Steak Burgers

I am pleased to tell you the steak burgers were a success tonight. It’s the first time in over a year I have been able to eat a steak burger with just my hands- no utensils. Yogolicious burgers definitely rock, but there is something about a bun fresh out of the oven that sends a burger from great to fantastic.
To fit more into the burger I used a spoon to scoop out some of the bread from the lid of the bun. That came in handy when Honey’s flattie made Dahl and offered me some… yum! I popped it onto the bread pieces… very nice.
When Honey returned home, I was fixing a snack with some of the toasted bread. Be warned, I had it on level 6 and it still came out pale. But certainly delicious. We had ricotta, tomato, prosciutto and Spanish onion. He liked the flavour of the bread too, so we made another snack with ricotta, aioli, salami, tomato and Spanish onion.


The place that you can find the recipe is here


I have since found that this bread can be cooked in the slow cooker and it has changed my life. This bread can also be cooked in a sandwich loaf (in the slow cooker)... yeah I am a huge fan of the Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a day recipe writers. they ROCK!





Judie

Breads and Buns Part 2

Basmati bread

Last night as I was milling my grains, I realised I had been over-looking one key sentence in the recipe. I needed to split the rice in 2 parts to mill it. Milling it all together had made course flour, which may have affected the outcome of the bread.

You should know; I have been using short-grain brown rice as the main rice flour. Brown rice because it’s healthier, short-grain because it’s cheaper and is available in larger packages from supermarkets. If you are new to my posts you can find the best gluten-free bread recipe here

I tried using 2 small eggs with 2 XL eggs in case it was the tiny bit of extra egg making the bread dough

stickier. I have not noticed much difference in the stickiness today.

Quinoa Pizza base 2

I made the last blob of quinoa dough into pizza last night using chicken, bacon, a mix of tomato and BBQ sauce, 3 cheeses again and tomatoes that had been diced and sprinkled with Italian herbs and refrigerated for 2 hours (Mostly I just did not want to forget to add the herbs again) and lightly fried onion with a sprinkling of smoky paprika.

2/2 people (and one dog) agree it was delicious. The base however, had become more intense from being in the fridge longer (as Jo, from quirky cooking said would happen). The quinoa dough was 5 days old. 

This time when cooking the pizza, I placed the dough on baking paper, cutting a circle about 1cm around the dough as it was proving. I placed the whole thing straight onto the cold frying-pan and heated it for about 5 minutes. When I noticed steam on the lid, I popped it to the side, added the sauce and topping, and popped the lid back on. Yet another oven (user error) ensuring the pizza went into a cold oven… again.

I think this was a better method all-round.

Enough waiting, the basmati bread is calling me…

Ok it is totally delicious. I can eat it plain, but it tastes a little nicer with butter and honey… dreaming of what it would be like with vegemite… and it can bend a bit without breaking.

So basmati bread dough I am going to test you as a burger bun. I halved a regular bread ball and placed it a little flatter on the baking paper. Popped some Glad-wrap over it to prove…

I think I need to go shopping now for hamburger salads and meat.

Later… Shopping done, bread rolls are in the oven. I am keeping an eye on the time so they do not over-cook. Starting with 20 minutes- if the top is brown I will slide the baking paper out and give the rolls another 10.

 

 

The smell of fresh bread was calling me at the 30 minute mark, (at 20 mins they were still pale, this may also be partly because the oven door was open for about 1 minute as I was placing the 2^nd roll in, it slid too close to the first roll) and now I can tell you, the tops are lovely and brown.

At 40 minutes both bread-rolls are out of the oven. They feel heavier than a regular bun. I have wrapped them in a tea-towel to cool.

Judie

Gluten free bread making

I have been gluten free for about one year. Bread is probably one of the most frustrating things for a gluten-friendly lifestyle. To be honest there is only one brand of bread that I have been able to eat un-toasted, but once it’s been frozen, it will crumble if you try to eat it un-toasted.

My family told me about Easy Bakers GF bread. My world was changed… not only was I able to have yummy fresh bread from the oven… cheaper…. I also made it into pizza bases which pleased even my non-GF flatties and tortilla which were not stinky and gross.

Challenge: I prefer wholemeal bread to white and grain, but Easy Bakers does not offer it. It was possible to make smaller loaves in muffin tins to have “Bread rolls” but the mixture was to the consistency of cake mix and they looked a little funny. In the end I took thickly sliced bread (Cut length ways) to the BBQ I was attending, toasted one side and shared my bread with another GF person at the party

I have a Thermomix and was keen to see what I could do with “From scratch ingredients”. Up till now I was really only using it as an expensive mixer.

