My wife’s been making more ice cream. We have very strong coffee, chocolate digestive and sweet sherry flavours. Next up is an attempt at an Old Fashioned sorbet (spiced rum, ginger and lime)
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I made soy milk for the first time. 'tis good! I’ve wanted to do that for years, but dried soy beans have long been impossible to find here. AFAIK this is because they must be guaranteed GMO-free which entails testing which would-be importers have presumably concluded isn’t worth the expense; but I recently looked again and saw a supplier for split soy beans, which is apparently ok (having just checked the import laws). I presume the split beans wouldn’t grow if you tried to plant them, and so they get a pass on that basis. This doesn’t seem to me like it should have been a significant obstacle for producers and importers in the past, so perhaps there was a recent law change.
In any case, I’m happy! Making my own tofu is the obvious next step : )
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I’ve been helping the little one make “ghost” gingerbread. They certainly looked horrifying.
I decided to make some pretzels. Mixed salami, smoked cheese, and herbs into the dough.
I may have eaten three before the last ones had finished baking.
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How do you make the „Lauge“ ? I asked my local apothecary and they won‘t sell any to me. I know I can order online but so far have decided buying them at the bakery is easier. But one day… one day… I will make some.
PS: they look delicious 
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It’s supposed to be a quick dip in boiling water with sodium hydroxide (lye - historically sometimes also potassium hydroxide). I make a bicarbonate of soda mix with as much bicarb and as little water as I can to fit the pretzels in one at a time. As long as the pH gets alkaline enough it works ok. Not perfect but close.
A final prove near an open window with a breeze helps with a chewy crust too (one of the alkali effects).
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Adam Ragusea tackles this a little while ago. His method is easier and safer (lye is dangerous stuff).
I haven’t tried it, but his recipes tend to be good-to-great. Might be worth a look:
EDIT: Just to add what I attempted semi-successfully… a friend is having her 40th birthday in a week, and since this was the only time we could see them, they came down for dinner! Pork loin roasted with veg (forgot to take pictures) and, since she is a huge fan of the Great British Baking Show she requested a Mary Berry “Chocolate Roulade.”
Since I didn’t have any time to test the recipe beforehand, I decided to try and make two with the hope that one would turn out okay…
For the first, where the dough (which is basically 6 egg whites and then 6 yolks beaten with sugar and then chocolate and cocoa added) actually looks right, I made a raspberry whipped cream (about a cup of thawed raspberries tossed in right before the cream was “stiff peaks”). The recipe, being British, does that horrible thing of not adding sugar to the whipped cream, which is an abomination, so there’s also about 15mL of powdered sugar in there.
The second, where the chocolate seized (ceased? Turned lumpy and solid) during the melting process (I blame my microwave… the stupid thing keeps tripping my breaker… gotta get an electrician to look at that) and therefore it didn’t fully incorporate into the cake batter… just regular whipped cream (which again, means powdered sugar because we’re not monsters, and a splash of vanilla).
Both apparently were quite tasty, but I over-baked them so they didn’t “roll” at all, as you can see. Not nearly sweet enough for my tastes, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy them (everybody had seconds, which is a good sign).
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It turns out that “experimenting with okara-based pancakes all afternoon” is the next step.
Flavour-wise, I think I’m going to be much better off including regular flour (online recipes I saw for “okara pancakes” had 1/3 okara, 2/3 flour), but I was keen to find out if I could make something reasonable using primarily the by-product of the milk I was making.
Along the way I twigged to something useful which many people probably already know. I’d never cooked polenta until very recently, and found it interesting how dramatically it congealed during cooking; so when I saw someone adding “corn starch” in a pancake recipe online, I realised that this was going to be a binder and hence another useful egg substitute (I’ve been using ground chia thus far). So I grabbed the polenta and added some in to the batter, and it really helped things to hold together while cooking.
Okara doesn’t have much taste on its own, so I concluded in the end that while it could be a viable basis for a batter, it needed something else to actually make a tasty pancake. My experimental additions ended up as okara, soy milk, polenta, almond meal (my other ‘milk’ by-product), baking powder, chia, mashed banana, and, finally, blueberries.
Were they amazing? No. They were ok, though. With the banana, and then the blueberries, they were absolutely more flavoursome. I don’t need anything sweet with pancakes made with regular flour, though, so… probably the people using 2/3 flour are doing it for good reasons :)
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Has anyone got any suggestions for things to cook in a multi cooker (AKA instant pot)?
We bought one at the weekend. Yesterday I made biryani, which turned out quite well.
Since we’re vegetarian please refrain from suggesting ways to cook meat (unless someone else wants those suggestions)!
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My partner uses our to make Butter Paneer which is her absolute favorite meal at the moment (the rest of the family is about burned out on it). I can get the recipe if you’re interested.
Outside of that, we usually use ours for soups that would normally take all day.
Not vegetarian: It’s also our preferred method for making hard boiled eggs
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Is that a slow cooker?
Plus a temperature controller (e.g. bring to boil, beep, wait for you to add the pasta, then boil for N minutes), and sometimes includes pressure cooker functionality too.
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It claims to be able to cook in 9 different ways, and slow-cooking is one of them. I’ve only tried sauté and pressure cooking so far.
It looks like a cross between Darth Vader and a Henry vacuum cleaner…
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That is vegetarian. Just not vegan
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Does it stir? Rissotto would probably work well if it does. Definitely pasta sauces with tomatoes, onions and garlic.
All of my specific experience is with meat and I’d worry vegetables would turn to mush
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Alas, no. Which is a shame because I like risotto!
You can do baked risotto - its not perfect but as long as you give it a stir manually occasionally, I’m sure it would be fine.
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My wife makes a great baked risotto using a Dutch oven. She recommends looking up Ina Garten’s (the Barefoot Contessa) recipe, which is what she used as a starting point, but adds the wine at the beginning and broth later. No idea how that would need to convert to use an Insta-Pot though.
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Fancy!
I’m a fan of one-pot meals, but have never seen a ‘pot’ like that before, so can’t help with anything specifically suited to it.
I like this book for its big colour photos and low-effort instructions, if that helps at all :)
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That looks good, I might check it out
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The chickpea moussaka is the yummiest thing I’ve made from that book so far, but I’ll note that I found the potatoes needed rather more cooking than the recipe indicates, and while looking up a link to the book today I saw a review from someone else saying the same (and whose inexplicable reaction had apparently been to throw it all out, rather than cooking the potatoes some more). At minimum I would add them to the pot as early as possible, and chopped much smaller than suggested.
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