Of Internet and Guessing

The epic battle of the broken internet is at an end, and I emerge victorious. I hope my mother will not be too offended that I threw her broken modem, which she kindly gave me under the impression it was not possessed be demonic sprites, in the bin. I said a few words for it – you were a good modem, for the first two years of your life. You lived much longer than you should have. Now, you are just ugly and large. Rest In Peace.

I think I have discovered a powerful fact about muffins. There is only one muffin recipe! Why do I own a book with 200 muffin recipes?! They all require some kind of flour, some kind of moisture (usually a combination of oil and milk), baking powder and then whatever ingredients make the flavour. Quantities vary depending on how moist the “flavour” is and how many you want to make.

I remember when I was even shorter than I am now, helping various family members in the kitchen. I remember asking how much of something needed to be added – and the answers were always frustratingly vague: “oh, just about enough” or “roughly this much, we’ll just see” and I’m pretty sure mum has told me on more than one occasion “I just sort of guess”. THIS is cooking?!

This is surely the difference between following a recipe and being a good cook. It is a combination of absorbed knowledge about the minimum required to create, for example, a muffin; and instinct. I like to call it Sense of Guess. Like the other senses, only more useful in the kitchen.

I have a terrible Sense of Guess but I think (or hope) that unlike the other senses it is something you can learn, even if you were not born with it naturally. Yesterday I decided to test my Sense of Guess to get rid of various quickly expiring ingredients.

I had a bowl of almond meal in my fridge – a by product of the almond milk I have been making myself; more on milk some other day – and two very, very ripe bananas.

Go-Go Gadget Guess: I turned the almond meal into flour using a coffee bean grinder. I don’t know how much there was. A lot? I had two bananas. They were smallish, I guess. Or medium? Don’t know, whatever. I added the other “Muffin Minimums” plus some soaked chopped dates and a spoonful of molasses (what sort of spoon?! Who even knows). I mixed and found the consistency wrong, so I added more stuff. I mixed again and was content. I spooned mixture into a muffin tray (I put just enough in each one) and then I baked them at a temperature for some time.

Yay, muffins! They are far sweeter than I expected, I wish I had put less molasses in them. Note to self: use a smaller spoon. Otherwise delicious, and the consistency is perfect.
And the verdict? Sense of Guess improving. Chance of GF trying my cooking: diminishing.

Iron Chef: More from the Coconut Battle

Apart from the abysmal fail of my coconut yoghurt, I also contributed coconut tartlet thingies and a coconutty salad. The salad was thrown together crunchy salad vegetables with dessicated coconut mixed through; the dressing was coconut milk, sweet chilli sauce, pepper, lemon juice and mint. I sadly could not find fresh mint which greatly detracted from the awesomeness of this dressing – but really it is delicious. It’s a good one for purple cabbage, corn, capsicum – anything sweet and crunchy. I’m a big fan of this dish but as GF says, “you can’t make friends with salad” so I made up afore mentioned tartlet thingies, as well.

A while ago I allowed temptation and pretty pictures to get the better of me, and I purchased Lynda Stoner’s book “Now Vegan”. It is a beautifully laid out book, and although there are not pictures for every single recipe, the spacious formatting makes even the text look delicious. My one major criticism of the recipes is that many of them contain “substitutes” – vegan cheese, fake meat and so forth – products which I consider a bit dubious. Some of them are edible but pretty void of nutrition; others are just plain dirty. But they don’t represent major ingredients in the recipes, and most of the meals in this book are glorious.

The “Autumn Pasta” jumped out at me when I was looking for something coconutty – I’ve never tried miso before, so I thought it would be a fun one to try. I ditched the pasta and used home-made coconut pastry cases instead. I also changed her “1 tablespoon” of cashew paste to “1/2 cup” of cashew paste – this was a mistake due to my previously stated idiocy and ineptitude. However, I think it worked out better this way; it made the sauce thicker and therefore more appropriate as a pastry filling.

Coconut, Miso & Other Stuff Pastry Thingies

• 400ml coconut cream (happily exactly one can of the organic variety I buy)
• Cup of Cashews
• Cup of (soy) milk
• 1 dessertspoon Miso paste
• 1 dessertspoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 dessertspoons sesame oil
• Clove chopped garlic
• Small onion
• Cup of mushrooms
• Lots of fresh basil
• Chilli, to taste
  
  
  not cooked yet!
  

1. Cook the onion, chilli, garlic and mushroom in the sesame oil on a gentle heat until everything has shrunk and softened and smells delicious.
   
