Fermenting Time!

On the second day of spring, ... da da da da da da...

Three strawberry kvasses

Two orange juices

And a half jar of salty carrots!

Ok, so just ignore the fact that it doesn't fit...

I can't wait to sing On the fifth day of spring, ...da da da da da da....

FIVE TRILLION LACTOBACILLUS BACTERIA!

Four trillion yeasts

Three trillion other microorganisms

Two jars left

And a very very happy tum-my!

Oh, and that's a jar of sauerkraut that gave my babies their starter. It's like their mother (no pun intended).

Slow, Unique Tomato Sauce

Good things take time. Everyone knows it. Traditional tribes soak their grains for the time it would take them to reach a shop. Indians let their spices meld overnight for a better curry. Holidays are better when they're longer. So I had an idea to transform this ingrained knowledge to an Italian favourite: tomato sauce.

Not exactly squeezy bottle, catsup-inspired ketchup, I mean the stuff you could ladle over chicken schnitzel (like I did last night - recipe will be coming soon!). Stuff you could toss into pasta if that's your thing. Stuff that makes anything boring taste much better. It's not much of a dipping sauce, but a ladle sauce. And you'll want a ladle for it too. You could even use it as a soup with some sprouted bread if you only want a small meal (or an entree).

The sauce turns out very individual to the last one you made, once you've made this more than once. And you can't just go 'I want that awesome sauce' right off the bat. Give yourself time to treasure this amazing stuff that's gone in two seconds at my house.

And no, apart from the obvious 'tomatoes' you're not going to guess the ingredients until you read the recipe. Guaranteend.

Unique Tomato Sauce

1 batch osso buco, cooked in a runny tomato-based sauce

arrowroot (optional)

Eat the osso buco. (never thought I'd see that as a first instruction!) Leave plenty of liquid-sauce behind.

Pour the sauce into a saucepan that fits it, and bring it to a boil where it's not overflowing but not simmering either.

Keep it on a high simmer (should I call it that?), stirring occasionally to scrape the sides, until reduced to your liking, preferably 1/4 - 1/5 of the size it was at the beginning.

Ladle over food and enjoy!

Easy Poached Eggs

After five days of charred, (natural) barbecued food, I wanted gently cooked eggs for breakfast. But boiled eggs just weren't working for me. So I poached eggs it was. On a weekday morning.

I can't say I cannot poach, because I've only really tried it once or twice. And it didn't work, so I've given up prospecting on that. Hoping for the albumen to remain in a singular state doesn't mean it will.

So I tried something new out. Using a larger surface area in water, not as much water, tension and area taken up by neighbouring eggs, and the idea of frying, I came up with this.

How to Poach Eggs when you have the Cooking Skills of an Amoeba

1. Fill a high-lipped saucepan with water a third of the way up. Bring the water to a ferocious simmer (mine didn't want to boil).
2. Crack an egg, and very slowly and carefully slide the egg into the water. You can do this by either opening the egg so that the shell is so close to the water that it might be wet, or crack the egg into a small cup and slide it in that way. Whatever you do, keep it close to the water and don't move it around once it's in there.
3. Once the first egg is in, fill the saucepan with enough eggs to cover the surface area of the top of the pan, by following the method in step 2. This will keep all the eggs together.
4. Cook on the same temperature you had it on before until the whites are cooked. I did mine too long, so my yolks were cooked too.
5. Use a flat-headed strainer-on-a-stick to pull out the eggs, and place on paper towel to drain. It would be better to do each individual egg for this, but they may have stuck together, making this an extremely difficult task to keep the yolks in tact.

This may be an easier way to poach eggs, but if you like your yolks runny and in one piece, all I have to say is: good luck!

Assessmentless

Or rather, what I do when I procrastinate on a bit more of a sophisticated level when the assessments/exams I have aren't impending and looming behind me.

I grow, of course! I showed you my shallots on Monday, and look how much they've already grown in three days. How crazy are they?! I've also tried some dirty English spinach this morning from a terribly gritty breakfast (how traditional peeps had a pica habit for health I'll never know) and I just made a jar of cucumber because a. we have no pickles left b. my intestines... ahem... would like some pickles c. I didn't know how the hell I'd for the cucumbers into my non-cucumbers meals d. I wanted to experiment a little. So nothing's really certified 'sterile' but I'd really hope a knife, a jar and some cuckes will be pretty bacteria-free (for now), and I added white balsamic vinegar because I couldn't find white vinegar and the last batch of just brine was boring.

Now, back to work!

Surfing and Strength

Argh! This every-second-day thing is NOT working. I may have to make blogging a daily thing just so that I actually keep it going.

So the other day I went for a surfing lesson because I've really really wanted to go surfing for SUCH a long time. I got the lesson as a voucher for Christmas so we picked a nice beachy day and I went out for a surf.

And OMG it was soo much fun!! I slipped into a wetsuit and jumped into the nice surf with a massive group of other pre-surfers with my specially-chosen board (I had about three after they kept swapping them). The instructors stayed around for a while and were super helpful, and they all had their different teaching techniques so that made it that much easier to learn.

And how can I not say that standing up on the board is the best part of all?! One minute, you're in the water, standing on the sand, then you're doing a rigid push up on your board, and before you know it you're on your feet guiding the board down to shore while trying to keep your balance. It's so invigorating and just fun standing up on that board!