and diced crystalized ginger. Mmmmm. Talk about a no brainer though, I mean you could probably add this to cat turds and make it taste good (thanks JM).

With the proportions within my imagined parameters, and many bits of chocolate having "fallen" into my mouth, I removed the semi-frozen cement from the freezer and mixed in the aggregate. It looked good and promising, and a little nibble gave me hope that I had saved this free fruit from being recycled by the wigglers. Time would tell.

The following day, I tried it again, serving it up in one of those tiny little ramekins, embellished with some "theme" toppings. My first impression was that somehow I had managed to make a decent sorbet, that believe it or not, I would serve again, should anyone be brave enough to eat it once they are told the ingredients. I gave a bite to Aunty, knowing full well that persimmons aren't her thing, but wanting some feedback on the spicing from someone older than three.

"Whoa, chai! Damn D, that's a lot of cardamom......oh, okay, now there's the chocolate." What do you think, is it too much ginger?

"No. Cardamom though, yes."


So, I thought about my spice proportions, and figured that it might help if I wrote this one down, but adjusted the recipe to fit more of how it could have been altered for greater appreciation by others possibly infested with those pernicious, too soft to eat out of hand, persimmons.


CHOCO-CHAI FUYU SORBETTO

4 cardamom pods
1 small cinnamon stick
4 whole cloves
2 t ground ginger
1 t black peppercorns
3 T chocolate powder (Scharffen Berger, just chocolate)
5 soft fuyu persimmon (very soft hachiya should work too, but maybe use 1 less as they tend to run bigger)
1/4 cup organic sugar
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk (substitute freely here)
1/4 cup diced crystallized ginger
1/2 cup coarse cut dark chocolate

Grind spices to a fine powder, add chocolate powder, mix well and taste. Feel free to add more chocolate, please. Mix whatever liquid you are using, a little at a time to the spice mixture until a runny syrup -like consistency is reached. Peel and seed (if necessary) the persimmons and puree in a blender. Add the spicey chocolate syrup, the sugar, and continue blending. Use more of the milky ingredient if needed to get the mixture circulating and smooth throughout. When thick enough to stick to the sides and certainly requiring a spatula for complete removal, transfer the mix into a bowl. Chop the chocolate into big chunks and the ginger into small ones and add. Mix thoroughly, then transfer into freezer safe containers (preferably serving sized) and let sit until firm. Serve. If its too hard for your liking, set it out for a minute and try it again later.

And yes, a disk of crystalized ginger and block of chocolate, sprinkled with chocolate shavings will make it taste even better.

.04 acres and a monkey

I'm feeling some pressure to provide more homegrown nourishment for my family, simply because it is getting bigger. Our monkey is growing up, way fast. "I'm HUNGRY dadda, maybe we can have some more lunch!" I've been thinking of her energy conversion powers as a wonder of nature. It makes me think: we need to find a way to run the planet off of kids. Yeah, that's the ticket! And no, I'm not talking child-labor, I'm talking about somehow harnessing the energy bursts some describe as screaming, or maybe rigging little magnets on them and having them slide repeatedly down a copper-coil tube (okay that would be child-labor) Focus now: or how about that dream of turning this untapped source of audible energy to work for us parents, who are usually the focal point for receiving such a release. I'm gonna need to provide more calories in the future to keep up with the energy absorption/emission curve.

We have limited garden space, on the north side of the house and in a yard that is only 15 feet deep. It contains a thick, black, expansive clay, that when we first started working it, contained tons of glass and gravel, with the occasional rusty nail and old toy. Two months ago we performed our largest "amendment" to the yard, but this does not make up for the fact that it only receives direct light for an hour in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. We do what we can with a few wine barrels placed out front that have served various functions over the past few years (including a staging area for things to be transplanted). We have them out front, facing south, where they get good light from sun-up till about mid-afternoon. So today the monkey and I took action and built a small planter box, to help expand out acreage if you can call such small increments. We brought it out back and rewarded ourselves with some pretty cheesecake for a job well (no, more like halfway) done. We'll get to that cheesecake later.

