Food illustrated

Sarah, from my writing group, is a renaissance woman. Seriously. Not only is she a writer, but an illustrator, a designer, a musician, a crafter, a gardener and a cook. (And I'm bound to have missed something.)

Anyhow, she has a new blog - Garden Kitchen - where she cooks delicious (and eco-friendly) dishes and then draws them. It's beautiful!

For sourdough fans

I've been rummaging through cookbooks that used to be my grandmother's, and among the treasures is Any one Can Bake - a 1929 promotional publication from 'the Educational Department of the ROYAL BAKING POWDER CO.'

You might get a laugh from their version of the origin of leavened bread - from a longer article entitled, 'The Evolution of Baking Powder'.

The Royal Baking Powder Co tells us ...

Yeast came first
Very early in written history we come upon mention of both 'leavened' and 'unleavened' bread, so the actual origin of raised bread is obscure. Some prehistoric matron, perhaps, was not too careful about washing out the vessel in which she mixed the grain and water for her baking. A stray yeast cell lodged in the scrapings and developed in the next moist mixing so that the loaf grew astonishingly. It was porous and softer than her ordinary loaves.

She tasted this unusual mass - and found it good. She added a bit of the magic dough to her fresh mixture in the hope that it would impart its characteristics to the new loaves - and of course it did.

Thus began the leavening of grain mixtures, and for generations yeast in some form or another was the only leavening agent known.


What can I say? Let's all pay homage to that prehistoric slattern whose naughty lapse in hygiene turned out to be a blessing for us all. And thank heavens that a single yeast cell just happened to come along at the right time! :P

Elderflower and water kefir - a yummy duo!

Just had to share ...

On a whim, I mixed a bit of our elderflower syrup into some very tart already-brewed water kefir - and I tell you, it is DELICIOUS!

A quick google revealed that the combination of elderflower and kefir is not stunningly original, but it was new to me anyhow!

(And in passing I noticed some sites talking about the cosmetic applications of kefir . Anyone know anything much about that?)

Elderflowers galore

There only seem to be a couple of Elders in our immediate neighbourhood, but the other day my mother took my children and me to a spot where they grow prolifically. After my Mum asked permission from a property owner, we harvested two bagfuls of flowers.
There were many other Elder trees frustratingly out of reach - they were on someone else's property, probably not used by the owner, but we had no way of asking the owner at the time.

Home again, I made a few things, including syrup for elderflower cordial and even elderflower junket. (No one in the family liked that except me, but I am a junket addict, and I will eat it any way at all.)

The internet presents a bewildering array of recipes for elderflower cordial - as well as wine and champagne. Everyone likes to make it differently. Here are some thoughts on navigating through the confusion ...

Elderflower/sugar ratio
A big part of the trick with the cordial is to get the proportion of sugar to elderflower flavour right, but that's going to depend on your own personal tastes. If in doubt, err on the side of adding less sugar than you think you need. It's easy to add more sugar syrup at the end if you find you need it, but less easy to up the ratio of elderflower.

Lemons
It seems important not to skimp on the lemons. They add something really important to the flavour. In my first batch I didn't use enough lemon (to my taste anyway), so I've been adding an extra squeeze to each cup as I have it.

What I did
I used the method at Gastronomy Domine - but changed the proportions, and didn't use citric acid. I will freeze some to preserve it instead.

My proportions ...
Around 20 elderflower heads
1.5 litres of water
3 cups sugar
3 lemons

I also heeded advice from other websites to remove as much stem from the flowers as possible. Some little stems are okay, but not the big ones.


Bugs!
There are these tiny little black bugs that like to live in flowers round here. They mostly crawl very fast, and I can't quite tell if they have wings or not. If anyone knows what they are, please tell me! Anyway, we found heaps in our elderflowers. I've also found big communities of them in gorse flowers, apple blossoms and roses.

Often it's good not to wash any flowers before using them, because -
(a) it can damage the fragile petals
(b) flowers readily release their fragrant/flavoursome/active components into water, and you don't want to wash any of that valuable stuff away
and
(c) if you're making something like wine, where you want plenty of wild yeasts, you don't want to wash yeasts off.

SO - I stumbled on a way to get rid of these wee beings without washing the flowers. It's a little time-consuming, and there may be a better way, but anyhow, I'll post that on Wild Concoctions a bit later today.

Oh Good

My foraging article came out in Issue 4 of the wonderful Good Magazine this week. I like the dandelion smiley face they chose for it.

The article is sitting happily next to a delicious piece on Antipodean Christmas cake alternatives by Alessandra Zecchini - herself a foraging fan.

There is also a really rather inspiring editorial.

oops - sorry!

In my last post I gave the wrong link for the article Cultural Uses of Native Plants by Sue Scheele. I gave the URL for the contents page of the journal it was in, instead of the article.

Here's the correct link:
www.rnzih.org.nz/RNZIH_Journal/Pages_10-16_from_2007_Vol10_No2.pdf

It's a great article.

