Ross!! I Am Calling You Out!!!! Cook-off!!!!
- Thread starter zeehag
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A wonderful cold weather beverage with very few calories is a nice cupful of a good rich meat stock. When you have had all the coffee or tea that you can enjoy and you are cold wrapping your hands around a cup of broth is warming inside and out.
There's this stuff from the UK (I think you can get it here now) called Bovril. It's a beef and yeast extract, comes in a jar, the texture of peanut butter. Brits use it to make broth all the time. Just dissolve a couple of teaspoons into a mug and pour in boiling water, and you have a nice cup of broth.
I know it's not the real thing, but like instant coffee, it's good in a pinch and easy on a boat.
We just had for lunch the bean soup I made yesterday.
I assemble my own bean mix from a bag each of every sort of beans I can find in the stores. Dump them all into a big bowl and mix and mix. Then repackage them in zipper freezer bags about one pound each.
Wednesday i put a package to soak and yesterday I brought them to a boil and let them stand for about ten minutes and drained them. Thransferred them to a bigger pot and added a pint of canned ham with stock and a pint of water, one large onion and anout two cups of chopped celery and a chopped carrot and a big pinch of ground chilies and a bunch of parsley stems that I tied a string around so that I could fish them out later. I found some old bacon ends in the refer and chopped those and added about a cup of canned crushed tomatoes. ( when I open a large can and use just a portion a put the rest in a freezer bag and freeze it then I just whittle off as much as I need next time). A friend had given me a package of andoulle sausage and I cut up half of that and added it. I let it cook all day with an occassional stirring and towards the end I added salt to suit.
The soup is a great success.
I assemble my own bean mix from a bag each of every sort of beans I can find in the stores. Dump them all into a big bowl and mix and mix. Then repackage them in zipper freezer bags about one pound each.
Wednesday i put a package to soak and yesterday I brought them to a boil and let them stand for about ten minutes and drained them. Thransferred them to a bigger pot and added a pint of canned ham with stock and a pint of water, one large onion and anout two cups of chopped celery and a chopped carrot and a big pinch of ground chilies and a bunch of parsley stems that I tied a string around so that I could fish them out later. I found some old bacon ends in the refer and chopped those and added about a cup of canned crushed tomatoes. ( when I open a large can and use just a portion a put the rest in a freezer bag and freeze it then I just whittle off as much as I need next time). A friend had given me a package of andoulle sausage and I cut up half of that and added it. I let it cook all day with an occassional stirring and towards the end I added salt to suit.
The soup is a great success.
makes a decent soup fortifier--mom used to be partial to bovril over herb-ox....i like knorr -- add water and poof--is broth--with season9ng-- each has different tastes-- when i can , i prefer goood old fashioned bone-indapot soup broth.....
I have been known to use a bouillon cube now and then. Another good product is Kitchen Bouquet. It is an extract of caramelized veggies. It can turn an anemic gravy into a beautiful rich brown gravy with a teaspoonful or less.
I've been known to use Marmite and Vegemite for broth as well. Usually I use them on toast with butter and a lettuce leaf.
made a cheap nd easy seafood salad burritos yesterday-- 2 paks imitation crab and shrimp stuff
mortons nature seasonings to taste
onion, chopped, small--about 1/3 cup
celery, chopped, about a cup
red bell pepper, chopped, about 1/3 cup
mayonnaise or salad dressing of choice
cabbage, sliced very thin
mix all the above ingredients together EXCEPT the cabbage. keep cabbage separate.
heat tortilla both sides and place on plate. place cabbage on tortilla, add about 1/4 cup mixture to that, fold tortilla enclosing lower edge inside, add hot sauce/salsa to taste.
eat.
mortons nature seasonings to taste
onion, chopped, small--about 1/3 cup
celery, chopped, about a cup
red bell pepper, chopped, about 1/3 cup
mayonnaise or salad dressing of choice
cabbage, sliced very thin
mix all the above ingredients together EXCEPT the cabbage. keep cabbage separate.
heat tortilla both sides and place on plate. place cabbage on tortilla, add about 1/4 cup mixture to that, fold tortilla enclosing lower edge inside, add hot sauce/salsa to taste.
eat.
Hi Ross, your bread recipe doesn't contain any sugar(s). Any reason?
I followed your recipe and came out with flat bread. I'm trying to track what I did wrong. It's not just your recipe either. Lin Pardey's didn't work well for me. Neither did Baking 911's or Bakewise.
I'm using fresh yeast and flour, 100° water, salt added to the dry ingredients, waiting until the yeast blooms and still,... hockey pucks (with slits on them of course
).
Bread is supposed to be the beginning, easiest, most fool-proof thing to make. Obviously, I'm living proof that nothing is fool-proof. :cussing:
I followed your recipe and came out with flat bread. I'm trying to track what I did wrong. It's not just your recipe either. Lin Pardey's didn't work well for me. Neither did Baking 911's or Bakewise.
