Tofu

Ingredients

360g Dried Soya Beans
Plenty of filtered water (2.4 L - 3.6 L)
3 tsp Nigari (Magnesium Chloride, a common tofu coagulant)


Method

Give the soya beans a quick rinse, then soak them overnight in fresh water.  They will increase be approximately 2½ times their weight after soaking.

Drain off all the soaking water, and in a high powered blender, blend the beans with filtered water. 3 batches of around 290g of soaked beans and between 0.8 L and 1.2 L of water, depending on how thick you want the soya milk to turn out, should have all the beans blended.

Pour the soya bean slurry through some muslin or a nut milk bag, to strain off the solids, which you'll collect a lot of (about the same weight of it as dried beans you used), and is known as "Okara". This stuff is packed full of nutrients, protein and fibre, but has an extremely short shelf life, and must also be cooked in a wet heat before you can eat it, and as such, is usually thrown in the compost.

The remaining raw soya milk should then be bought to a boil on high heat, and a very close eye should be kept on it, string continually, and lowering the temperature as soon as it starts to foam up, which it will. You need to cook the milk for at least 10 minutes on a high heat (as high as you can manage without it violently erupting with foam), then a further 10 minutes at a simmer, string throughout.

After cooking, let it cool. A skin will form, which can be fished out and saved for adding to various dishes.  Now is a good point to reserve any of your fresh soya milk to store in the fridge, in which case pour off however much you want to save.

Dissolve the nigari into some water, then add to the warm soya milk. Stir gently once, then leave for 10 minutes.

Pour the coagulated soya milk into your muslin lined tofu press, and place a heavy weight on top, to press out the excess liquid.  Leave for between one and four hours, depending on how firm you want your tofu. After its been pressed, place the tofu into a Tupperware box filled with fresh water, and refrigerate. It should be left in the fridge for at least two hours before using, to allow the bitterness from the nigari to be leeched back out of the tofu.  Change the tofu's water at least every other day, preferably daily, and it will keep fresh for 3-5 days.

Other things to do with your fresh soya milk:
1. Add a pinch of salt, and a squeeze of agave nectar, and use it like you would shop bought soya milk
2. Add some agave nectar and an Acidophilus Lactobacillus tablet to make soya yoghurt (just keep it warm at 27°C for around a day or two).
3. Freeze it into ice cubes, and use it to enrich smoothies.

The Industry vs The Consumer

Piracy is a word that's been thrown around a lot in recent years. This article got me thinking what kind of service would appeal to me personally, as a viable alternative to downloading. Spotify is a prime example of how to do music right. I'm an avid subscriber, and have no qualms with shelling out £5/month for a reasonable selection of music. Its not perfect, but its good enough for me, which is all that matters when it comes to curbing piracy. The TV/movie industry should really take a look at this model. There is so much wrong with the current TV industry I really don't know wear to start. I don't pay for a TV license, its simply too expensive for the amount of use I'd get out of it. So I simply don't watch live TV broadcasts, which doesn't bother me in the slightest - I'd much rather watch shows when I want to watch them. Which brings us to the TiVo/Sky Plus model. This appeals to me slightly more, being able to select shows, and have it record them in decent quality as they are broadcast. But again, the combined cost of Sky Plus AND a TV license is way too high.

The BBC Iplayer/4OD type thing is all well and good, but doesn't offer me the flexibility I need - I can't watch it on my Xbox with XBMC, and I can't download shows onto my android to watch offline. Even if I could, they would be unnecessarily time restricted, for no good reason. And the quality could be better. But free is a good price, so I won't complain too much, but they certainly leave a lot to be desired.

