Saturday, February 16, 2013

Cooking up a storm today

Free from study at last, I have spent most of today cooking.  While studying I became keenly aware of what I missed most: cooking, gardening, sewing. All creative pursuits rather than analytic.

The sun has just come out, but earlier it was raining so I opted for cooking not gardening. I like cooking on a Sunday as it makes the working week so much easier when good food is ready to eat on the run.

After eating nothing but store bought bread for months I set the bread machine to dough to make plaited herb bread. I cut the dough into four proportions, rolled each flat and spread a mix of dried thyme, chilli and olive oil, and then rolled into a long sausage.  It was very easy to twist two long rolls together. I left the plaits on top of the warm stove until more than doubled in size, then into the oven.  They smell wonderful. 

A couple of months ago I bought a cute pan to make 8 small loaves.  At first I didn't know what I'd use it for, but I bought it anyway ;)  Since then I have been making individual serves of zucchini slice: today's version includes zucchini, carrot and potato, a little grated cheese and slivered almonds on top.


I experimented with pumpkin and corn muffins too. Starting with a basic, unsweetened muffin recipe I added corn scraped straight off the cob and mashed pumpkin.  They look good don't you think?
These savoury loaves will be great for lunch with salad, or with a poached egg for breakfast.  I swapped ordinary flour for gluten-free, high protein besan (chick pea) flour to lessen my reliance on wheat and add nutrition. Add baking powder to make it self-raising and you can use it any recipe.  You'll find chickpea flour in health food stores or Indian grocery suppliers.

I haven't been eating cakes and biscuits so I miss baking them. I have baked some tiny muffins using honey, blueberries, strawberries, and buckwheat flour. These muffins are not very sweet and so tiny even eating 2 is significantly smaller than an ordinary muffin. A nice little treat! Besides I am taking these to work tomorrow to share.

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