Toast

I made this bread yesterday, after seeing a recipe on Facebook for the rather boastfully named Life-changing Loaf of Bread.  If it hadn't looked just like my old favourite North's bread, and caused a flood of happy toast memories (and saliva), I would have scrolled on by. But I ended up baking bread instead. 

This is no ordinary bread. There's no kneading or proofing and rising. It's actually more like making breakfast cereal than bread. It just happens to be gluten free, dairy free, and sugar-free and it's full of healthy healthy ingredients like coconut oil, nuts, seeds, loads of fibre -- not that you'd know. In spite of these healthy credentials, it's moreish. But best of all, it makes incredible toast.

 

Memories of toast are perhaps my most abundant food memories. Some of them are happy, and some are not so flash. In the happy toast file, I count after-school white bread toast dripping with butter and golden syrup, eaten doubled up because the the bread was so thin; slender toast soldiers, thick with butter and dunked in the yolk of a soft boiled egg; the toast nana used to make on the end of a fork over the coal fire, vaguely smokey, slathered with butter and tart blackcurrant jam, so much crunchier than anything that came out of the electric toaster at home.

In the unhappy toast file, there's the toast that got burned black, then scraped angrily with a knife to "unburn" it, charcoal staining the butter and just plain nasty; thick white "toast bread" that never did anything in the toaster but get hot and gloopy, and ripped apart when you tried to butter it; and the worst ever, cold vegemite toast "sandwiches", wrapped in Gladwrap, flaccid and embarrassing in the lunchbox at school.

Toast experiences, like all food experiences in my childhood, were random and uncontrollable. We ate what we were given, and that was that. Sometimes it was delicious, and sometimes it was disgusting. I suppose we just dealt with it.

But when I left home at the ripe old age of 21, the thing I most wanted to sort  out in my life was the food. I immediately taught myself to cook food that was totally different to my white bread, meat and potato, stewed fruit and instant pudding upbringing. I discovered vegetarian food, Italian food, Middle Eastern food. And I discovered North's bread, a dense, dark, nutty, seedy, grainy, heavy loaf that even came in an unsliced version! It made terrible sandwiches (too dense and heavy) but incredible toast -- crunchy and chewy, indestructible, even when spread with cold butter. And it had a sour exotic smell that set it apart from any bread I'd ever eaten. It was the kind of bread my family would have hated. It was exactly the culinary statement I wanted to make.  

North's bread looked a bit like this.

I was thrilled that this loaf was so similar to my long lost friend North's bread. I made a few changes to this recipe, including a name change. The original at My New Roots was the inspiration, and looks every bit as good, but here's my version.

North of 50 Toast Bread

In a large bowl, mix up:

• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup whole flax seeds
• 1/2 cup almonds. I used skinned, slithered almonds, because I had them in the cupboard. I think any kind will do, but I'd chop them up a wee bit.
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 4 tablespoons psyllium husks
• 2 tablespoons chia seeds
• 1 tsp salt

I reckon you could use any nuts and seeds you like here, but I wouldn't monkey around with the oats and psyllium husks, as they seem to be responsible for soaking up the liquid and "gluing" the other ingredients together so nicely.

In another bowl, mix together:

• 3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 cup of whey (or not, read on)

OR... give olive oil a go... or butter even. And any sweetener you like. I'm going to give coconut sugar a go next time.
And don't sweat about using whey. It is my current kitchen fad, so I'm looking for any opportunity to use it. The original recipe just uses 1 1/2 cups water, no whey. I've been reading about the health benefits of soaking grains in whey before cooking with them, so I wanted to try it out with this bread. I have nothing to compare with, but I was very pleased with the slighly sourdough flavour of my loaf, and I'm pretty sure it came by way of the whey. In case you are interested, there are how to make whey instructions at the bottom of this page.

Mix the liquids in with the dry ingredients, and press the resulting stiff mush into a baking tin.