Challenge 2: Finding the right recipe. I must admit seeing this slice of bread fold without breaking sold me… I had to try it... find the recipe here

Problem: where can I get sorghum flour/grain other than “stealing” lunch from a neighbouring cow? It did strike me as slightly funny. I have scrolled through and found there to be some grains I could swap the sorghum with- Chia which apparently can be used instead of any other GF grain, quinoa and rice. We are checking the Asian stores in Rockhampton as the health food store had not heard of sorghum flour.

Take one:

First attempt- CHIA

I broke the Pyrex “Bath” when I added the water. We had a huge mess to clean up… Disappointed me… the rest of the dough went into the fridge and I went shopping for a new, metal bath the next day. The lady in the kitchenware store was slightly appalled when she found out what I did. Upon her advice I filled the bath up and popped it into a cold oven. Seriously water boils at 100c I realised I would not be lacking for steam. I was very excited that this dough made balls that held their shape, so burger buns were now a possibility for “One-day”.

Using Chia flour (Made by milling chia seeds for 1 minute) the bread came out very brown (I had dark seeds), topped with fresh tomato, aioli and avocado was delicious, we also tried Ricotta, tomato and Spanish onion. It was quite a strong-tasting bread and reminded me of eating pumpernickel once as a child. Not much good as a slice of toast with butter and honey, the “fold” effect was disappointing.

Regarding the tapioca flour- mill tapioca seeds/pearls (also called sago) for one minute in the Thermomix. The box has over what you need though it says it has less and the bag should have exactly what you need though it also says it has less.

As the eggs were ex-large, I backed off the water slightly. With the dough being drier, I was able to pop the ball into the oven (Onto a cast iron frying-pan) with an egg-flipper.

I have since found that the best place to get tapioca flour is from the Asian isle at Coles. However milling sago for 2 minutes in the TM does produce a powder. 
 

Second Attempt- QUINOA

I was using up my stash of quinoa, I had not wanted to become too addicted to the flavour of quinoa porridge as I recently read of the heath-concerns that poor people in Peru and Brazil are facing at present as vegetarians and GFs have discovered the wonderful properties of this seed, the price of quinoa(a staple) has sky-rocked… I could not in all conscience be a party to taking food from their babies mouths. Let me say I am very excited to say that quinoa is available from Australian farms via the internet and we look forward to experimenting with this fascinating seed.

I have since found that the information above, is an urban legend... and have started buying quinoa again
 

Result:

Test one: Butter and honey. The bread smelled very nice as it was baking, it had a beautiful brown top, but the taste was somewhat disappointing. The dough was a little stickier as I added the correct amount of water,(I was still using ex-large eggs)  but it still made fantastic blobs that held their shape.

Test two: I added Tuscan herbs to the next ball hoping to be able to eat it with just butter- perhaps Italian herbs would have been better, as it was a little salty. But toasted with ricotta, tomato and aoli was delicious. I don’t think I gave it quite as long as it needed in the oven. This ball was too sticky to pop into the oven with the egg-flip so I used the baking paper method. When it was time to remove the paper, I was amazed that it just slipped out without any effort.

Test three: Pizza base- by far this is the one that we liked the best. I used the “cast iron frying-pan method” which starts on a stove top and ends in the oven. I put the pizza base out to rise between 2 pieces of cling wrap. Getting it onto the heated frying-pan was tricky, but “forgiving”. I “Puttied” up my holes and mistakes with the dough that folded over. Getting the temperature of the stove-top was also tricky. If it went too hot- the base burned but it needed to be hot enough to “steam” the lid. When the base looked cooked and was able to be lifted away from the pan, I popped it into the oven. I would have preferred to have had it hot, but I forgot a step in turning it on.

The end result was delicious. There was plenty of topping, and the base was fairly thick so I was only able to eat 2 slices. The pizza was about the size of a dinner plate and was cut into 6 slices. I used kransky, chicken, bacon, bbq/tomato sauce and grated Mozzarella, fresh Parmesan and Cheddar cheese on top.

The topping was able to tone down the intense nutty flavour of the quinoa.

This evening I intend to make the last ball into pizza again, but I want to see if it can work as well from being placed onto a cold frying pan first.