Lovefilm/Netflix. Well I tried Lovefilm and for a while I enjoyed it, until I realised that the Blu-Rays I was getting weren't playing in Blu-Ray quality, but some gimped quality, as I wasn't using an HDMI cable. Turns out Blu-rays need all the hardware/cables/monitor to be HDCP compliant for the good quality footage to be unlocked, and don't even think of being able to play them easily on Linux, as you'll be sadly disappointed. It took me quite a while to be able to rip one onto my hard drive, and transcode it into something smaller than 30Gb, and I still wasn't happy with the result, when the alternative to simply download it is so quick and easy. So Blu-Ray isn't the solution either. Getting DVDs instead from Lovefilm kept me happy for a while, but I have noticed a sudden decrease in the quality of DVDs in recent years, probably a ploy from the publishers to slowly wean the audience onto "HD" sources. Not to mention DVDs are often so crippled with intentional errors from their draconian DRM that they often stutter and refuse play on my DVD player and computer. That leaves the streaming of videos, which I've only tried on Lovefilm, and not Netflix, so I can't speak for both, but the quality of the streaming of Lovefilm is pretty poor, and again, there is no way of downloading the whole thing for uninterrupted offline viewing. Oh, and its Microsoft Silverlight now, so there goes my custom, as I use Ubuntu.

HBO Go. Well I don't live in the USA, so there goes my ONLY chance of keeping up with Game Of Thrones in a legitimate manner. I would love to have a way of getting hold of this series as it was being aired (or within a day or two). Waiting for the DVDs/Blurays I would've had the story line ruined by other people who had watched it, believe me this has happened on more than one occasion, so watching them as soon as possible was quite an important factor on my choice of how to watch them! If I could've downloaded my choice of 480p/720p/1080p mkv (NO DRM is hugely important to me buying this product), for a small fee per episode, I might've gone for it. But what would make the whole experience more satisfying is if I got "rewarded" for my purchase. In the same way as Steam shows you a library of things you've purchased, with the option of re-downloading whenever/wherever you are, should you ever loose your copy, or want to put a reduced resolution version on a portable device. But Steam also manages to make you feel proud of buying products, knowing that your friends on steam's Community social network will see the purchase, and its nicely integrated.

Another form of media consumption that I really liked was KickStarter/Pledgemusic. Committing to buying something you like, similar to preordering I suppose, but your reward is being kept up to date on the progress of the latest filming, photos from the set, or other perks. This would be an interesting way of getting people of part with their hard earned cash for a franchise or product they are interested in.

So in summary:
* DVDs - No good, the quality is way below par, and often has problems playing in some players due to DRM
* BluRay - No good, not supported in Linux, requires new hardware to play properly. Maybe when the Xbox720 comes out...
* Physical media - Not ideal: no space for it in my flat, can only watch once all episodes have aired
* Rental services - Need 100% coverage, suffer from same problems as Physical Media
* Streaming services - Usually low/medium quality. Sometimes have time restrictions. Don't allow for offline download. Some don't allow for caching. Some are region locked to specific countries
* Bittorrent - Perfect, flexible, easy and quick

All they have to do is come up with something easier than bittorrent, and they'll be sitting on a gold mine. Maybe not as lucrative as the idea of everyone who watches their content paying the full BluRay price, but that is just a pipedream in this digital era.

Random Weekend Casserole

I like to collect squashes, or is it squashs..? Squashai? Anyway, they're cute, and make good decorations for my table, plus they have such good armor that they'll happily survive the entire year without going bad.



Still, if its between me and fixing hunger, a pretty gourd will definetly come second to a delicious bowl of squash casserole.

I didn't have a recipe, didn't even know what I was going to create, I just went for it, knife in hand. And it wasn't half bad, so I thought I'd record my experiment here, for the next time a pumpkin comes to visit.



Half a big squash, cubed (any kind will do)
1 carrot, roughly chopped
Half a bulb of fennel, sliced
1 cup of millet seeds
3 sundried tomatoes, chopped
3 bulbs of garlic
1 red chilli
Small handful of dried fruit, apricots or sultanas
Small handful of chopped nuts, eg walnuts, pecans and/or hazelnuts
1 can of tomatoes
2 tsp paprika
Pinch of safflower/saffron
3 cups of hot vegetable stock
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes

Pour some olive oil into a big lidded casserole dish, and throw in everything, season with salt and pepper, and finally drizzle over done more oil. Stick in the oven at 190c for an hour with the lid on, then stir, and give it another 20 mins without the lid. Chopped parsley/spring onions would make a good garnish once out if the oven.