2. Meanwhile, make cashew paste by combining your milk and the cashews in a food processor.
3. Add the cashew paste and other liquids to the mushrooms and stir. The miso I used was a hard block so it took a long time and a lot of stirring for it to dissolve into the mixture.
   
4. Lastly add big handfuls of shredded basil.

Now the sauce is complete – set it aside to cool, while you make the pastry. You will need:

• 1 can of coconut cream
• No-Egg (a powdered egg substitute)
• 2 cups Flour

1. Put the can of coconut cream into the fridge. The idea is for the cream to solidify and become as hard as possible. When the cream is ready, it should be the consistency of margarine. There will probably be a layer of this cream in the can, and beneath that the watery juice.
   
2. Use clean hands to scoop out just the harder cream, and rub this into the flour to make a bread-crum consistency.
3. The “no-egg” stuff is usually made with water; use the left over coconut juices instead. Combine this with the flower mixture and stir into a bowl. You’ll have to start using your hands after a while. If you need more liquid use more coconut cream or water. The dough should only just be keeping together at this stage, so don’t add too much liquid.
   
4. Knead on a clean floured surface for a few minutes (5 maybe?) until it is smooth and pastry like. Because the consistency of the coconut is key, if your hands are warm, you’ll probably need to do all this in steps, returning the mixture to the fridge periodically to keep the cream cold. I only had to use the fridge once, because our kitchen is in Canberra.
   
   
   
5. Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin – make it as thick or thin as you like – and cut it into circles. Mould these circles into a greased muffin tin.
   
6. Cook on 200 degrees for about ten minutes to harden the shells up – check them, however, to prevent them over cooking. Remove the cases from the tin and allow them to cool a bit.
   

For the final part of this concoction, spoon the sauce into your cases, put them on a tray, sprinkle desiccated coconut on top, and zap them in the oven. I used 200 degrees for ten minutes then 150 degrees for a further fifteen, but it depends on your oven – you basically just want to heat up and crisp your goodies.

What Others Brought

I have just moved house! That’s right: I finally have a brand new Cardboard Kitchen – complete with lime green bench top and four working hot plates. More on this later. Due to limited time and even more limited internet connectivity, updates have been and will continue to be sporadic. Here’s the recipes for my friend’s contributions to the Iron Chef Coconut battle, to keep you busy in the meantime:

Iron Chef Queanbeyan brought Coconut Fondue: we skewered cut fruit, then dipped this into a gorgeous sweet coconut concoction which was kept melty and warm in a dish supported by a hollowed out pineapple with a tea-light inside. This delicious skewer was then rolled into toasted coconut and consumed with joyous gobbling noises. Iron Chef Queanbeyan supplies the following instructions:

"Well I reckon you can probably work out how to cut fruit and toast coconut with a bit of cinnamon in :-). The cream I made up as I went along but the process was something like:

Put 2 tbsp of cornflower in a pot and mix with coconut water until you get a thin paste, stir in a can of coconut cream until smooth. Place over medium heat and stir until it starts to thicken slightly and set aside.

Peel a custard apple and cut in to small pieces. Using a food processor or bamix process for about 2 seconds only. This is just to loosen the seeds so you can go through and pick them out. Once you've removed the seeds process it to a goo and sieve the goo in to the pot, pushing it through with the back of a spoon. I also added a few spoonfuls of the goo from inside the sieve for a bit of texture. Finely dice about half a cup of fresh coconut flesh and add that to the pot too.

Stick back on a low heat, stirring continuously while you grate in 2 sticks of palm sugar. Depending on the sweetness at this stage (which depends on the sweetness of the custard apple) you might want to also stir through about a teaspoon of glucose.

Keep stirring until you reach the required consistency, using more coconut water or coconut milk to loosen if needed.

For the record, the fruits which I found worked well were banana, strawberry, rock mellon, persimmon and pineapple. Red tamarillo also is very tasty but impossible to get to stay on a fondue fork!"

Iron Chef Perth brought a coconut and a bendy blue straw. Here is her recipe:

"Step 1: Fail
Step 2: ??
Step 3:Profit
Step 4: Slight panic
Step 5: Discover coconut innocently sitting on kitchen table
Step 6: Rifle through drawers to find a straw
Step 7: Nick above coconut and straw

If you follow the above steps exactly you should have a most tasty cop out."