Cover with a cloth or Gladwrap, and let it sit at room temperature overnight or for a few hours so the liquid can get firmly gummed up with all that fibre. A silicon baking dish is ideal, because you can easily see when the loaf is stiff and able to hold its own shape... but I think you could also tell by giving it a good poke, so don't be put off if you've only got regular baking tins.

(What are those dark things in the photo above? Raisins and cranberries. I'm trying a fruit flavoured batch. Not sure how it's going to work but I'll let you know. I had a dodgy memory card in my camera, and lost a load of photos for the original batch of bread, so this is a substitute shot.)

Baking

• Set your oven to 175 C.
• Bake the loaf in its baking tin for 20 minutes, on the middle rack.
• When the 20 minutes is up, tip the loaf out of the baking dish, sit it naked on the oven rack, and bake for another 30 or 40 minutes. Now you know why the mixture needs time to stiffen up before you bake it...
• Like all bread, it's ready when it sounds hollow when you knock on it. Just give it a rap and listen. If it doesn't sound hollow, give it another 10 mins and try again.

Let the loaf cool down before you try to slice it. And use a serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion for the thinnest, most gorgeous slices. Eat as is, or toast for maximum taste and crunch. Excellent with butter and honey. Or crab apple jelly. Or vegemite.

A North of 50 experiment
We used to buy and devour Lesley Stowe's Raincoast Crisps when we lived in Vancouver. We always look forward to eating them when we're back in Canada. But alas, they don't make it to New Zealand shops. My North of 50 loaf reminded me of those crisps. Which got me thinking...

What if I made some super thin slices of North of 50 bread...

... baked them for about an hour in a low oven... say 150 C? How close could I get to the original Raincoast Crisps?

Looks and texture wise, they are very close. Flavour wise, they're not there yet.

But the real reason for this experiment was to show off my new nifty manual meat slicer, a gift from my good friend and op shopping champion Jo. Isn't it a gem? And boy, does it cut thin toast.

And finally, if you're interested in using whey in this recipe, here's how to make it, and get a lovely batch of cream cheese at the same time.

• Get a fine sieve, and drape a clean piece of cheesecloth or cotton over it. 
• Pour boiling water over the sieve and cloth -- I don't know if that's necessary, but I feel good doing it, so I do it.
• Set the sieve and cloth over a large bowl or jug.
• Pour a tub or bottle of natural full fat yogurt or buttermilk into the sieve. 
• Watch the whey drip into the bowl. 
• After a few hours, or overnight (you can stop watching whenever you like), there will be a lovely ball of cream cheese in the sieve, and whey in the bowl. 
• Use the whey for making this bread, and you know what to do with the cream cheese...

For all things whey, start at this wonderful blog: Nourished Kitchen -- reviving traditional foods.

If you've got a toast memory, I'd love to read it. Comment away about toast. 

Plenty

Cucumber plenty
Look what I found in the undergrowth! Talk about treasure in unexpected places. This "dead" cucumber plant had been looking so awful, with its decaying leaves and limp stems. I decided to put it out of its misery on Saturday, and to clear out its caterpillar-ridden tomato neighbours while I was at it.

But when I started pulling, one of the vines was way too heavy for a dead plant. It was kind of like hauling a loaded long line into a boat. Awesome. Five fat crunchy juicy cukes -- 1.5 kilos. I love surprises like this.

This plant (all from one tiny seed I can't help adding) has been giving us cucumbers since January. I planted it in a bag of old potting mix, put it in a hot, sheltered corner, kept it watered and gave it a couple of seaweed spa treatments while it was flowering. Given its root restriction, I wasn't expecting too much from it. Hmmm.

Simple cucumber salad. Salt, pepper, a splash of white wine vinegar. I don't bother removing the seeds. They're so soft, silky and plentiful it just seems like a waste. I will be saving a few for next year's crop though.

Crab apple plenty
Did anyone else describe someone (usually a girl) who was sharp and nasty as a crab apple? We did. "Don't be such a crab apple!" I think the insult went. Anyway, like all sharp, nasty things, crab apples have their soft side. You can see a hint of it in their gentle blush.