The great thing about this kind of dish is you could basically stick in anything and it would still be nice! I used up a globe courgette in there too although I wouldn't recommend them in here for the fussy eaters: Mine came out a bit bitter, which I don't care about at all, but for the more delicate palette, stick to veggies that are tasty in their own right, like spinach, butternut squash, sweet potato, leek, cabbage. Avoid aubergine, courgette, tempeh, or anything that needs to be imbued with a different flavour.

I recently watched a film called The Ramen Girl, and you'll never guess what it inspired me to cook... Whilst I wouldn't particularly recommend the film, nothing beats a delicious bowl of noodles in a warming gingery miso broth.



Fried onions, chilli, garlic and ginger in my favourite cast iron skillet, spiced with shichimi http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shichimi and cooked with a few leaves of savoy cabbage, sweetheart cabbage, pak choi, and carrots. Soya sauce, mirin and rice vinegar for liquid flavouring. The broth was simply dried shitake, miso paste, and wakame and hot water, which I used to "clean" my pan out once I'd finished with it. Topped with pickled mustard greens, and nori flakes.

Blueberry Muffins

I think this is the easiest recipe I'll ever post! And damn they are tasty, I made a batch of 12, and am currently down to 9 as I write this, with still plenty of evening left for more to be demolished...

Lemon+Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients

1½ cups (180g) plain white flour

½ cups (70g) wholemeal flour

1 tbsp wheatgerm [optional]

½ tsp salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

½ tsp baking powder

Zest of two lemons

1 tbsp poppy seeds [optional]

¾-1 cup (180g) sugar

1 cup (235ml) soya/oat milk

½ cup (78ml) sunflower oil

2 tsp (10ml) lemon juice

1 tsp (5ml) cider vinegar

1 tbsp ground linseeds

1½ cup frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Mix together all the liquids with the sugar and linseeds, until the sugar is dissolved. And the flour, baking soda/powder, salt and zest, and mix to incorporate (but don't overmix, just enough to wet the flour). Coat the blueberries in a teaspoon of flour, then add them to the batter, and fold in. Fill a greased muffin tray with the batter (should make about 12), and bake for 22-30 mins, until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack.

Good luck saving them for your friends, and not devouring as soon as you get them out of the oven. Warning: Hot blueberries hurt.

All You Can Eat?

As always, the highlight of my travels is the food, and this time is certainly no different. Vegetalia is cute cafe tucked away in the back-waters of Fuengirola. Once through the labyrinth of alleys it revealed itself like an oasis in the desert. And if you manage to find it before the end of lunchtime, you'll be rewarded with an all-you-can-eat buffet, where almost everything was vegan. For the few things that weren't, the lady was happy to bring out a customized version especially for us.



Plate one of five. I walked away from this place delightfully stuffed with mounds of food. Much like one of the stuffed peppers we ate. Well you are what you eat, as they say...

Vegetalia
Santa Isabel 8
Fuengirola

Next in the agenda was the amusingly named Bombay To Goa, which we stumbled upon in La Cala. The guys here understood our request for no dairy, and happily bought us out a veg-friendly biryani, channa massala, aloo gobi and brinjal-something-or-other, and it was all delicious! Good indian cuisine seems harder to find in Spain, although I suppose the bar is set relatively high living around Birmingham.

Costa del sol

Its not even midday, but as they say,"when in rome". I'm sat on the balcony, overlooking a stunning panorama of the mediterranean, with a bowl of olives, monkey nuts and a glass of cool beer. This is the life!



Later we are heading to Vegetalia for an all you can eat buffet.

Where Megatron and Rapunzel Collide

Today I woke up in a bit of a daze, was it all a dream? Or did I really see Cinderella dancing with a Pokemon?



The top hat and goggles on my bedside table brings me back to the harsh reality that Ayacon has come to an end, and that for another year, I have to endure the monotony of the real world. Okay that was pretty bleak, but if you've ever spent an entire weekend at a cosplay convention, you'll probably know what I mean! I've been reliably informed that this glum feeling has a name: Post Con Blues.



