Putting things together.

We are very close to the finishing stages of our kitchen and exteno project. I’m in the process of moving everything from the temporary kitchen, the old dentist room, the shed and the spare bedroom into our new kitchen. So far all the bits are fitting in beautifully and I will have oodles of space to store everything. I’m being ruthless and items not thought about, used in 12 months or damaged are going straight to the op shop pile or tossed.  We still haven’t got water and gas connected in the kitchen but we do have it in the laundry so we have been able to clear the plastic table and babies bath out from the bathroom and can wash dishes in the laundry. This has been the greatest challenge I’ve faced with this whole experience. I really didn’t like having a loo in the dishwashing area!We can now work on plans for renovating this bathroom. The part with insulation is where we have extended the wall out from the existing room. Love the drapes? 2 shower curtains that do the job well enough. We still have to do a few jobs but it is certainly well on the way to completion and the space is working extremely well. I’m still using the 2 butane gas camping stoves and hope this box of butane cans is the last I will need to buy for home use. They are an excellent product and you can cook everything on these cookers, I suspect there may even be times when I take one outside to the verandah to cook with.  We had friends around for tea last night and I felt like doing something ‘Asian’ so went to the gorgeous Dumpling Sisters website for some inspiration. My first exposure to the Dumpling Sisters was when Celia posted about their fantastic home made dumplings and I made the wrappers from scratch. Their dumplings are great and the wrappers are oh so easy! Anyway, for this meal I made their Mapo Tofu, well, it was improvised based around what I had and what I couldn’t get locally. I didn’t have chilli bean sauce so I used black bean sauce and added some chilli sauce and some of my home made chilli paste. I couldn’t get soft tofu, so I used hard but fried it off first to give it a nicer texture. I used veal instead of beef as I had taken some out of the freezer earlier to make  dumplings with. I added fresh beans, omitted the black beans and served with chopped red capsicum and spring onions. It was delicious!Next  up was their ‘One Pot Cauli Satay’. I’m not a huge fan of satay but I love cauliflower and really enjoyed this meal. I added a chicken thigh fillet, halved the curry powder (Keens) and also added peas. This was great! Glad I cut back on the curry as I was concerned that it would be too hot, but with using half it turned out to be just right.For desert (very unusual for us) I made lychee and orange sorbet. This was absolutely delicious, served with our freshly picked oranges that had been segmented and sitting in their own juice for a couple of hours. I only made half the recipe and it was more than enough for the four of us. We still have some in the freezer for when I need a hit. This would have to be one of the easiest and lightest of deserts I have ever made. It was perfect for finishing off the chinese style  dishes and cleansing the pallette.Today I bottled my Kombucha, I added ginger to 2 bottles and left one plain. I believe this will now do a 2nd fermentation in the bottle resulting in a bubbly beverage. Fingers crossed. I made a fresh batch with the scoby and a fresh batch of sweet black tea. Like the reflection on the bottles!I love my soda stream,  I have had one since they were first released and came with small glass bottles. I love the concept and my main reason for using one is to avoid all the plastic bottles soda water comes in. We usually use fresh fruit or lime cordial that you can buy in glass bottles for flavouring. I wasn’t really happy when I read this on the side of one of their new style bottles. Why on earth would these have such a short shelf life? Some research is called for here, but I suspect I might be going back to an old fashioned soda syphon that come with metal gas bombs and a steel carbonation chamber. I’m working on getting better results with baking bread in my new oven but I must say, the Sunbeam Pizza Bake N Grill is hard to match! Still a way to go but it does taste great.My capacola is doing what it should be doing. Not smelly, no blowflies, no mould and it actually smells wonderful. I’ll watch the conditions carefully and if it starts to warm up I’ll take it our daughters house which has a very cool and humid underfloor area.We’ve been picking oranges and amazingly Rene has been laying eggs. She is over 4 years old and we thought she’d lost it but it appears we were wrong. This equates to pretty much one a day. I’m impressed!

Corn, Kombucha, Crochet, Capicola and Cactus back. Part 1

So what’s been happening?

