The easiest yoghurt ever

I love my Caspian Sea yoghurt!

I've never had much luck with 'ordinary' yoghurt. Into a jar I'd put scalded milk and starter. I'd leave it in a warm place, open it up a day or so later, and find - scalded milk and starter.

It's true that I didn't perservere as determinedly as I could have. But since getting this Caspian Sea yoghurt (from Deb at Wellington WAPF) I haven't seen the point in trying to make regular yoghurt again.

Making Caspian Sea yoghurt seems almost failsafe, and perfect for people like me for whom precision is not a strong point.

Put a few dollops of the starter in a clean jar. Add any kind of milk (or cream). Then put the lid on, shake it around a bit, and leave it somewhere that's not too cold. Open it up the next day, and there you have it! A jar of yoghurt!

(This may not seem so amazing if you're used to success with yoghurt, but for me it's nothing short of miraculous. I feel like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold.)

Caspian Sea yoghurt, also called Matsoni, originated in Georgia apparently, and was introduced into Japan in the 1980s. It contains yeasts as well as bacteria - so it tastes very like ordinary yoghurt, but with an extra yeasty tang. It also has more of a gloopy, viscous texture.

So far I've used it in curries, smoothies, dips, and for Bircher muesli. Next on the to-do list is a frozen yoghurt dessert.

It's so ridiculously easy, I feel like I want to make more ... and more ... and MORE! And I want to give little pots of it away to everyone - so they can start making more and more and MORE!

There are some interesting community swap networks getting going in Wellington at the moment - as well as a Really Really Free Market happening in town on Buy Nothing Day - November 29.

I'm hoping to be there with great mountains of Caspian Sea yoghurt.

Wild turnip greens for dinner

Yesterday we picked some big bunches of Wild Turnip from our backyard to put in a noodle stir-fry - along with ginger, soy sauce, onionweed, egg, cashew nuts, and mushrooms (ordinary brown buttons from a shop, I hasten to add.)



I felt there was some urgency to picking the Wild Turnip, as my father-in-law had announced he was going to come and mow our lawns for us, and I would have felt a little strange - not mention ungrateful - about giving him a list of weeds to work around!

Wild Turnip is a variety of Brassica rapa - the same species that has been bred and cultivated for its roots to produce turnips, and for its leaves to produce bok choy.

The leaves, buds, flowers, and seeds of wild turnip are all highly edible.

Looking at its buds, you can see the family resemblance to fellow Brassica, broccoli.




Wild turnip produces a crazy hotchpotch of different shaped leaves. It starts as a rosette of 'lyre-shaped' leaves with funny little pox all over them ...



... then it sends up a stalk.

The further up the stalk you go, the more the leaves lose their lyre shape and their pox (I'm sure there's a technical name for those, but I'm enjoying calling them pox.) I've read that the lower leaves, and especially the first leaves of the rosette, are the best tasting and least bitter. We're still experimenting with that ...

From the batch of wild turnip we collected last night, we also managed to harvest a few seed pods. Mustard can be made from the seeds of several different Brassica species and varieties, so we're going to dry these seed pods and have a go at it.



Wild Turnip roots smell delicious (very turnipy), but I haven't read anywhere that you can eat them. One source says they're too stringy. But if this is the only reason not to eat them - perhaps you could still boil them up as part of a vegetable stock? I'd love to know if there's any reason not to eat them apart from their stringiness.

Street-smart weeds

A funny side of effect of getting more into foraging has been that when I'm out and about, everywhere I look I see FOOD.

I imagine that if I lived in unspoilt wilderness, this would be a good feeling. But I live in a busy suburb close to the city, and my 'everywhere' is grubby footpaths, crowded roads, and the odd well-used sports field. There's a certain pain that comes with seeing masses of edible weeds sprouting up through the concrete or ashphalt of untouchable places. It's like seeing a crate-load of broccoli rolling away down a gutter.

Wild Turnip is a brassica with delicious, mustardy-tasting leaves, which thrives in our suburb.

It grows here ...



and here ...



and here.



In fact any spot that gets trampled on, peed on, and coated in car exhaust fumes is prime real estate for Wild Turnip.

I like to think that Wild Turnip might have evolved to grow so well in these places as a strategy against being eaten by humans. (Clever plant.)

Still, there may just be enough of it on our slightly-less-toxic back lawn for a stir-fry tomorrow.

The Weeping Bolete

Walking through the Town Belt with friends today, we came across three big brown mushrooms under some pines. My son thought they might be edible boletes, so we picked one (or rather, my son hit it out of the ground with a stick and I gingerly scooped it up with a bag), and we brought it home to identify.





A book and several websites later, we'd decided that yes, it probably was a pine bolete - maybe Suillus granulatus, also known as Weeping Bolete.

I would have liked to have eaten something with such a great name, but even with all the resources at our disposal we couldn't be completely sure of its identity, and I was troubled by the fact that all of those resources said pine boletes are autumn mushrooms ... It's definitely not autumn.

I wished we had a fungus expert on hand to make a pronouncement.

Anyway, we had fun chopping it up to see what it looked like inside.