The Iron Chef previously known as Iron Chef Hackett brought an amazing sticky black rice pudding with coconut sauce and sweet toasted coconut. She apparently used the recipe to be found by following this link, but added the Vietnamese mint using her own initiative. It must be honestly said that the mint really makes the dish – I went back for seconds three times.

I'll upload more pictures later - I have a stupidly tiny limit to play with.

Iron Chef: Yoghurt Adventure

When I was in Byron recently I was excited to stumble across a Queensland brand of yoghurt made from coconuts. It seemed perfect for the upcoming Iron Chef battle. I found a recipe for yoghurt in “Eat Vegetarian” by Sam Stern (which is one of my favourite cookbooks at the moment) and substituted milk for coconut milk. Before I regale you with the horrendous failure that was Friday night’s yoghurt attempt, here is the recipe I was using:

• 1 litre of coconut milk
• 1 sachet of natural yoghurt starter (health food shops have these)

1. Boil the milk until it rises, then remove from heat.
   
2. Pour into a bowl or jug let the milk cool down to luke warm (about 40 degrees).
   
3. Stir in the yoghurt.
4. Leave, covered, for 6-8 hours somewhere warm. It’s important that the temperature is around the 38 degree mark and that the yoghurt isn’t disturbed. The yoghurt should thicken – you might need to leave it longer if the temperature is low.
   
5. Put yoghurt in the fridge to cool – and then it’s ready to eat! You can use this recipe to make greek style yoghurt just by straining it.

Sounds pretty easy, right? That’s what I thought. I was all ready to go, I had my pot and cans of coconut milk, my yoghurt starter and a spoon, and had fired up the (one working) hot plate. Five minutes later it became apparent that the one working hot plate did not work. I decided to utilise some high-end engineering skills, and hit the stove top whilst swearing colourfully.
I tried the other hot plates. Maybe, in dying, it had given its power to one of the others. To my surprise, the third plate I tried did begin to heat – a few minutes after spewing noxious smoke into the kitchen. Once the fumes had cleared, it worked quite well. And by well, I mean five times more slowly than it should have.

But, the coconut boiled. Good – now for the easy stuff! I should mention that the starter I used is not from an English speaking country – nothing on the box is written in English, and there was just the shop’s sticker explaining what it was. Luckily there was a small slip of English instructions inside; however neither the “don’t disturb while maturing” nor the “leave for longer if cold” advice were immediately obvious on these instructions.

Sam Stern suggests wrapping a towel around your yoghurt “if it is chilly”.


Ten hours later, the Antarctic climate of our house had produced a saucepan of: coconut milk.


No yoghurt. No yoghurt-ish texture, no yoghurt-ish flavour. Damn.

In the end I heated my oven to 50 degrees, let it cool a smidgen and then put the yoghurt in there. I repeated this process over the next 8 hours, and by lunchtime on Battle Day the milk began to taste like yoghurt, and was a bit thicker. Presumably, if I had done this to begin with, and hadn’t moved it about so much, it would have actually worked the way it was meant to.

I added some pineapple bits & juice to the yoghurt-ish slop, and it actually tasted pretty good. With a bit of honey and cinnamon, poured over fresh fruit, I didn’t think it did too badly. Certainly not what I was going for, but I think I’ll try again at some point. I’m thinking that if you put the yoghurt in a jug, and then put the jug in a bowl of boiling water, you’d be able to keep the temperature constant by switching the water whenever it cooled.

Do not let my failure deter you – clearly I am inept and an idiot. Sam Stern’s book is brilliant: he’s kind of like a tiny Jamie Oliver who seems to favour vegetables. His book has lots of pictures, easy to follow instructions, and great advice about substitutions and variations on all the recipes. He explains how to make heaps of basic stuff from scratch – like bread, yoghurt, cheese, and pizza – and from there you have so much scope to experiment. I’ll do a post on some of his bread recipes I’ve tried eventually. I suspect his yoghurt may work perfectly for actual milk; a friend informed me that coconut juice used to be used to sanitise wounds which might explain its reluctance to host bacteria in our freezing cold lounge room.