Aya, where do I begin? Its a 3 day convention for the anime and manga fans. Its a weekend of comedy, informative lectures and dressing up. Its a party.

A three day party, from which I still haven't quite recovered.



Cosplay chess, watching karaoke, buying merchandise, getting my butt wooped at Bleach fighting game, watching hobbits play DDR, learning about steampunk, hearing about how to plan a trip to Japan, live bands, a violinist who played some of my favourite tunes whilst sat outside relaxing in an open-air amphitheatre... I could probably go on for a while!



But it wasn't perfect, not far from it, but I had set my expectations too high by time it came around to the final event, the Ball. I've never been to a ball, I missed graduation ceremony at uni, and wasn't around for the school proms either. So my idea of a ball had been mostly modelled by the picture painted in hollywood. I was hoping for that scene in FF8. I was hoping everyone would be dressed like Kayleigh in Firefly, and the dance floor would be full if people waltzing in big flowery ball gowns. I was hoping a beautiful princess would come and sweep me off my feet.



Well there was definitly no dancing, at least not by me, which maybe was a good thing in hindsight, as I've never waltzed before, and I was wearing big boots that might've trampled the unwary. And actually, there were a handful of impressive ball gowns being worn, and a few people were dancing to the slow romantic songs. And I did get talking to a lovely woman with the prettiest steampunk outfit. So some may wonder what I'm complaining about... To tell you the truth I'm not even sure, I'm guessing the post-con-blues is to blame.

Ladybird Challenge

All through summer I longed for an effective way of dealing with common garden pests. Slugs and snails have decimated my beans and courgettes, cats have defaced my soil, and ants have been teaming up with aphids in an attempt to ruin my tomatoes, chillis and herbs.



Whilst there's certainly no silver bullet (although these would definetly be effective against cats...) I certainly welcomed the arrival of these little guys.

How many can you spot?

Soft kitty, warm kitty

First off this post has nothing to do with cats, and secondly this is an experiment to see if blogging from a phone actually works, so forgive me for any predictive-text-related screwups!

I'm currently sat in bed, when I should be I work, drinking cups of tea and nursing a stinking cold. So I thought I'd share my getting-over-a-cold-quickly routine.

First in my toolbox, is a spoon if manuka honey... I know I know, not entirely vegan, but the bees will have to forgive me with this one, as I swear it works wonders. You can literally feel the tea tree antiseptic qualities burn the back of you throat as it cleanses its way down.



Next is tea, and lots of it. I like to boil up a batch of yogi tea, as you can make a couple of pints of the stuff in a saucepan, leaving more time to sit in bed.

And if this doesn't work, I don't know what will! Boiled potatoes, with garlic and ginger gravy, boiled cabbage, and wild rocket garnish.



Ingredients
6 medium potatoes, sliced thickly
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp flour
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 chilli, sliced thinly
4 cloves garlic, minced
2" piece of ginger, finely chopped
3 giant cabbage leaves sliced thinly
Chopped rocket to garnish

First get a saucepan half full of water up to boil (a bit of salt helps), and throw in the potatoes to boil, they'll take between 10-15 minutes to cook. Check then with a fork to bake sure, then drain the water, and put the lid back on to keep them hot.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet, and add the flour. Cook for a few minutes, until the flour starts to brown, then add the paprika and chilli. Cook for another few minutes, then add the garlic, ginger and about two cups of water. Now is a good time to add other nice things to the gravy, like a dash of soya sauce, some mustard, or seasoning, but if you're not feeling 100% like me, then this will still do nicely! Simmer the gravy down to a nice consistency, around 3 mins should do, then pour onto the cooked potatoes.

Throw the cabbage leaves into the now-empty skillet, add some boiling water, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Combine everything together, and garnish with the chopped rocket.

Minimal washing up afterwards, quick and easy, and made up of things you might already have in your cupboard, (especially if you have wild rocket growing in your garden like I do!)

New Music Strategies

After watching the livestream for New Music Strategies (#ampnms) I feel inspired to have a rant.

The Record Label
The "music industry" is working overtime to try and keep its stronghold on consumers money. The reason why? The industry focus way too much on stuff like piracy, and not nearly enough on satisfying their customers' needs.

