How can I find my old pictures?

[patsylabrador]

I've become very keen on miso paste and add it to almost anything. I put a huge dollop in my cheese sauce yesterday and it was delicious 😋 I've been looking for a healthy, natural alternative to HRT. I've been reading about phytoestrogens and miso paste is high on the list of good stuff. That and broccoli 🥦 which I also love. I think my body has been telling me what to do but I wasn't listening! I've ordered a book called the menopause cookbook and I suspect it's going to have a lot of Asian influences.

I use miso in stir fries and casserole, plain rice, soups just about anything. It's a bit expensive but a good sized pot lasts for ages. Apparently it's good for general stomach health because it's fermented, it helps balance all those gut bacteria. 

[Daphne]

I guess miso adds that extra savoury touch that you can get from putting Marmite/Bovril or Worcestershire sauce in things, but its much better for you.  OH loves miso so I might see if I can find any here (long shot).  I discovered yesterday that he puts a spoon of Marmite in what is otherwise a delicious spinach and chickpea curry, so I have extra motivation to find some miso (I am not overkeen on Marmite).   We have a friend coming to stay who is very keen on Asian/Japanese food, so I will see what he cooks for us with some excitement.  I really like Asian salads, very fresh and tangy.

Last night we had guinea fowl legs, with baked potato and broccoli.  I am staying in a house with limited cooking facilities and a small puppy.  Not a happy kitchen combo!

[ajm200]

Have no voice and just wanted soft comfort food.   Not sick - just this autoimmune/neurological rubbish again. 

Made vegan mac and cheese with nutritional yeast in a oat milk white sauce with cayenne and garlic.  Not looking amazing but was pleasantly surprised.  Have been a bit skeptical about nutritional yeast until now.  Had more flavour than the bland ready meal versions and was less greasy. I would normally have topped it with breadcrumbs and bacon bits then popped it under the grill and make it look better but wasn’t up to eating a crunchy topping today.  Add a few chives though,  

[patsylabrador]

That looks yummy 😋 

I've never cooked split green peas but I've seen a nice recipe. Do you soak them or cook them from dried? I think you can do either but I was wondering what people find better and what do they really taste like? I've never liked red lentils so I'm hoping that they don't taste like that. 

[ajm200]

34 minutes ago, patsylabrador said:

That looks yummy 😋 

I've never cooked split green peas but I've seen a nice recipe. Do you soak them or cook them from dried? I think you can do either but I was wondering what people find better and what do they really taste like? I've never liked red lentils so I'm hoping that they don't taste like that. 

Unlike other dried pulses, lentils and split peas do not needsoaking/precooking.  (Beans have to be soaked and precooked as they can make you ill otherwise..) You need sort through them and discard any stones and grit these sometimes makes it into the pack.  Rinse them well.

Cook in 1.5 cups of water for every cup of peas.   Boil for a min of 45 mins.  Salt towards the end of cooking time.  You can add directly to soups/casseroles as long as you add enough liquid and cook for long enough.  

 

 

Have you ever had pea and ham soup?  That is made with dried peas.  They don’t taste fresh peas or lentils.

Edited March 12, 2019 by ajm200

[soapdragon]

I bought a bag of sweet potatoes today as they were all small, long and thin and o I'm planning to make sweet potato oven chips with them. I do love the taste but all the crisp type sweet potato snacks are unbelievably high in fat and calories which is such a shame.

I now have a fruit cake, doused in brandy, tucked away to mature for another few weeks and a batch of tomato sauce ready for the freezer (for when I need a quick pasta sauce base!). It's been a productive day! Oh, and I also made a batch of soap at the weekend....not sure if that counts? You do have to melt the oils then whisk with a stick blender so I'll pretend that it does!

[patsylabrador]

Thank you AJM. The recipe sounds so nice with leeks, potatoes, carrots, tofu and miso and of course the split green peas. I'm definitely going to try it. I bake my own bread so that seems like a good meal altogether. 

Soapdragon, in certain department stores in Japan they have small containers heated with those sauna rocks and they cook sweet potatoes on them which you can buy for a snack. The smell of the heated rocks plus the sweet potatoes is mouthwatering, very difficult to describe. I also saw small vans parked up much like ice-cream vans but doing the same with the sauna rocks and sweet potatoes. Open fires and petrol engines seem bit of a bad combination but it's not my place to judge. I love your productive day. 

[Daphne]

Somebody gave me a wedge of pumpkin today so I think I am going to roast it, with some other root veg and cheese on top, with a green veg on the side.  I got some beef cheaply yesterday, marinaded it in wine overnight, and today I fried an onion/bacon/garlic/carrot in a cast iron casserole, added the beef, wine and some water, plus herbs and stuck it on top of the woodburner.  I hope that by tomorrow night it will be edible!  Today we had pasta with a fried bacon/fennel/mushroom/garlic and wilted cavalo nero top.  I dressed the pasta (fresh) with sesame oil, and it was lovely, especially all the crispy bits.  I feel the need to add that we are exhausted by the puppy so are very hungry!

[patsylabrador]

Oh my that all sounds so delicious. I'm a recent convert to roast squashes. 

[ajm200]

@Daphne The beef dish sounds delicious and so do the the veggie ones 

@patsylabrador Roast squash drizzled with chilli oil and crispy bits of onion and chorizo is one meal guaranteed to get my son down from the Xbox in record time.  The other one is a pumpkin, chorizo, garlic and sage soup

Edited March 12, 2019 by ajm200

[patsylabrador]

I've never frozen cooked jacket potatoes. I see online that it's a normal thing to do. Any tips?

