Brother Cochise sent this pic of his sourdough experiment #1, now that he’s got a real lively starter figured out. I think I’m right in saying this is 100% sourdough, and not spiked with commercial yeast at all. I think I’m also right in saying these are the first free-standing loaves a la casa cochise, [...]
Georgia’s State government, as we know, adopted a fairly draconian set of rules for checking immigrant documentation (that would be brown people, of course), including just stopping people for being brown and demanding “your papers please”. That’s not what the law said, but that’s what started to happen and that spooked the immigrants, naturally enough, [...]
I was going to write “I love Chinese food” as the opening, then I thought about it and realized I don’t really know if that’s true. I probably would, but I’ve never been to China. What I do know is that I have always loved food prepared by Chinese people. As a student a few [...]
The recipe below has a Southern China influence, as salted black beans are from the South of China. The mung bean noodles are superb and mop up the delicious sauce beautifully – rice noodles do not compare. You can substitute shelled prawns, scallops, chicken or beef for the mussels if you wish. The mussels in [...]
A bowl of corn grown by our friend Mike over in the North Fork. His small truck farming operation is where we get most of our produce during the summer, and this is one of his latest ventures to try evening out his income stream a little. He raises chickens for meat too, which are [...]
I found my old recipe book yesterday, and found a cut out and stuck in recipe for fruit loaf which I’d never actually tried, so, full of energy for a change and bored out of my skull, I made one yesterday evening. I’ve just eaten a slice of this, and it’s not bad. Not bad [...]
The festive season is coming around the corner soon, and it might be wise to start planning. Country housewives in pre-freezer days often preserved surplus fruit for the winter by cooking fruit into a thick well-flavoured puree called a cheese – apple and damsons were particular favourites. These fruit cheeses are very handy for making [...]
I mentioned earlier in the sourdough saga about hydration, and how just varying the amount of water in a bread recipe can have enormous effects on the finished bread. It’s actually quite surprising. I also note that not everyone has a handy-dandy machine for kneading bread dough, and some don’t much care for the process [...]
MAPLE CHICKEN ‘N RIBS Serves 6 – 8 people Ingredients: 12 pork spare ribs 12 chicken thighs, skin and bones still on 250 ml apple juice, as sharp as possible 4 x 15 ml tablespoons maple syrup 2 x 15 ml tablespoons vegetable oil 2 x 15 ml tablespoons soy sauce 2 whole star anise [...]
The fruit harvest this Autumn has been phenomenal in England. Apples galore. A timely introduction to the modest, but delicious, Dorset apple cake is called for. As I like a little more flavour in an apple cake, than the original Dorset apple cake recipe stipulates, I have added cinnamon to spice things up a bit. [...]