Kombucha

As part of my commitment to trying to live as sustainably and waste free as possible, I’d explored and seen a lot of discussion around the traps about something called Kombucha, or fermented sweet tea. I was a little negative and hesitant as my only experience with fermented products (apart from beer and bread) was kaffir and I hated it. I read a post from Tammy at Gippsland Unwrapped about making Kombucha for everyday drinking and also for fermenting for a longer time to create vinegar for home use (cleaning etc) and I was hooked. I had to give this Kombucha thing a go! Tammy very graciously offered me a SCOBY to use as a starter for creating my fermented tea, and the lovely people at String & Salt in Warragul were gracious enough to act as our exchange point. I really love it when like minded people and businesses can work together and create a hub of support so we can share and learn new things.

So this is what a SCOBY looks like.

It’s weird. I’m not going to go into explaining all about it, you can get that detail by visiting Tammy’s site at Gippsland Unwrapped , you may even pick up some great tips about living without waste while you are there.

I did some extra googling to try and get my head around the steps involved in turning this weird beast into a usable product and I was amazed at how easy it seems to be.

First up I made a batch of sweet black tea,

Let it cool, then added the SCOBY,

covered the concoction and while I’m still quite unprepared for what the outcome will be, set it in a dark spot to do its’s thing. Milton the Monster anyone?

It appears to be behaving, I dipped my finger in and I am quite excited about the end result. In a couple of days I’ll decide if I do a second fermentation or not. Interesting indeed.

Corn

Last seasons corn harvest was stored differently than previous years. Rather than remove husks, de-silk, blanche, cool, wrap, I simply removed the silks, wrapped the husks back around the cobs, wrapped them well in foil and bunged them into the freezer.

  Always the sceptic, I cooked some the other night expecting to be disappointed. I certainly won’t waste my time doing the blanching process again. The corn was great, almost as good as freshly picked. Olive oil, freshly cracked black pepper, mmmmm….

Capicola

For my first attempt at processing some charcuterie, I decided on Capicola. I apologise in advance for those who disagree with my spelling, but there as many versions of spelling this meat as there are of how to process it, so I’m sticking to Capicola. A cured meat product made from the pork neck. I stupidly (so the store told me) selected in store pick up rather than posting of the collagen skin (even though I’d paid postage) so the neck was sitting in the salt brine longer than I had anticipated. Let’s just put that down to experience.

 After salting the pork was rinsed with in red wine while I prepared the other ‘bits’.I made a rub of cracked black pepper, chilli, sweet paprika, fennel, salt and I’m sure something else….. and rubbed it over the pork.

Emergency situation at hand as far as the wraps went so I improvised by buying some fake salami skins, soaked them, cut them open into a flat piece and used them to wrap the pork. Not real happy about having to do that but we will see what develops.

I wrapped the pork in the skins then put it into elastic net ready to hang and hopefully cure into a delicious cut. It is a little late in the season to be doing this but I’m game.

Well, seeing as it taken me 3 hours with internet and photo issues to get this far, I’m breaking this post into 2 parts. Hopefully tomorrow night will be more successful.

Turkish Cooking Class, in Warragul!

Whenever we travel, I like to do some sort of cooking class or have a hands on session with food in some way. I love the memories the experience brings and it is a fantastic way of learning more about a local culture as food is usually an integral part of any country’s history and social make-up. Unfortunately on our recent trip to Turkey I did not get the opportunity to participate in a local class due to the fact tourism has been so rocked by recent events, there were not sufficient numbers (2) to hold a class. I had registered interest with 4 different places and had a good window of opportunity, but it just didn’t get off the ground. Due to this, I did not even blink when my favourite business, String & Salt  in Warragul, West Gippsland announced they had 2 last-minute places available for their ‘My Turkish Table’ cooking session last Saturday. In 2015, S & S’s Michelle, participated in an 8 week vocational and cultural exchange to Turkey, and shares her cultural experiences and demonstrates making the Turkish dishes wish such passion  and enthusiasm you can’t help but be swept away and enjoy the whole experience.

