A decadant lunch

I love bread making … it doesn't really matter if it's in the machine or the oven or a combination of both; there is nothing like the satisfaction of getting the dough to rise and the smell of freshly baked bread….and I'm still only a beginner. I made bagels on the weekend (I've made a couple of batches before) but for the first time I began to understand how the dough should feel when you've kneaded it enough.

I don't know why, but I always though bagels would be difficult to make but they're actually not…a little bit fiddly maybe but not hard at all.

Ingredients:
6 cups of white flour
2 tablespoons of dry yeast
2.5 cups of warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 egg
Sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds

I usually mix the yeast and the water together for about 10 minutes to let the yeast activate…I have also read that this is an unnecessary step but I have found in my very limited experience that I get less failures if I do this step first.

While the yeast is activating, combine 5 cups of the flour, the salt and sugar in a bowl. Pour the yeast and water in and mix until a shaggy lump of dough forms. Put on a floured board and knead, adding the remaining cup of flour as required. When I first made these, the mistake I made was thinking that I had to add the whole cup…but I've since discovered that isn't always the case. What you want is dough that is smooth and elastic. (I actually only used half a cup of flour this time.)

Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave to rise until it's doubled in size (about an hour).





Remove the dough from the bowl and divide into 12 even pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, flatten slightly and put a hole in the middle. Cover and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.

And now comes the fiddly bit…get a pan of lighlty salted water to a rolling boil. You need to boil each bagel for about 2 minutes, turning every 30 seconds. I used a fry pan and could fit three to four bagels at a time. When you boil them, they puff up slightly and hold their shape better…but don't boil them for too long or they'll deflate and then they're no good.

Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the water, brush the tops with the beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds. Put them in a 200 degree celcius oven for 25 – 30 minutes or until golden brown.



We have been having the most decadent lunches with smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers on the bagels, or breakfast with toasted bagels with cream cheese and vegemite (and this is another of Sim's combinations I highly recommend).

A cheap night out ...

Tonight we had a great night out for the grand total of $5.50 at the Melbourne Aquarium and we learnt something in the process.

Sim and I are mad keen scuba divers and have a particular interest in helping preserve our oceans and the animals and plants that inhabit that world.

We went to a seminar run by Reef Watch Victoria on an overview of Opisthobranchs of Southern Waters. Now, don't run away screaming at the scientific latin vocab ... it was actually a low key fascinating talk by an expert on marine slugs...okay that probably isn't really helping either is it...I can see everyone picturing those grey slugs from the garden that eat all the good stuff and foil every attempt to remove them.

This is what the talk was actually about:

That is what is commonly called a nudibranch and they come in the most amazing colours and shapes and sizes. Here are a few more:

Most of these photos I took in the Philippines but the one above in the middle is actually a local - Williamstown Beach right here in Melbourne.

The bits that look like feather boas are actually their gills. They're not very big...about the same size as land slugs if not a bit smaller but you have to admit they are much prettier; they are also referred to as the butterflies of the sea. The amazing thing is that not that much is known about them. It is estimated there are approximately 3000 different species worldwide but probably more. A lot have been identified but not formally described or named.

Bob Burns was the presenter and he has been studying these animals for more than 50 years. What is even more amazing is that he isn't a scientist or a marine biologist or even a scuba diver for that matter, he's a builder, a tradie so passionate about a particular subject that he has become, and is considered, an expert in his field. Scientists send him papers they've published for him to read...he even has one species named after him.

An added, and unexpected bonus, was the tour of the aquarium afterwards. We got to spend some time in the main oceanarium watching the sharks and the bull rays and the turtles and the snapper to name a few. It was a fascinating night...a glimpse into a world that is often forgotten and exploited but a necessary part of the system that maintains life on this planet.

Reef Watch is planning more seminars throughout the year...there may even be one about penguins (with a potential visit to the penguin exhibit at the Melbourne Aquarium). Check out the Reef Watch website if you're interested.