For instance, not that long ago, it was almost impossible to buy a digital copy of music without it being riddled with some kind of DRM, rendering it useless and annoying to the end user. Why? Why would the music industry insist on its precious music being distributed in such a way as to make it more irritating to its intended audience?

And even now, they are still trying to impose silly restrictions to the customer - you can't buy a song on its own, you have to take the whole album. Or if you can buy a single song we'll make you pay the same price as an album. People don't like being ripped off - we're not stupid. If you say the CD costs £5 then a digital copy should cost maximum £3.50, otherwise we'll know you're trying to extort us.

And then there is the other end of the scale...

The Real Indy Musicians
These guys and girls and the lifeforce of music today, they are constantly battling the stereotypes of what music is and how it should be enjoyed. Employing such tactics as social media, twitter, facebook, blogs, soundcloud, bandcamp and others, to keep their fans up to date, and bypass the middlemen in distribution, marketing and the like, going directly to the consumer.

Whilst this is an excellent idea, it puts a lot of the workload on the artist to maintain their social media updates, working very hard with not a great deal of visibility to their intended audience.

And also on the consumer, who has to work out how to use proprietary websites and payment schemes, sign up to lots of different websites, and really work quite hard to "discover" new music.

The Missing Cog

I personally think there is a massive niche in the audio market at the moment. A tool that can deliver content as effectively as Spotify, that can recommend music in the same way as Amazon, and is as free as free can be to use, with no adverts, DRM or other stuff to drive the consumer crazy. It must be easier to gain music through it than torrents, and there must be no disadvantages to using it, over Usenet, or whatever the current flavour of "illegal" downloads happens to be.

We must accept that the pirates will always be ahead of the game, and so trying to stop them is a waste of time. Its the consumers we want to win the hearts of. The ones who are downloading music from ThePirateBay, simply because its the easiest (or only!) way to get music onto their Android phone, using their Gentoo Linux based system.

A distributed peer-to-peer system, where once paid for, a tune can be downloaded as MP3 locally as many times as needed, but can be listened to online easily too. Where the 100% of the money goes straight to the owner, not through the tool.

burfdaaay!

Saturday 06/11/2010

Today marks the birthday of a legendary* drummer (*May not be legendary in all corners of the globe. Hey wait, do globes even have corners...?). To celebrate such a momentous occasion, a rather unusual activity had been chosen: Paintballing...because nothing says happy birthday like being shot in the ass with paint.

You really couldn't have picked a better day in the midst of autumn for running around in the woods, armed to the teeth with rifles and smoke grenades, as the sun was beaming merrily down upon us, and the chill in the air was barely noticeable with the adrenaline pumping through my veins. 500 tiny spheres of pain were handed out, along with some very fetching jump suits that looked like they had been washed a few too many times to qualify as camouflage.



2 teams, us vs "them"... the other team was composed mainly of kids, one was even on crutches, but this didn't lessen the satisfaction of tearing through their ranks to destroy them. I was willing to show some mercy at the beginning, and offer a painless surrender to any close-up encounters, but after one of the little rodents shot me multiple times in the butt after I had already been eliminated, my compassion evaporated as quickly as a cluster of stinging bruises appeared.

Paintball came to end and only a few injuries had been sustained. I'd been shot in the neck, directly between my mask, and clothing, which was quite unfortunate, being the only bit of exposed skin, but what hurt more were my feelings when I saw that the origin of the shot had come from a rogue teammate.



After freshening up a bit, we went to see the bonfire and fireworks, which was a nice surprise - I'd almost forgotten about celebrating people trying to blow up the parliament buildings.









Next up on the agenda was Sabai Sabai, a Thai restaurant where I had some very tasty Thai Green Curry, with rice, but not before a pint in Voodoo. After coming to terms with the impressive half a grand bill, we headed straight for somewhere slightly easier on the wallets. Satchwells was as cheap and cheerful as ever, more so because of the beer festival, where I got an interesting pint of vanilla flavoured beer.