We filled the box with soil, and then began transplanting some of the spinach we had purchased from Berkeley Hort. While we were at it, we transplanted the beets seen here into the sunniest spot in the back yard, with hopes of at least beet pasta come late spring. The spinach would fill most of the new box, but we needed something else. Maybe with a streak of color, hardy, and certainly edible. "Hey let's go look out," I turned around and there they were:



The "Pot of Gold" container chard from last spring. I had planted it amongst the tomatoes last year, trying to fill in areas wherever I could with various seeds to see what worked. Turns out that in my yard, container chard stays a tiny little thing when it gets shaded out by tomatoes. But it is also hardy, for when I finally had the gumption to rip out the dying tomatoes, it was still its tiny little self, all four inches high and in about 8 or 9 places. I left it there, and a few weeks later it was twice as big. Well, this is certainly worthy of attention, so I took them out of the ground before the previously mentioned amendment by putting them in a container and in the sunniest spot in the backyard. Now they are thriving, and starting to really crowd their container. They needed thinning and would be a nice compliment to the spinach. I placed two plants at either end of our new planter and gave it a little pat-down. Now for the hard part: getting it upstairs and outside the window for living on the roof in the most direct light available.

Now our view of the elementary school across the street includes some greens for braising and salads. It is a small purchase of space, but we're hoping the rewards are great. Last year our attempts in the garden yielded a few tasty things, namely some peas and tomatoes, but really it had plenty of room for improvement. This year I have made a pledge to use our little bit of space in a fashion more befitting of its capabilites. We need more variety, more fecundity, out of our little space. With more use of our sunny roof, perhaps we can achieve such things.

Back to fecundity. And that bigger family remark. We are about halfway toward harvesting our "potato" crop. As with all tubers and subterranean veggies, this one will depend on the moon and other environmental factors as to the exact date it first sees the light. We're just hoping the arrival will go as smoothly as ours in late Nov, 2003. As seen by the in-utero headshot of "Pablo" (as the monkey calls her sibling), our potato has eyes, nose, lips and chin. Just as they should. Let us do the rain dance and pray for good spring weather. So far it's promising to be a bumper crop!



Oh yeah, and that cheesecake thing. You see, the one pictured at top, that we pre-emptively rewarded ourselves with, had some chevre in it, comprising about a third of the cream cheese component. I've been dying to try some goaty-goodness in a cheesecake for at least a year now, so this was a focus for this version. It had the typical (these days) sweet potato for body, color, and flavor, but I did go out on a new crusty limb and used ginger-zing granola and animal crackers for the bottom. It was tasty, but a little too goaty. I'm thinking, in the future, keep the goat on the savory side of the cheese.

And the reason all of these things spilled out of my mind, only to be put together in my dweeby little blog?

Kids.

the monkey's mutinous minions

Time to be honest. I am a user of the local "day labor" scene. Today it came in the form of some strict herbivores, so when I proposed frying up the chorizo in the fridge, they gave me a bad time and reminded me that recently I have been using alot of animal products. I felt a little guilty, as it is a topic that I continue to struggle with and therefore attempt to keep it local and humanely raised. They acknowledged my efforts and pointed out that the crritters in question usually die as the end result of their labors. Hear, hear my homey quadrapeds.



Then they suggested that they all would feel alot better after they sampled one of the diminutive muffins from last night's labors. I thought hey, this gang of camelopardalis sure have some nerve....


I acquiesced and they sat down with their labor organizer. I know that the manipulation performed by toddlers is normal and all, part of learning, but this was a whole new level of sophistication. The monkey requested toast and "butter" while Momma Giraffe and Fae Fae's Cousin had theirs plain (plain my a__, they had 'em on the gold-rimmed china!) Fae Fae took another route and requested toast, "butter," a drizzle of my homemade ginger and cherry infused simple syrup, and a crank or two of fresh nutmeg. I was not aware that she had such a distinguished palatte, but being an herbivore and this being vegan, and after thinking about it a while I decided that she certainly had the upper hand in expertise.