Pepper Pasta with capers and rocket

We are on the lookout for a cheap pasta making machine as we have fallen in love with the fresh pasta that I buy from the markets near my work. It’s a pepper fettucine and it's peppery and spicy and absolutely delicious. We use really simple sauces with this pasta because you don't want to hide the flavour of the pasta unlike the pasta that you buy from the supermarket.

Ingredients:
Capers
Zest from two lemons
Lemon juice (from one lemon - save juice from the other to taste)
Fresh basil
Rocket
Olive oil
Parmasan
500g Pepper pasta

The proportions of each are really as to your own taste; we are both massive fans of capers so we add heaps (I have even marked in my diary when caper bushes are available from Diggers this year: Wednesday 2 September – for all you caper lovers out there).

Add the pasta to a large pot of boiling water:



Heat a frypan and in some olive oil, gently heat the capers, adding the lemon zest and the basil:



When the pasta is almost done, add the rocket so that it wilts slightly. When the pasta is cooked to taste, drain but keep two tablespoons of the water and return it to the pot. Add half the pasta, then the sauce mixture to the pot, placing the remaining pasta on top, pour on the lemon juice and toss through. Have some parmasan ready and that's it:



This is our current favourite. I made a version of it once and Sim has since taken it on and made it her own…she is much better at putting flavours together then me…I'm a recipe follower and the slightest variation can throw me a curve ball but Sim just pulls meals out of nowhere and is really good at finding a substitute that works if we don't have the right ingredient.

One of the great things about this recipe is it is such an easy meal to cook when you need to whip something up quickly as it only takes as long as the pasta takes to cook (which takes about 8 – 10 minutes) and 500 grams of pasta will easily do us for lunches the next day as well. I know the process will become much, much longer when we attempt to make our own pasta but once we get our own caper bush and sow some rocket, we will be able to contribute most of the ingredients ourselves and we're really looking forward to that.

The Great Easter Garden Clean-up

Four days stretched out before us, four days of getting the garden sorted, de-cluttering the house, baking bread, cooking delicious homemade meals…before those four days suddenly flashed by in the wink of an eye and I'm once again facing my concrete wall at the office before I'm quite ready to.

I realise now that our list of tasks was somewhat ambitious…but we did actually achieve quite a bit:

One part of the garden went from this:

To this:

To this (all ready to get some no dig beds prepared):

We started a herb garden around our pond:

We built a gate (don't look too closely it might fall apart!)

And next weekend's job will be to hang it.

It was probably one of the first long weekends that we have spent the majority of it around the house or out getting things to use around the garden...and it was entirely enjoyable, I don't feel that we missed out on anything and besides, there's still plenty on the list to keep us occupied.

From rock cakes to fig and walnut loaf

We invested in a breadmaker a few weeks ago and before we bought it we had a conversation about our potential use of yet another appliance. We have recently moved into a pretty small house and it has made us think about what we put in it. I guess we've finally realised that all these handy appliances are only helpful tools if you actually use them.

And I'm pleased to report so far we have been baking up a storm.

I have to admit to a few false starts; rock cakes that didn't rise and would have easily broken any window without much effort...we even gave them to the dogs who tried valiently to eat them but in the end even they had to admit defeat:

My first success (read: edible) attempt was a Fig and Walnut Loaf I adapted from a recipe I found on taste.com.au. It was also the first one I found that used honey as a sweetener rather than refined sugar. I only used the breadmaker to knead and raise the dough and have been baking it in the oven. I'm guessing this probably isn't the most energy efficient way to bake bread and one day I plan to do it all myself but I'm not the most brilliant person in the kitchen so it's still all a bit daunting.

So here's the easiest loaf to make:

Ingredients:

1 sachet of dry yeast (7g)

1 cup warm water

45 ml honey (3 tblspoons)

440g of bread flour (I've been using white but I think wholemeal would be tasty too)

1 tspoon ground cinnamon

1 tspoon salt

150g of dried figs, coursely chopped

100g coursely chopped walnuts

Small amount of olive oil

Place the yeast, warm water and honey into the breadmaker and leave for 10 minutes so the yeast activates. Then add the flour, cinnamon and salt and set the breadmaker to the dough setting. I've been adding a small amount of olive oil for a bit of extra moisture at this stage too. Our breadmaker beeps just before the end of the kneading process to add the figs and walnut so they don't get too mashed up.