Finally, we ended up in a random house party, hosted by Jim, Motorcade's front man, where we met people from all over globe, including drunk French people, Spanish people, crazy swedes (actually he was with us...!). I ended up watching Motorcade play into the early hours of the morning, which rounded off the evening very nicely.



If only every day was as fun as this one! Happy birthday tor :)

Cake in the Making

My next project is to master the art of cake. The particular cake I'm aiming for requires a whole new baking discipline that I've never really experimented with before - icing.

My first few attempts at icing have usually ended up with a slurry of sugary grease, but there are plenty of awesome cake chefs out there to show us that decorating a cake isn't impossible. I still thought I'd better get some advice of a real pro before starting though, and now, armed with some sugary wisdom, I'm preparing for Cake Mark II.

You may be wondering what happened to Mark I? Well, this particular cake adventure is a top secret project, for a good friend's birthday, and I thought I better not post my preliminary findings in the unlikely event that he somehow stumbles on the page and ruins the surprise! But here it is now!



Icing/Frosting
Here are some potential recipes I've found so far:
Rich Vanilla Frosting Not so keen on this one, as it uses soya milk powder, which is sold here at a whopping £10 minimum. Creamy White Frosting interesting looking recipe here - vinegar seems like an odd addition though...

In Other News
Other than cake, here's a few other things I've made in the last couple of weeks:


Coconut custard pie and tarts


Left over custard, decorated with one of my cute borage flowers from the back garden, dessicated coconut, and chocolate ganache

A Night In The Caribbean

"Carribean Food". That's what I promised for my next poker evening. So now I've got to work out exactly what that is, before I go to the supermarket in a few minutes, to inevitably realise that supermarkets don't have yukas, plantains or any other carribean items that my recipes call for!

So far my research is leading me to some kind of rice and beans combination as being a fairly traditional. Apparently the trick to this kind of dish is in the "sofrito", which is a sauce made from frying together finely chopped onions, garlic, pepper, corriander and oregano in olive oil, for around 15-30 minutes. Mix that with some precooked kidney/black beans, and serve mixed into some plain rice, and thats that. Dish #1.

Allspice seems like an essential flavour too, the spice of the carribean. So does rum. But how can I incorporate those things with the quinesential plantains and pineapples to create some kind of stew to go with the rice? Sounds more like a cocktail so far! (Well, that's certainly one way to make sure I win the poker!)

Merry Christmas!

As I have been extremely lazy with my poor blog in the past couple of months, I thought I'd wish the world a merry Christmas!

Hopefully in the new year, I'll be back to gourmet cuisine, rather than eating meals out of a can, as with any luck, the game I'm working on will be finished!

Soughdough Bread

So you've been feeding your sourdough bread for the past week, and are now wondering "what now?!" Well for a start, you can add some of your starter to any bread recipe, to make it more interesting. Every time you use it, make sure to replenish what you take, so you've got some for next time!



But for something special, look to the classic soughdough recipes. Pane All'olio is a tasty Italian bread, with its distincitive sour characteristics combining nicely with the olive oil. The secret to a great crust on your bread is to cook it in a very hot oven, on an unglazed terracotta tile, and make sure to mist the sides of the oven with water during the first 10 minutes of cooking. If you're lucky, your local tile shop may simply give you one of their tiles. To transport your dough onto the hot tile, its useful to have a "bakers peel" - a thin flat shovel, either wooden or metal. Also a large piece of unbleached linen cloth is a useful item to get hold of, for letting the dough rest in, to give it its shape. Dough tends not to stick to linen, if its well floured. (A tea towel would also work)



Down to business! Here's how to make another Italian favourite:

Ciabatta
¾ cups / 160ml / 6 fl oz Sourdough Starter
1 cup white flour
¾ cup water
325 g / 11½ oz / 3 cups white flour (I used "brown" for added nutriants. Probably half wholemeal/white would also work, but you may need slightly more water to compensate)
200 ml / 7 fl oz / 1 scant cup tepid water
¼ tsp active dry yeast
½ tsp sugar
30 ml / 2 tbsp soya milk
30 ml / 2 tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp salt