While they were chowing down, I pulled out the chorizo, some mushrooms, and an onion for the upcoming mac-n-cheese-off. When the crew got wind of the aroma they rushed the kitchen and staged a sit-in, blocking access to the remaining burners. Even though their labor organizer is the one who suggested using chorizo in mac-n-cheese, she finds no difficulties in switching gears and showing some solidarity for her work crew. Ah the fickle minds of three year olds.




I know I live on the border of Berkeley, but isn't this a drastic measure to take when you are made of synthetic materials? I had to act fast, or I'd be reduced to doing work on the back left burner until they either starved or went up in flames. I couldn't handle the prospect of those grim outcomes so I did them up right. I'm such a softie.

So round two for them was served in the livingroom where the monkey requested. I guess they wanted to put their hoofs up on the coffee table, with the meal so graciously provided on the new serving platter from the MCC we received as a x-mas gift from Grandma G. (Thanks!)

I hope the next round of laborers aren't so testy..........

colorful holiday cheesecakes

When I shop for sweet potatoes, I always hold a sort of hope that a taste of the islands can be found. You see, on the two trips I have taken to the Big Island, we delighted in sampling some of the local produce: coconut, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, longan, and some of the more familiar to us tomatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes. Only one thing, these sweet potatoes were purple. Heavenly, yummy, purple, gorgee-ous little sweet potatoes. Some of the local restaurants served it up as a side dish, to say a seared ahi steak or grilled ono fillet, in the form of light and fluffy lavender mountain, with a red colored salad sprig stuck in the top, representing lava spewing out. I fell in love with this form of mashed potatoes at first tasting, and we later purchased some raw ones at the local farmers' market and tried mashing them up ourselves. Well, our selections in lodging somehow never managed to have the right utensil, namely a masher in a kitchen drawer. We made do with forks and big spoons, and plenty of cream and butter I believe, and they ended up palatable. If only we could find these back home....


Shopping at "The Bowl" one afternoon last summer, I'm cruising the tuber section in produce and see something called an okinawan sweet potato. I look at it a little closer and see that the flesh looks like it has purple streaks in it. Ohhhhh, could it be........one of...........those.........hawaiian ones..........? I make my way toward the register to read a book I brought from home for entertainment while standing in line (or so I wish, about every-other time I'm in the place) and purchase somewhere near ten pounds of them. I get home and google it. I had found them. The very thing. I was so happy. I looked up a few recipes and found something entitled "Sweet Potato Cheesecake with Haupia Frosting " by anonymous locals. One look at the ingredients and you could tell they meant island locals. So, for thanksgiving last year we had this purple cheesecake for dessert.

Looking up the recipe again yielded this site:
http://www.e-hawaii.com/features/Christmas/recipes/sweetpotato.htm


Sadly, this year I have not seen the sweet little purple things. I've been back to the source, then another, but without luck. I should probably check chinatown, as I did last year and found them, but you see, most of the crop comes from Hawaii. This doesn't sound too bad right? Think about it a little harder and consider the requirement that the USDA has on irradiating them first, before shipping them the 2,500+ miles (at least) to your door. Purchasing them, should I even find them, is something I just can't do now, for either of those reasons, when there are just so many great locally grown sources of equally delicious tubers. So this year, our family has happily plugged away at eating our papas in the white, yellow and orange color scheme. And as it happens, this week found leftover baked garnet yams, sitting in the fridge, just waiting to be made into something else. Sister A was spending some time with us, so technically it was a holiday and all......so why not, let's do another colorful cheesecake!