But it's only when you take the time to get to know them and find out what makes them tick, that you get the full joy out of these little tarts.

Sure, it takes more than a casual chat over a cup of tea to find the crab apples' inner beauty and true potential  -- which is jelly. You've got to chop and mix and simmer, strain and sweeten and skim off the scum. Only then do you get something worth bottling.

Guava plenty

They float like cranberries, but they are super sweet and way more plentiful than the cranberries. The Chilean guavas have been wafting their delightful toffee-flavoured perfume over the front path for weeks now. I mixed them in with the crab apples, hoping to end up with a toffee-apple jelly. But no. I'll see what I can do with next year's crop. I think it's an idea worth pursuing.

Lettuce and onion plenty

I can never get over the over-the-topness of seed production in some plants. One tiny black spec of an onion seed, one slither of a lettuce seed... and look at how many new seeds they produce. These seeds will drop and blow all over the garden, and soon I'll find buttercrunch lettuces and Welsh onions in the path, in the spouting, in cracks in bricks... and some in the vege beds even. Free salad all winter.


Strawberry plenty + a giveaway

A couple of years ago, Kaye from Grow From Here gave me a cute little strawberry plant. She said it was descended from the first strawberry ever to grow in Wellington, arrived in a boat from somewhere far away. Cool, I thought, and stuck it in a quiet corner, not giving it much more thought. Now I'm stunned Wellington isn't the strawberry capital of New Zealand -- these little blighters breed like rattlesnakes.

I've trained them around the edges of the vege patch and path, where they provide convenient dog snacks and make a wonderful natural weed mat.

But I've got way too much of a good thing going on now, with strawberries growing all over the the garden, crowding the vege patches and paths, and tumbling down the walls. I figure it's time for my first blog give-away. Free strawberry plants to a good home. You pick up in Wellington. Comment below to get some.

They're all packed up and ready to move to good homes.

I love this time of the year. It's like the plants have all woken up from their summer holidays and thought "Holy shit! It's autumn already." And they all get busy making sure there's another generation to survive them. The intelligence evident in even a little garden plot on a Wellington hillside blows me away. And all this writing about plenty reminds me it's probably an OK time to go look at the winter seed catalog.


Don't forget to let me know if you want strawberries. There are enough for everyone.

Gazing Into the Salad Bowl

I have had a shocking case of writing block for weeks. I keep giving myself the same advice I give other blocked bloggers. "It all starts with the camera! Take some photos and use them to inspire your words and shape your post."

Yeah right. How annoying does that sound when you're in the pits of feeling you've got nothing new to say about anything any more -- when you're feeling uninspired. 

But meditate on that sorry thought for a moment -- I'm uninspired -- and it uncovers a couple of human foibles called arrogance and blindness. I mean, really. I only have to open my eyes and get over myself for one moment -- just look in the salad bowl for crying out loud! -- and Be Inspired by what's right in front of my eyes, if only I would give it some attention and appreciation. So let's just gaze into the salad bowl for a moment and be amazed, enthralled and inspired.

Before we get into the salads, let's admire the ingredients. Tomatoes have been the stars of the salad bowl recently. They're just like people really. Some are a bit gnarly, some polished and neat, some sweet, others a bit on the harsh, sour side. Some are a bit dodgy-looking but the best ever inside. These were all planted from Kings Seeds's heritage seeds.

The Oaxacan Jewels -- the orange gnarly ones -- are my favourites. They're colourful, very sweet tasting, quirky and plentiful.


Really Good Tomato Salad

Gazing first into the blue glass bowl, we have Really Good Tomato salad = a selection of ripe tomatoes + slithers of red onion + a green onion + a shake of olive oil + a few drips of balsamic vinegar + a sprinkle of salt. Great flavours dancing on the tongue. Here's a story about the original Really Good Tomato salad.