1. Put the ¾ cups soughdough starter into a large bowl, making sure to replenish your remaining starter with equal amounts of white flour and water.
2. To your bowl, add the 1 cup white flour and ¾ cup water, mix well for 10 minutes, folding the mixture using a spoon to try to capture as much air as possible.
3. Cover your bowl and leave overnight (at least 12 hours) at room temperature.
4. The next day, your soughdough should be healthy and bubbling a little, ready for some leavening action.
5. Add the remainder of the flour on top of the starter, and make a well in the centre. Add tepid water to the centre, and then the yeast and sugar, stirring a little to dissolve, and leave the yeast to activate and start to bubble, (15 mins)
6. Add the remainder of the ingrediants, and mix into a fairly wet dough. Continue to knead for 10 minutes, trying not to add too much more flour if its too sticky - the dough should be like this.
7. Leave in a warm area for 1 hour, until trippled in size.
8. Divide into 2 portions, and, trying not to expel too much air, tip dough onto a well floured piece of linen, and gently shape into loaves.
9. Preheat your oven, with the baking stone/tile, to 220 degrees celsius.
   
10. Leave to rise for a further 30 mins, then tip each loaf in turn onto your peel, and into the very hot oven, onto your baking stone/tile.
11. Mist the sides of the oven with water, and again every 3 minutes for the next 10.
12. Bake for a total of 30 minutes, then remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. The underside should sound hollow when tapped.
    

So, armed with a litter of freshly baked ciabatta loaves, I set off this afternoon to a friends house for a Sunday roast. My loaves were promptly cut into slices, and served up with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and didn't last long, as we waited for the main dish to be served.




Amy had done a fantastic job with the main course, and I was extremely well catered for. I had roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffed portabello mushrooms, with boiled carrots and french beans on the side, and applesauce on top. For dessert, I had a fruit salad all to myself, full of strawberries, kiwi, orange and apple. Simply delicious!




Cheers!

Loafing Around

Walking down the streets of London, a breath of fresh air is an unexpected pleasure, but as I wondered around, past Le Pain Quotidien, I was greeted by the most sensational aroma. Fresh sourdough bread being baked. Its just one of those things that instantly makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

For the past couple of months I've been trying to get into bread baking. I've learnt quite a few things, one being that it ain't easy. Baking bread seems to be more science than art, a long way off from my normal kitchen craft of throwing things together, and fixing the taste as you go.

To me, Sourdough bread is the cordon bleu of the breads, so I decided that if I was going to get into baking bread, I may as well aim for the best.

• It gives bread character - plenty of aroma and flavour
• It is essential when trying to make loaves with high percentages of rye flour, good for lower gluten recipes
• The bread last longer, being more resistant to other molds
• Soughdough bread is cheaper to make, as you can reduce, or even remove the amount of yeast the recipe calls for

Making The Sourdough Starter
The goal here is to make a batter from flour and water, which is full of yeast and a strain of good bacteria, which can live happily together for years to come, as long as you keep it active.
Start off with a bowl that can hold around 4 cups.

The Chef
0.6ml / 1/8 tsp dried yeast
50g / 2 oz / ½ cup organic white/rye flour
45ml 3 tbsp dechlorinated water

Flour natually contains microorganisms that can help create a good culture in your starter. To give it all the chance it needs, organic flour is best. Rye flour is also a good way of introducting good bacteria to the starter, so substuting in small amounts of rye at the start is a good idea. Tap water contains quite a lot of chlorine which can defeat our good bacteria, allowing bad ones to take hold later on, so either boiling, or leaving water in sunlight for a few hours will help (chloramine is unaffected by these methods, so if you live in one of those areas, it might be harder creating a good starter from scratch).

To make the "Chef": Mix the yeast and flour(s) together in your bowl. Gradually add the water with a metal spoon, and mix to a stiff dough. Cover with oiled cling film, and leave in a warm place for 2 - 3 days.

Break open the crust on the Chef. The middle should be aerated and sweet smelling. Add the "1st refreshment":

The 1st Refreshment
65ml / 4½ tbsp water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Mix in the water and flour to form a fairly stiff dough. Replace film and leave for 2 days in a warm place.