Based on making the purple variety twice, adjusting for my own preferences, and of course altering the recipe into one more accommodating to my ingredients, it became something like this. So for a first time, I shall put something into an actual recipe form (of sorts), so here goes:




Garnet Ginger Grenadine Cheesecake (a work in progress)

1 cup chopped pecans (fine)
1 cup mashed graham crackers
1/2 cup buttery stick
2 tbsp chopped candied ginger

combine and pat into that fancy pan you have for such occasions and bake at 350 for ten or so minutes

1 and 3/4 cup mashed garnet yam (1 cup at least, or up to nearly 2 depending on consistency and size of eggs used)
3 jumbo eggs (use large sized if using only 1 cup potato, more like 4 large or 3 jumbo if using nearly 2 cups potato)
1 pound cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

combine these together in a large bowl, preferably in a mixer to save your arms from breaking off. when finished, wrap your pre-baked and now cool pan with tinfoil (if using a springform pan) and pour this mixture in. place the pan into a large roasting pan that will hold it and lots of boiling water around it (should you consider a water bath, which I highly recommend) pour in boiling hot water (around the cheesecake pan please) and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. it should be hardly done (no more jiggle in the middle). carefully take the roasting pan out of the oven, making sure to not scald your arms off with sloshing HOT water. DO NOT POUR WATER OUT while cheesecake is still in the roasting pan. it will slide to one end and not being horizontal at this high of a temperature will destroy it. siphon off the hot water with a turkey baster or the like and then remove the cheesecake pan from the roasting pan. place on a cooling rack and leave for several hours on the counter until it is totally cool. mix up 1 cup of sour cream with a few tablespoons of grenadine. pour this over the cheesecake and smooth it out. place in the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving. when chilled, place pomegranate seeds on the top, hopefully in a pattern more thought out and interesting than the one above.


Oh how I love leftovers like these. Because when the weather outside is dreary and gray, I feel like wrapping myself up in a blanket and snuggling down with a nice piece of cheesecake. Besides, it's kinda funny to see the colors of Fall on a plate, and be reminded that this weather will pass (after a few more months of rain that is) as this season of colorful cheesecake comes to an end and ushers in a new year.

navarathna korma with a side of alter-ego

In my dream our mortar and pestle was grinding away without me. It didn't need me to define it. It knew what its purpose was in life, so it merely performed it. It was calling out for a garam masala. It wanted hot and sweet and I had a recipe in mind......we have had Reedley produce still lying around so I got to work on a butternut and a few eggplant, and added tomatoes from our garden. Also a sweet potato that needed cooking. These were roasted on a pan in the oven at 400 for about an hour while I ground 1Tcardamom seeds, 1T black peppercorns, 3 sticks of cinnamon, 1t coriander, and 1t fennel. To this I added 1t ground cloves and called it good.
With the garam masala ready for takeoff I needed to work on some veggies to saute. Two huge onions were chopped, about 10 mushrooms, plus an inch or two of fresh ginger and cooked in olive oil. I added 1/2t chili powder and about 1/2 of my masala and stirred well. Next came a large can of diced tomatoes and some lentils I had boiled earlier. When the roasting veggies were done, they too were added, plus some diced carrots and frozen peas. Then a top for the pan was found and this concoction was put on the back burner for a while. I served this with pita and sticky white sushi rice, of all things, cause I was in the mood. It was very satisfyingly spiced and I derived great pleasure from the garam masala in particular.



The next day my cousin Rohan dropped by. Upon hearing of the leftover spices and veggie korma as well as the lingering butternuts, he suggested that we make some of his authentic Indian calzones......huh? Yeah, Cousin Rohan! Give him a beer and he can make anything!
We made up a half whole wheat sourdough and let it rise once before shaping into calzones. The filling consisted of roasted butternut combined with mushrooms, onions, garam masala, cumin and mustard seed, and a can of coconut milk. This was all cooked together for a while and then the sauce was reduced slightly, leaving what you see here. It ended up being enough for 4 huge calzones, which is good because Rohan is a big kid who can really pack em' down, especially after working up an appetite kneading dough.