When the breadmaker has done its thing, take out the dough and knead it for a couple of minutes (I usually have to mix the figs and walnuts in properly, then put it in a lightly greased bread tin and leave it to rise slightly for 10-15 minutes. Put the dough in the oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes to brown the crust, lower the temperature to 180 and bake for about another half an hour. When you tap it on the bottom it should sound hollow and then it's ready.

Now I take fruit toast to work instead of buying it...and make everyone jealous as they smell the cinnamon toasting in the lunchroom!

The garden bed is undone!!

We came home today to find our small vegetable garden that we planted out on Saturday dug through and the cauliflower and cabbage dug up. I'm here to tell you that bird netting does not work as a dog deterrent...especially one that is addicted to Dynamic Lifter. 

So I'm trying to maintain my positive attitude which was a little shaky anyway when I walked through the door with my train home LATE AGAIN after an eight hour day looking out the window of my corporate office onto a flat, gray wall of concrete. And it's not like the dog did it on purpose...

I guess we may have to move to plan B, and build a gate before we get too carried away with planting too much more stuff. We managed to work out how to join redgum sleepers together so perhaps a gate will not be too much of a technical leap...and I can slowly erase the painful memories of wood working class in year 7 when I tried to make a truck out of wood and it turned into an uneven crate with uneven wheels held on by match sticks...interesting the things we hang onto from our childhood.

I don't know if you can see from the picture above but we have ready made posts with a pergola exactly where we need the gate so anyone got any great gate designs for a span of about 2.5 metres and some unhandy people?!

The first garden bed is done!!!

It's been a few months coming but finally we finished one garden bed today! It's a small step but a significant one in that it is a move in the right direction.

We have recently bought a house with a little bit of space out the back and we have been talking (a lot) about doing something constructive with it. We've been reading so many blogs .... the Greening of Gavin and Down to Earth are two that have particularly inspired us...and last weekend we actually stopped talking about it and made a start - sometimes the hardest part. 

We have decided on the no-dig vegetable garden so we headed off to Bunnings (while not the ideal choice we feel like such newbies we wanted to be able to ask advice if we needed to) for some redgum sleepers, some coach bolts to hold the beds together and a drill bit to get through the hardwood. Our original plan was to make two beds of 2.4m x 1.2m  as a beginning, but we discovered almost too late that 2.4m length sleepers were not going to fit in the car! Desperate to make a start we quickly rethought the plan and went for two beds of 1.2m x 1.2m. We do have space for more but we have to clear some room and we figure that we can use these first couple of beds as a bit of trial and error.

While I would like to boast that we put the framework together quickly and easily, the truth is that the first bed took us an hour and a half . We discovered that the Bunnings Man had advised us to get the wrong size drill bit and so we scrounged around at home and found the right size bit in a cheap set found in the shed - a lesson learnt that $11 on one drill bit is not necessarily the way to go nor is blindly taking advice from the Bunnings Man.

The second bed took us half an hour so I reckon we 'll get it down to twenty minutes easy - eventually. This is what we ended up with:

Today we filled one bed. We started with a layer of newspaper, then a 5 cm layer of sugar cane mulch. We added some concentrated dynamic lifter pellets and watered it in well. Next came a layer of cow manure, and then a layer of mushroom compost. We started the layering with the mulch again, dynamic lifter, cow manure and compost. Our sleepers are only 100m high so that was enough to almost fill them.

We want to grow our stuff from seeds eventually but we bought a kick-start pack from Bunnings of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. Finally we topped off our bed with a protective layer of bird netting...with two dogs who luurve rolling in dynamic lifter and birds that adore sifting through mulch for worms we figured this was the easiest way to get around both problems. 

Here's the final product. It may not look like much but we're pretty excited!