Along with the 10 or so dishes we made, there was a great little set of detailed notes that covered things like spices, cooking styles, essential ingredients and sourcing them, information about some local drinks and when they are served and some basic Turkish phrases. Everyone at S&S has the same infectious, positive attitude. This is Chef Anne preparing a smoked eggplant which will become part of the eggplant mash the lamb stew (Sultan’s Delight) was served on.Some of the other dishes we covered were, gozleme (I was so involved I forgot to take photos), Hiro’s Boregi, a beautiful pastry dish made with of layers of pastry, greens, spices and a egg/yoghurt custard.

The baked result! This was one of my favourite foods in Turkey.There was also a variety of salads,   carrot dip (look at that focussed attention!),Sultan’s Delight  or lamb stew cooked on the stove top and served in a traditional Turkish Clay pot.Skewering the marinated chicken,which was cooked over charcoal in the back alley. The charcoal imparts such an authentic flavour, not to mention the ambiance it creates!Once everything came together we sat around the communal table and shared String & Salt’s sensational Turkish Table Feast.Of course we had to finish with a delicious and extremely easy version of rolled almond and pistachio baklava. Definitely a repeat to be made of this.String & Salt is where we purchased our brand new Falcon oven so it’s  fitting that on the same day as this class I baked bread for the first time in the new oven. Few things to learn after using a pretend oven for so long but I don’t think there will be any issues by the look of these!Thanks everyone @stringandsalt sensational!

 

In My Kitchen, July or August?

Although our lovely IMK hostess Maureen is recuperating and no ‘formal’ IMK is in place for a while, there are quite a few of us who are still enjoying doing a post under the IMK banner. We wish Maureen well and hope she is back on deck very soon. Here is my ‘In My Kitchen’ for July or is it August? I never quite know if its about what happened the previous month or what’s on the upcoming horizon.

My very first In My Kitchen post was a little rundown on what limited facilities we were coping with and plans for the future vision. I am pleased to say we have come a long way (over a long time) in finally establishing a good working kitchen.

We recently travelled to Greece & Turkey and these are a couple of things I brought back as momentos. From L to R, a second-hand tap just like the ones you see on all the ablution washing stations on Turkey outside Mosques and call to prayer points. This will end up in the garden somewhere and I love it! Then there is a clay pot, some  assorted rolling pins and paddles that are traditionally used for transferring the delicious gozleme to the cooktop and off. I’m finding them very handy as little bread peels. See how well they blend in with the gorgeous bench tops?

On the right is a clay dish that is used for placing on the top of dolma or dolmades as they cook. Does the same job as a plate but I like the memory of buying it at the Çanakkale market. The shiny little dish below is for presenting little treats to guests, things such as Turkish delight, small pastries etc. I found a set of these in a catering store in Istanbul for 18TL (the set) and in the tourist spots I noticed they were selling for 25TL each. Happy with that find. I have a little bowl full of Ouzo lollies that we bought in Greece ready for anyone that takes a fancy.

 I  did manage to bring a couple of Turkish plates back. I must admit I was a little disappointed with the shopping opportunities. At the limited places we visited, things were either cheap, or really expensive and not what we considered great quality or value. Love the colours of this plate and it reminds me of the hot air balloon ride we did at Cappadocia. This hand painted plate is very different but I just adore it.In My Kitchen is the first loaf of bread baked in the new oven. This was baked Saturday and it’s now Wednesday and I had a slice tonight with just a smear of butter. Delicious!The view of cupboards (actually they are all drawers) in the island where the sink and dishwasher is going.New oven and a few more drawers. Why can’t anyone put labels on straight? Below is the last of the makeshift kitchen. The ‘toy oven’ has been relegated to the shelves and most of the other stuff on this set of shelves will be going to the op shop or chucked. My bread books will be displayed onnsome shelves beside the chimney and the bread ‘trolley’ will probably sit in the chimney alcove.

The existing wash up area is about to become a thing of the past (hallelujah!) Those beer bottles are not my breakfast dishes but some I tipped old sauce out of while clearing things out.I have an impending sense of being clean and organised, I like that!So, what’s in your kitchen this July? Or is it August?