Ironchef: Coconut Battle

We have just finished cleaning up after the epic success (and epic mess) that was our first Iron Chef battle (oh yes, there will be others). There were nine contestants in all, and the following contributions:

• Prawn Skewers with Coconut peanut sauce
• Coconut Rice
• Salad with Coconut & Sweet Chilli dressing
• Cashew, Miso & Coconut tartlet thingies
• Fruit Salad with Coconut Yoghurt
• Coconut Fondue
• Black rice pudding with coconut topping
  
• Coconut & Lime Cheesecake

Black Rice pudding with Coconut milk & toasted shredded coconut
Possibly the most inventive dish, however, was a whole unopened coconut and a soft drink straw. We’ll be saving that puppy for the house warming, when we move house in a few weeks time. I’ll be posting the full recipes for everything that was made – when people pass them on to me – but in the meantime, feast on these:

Lime and coconut Cheese Cake - as delicious as it is beautiful to behold.

Salad (with desiccated coconut); the coconut & sweet chilli dressing is just visible in the background.

The wine is not made from coconut - but note the remaining prawn skewers. Obviously I did not have these, but they got Girlfriend's vote for dish of the night.

Gorgeously sweet and indulgent: black rice pudding, with, of course, coconut - and vietnamese mint, of all things. Can't wait for the recipe for that one.

Fruit Salad & Coconut Yoghurt

Coconut fondue - there's a tealight in the hollowed out pineapple on which the bowl rests. Astounding what people can do these days.

Needless to say, fun was had, mess was made, and OldSpice Ads were watched on Youtube.

Best Breakfast in Da World

How good are pancakes? I have found, in my quest to live forever, that things don't have to be "bad for you" in order to taste good. This is my favourite breakfast - complete with fibre, fruit, and no added sugars.

Apple & Banana Pancakes

These pancakes have their own unique and delicious flavour, so I don't add any honey - but if you have a sweet tooth honey or maple syrup are perfect toppings. I love the contrast of the warm, filling pancakes and the cool, freshness of the cold banana. It's like getting the best of both worlds: satisfying and refreshing all at once.

• 1 egg
• 1 tsp butter, melted (optional - I don't add butter)
• 1 1/4 cups of milk
• 1 cup flour (I use wholemeal for fibre; white makes lighter pancakes)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 apples, peeled & grated (when in season, green ones work best)
• cinnamon (to taste - I use about a bucket)
• Vanilla essence (to taste - I use a tablespoon)
• pinch of nutmeg (optional)
  
  
• Banana (slice and serve atop pancakes)
• Honey or real maple syrup (topping, optional)

1. Make mixture by sifting together dry ingredients and then adding the wet ones. I cheat and use a blender stick to mix everything together, but potentially folding with a spoon will keep the mixture lighter.
   
2. Add the grated apple last, stir together.
   
3. Cook in a frying pan (see below for tips).
   
4. Serve topped with freshly sliced banana and, if you like, honey or maple syrup.

Makes enough for two hungry lesbians, with a serving of leftovers (mmm, cold pancakes for lunch!)

The original recipe calls for only one apple to every cup of flour, so my version is more like an apple fritter than a pancake with apples in it. If you prefer a bit more fluffiness leaving out some of the apple will do the trick. You can also add in some banana to the mix instead of one of the apples: I did this when I cooked for my mum, and they worked brilliantly. The mix can be made up the night before - in fact, this is what I always do, because I think it makes them taste better - but you will usually need to add a little extra milk the following morning.

How to cook pancakes

I have been taking singing lessons since I was 12, and I have found that the best teachers are not necessarily the best singers. At first that doesn't make sense, but the reason is quite sensible. "Naturally gifted" people never really had to learn themselves. They either could just do what they could do without guidance, or having been shown once, were able to pick it up and do it perfectly without practice.

Really good teachers struggled to understand concepts, came up against obstacles, practiced, failed, made mistakes, tried a thousand different methods, and finally mastered the best techniques.

Be assured that I am not naturally gifted. I have made many pancake-scrambles, pitch black fritters, and seemingly perfect concoctions that run gooey and white in the middle (I actually like them this way, but that's another story). Because I am so utterly inept, I've had to play a lot of trial and error, and I have been forced to make pancakes almost every week just to practice. (the things I do for my art)

Here are some tips that have helped me make pancakes that people will actually eat:

• Use a good non-stick frying pan. This is probably the most important thing for me. I love my frying pan. It's one of the only really good quality items I have in my kitchen. And it does make a difference - the difference between carcinogenic goop and pancakes.
  
  
• Wait for the frying pan to reach the right temperature. The first batch always goes awry for me when I rush in - so I normally cook a single pancake to check the temperature before marching on with the rest.
  
  
• Use a temperature which is hot enough to change the colour of the pancake, but will not burn the outside before the inside is cooked. I usually use a slightly higher temp for side one, then down the volume when I flip the pancake for side two.
  