Being seen

Sounds like I should revise my earlier comment about having our solar cooking picnic somewhere a little out of the way. You guys who are coming - are you happy to be more visible?

I was in touch with Christine Dann briefly and she suggested having it somewhere like a waterfront where there are plenty of people out strolling.
'
The same day I heard from her, I looked at the Solar Cookers International wiki and its article about organising solar cooking events. It advocates promoting solar cooking by being visible and happy to chat to interested passers-by.

Christine also suggested we offer sun tea to anyone who would like to try some.

Still wondering about QE2 park as a possibility ... I don't know it well. If anyone has any thoughts on it, would love to hear.

A date for our solar cooking pinic?

According to my calendar, November 9-15 is SunSmart Week!

Mid-November seems like the best time to have our picnic anyway, so how about we go with Saturday 15 November? It's the last day of SunSmart Week, and our theme could be, 'Cook your food - not yourself'!

If the weather looks unsuitable we could postpone to the following weekend. (A bit of wind or cloud - fine. Rain - nah.)

A venue is trickier.

It needs to be somewhere between Kapiti and Wellington, and preferably on a public transport route. It also needs enough shade for people to sit in (unless we bring our own) - but enough flat, open, unshaded space to cook in. It needs plenty of room to spread out cookers where they won't get in the way of other people ... And it should probably be as sheltered from the wind as possible. (We can deal with the wind, but it's still pleasanter not to have to!)

Any thoughts? I wondered about QE2 park? But how easy is it to get there by public transport? I can imagine taking a cooker plus food on a train, but a little more tricky perhaps on a bus, and not something I'd want to walk for a really long way with ...

Another idea for a venue is a school field - nice and flat, not too many people on a weekend, and accessible toilets if we could persuade the school to open them for us.

I'm also wondering about trying for a tiny amount of funding. Just to cover the cost of a venue (say if we booked out a space at QE2 park), plus maybe to buy 2 or 3 solar cooking kits from Solar Cookers International that we could give away or raffle at the picnic?

I guess we don't want to be too ambitious, since it's a first time thing - it's just trying to strike that balance between well-planned and relaxed ...

Oh - I did see slightly different dates for SunSmart Week (just a day or two's difference) on another website - so will double check that.

If you can't stand the heat ...

Kapiti blogging friend Nikki is an inspiring advocate for cooking with retained heat and residual heat.

Talking with her got me thinking about those recipes for meringues where you pre-heat the oven, turn it off as soon as you put the meringues in, and leave them overnight.


My daughter and I had a go at some chocolate chip ones this evening, using a recipe from The Uncommon Gourmet. (And when we'd dolloped about half the choc-chip meringue mix onto a tray, we also added some orange zest to the rest.)

Now it's approaching midnight. My daughter is tucked up in her bed, the meringues are tucked up in the oven, and everyone who's still up and about has strict instructions not to open the oven door till morning.

It may be foolhardy to attempt meringues on such a damp night, but we'd had this bowl of egg whites sitting in the fridge for two days, begging to be used. If you're wondering what we did with the yolks, we made kawakawa icecream - which I'd like to post on another time. It tasted divine, but those leaves are potent!

Back to meringues ... I've been wondering how much electricity our oven uses compared to our stovetop. Obviously making meringues with this residual heat method uses less power than baking any dessert that has the oven on for longer.

But how does it compare to making a dessert that only requires one stovetop element - even if it's turned on for longer? Like custard, or steamed pudding, or rice pudding? (Although I dare say desserts like rice pudding might work well using residual or retained heat - so perhaps really no need to leave the element on for a long time?)

I haven't done the research. If anyone else reading this has, I'd be interested to know.

New wild foraging email list

Just started up ...

Wild Foragers Aotearoa NZ
For New Zealanders interested in sustainably foraging food, medicine, and other useful stuff from the wild. A place to share ideas, questions, difficulties, experiences, and knowledge. Topics may include identification, sustainable harvesting practices, ideas for preparation and use, and more.

There are just four of us there so far, and we haven't started talking yet. (Although I am dying to post a picture of a weed in our garden that I need help identifying.)

To join, or find out more, go to
http://groups.google.com/group/wild-foragers-a-nz

Food activism article

A while ago, a couple of people asked if there was a link available to the article on food activism that I wrote for Sunday magazine, but there wasn't. (Often Sunday articles go up on stuff.co.nz, but this one didn't.)

So anyhow, I've put it up on a file sharing site, in case anyone is still interested. It's here.

When can we start?

My Dad, a retired physicist, has kindly been calculating when we might have enough sun to start solar cooking this year. Here's what he's come up with:



I don't understand it in the slightest.

Luckily he's also provided a translation:

In Wellington, prime solar cooking days (when we're at a 45 degree angle to the sun, or greater, for 4 hours or more) will begin in mid October, and run through till early March.

Solar cooking is, however, often also possible a few weeks before and after that prime period, so I'm planning to have a go towards the end of September.

The further north you are in New Zealand, the earlier you can start. That means Aucklanders can get in there about a week and half before Wellingtonians, while Mainlanders will have a few more days to wait.

Hurry up, spring!