The Levain
115ml / 4 fl oz / ½ cup water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Add water and flour, and knead into a "basic dough". Leave for 8 hours with a damp dish towel to cover, at room temperature. The sourdough starter is now ready to be used in a loaf. Don't use all of it, mind! Whenever you use some (between ½ and ¾ of the starter), you should replenish what you take with equal parts flour and water (by weight)

Using The Starter
When its time to make some bread, take your starter out of the fridge and leave to warm up to room temperature (if storing in the fridge, which is a good idea if you don't make bread every other day or so). Take the quantity needed for the recipe (no more than ¾ of the total), and note the weight that you've removed. Replenish this with equal quantities of water and flour (by weight), and mix into a smooth batter. Leave the starter mixture until it starts to bubble, before returning to the fridge, anywhere between 3 - 8 hours should be fine.

Well, that should keep you busy for around a week, so I've got a bit of time to perfect the best sourdough loaf recipe ever! Stay tuned...

Barcelona Days 1 and 2

Day 1
Monday morning starts a little hazily, probably as a result of Anke's delicious Baileys-style cocktails that we were drinking into the early hours of Sunday morning. It is still technically the morning after, as 3 hours sleep in a cheap and cheerful youth hostel in the centre of Camdon doesn't really count as a good night's sleep.

There are last minute preparations to be made, before I head out. Water the plants; check passport; learn Catalan; decide what we should do for this upcoming week... I didn't manage to do everything on my list before heading to the airport, but at least the plants didn't feel neglected.

I found out in the airport that politics is about as taboo as talking about the ethics of food, and the best thing to say about nationalism when surrounded by foreigners is nothing. Hypothesizing what would happen if lightning struck a plane in middair seemed to lighten the mood, until torrential rain delayed our plane from taking off.

And then we were off!

There weren't many hours left in the day by time we'd settled into our awesome apartment in the middle of Gràcia, so we didn't stray far for our first round of Estrellas, followed by some food from a place called Ugarit. There seemed to be a reasonable selection of Middle-Eastern-style food here, including falafels and cous cous, and I ended up with a wrap filled mostly with houmous, which is what you get when trying to stress how much you don't want any other sauces, "only houmous". The free shots of beer was a nice touch.





Day 2
We were all up bright and early in the morning, which was a nice change, and the first port of call was the supermarket for some supplies. We'd decided to do a bit of cooking in the apartment, to save on money, and also to accomodate my taste buds, which I definitely appreciated. It was either that, or drag my friends to a vegan restaurant (of which there are plenty in Barcelona), and have them complain about "organic tasting" or "bland" food, or worse, go to a regular restaurant, where I would inevitably get given genuinely bland and organic-tasting food, or simply food I couldn't/wouldn't eat. Cooking at home was definitely the best option, although I was slightly concerned about how much they really cared, when one of them decided to get some unsuitable pasta, saying it was probably OK because it didn't have pictures of eggs on the packaging like the others...





After depositing some extremely heavy shopping, and a quick mid-afternoon snack to keep us going, we headed back into the city making our way from the fountains at Catalunya Square to the Gothic Quarter.



Barcelona is a beautiful city to walk around. Each quarter has its own personality, and to me, the Gothic quarter is exactly how I imagined Barcelona to be, with its narrow cobbled alleys snaking their way around old churches, unique architecture, cafés and bars. Amongst the plethora of artisan bakeries, delicatessens and pharmacies, there just isn't any need for supermarkets. Buying from these tiny shops is a much more tangible experience than self service in a supermarket, or worse, internet shopping.




We walked all the way down to the port, and all the way back on La Rambla, stopping off along the way for refreshments, including beer at a microbrewery. Wearing my big clunky boots may have seemed like a stupid idea in Barcelona, but at least this long walk left me unscathed. One of the others with less sensible footwear wasn't quite so lucky, and by time we got back I was thinking we might have to amputate his foot, or at least feed him some beer, to ease any pain. The second option seemed to be more favoured, and went well with the spaghetti we'd thrown together for dinner.