  
• Be patient. Don't flip the pancakes before they are ready. If you're using a good frying pan, they should slide easily onto your flipper when they want to be turned. If they offer resistance it is because that side is still cooking, and the mixture is sticking to the pan. Just leave them for a bit longer and try again.
  
  
• Normally the "bubble" method works well - watching bubbles form and pop on the surface of the pancakes - but this is less effective with these particular pancakes as the quantity of apples makes for less bubble visibility. I usually rely on the "flipper test" above.

Some things about Meat

I do not eat meat because of an anxiety disorder - I have "carnophobia", or an irrational fear of consuming meat. However, here are some interesting facts about meat that others might wish to cite in favour of Vegetarianism:

• Turkeys bred for consumption cannot reproduce naturally - cannot, in fact, have sex - due to the grossly unnatural size of their breasts. That's right, big boobs = no turkey sex. All turkey sold in American supermarkets has been artificially inseminated, even the "Free range" and "natural" branded stuff. I have no idea what the turkey situation is like here in Australia. Do you?
  
  
• To be branded as "free range" in America, chickens need to have "access to the outdoors" which, on further analysis, proves to be meaningless. As many authors (eg Singer, Saffran Foer) have discovered, "free range" chickens still have less than 1 A4 sheet of paper on which to stand, are packed into barns with no places to perch, and their access to the outdoors may be for a few hours of daylight a few days of a few months every year. They are still bred to grow so fat so quickly that their bones do not develop properly, and they often cannot walk properly. They still have their beaks seared off to stop them pecking each other. They still stand or kneel in thick piles of their own shit, causing all kinds of sores and infections, including blindness and respiratory problems. As Jonathon Saffran Foer eloquently says in his book Eating Animals: "One can reliably assume that most 'free-range' (or 'cage-free') laying hens are debeaked, drugged, and cruelly slaughtered once 'spent'. I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range."
  
  
• Singer, in his book the Ethics of What we Eat mentions that debeaking is "common practice" in Australia, as well. Chicken's beaks are like our fingers. Imagine having your child's fingers sawn off with a hot blade, with no anaesthetic. Then imagine that child living out their existence in artificial light, shoulder to shoulder with other fingerless children, up to their knees in excrement, for the rest of their lives - luckily, though, their lives are only 39-42 days. At this stage they will be plump and delicious and ready to slaughter. Assuming they have lived this long, of course.
  
  
• Now, in Australia, it is possible that there are egg sellers who use the term "Free Range" in the sense that we would assume it is meant, and that their birds are not debeaked or put through other factory-farm suffering. But how can you tell? If "free range" apparently means nothing, which eggs do you buy? I personally would opt to buy eggs off a neighbour who owns her own hens. Wouldn't you?
  
  
• Did you know that the chickens that produce our eggs and the chickens that produce our meat are no longer the same chickens? I found this fascinating. You see, they are bred to be extra specially good at what they do: which means fast growing chubby chooks (broilers) for our dinner plates, and over-laying ladies to pop out 300 eggs in their first year (before being sold for pet food, as it becomes economically unsavoury to house hens who have dropped 50% in productivity by year 2). Which raises the question, what happens to male "layers"? Well, they're pretty useless, actually. They grow too slowly and don't get fat enough to eat, and, shame for them, they can't lay eggs. I won't post the links, because that would be gratuitous, but there are photos all over the internet of baby male layers being thrown into dumpsters to suffocate, or into machines that are effectively wood chippers for live chicks. Chick Chippers, if you will. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? VeganPeace.com has some photos if you really must upset yourself further.
  
  
• The suffering of the vast number of pigs farmed by factory methods aside, let's talk a little more about shit. I can do no better than to summarise Saffran Foer's explanation of the several hundred 120,000 square feet shit "lagoons" that surround each hog farm: "If you were to fall into one, you would die... just as you would die of asphyxiation, within minutes, if the power went out while you were in one of the hog sheds."
  

This topic is endlessly fascinating to me, but I think it's time for a recipe.

Dinner

• Take some fresh vegetables
• Add some herbs and spices
• Apply heat according to your methodology of choice
• Serve atop your favourite carbohydrate, cooked in whichever manner you fancy

Delicious. If you're still hungry, however, Jonathan, again in "Eating Animals", offers a mouth watering recipe for Filipino Stewed Dog ("wedding style", apparently). Presumably it could apply just as deliciously to cats, if you're not really a dog person.