After baking them for near half an hour at 400 degrees, we pulled out the leftovers and got to plating up. Rohan poured the stout and procured the chocolate dipped, candied ginger cashew biscotti, while I heated the korma and chose two of the pretty calzones to eat. We discussed the latest book he's been reading, once again drifting toward the merits of vegan eating, and how our geography no longer dictates our eating habits (as it once righftully did, in the not too distant past). We talked how this may be a boon for veggie-headed lovers that comes with sometimes conflicting problems of transport that can seem to negate the good you are trying to propagate by going organic with your selections........we thought these things until we realized that the beer was from a town kinda close. This made us feel so good about supporting our local brewers that we finished it off, reasoning that the need for more would contribute to the local self-sustaining market right here in the bay area.

cashew ginger biscotti, a work in progress

Thank you Nana. You have been gone since I was in second grade, but I think of you whenever I find myself even thinking about biscotti. From your mother to you, to Grandma, and then to both of my folks, was passed on the tradition of making biscotti. Anise cookies were what we knew them as when my sis and I were little. They were crumbly, nutty, mildly licoricey, a touch sweet, and associated with holidays or special occasions. I ate as many as I could whenever I could get my hands on them. Now, I've been making them for at least ten years, during the holidays and maybe for a birthday or two. I have loved biscotti my entire life, so while I was pilfering some of the candied ginger from our jar the other day, and I heard my brain play a bit of a conversation from a few weeks ago: J saying, "Biscotti? I've made em' before.....with some candied ginger bits....tasty!" I imagined how I could alter the family recipe and accommodate what my salivary glands were suddenly demanding.

It took about 3 minutes to assemble the ingredients here. This photo includes the mortar because the flax seeds needed a thorough pulverizing. Raw cashews, candied ginger, and lemon zest are on the plate, vegetable shortening and canola oil represent the fats, all backed by canisters of flour and sugar, plus the baking powder can and fertility symbol salt-keep.


Once again, these ingredients here are NOT those involved in the anise cookies. But I could not talk about making biscotti without talking about Nana's and Grandma's cookies and my original encounters with such. Now that I make them for myself and others, I can choose to create somthing to suit my tastes. Think about it. When given a plate of thirty cookies to choose from, your brain usually starts looking for little details: that ones a little more done, or, hey this one is bigger or has more frosting, etc.....So, overall, I make mine drier, and maybe a little harder, but you can dip it in coffee, tea, or vin santo, and most of it comes back out of the glass (granted we really didn't dip them much as kids so this was of no concern back then) I guess you could call me downright discerning at times, but come on, biscotti aren't just any ol' cookie. I'm not looking to get a sweet-tooth craving sated when I consume one. I'm looking for the comfort-food eating experience that only a good biscotti can satisfy. Considering this, when I experiment with biscotti, the odds are stacked against me, for I'm prone to being overly critical. It was with all this in my head that I embarked on this adventure.

I ground 2T flax seeds into more or less a powder and added 6T of water. This sat and soaked while I worked with the rest. I put 2.5c flour and .75c sugar with 1t baking powder and .5t salt in a sifter, and sifted together 3 times. I melted 5T vege shortening and combined it with 2T canola oil and the flax seed mash in another bowl. This was then combined with the dry ingredients and mixed by hand. When the dough started coming together I added 2/3c chopped cashews and 1/4c chopped candied ginger. This was the result. I covered it with wrap and put it in the fridge to chill for a few hours before shaping into a loaf and doing the initial baking.

Biscotti are the shape of the inside of your hand, so the next step is quite easy. Using your hands, form a loaf about a foot long and a middle finger wide. Bake this for 30-40 minutes at 375, on as light of a pan as you have. Remove from the oven and put on a rack to cool like this.


When cool to the touch, cut at a diagonal, into individual cookies, about as wide as your pinky. Lay back on the cookie sheet and put back in the oven at a lower heat, say 325, and bake them even more. After about 10 minutes, flip over the cookies and put back in the oven. You will probably have to do this several times more if you like them like I do. When the cookies are taken out, do not eat any (these aren't anything like chocolate chip cookies, there is no benefit to eating them warm, unless you like burning hot pieces of cookie-shrapnel embedded in your gums.) Hopefully, you are left with something along these lines:





And, if you manage to not eat all of them, and some make it to see the light of day, you can enjoy them with some nice strong coffee. Lord knows a few of my relatives over the years have started their day with a breakfast similar to this.....Ciao!