The next grain I intend to replace sorghum with is basmati rice then jasmine and maybe purple rice. I also intend to try milling pop-corn to make corn meal and milling chick-peas to make besan to substitute the sorghum.

Judie

May Meeting

The next Lawn to Lunch meeting is at my place on Sunday the 19th of May. This is mostly to give me some incentive to really get stuck into things as I have been terribly distracted with work lately and have let things get a bit out of hand.

I am hoping to organise the delivery of some Shiitake mushroom mycelium for the day so if you would like to have a go at inoculating logs then please come along. 

Contact Greg for the address (see contact us ->)

Getting back into the garden

It’s one week until the Easter holidays and I am absolutely busting to get back into the yard and get some work done. The last few months have seen very little happen as the usual summer heat brings my efforts to a standstill.

The recent combination of rain and high temperatures have seen an explosion in growth in the fruit and nut trees and with an uncharacteristic break in the weather last weekend I finally managed to get out with the whipper snipper and slash back the 6 foot high grasses and weeds that have established themselves throughout the summer.

When I first planted the garden I tried hard to suppress the weed growth but my position was changed by some of the local Waru permaculture gurus who convinced me that the grow and slash method would build up my soil at a far greater rate. This really seems to have been the case especially since a lot of the weeds that are mixed in are legumes and are adding nitrogen back into the soil. The lemon grass and other varieties grow out of control during the hot weather so that when I slash it all in preparation for the cooler months I end up with a thick layer of mulch on the ground to start the growing season with.

I took a load of garbage to the dump the other week and did my usual check out of the recycling area to see if there was anything that would be useful in the garden. To my joy I nabbed two brand new fibreglass bathtubs for $10 each. they still had their delivery plastic on them and when I took them home and removed the plastic I found them to be flawless. This is the forth time that I have found brand new bathtubs at the dump and I really wish I knew which business keeps throwing them out. If they let me know I would even come and pick them up and pay them for the privilege. It must be something to do with them being last seasons models or something but seriously do people really replace their bathtubs seasonally? Who would care if a bathtub doesn’t have the latest aerodynamic fins just stick a lower price on it! Anyway it works out well for the aquaponic beds and I have enough now to seek out Lynn's advice about using bathtubs to make some wicking beds this year.

The aquaponics has been a rollercoaster ride the last few months with one of my industrial air pumps seizing up after two years of flawless performance. I needed to send the pump in for servicing and was running the large tank just on the emergency backup aeration system.  After a couple of days I was noticing that because I wasn’t mixing the air flow right through from the bottom of the tank like the big pump does, it was causing all of the fish to gather in the top half of the tank. I gave it some thought and finally decided that it was time for a large scale harvest and freezing session especially since a lot of the fish were starting to hit the 2 kg mark.

The number of fish was ridiculous, I gave a washing basket full to my neighbour and then started crating the rest to my parents house where my dad and I worked into the night to gut and scale them. I wish I had gotten some photos but I was wet and mucky from the beginning to end. I will take some of the bags of Jade Perch out of the chest freezer and grab some photos later.

Some of the fish that mum cooked up with a marinara sauce almost tasted like Barramundi though we found that I had let a lot of them grow much too big. The best tasting ones were plate sized and the really large ones were not nearly as nice. I am using one of my IBC containers as a liquid fertilizer container and find that I can put all of the fish waste into it without any serious smell escaping. This container is also good for holding buckets of cane toad bodies that I collect up and down the street and any other material that can’t go into compost but will dilute down in water. I have been putting this water onto the Asparagus and fruit trees and the results have been explosive.

Although it was a pain at the time, the air pump failing turned out to be a god send as my main fish tank suffered damage during the cyclonic winds we had causing it to drain and killing the remaining few fish I had. I was ok with that as we had harvested so many prior to the incident and I now find myself able to do some work on the tanks that I have wanted to for sometime. I made a lot of mistakes when I first put in the tanks and intend to correct these before restocking.

The big green tank is going to be removed and the base redone in concrete rather then crusher dust, I will be plumbing in through tank aerators rather then feeding in air lines from the top and will raise the fibreglass beds by a couple of feet so that the auto-syphons can work reliably. I also need to fit a better sump to one of the AP systems and build a covered deck over them. One of my neighbours told me that they regularly saw predatory birds diving down to my vastly overstocked 7000 litre tank and then taking off with jade perch. There were so many fish in there that I didn’t worry to much as it was just thinning the load for me.

 Greg Rutter