Salsa Fresca

Finely diced tomatoes, chillies, red onion, green onion, chilli oil, and generous squeezes of lime juice make an amazing salsa for scooping up with crunchy corn chips.

Salsamole

Staying with the Mexican theme, if you're pressed for time, avocadoes and tomatoes with a good dash of salt and a load of lime juice make a mighty fine substitute for salsa and guacamole.

Dripping with Pearls

Moghrabieh or Lebanese couscous will give you the pearls in this recipe. I boiled them in salted water for about 20 minutes until they were tender but still with some bite. Tossed them with tomatoes, green onions, cooked sweetcorn and carrots. Slick with olive oil, dribble over some red wine vinegar, and season with sumac.

Almost Greek Salad

Is it still Greek Salad without feta and olives? Probably not, but cucumber, tomato, red onion, green onion and mint with olive oil and tarragon vinegar is as Mediterranean as it gets. Try it with grilled lamb chops to Greek it up.

Simply Tomatoes

There is a point when the tomatoes are so perfectly sweet and tart, meaty and juicy that the only preparation they need is chopping into bite sized pieces. When the harvest is coming thick and fast, we eat them with pretty much every meal.

There is something so adorable about Roma tomatoes.Their shapely bodies, and perky hair-dos always make me happy.

So I guess I wasn't really uninspired at all. I probably just needed a bit of time off writing. Now I've started again, my brain wheels are spinning and I'm thinking about writing about the peppers stuffed with spicy lamb that we just ate for dinner.

Fruit and Nuts

The dream of walking up the front path nibbling on fruit and nuts is coming true. And nibbling is the right word for it. No gorging this year yet, but sometimes the things you grow in the garden are even more special because of their scarcity.

3 Hazelnuts
I noticed these hazelnuts weeks ago, and have loved watching them toast up to a gorgeous hazelnutty orange brown.

These three nuts are the only offspring from five trees, so they qualify as miracles. I'll have to figure out what makes hazelnuts fruit more (or is that nut more?), and I'll have to work out when to harvest them too. Right now I'm happy enough admiring them, but one day I'd like to eat them. I think I'll write a chocolate cake recipe that finishes up with "toast exactly three hazelnuts, chop them finely, sprinkle over the wet chocolate icing, and eat immediately."

9 Damsons
Three still left on the tree, starting to split after all the recent rain. The other six eaten on the way down to the mail box. They are yellow-fleshed, tart, and the flesh clings for dear life onto the stone; sucking the stone is a bit like sucking a really sour lolly. Nice.

1 Peach
Yes, just one, from two trees, but what a peach! It was an unplanned picking, prompted by a scary thought: what if someone passing by notices it and absentmindedly plucks it and eats it? That's just the sort of thing I'd do, so I quickly picked it and ate it before anyone else could. I almost forgot to take a photo. Small, sticky, sweet and very very peachy. I'm really glad it didn't get stolen.

6 Orangeberries
The orangeberry carpet fruited for about five minutes a few weeks ago. I ate all six orangeberries in one go, and didn't stop to take a photo. They looked like pale orange raspberries, and tasted a bit like plum, a bit like apricot and a bit tropical. I would be thrilled to get a big crop next year -- they would make an amazing jam I reckon.

0 (yes zero) almonds, currants, passionfruit
The almond tree is healthy and leafy, so let's hope it does some nutting next year. The currants did give a wee bit of fruit -- but it all got eaten by a tenacious blackbird who set up shop on the power pole and swooped in and out all day, stripping the plants. I did my share of yelling and broom waving, but it just looked at me with that "what a crazy lady" look and ate all the currants.
The single passionfruit flower dropped off the vine before it set fruit. Not enough hummingbird action maybe.

Plenty to come

Slowly, surely, the blackberries ripen. There will be enough for a pie -- hopefully without a blackbird in it.

Guavas, starting as tiny elegant fireworks, morphing into goofy stars, and bulking up into pop-in-your-mouth tropical snacks.