I'm using fresh yeast and flour, 100° water, salt added to the dry ingredients, waiting until the yeast blooms and still,... hockey pucks (with slits on them of course
).Bread is supposed to be the beginning, easiest, most fool-proof thing to make. Obviously, I'm living proof that nothing is fool-proof. :cussing:
I have had this happen twice when I was visiting family and each time the fault was old flour. I could not get it to develop an elastic dough, fresh flour solved the problem. Good flour will make a dough that will stretch like bubble gum even without yeast. Use at least 63 percent water to the total weight of the flour. It really doesn't take much yeast. One teaspoonful is plenty for six to ten cups of flour. The fermentation process converts the starch to sugar and all flour has a little barley malt included in the blend.
With percentages you can make any size batch you want. 68 percent or more makes a very wet dough which is great for the rustic Italian breads, lower than 62 percent is pretty hard to work. Add sugar, milk and eggs to make nice soft dinner and sweet bread rolls. Count all wet ingredients as part of the percentage of water.
Wet dough is handled quickly and gently in a lot of flour on the table.
One that we love takes a pound of large curd cottage cheese rinsed with the water that will be part of the bread. about 3 cups of flour a teaspoon of yeast, a scant teaspoon of salt and the cottage cheese curds, add the water and mix to form a very soft dough. Let it rest for a half hour and dump it out onto a lot of flour on the table and coax it into a two foot long snake. cut it into twelve pieces and put it in a greased muffin tin let it rise for an hour and bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes They are best hot but they ain't bad cold.
Scoop up the flour and put it back in the bag.
Wet dough is handled quickly and gently in a lot of flour on the table.
One that we love takes a pound of large curd cottage cheese rinsed with the water that will be part of the bread. about 3 cups of flour a teaspoon of yeast, a scant teaspoon of salt and the cottage cheese curds, add the water and mix to form a very soft dough. Let it rest for a half hour and dump it out onto a lot of flour on the table and coax it into a two foot long snake. cut it into twelve pieces and put it in a greased muffin tin let it rise for an hour and bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes They are best hot but they ain't bad cold.
Scoop up the flour and put it back in the bag.
Thanks. I'll give that a shot.
I thought it was the flour too so I went out and bought a new bag before I tried your recipe the second time. Got practically the same results both times.
Maybe I'm not kneading it enough?
Frank
I thought it was the flour too so I went out and bought a new bag before I tried your recipe the second time. Got practically the same results both times.
Maybe I'm not kneading it enough?
Frank
Frank, My method is to measure the flour into a large bowl and hollow the center of the flour and add the water and yeast in the hollow, I whisk that until I have a thick slurry and then mix with a wooden spoon until it is all moist. Then I cover it for about twenty minutes to allow the flour to absorb the water. The dough will change texture during this time and should be soft and stretchy and seem a little too wet. Don't add any flour to make the kneading easier, it changes the recipe. Just scrape the dough off your hands with a butter knife. after about five minutes of kneading the dough will begin to let go of your hands and stay together.
I do all of the kneading in the mixing bowl.
When I have finished kneading I dust a little flour into the bowl and pull the dough into a ball. For the final rise I grease the bowl with leftover fat from cooking so the dough ball dumps out easily. Cover the dough ball with plastic wrap.
For the final shaping I put a handful of flour on the table and spread it with my hand. My tool for the table is a six inch drywall knife it cut the dough and scrapes it free if it sticks to the table.
Kneading does two things , It insures a uniform mix and it developes the glutton which is the part the stretches to form the bubbles.
The percentages are quite critical. If you are making a plain white loaf then one pound of flour, 10.5 onuces of water and a half tablespoon of salt, and a teaspoon of yeast is about right. If you add a half cup of flour while kneading that changes the recipe to 18 ounces of flour and that gives you only 58 percent water compared to the 65 percent in the original mix. This would be a very dry dough but it should still rise.
I do all of the kneading in the mixing bowl.
When I have finished kneading I dust a little flour into the bowl and pull the dough into a ball. For the final rise I grease the bowl with leftover fat from cooking so the dough ball dumps out easily. Cover the dough ball with plastic wrap.
For the final shaping I put a handful of flour on the table and spread it with my hand. My tool for the table is a six inch drywall knife it cut the dough and scrapes it free if it sticks to the table.
Kneading does two things , It insures a uniform mix and it developes the glutton which is the part the stretches to form the bubbles.
The percentages are quite critical. If you are making a plain white loaf then one pound of flour, 10.5 onuces of water and a half tablespoon of salt, and a teaspoon of yeast is about right. If you add a half cup of flour while kneading that changes the recipe to 18 ounces of flour and that gives you only 58 percent water compared to the 65 percent in the original mix. This would be a very dry dough but it should still rise.
when i make 16 bean soup i follow the directions on the goya bag they come in-- and after the soak and drain phase, i throw bacon fat into the pot,add the beans, onion , celery--i like also carrots, but i didnt have any this time and i was way too lazy to go out and get any, so i skipped it this time-- added caldo de tomate and garlic(4 cloves) and caldo de res both by knorr,and some pozole seasoning(large pinch) and a bay leaf, and cooked until beans were soft-- about 3 hours slowly.
was good first nite as soup, and tonite was thick enough to put into a tortilla with cheese as a burrito....
was good first nite as soup, and tonite was thick enough to put into a tortilla with cheese as a burrito....
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