Nikki - thanks for letting me know the link was wrong!

Foraging update

My good friend Lynda organised a Weed Walk yesterday for the Wellington region members of our foraging email list. Unfortunately for me, life stuff got in the way, and I couldn't go.

The walk was led by this Kapiti couple. Nikki has blogged about it here.

It sounds like a lovely afternoon! I wish I could have gone.

Still - I'm slightly consoled by having just found a fantastic article! It's Cultural Uses of New Zealand Native Plants by Sue Scheele at Landcare Research, who keeps a valuable database of this information.

It's a pdf file, and I haven't managed to get a direct link to it to work from my blog yet, so if you'd like it, just go to this address:
www.rnzih.org.nz/RNZIH_Journal/Contents_page_from_2007_Vol10_No2.pdf

Apple blossom and raspberry leaf alcopop!

I'm pretty sure it's Sandor Ellix Katz who is responsible for popularising (among us westerners!) home-made t'ej - Ethiopian style honey wine. It's the first, and simplest recipe in his book 'Wild Fermentation'.

Basically - 1 part raw honey to 4 parts water. Stir to dissolve honey. Cover. Leave in a warm room for several days. Stir at least twice a day, and wait for the wild wine-making yeasts to take up residence. Once the liquid is bubbly and smells and tastes like wine - well, it is.

You can use the basic principle to experiment with any sweeteners and additional ingredients you like.

Recently I tried using sugar instead of honey, and using water infused with blackberry leaves (tannins for some dryness) plus the last blossoms on our apple tree. The idea was that the sugar would be less strong-tasting than the honey, and allow the subtle apple blossom taste to come through more.

I'm not sure if sugar water is as good a breeding ground for wild yeasts as raw honey though! The result (above) was a nice tasting drink that tasted somewhat fermented, but was only very slightly alcoholic. More a home-made alcopop really!

Oh well. Further apple blossom experiments will have to wait till next year (and this time, I'll get started before they've almost all fallen off!) Meanwhile I'll find some other things to try and make wild wine from ...

Solar cooking backyard get-together

So New Zealand now has a right-wing government, and Roger Douglas is back. I should be feeling angry and miserable, but actually I feel great.

Today, we had some lovely people from Wellington South Transition Towns round for a solar cooking get-together - and it was the perfect antidote to Terrible-Election-Results Blues. Who cares what the government does, when Transition Towns communities are starting to get together and try sorting things out for themselves?

It was just an informal event. We set up our solar cookers - one bought - two home-made, and invited TT people to drop round any time during the day. We had curry, peppermint tea, and pavlova on the go. (Thanks to Heather for the pavlova inspiration.)

Just a few people came in the morning, and then more in the afternoon.

It got extra fun when Jean-Fabien and Rose brought some tin-foil coated cardboard and started cutting out more panel cookers ... and more ... and MORE!



Lots of different ideas for constructing and using solar cookers were flying round - as well as thoughts for another solar cooking event.

Meanwhile, our curry and pavlova were steaming away. My daughter was absolutely desperate for the pavlova to be ready. Luckily Wayne and Ping had brought some chocolate biscuits for the interim. Whew.

A lot of people had to go before we got the food out, but hopefully they enjoyed the afternoon anyway.

The curry turned out great.


The pavlova was good too - um - in it's own way. But I'm going to contact Heather for some tips.


All in all, it was a fantastic day, and we even got two nice little bunches of flowers out of it.

Anne brought this from her garden - a fully edible bouquet. Very cool.


And Rose picked these on the way.

And there's our cat, the publicity hound, again. It even managed to get into Rachelle and Rimu's photos at the Transition Towns website.

The joys of solar cooking at 41 south

I haven't posted a solar cooking update for a while, but we've been puddling away at it and having a few nice meals.

What's becoming obvious is that a solar cook's biggest challenge here in Wellington is the unpredictability of the weather. I don't mean from day to day, but from minute to minute.

Wellington weather is like - 53 minutes of sunshine, then 46.5 minutes of high cloud, then more sunshine, then a breeze blows up, then a huge, low rain cloud rumbles over and releases 23 drops of rain, then it's sunny for 5 minutes, then a howling gale rages for an hour, then the sun comes out again ...

As far as wind goes, I've got a bit better at dealing with that.

With the CooKit panel cooker, I anchor it down at the sides with bricks, and set up the pot in such a way that there's no risk of it sliding around inside its bag or tipping and spilling.

With the box cooker, I thought I was going to need to prop up the lid's relector panel at both sides, instead of just one, but so far I haven't needed to. I just made a better, stronger prop for the one side. (That may yet turn out to be unsatisfactory though.)

As for dealing with rain, I think what would be ideal would be to make a little shelter that we could put over the cookers at short notice whenever Welllington decides to turn on one of its brief, impromptu little showers. Must get onto that.