The Chilean guavas have started to fill the very front border. This year there are hundreds of little baubles, plumping up, but still too tart to eat. The birds don't seem to be interested in them, and neither do the passers by, so I should get enough to make a jar or two of jam.

Dozens of crab apples this year. Last year the crop looked amazing, but every crab apple was black inside -- a lack of calcium apparently. I've been putting crushed eggshells around the base of the tree, and also giving it comfrey leaves, and so far, so good. There's jelly on the menu -- one of my very favourite things.

Can't resist another brag about the hazelnuts. Only three, but so so beautiful, so hopeful, so exciting.

What's exciting you in your garden? I'd love to know.

WTF?

This stopped me in my tracks on the way down the front path this morning. It was one of those "What's That Flower?" moments. Holy flaming Flamenco dancers -- it looked almost dangerous in the early sunshine, dangling from the stair rail on a thread-stem, flapping about in the wind. And it wasn't there yesterday. I keep a very close eye on my garden, and I know when something this spectacular is going to happen. So my first thought was that someone had put it there. You know, as a surprise or a joke.

But no. This is the passiflora on the front bank. The one I've been admiring for its clever tendrill knotting patterns.

Handrail detailing anyone?

In the grip of passion

This is the passionfruit I thought would never flower, out there on a steep clay bank, catching the Southerly blast, fighting for space and soil with ivy, jasmine, clematis... It's Passiflora Antioquiensis, red banana for short. It looks quite like the noxious banana passionfruit, Passiflora mollissima, which has smaller, light pink flowers, and is famous for smothering native bush and anything else that gets in its way. I study that one in the wild in the green belt, Mt Victoria. The council hacks and poisons. The banana passionfruit grows back. Over and over again. Anyway, back to my front yard.

The five petals on the outside seem to have leaves grafted into them, only visible from the back - or the top in this case. The stem looks to be made from exactly the same matter as the tendrils, only it's straight, 28 cm (almost a foot) long, with a flower hanging off the end -- so the flower hangs upside down... which got me thinking.

About pollination.  

The Echinacea flowers out the back are doing the exact opposite to the passionfruit out the front; they're thrusting their pollen laden centres up to the sky, luring in the bees and butterflies that ensure a healthy sex life and successful reproduction. That's what plants do -- whatever is necessary to produce a next generation.

So why is the red banana passionfruit hanging upside down, modest, hiding its reproductive organs -- effectively giving the bees and butterflies the cold shoulder?

I had to turn the flower over to take this photo. I'm pretty sure it blushed.

As I tipped it over, I noticed some drops of clear liquid dripping back into the white center. It was super sticky and very sweet. (Yes, I tasted it; perhaps that was stupid, but I'm alive to tell the story). And I thought idly "wouldn't it be cool if we had humming birds in New Zealand... they would flock to this flower." And there, I think, is the answer to the pollination question.

Perhaps in their native habitat, these flowers aren't pollinated by bees at all. A passing hummingbird, dropping in for a spot of nectar, which just happens to be hanging there in big oozy drops, would do an amazing job of spreading the pollen with its whirring wings. If the flower faced upward, they wouldn't suit the hummingbird anywhere near as well. Hummingbirds feed on the fly, hovering as they sip, and hanging flowers accommodate that habit perfectly.  They drip nectar where the humming bird's beak can reach it, keep their petals out of they way of those crazy whirring wings, and conveniently dangle their reproductive organs where they'll get the most pollination action. Genius.

Sure enough, these plants are native to the cool rainforests of Columbia. Maybe they don't even have bees there. But they do have hummingbirds, and butterflies with long curling tongues used for slurping up nectar. Mystery solved.

It's amazing what can happen to the innocent gardener as she trots down the front path first thing in the morning. Sometimes she ends up on a trip to the Columbian rainforest.

Meanwhile, up the top of the back garden, the waxeyes and tuis are plundering the figs as they ripen. The native birds don't seem to care where the trees are from. If the fruit's ripe, they'll eat it.