[soapdragon]

OOOOOOh, I'd forgotten about this thread! Thanks for resurrecting, PL!

Too hot to cook for the last few days although I did cheat and use some of our frozen sliced sourdough (we freeze what is leftover for breadcrumbs usually) topped with homemade tomato sauce from the freezer topped with peppers, onion, ham and cheese as as sort of cheats pizza. 

We are out all tomorrow afternoon so I've just made a batch of chilli to have with flat breads (I'll put the dough on when we get home and cook on the griddle pan) together with loads of iceberg lettuce. 

Tesco had unwaxed lemons in the reduced section today so I can feel a lemon drizzle cake coming on!

 

[patsylabrador]

Oh right, so what do you do? Do you slice the left over bread freeze it and then take out what you need, put on the toppings when it's frozen or defrosted and then bake like a normal pizza? Sounds like a great idea. 

[Valkyrie]

Sounds a lot better than what happened here today.  With the role reversal his lordship is into baking.  On the plus side he made tomato ketchup, on the bad side he used either a Mary Berry recipe or River Cottage.  It used up the jar of mincemeat from our pies.  I said it tasted like Christmas cake, but it had a tang.  Oh that's the mincemeat.  Oh it isn't often I take 2 bites of a cake and not persevere to the end.  I told him it's all yours!  It was supposed to be lunch but I got so grumpy that I went out and chased some cabbage butterflies off the greens!

[Valkyrie]

Just scrolled down the emails - frozen jackets?  We've never had any left over really.  On the odd occasion that we did, number one daughter took it to work for her lunch the next day!

[soapdragon]

2 hours ago, patsylabrador said:

Oh right, so what do you do? Do you slice the left over bread freeze it and then take out what you need, put on the toppings when it's frozen or defrosted and then bake like a normal pizza? Sounds like a great idea. 

I slice it before I freeze it (can use for toast straight from the freezer that way) then grill toast both sides (so that the side with the sauce on doesn't go soggy!) then put toppings on and back under the grill till the cheese melts. 

I have a recipe for mincemeat cake....somewhere!  I did a quick rearrange of the store cupboard last week and found three (!) jars left over from not making mince pies so made a mental note (which obviously then fell of the mental notice board) to look out the recipe. 

[Valkyrie]

I think because I don't like Christmas cake, then it didn't do it for me.  But I do like fruit cakes.  My mum gave me a recipe that I tweaked because it was wayyyyy too sweet is for a "Belgian Loaf" and it's lovely spiced with all spice or cinnamon or no spices at all.  Mainly sultanas, but for the cherry lovers in the family we added glace cherries.  It is usually very moist.

[soapdragon]

Yes, I jazz the mincemeat cake up with glace cherries - ES asked if they counted as one of his 5 a day? Ermmm, sorry, darling.............

Now the temperature is cooler we can get back to baking our own bread again. It's just been too hot to put the oven on and also too hot for the dough to rise evenly. Having been baking our own for so long we are spolied and shop bread just isn't the same...whatever brand 

[patsylabrador]

I tried making rolls on hot Thursday which was ridiculous because I've got enough in the freezer. The dough rose OK but when I tried to make the rolls it was very liquid and sticky. No amount of extra flour would help so I dumped lumps of sticky dough on the tray and carried on. The rolls are weird but OK. They're a bit like pretzels 🥨 

[Blackrocksrock]

I cook jacket potatoes and freeze them as I like mine done in the oven not the microwave and so when the oven is on I cook normal ones and sweet potatoes

too - they go a bit strange inside but with toppings they are fine.  

ps.  I freeze most things! 

 

[mullethunter]

That’s a really good idea Boackrocksrock- what do you mean by weird inside and do you then defrost them and heat them in the microwave? I only really like them oven baked too. Trouble is I hardly ever have any room in my freezer.

[Blackrocksrock]

They kind of separate inside but I microwave them and eat them and they are fine - I dont put cheese or butter in them as I dont eat these and love them jsut as they

come out of the microwave. Dont take up much room in a little zip loc bag in a corner here and there!

BTW can anyone tell me how to stop the double spacing on here  - drives me mad.

[ajm200]

10 hours ago, patsylabrador said:

I tried making rolls on hot Thursday which was ridiculous because I've got enough in the freezer. The dough rose OK but when I tried to make the rolls it was very liquid and sticky. No amount of extra flour would help so I dumped lumps of sticky dough on the tray and carried on. The rolls are weird but OK. They're a bit like pretzels 🥨 

Try the basic bread recipe from Jamie Olivers garlic bread recipe.  I use it a lot

[soapdragon]

1/2 pint water, dash of olive oil or knob of butter, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 of sugar then add 1lb flour (whichever floats your boat) and 1 teaspoon dried yeast. That's been our basic recipe for donkeys years.....makes 1 loaf or approx 9 rolls and you can double it, as required. We have a local mill called Wessex Mill who have many different mixes of flours (their sun dried tomato and garlic flour, Wessex Cobber and Cinnamon and Apple are particularly good) and I think they are available elsewhere in delis and independent bakers.

[Patricia W]

That recipe is very similar to the one my Grandma passed down to me yeas ago.  Only difference is that she used fresh yeast. Haven’t been able to get that for years.   Soapy, where is this Wessex flour place near us?  Did you know that Degustibus Artisan Bakers is based in Abingdon though?