Food

Is Purslane the New Kale?

Avatar photo
Food, Foraging, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
29 Comments
Purslane in a Greek salad. Image: Wikipedia.

Purslane in a Greek salad. Image: Wikipedia.

Salty, crunchy, nutritious and edible raw or cooked, purslane (Portulaca oleracea) could soon be ready for its fifteen minutes of vegetable fame. We planted some this year in our summer vegetable garden and I’ve used it in a lot of salads this week.

Purslane is a common weed in North America. We’d love to be able to forage it in the neighborhood but, for some reason, it only tends to appear in unappetizing locations: usually the gutter (I think it needs a bit more water than what falls naturally from the sky here). You can eat the whole plant: stems and leaves. It has a salty and slightly lemony flavor reminiscent of New Zealand spinach.

There’s always a huge bin of it at Super King, our local Armenian supermarket. In Armenia it’s gathered in the wild and used either raw in salads or lightly sauteed.

There’s even a World Cup tie-in. The color of the plant in South America is associated with green/white soccer uniforms.

Have you grown purslane? Foraged purslane? How do you like to eat it?

An Easy and Healthy 100% Whole Rye Bread Recipe

Avatar photo
Bread, Food
32 Comments

ryebread3

I’m a huge fan of making your own rye bread. Why? The rye bread you get at the market ain’t rye bread. It might have a bit of rye in it but it’s also got a lot of other stuff: often white flour, caramel coloring, dough conditioners and preservatives.

This recipe that I often teach as a class, has a lot going for it:

  • It’s 100% whole rye. Whole grains, as most of you know, are much better for you than white flour. Nothing has been removed and no strange vitamins added.
  • The use of a natural starter (sometimes called a sourdough starter or levain) predigests substances in the flour that may not be good for us. You can thank lactic acid producing bacteria that work symbiotically with natural yeast for this. Don’t have a starter? Here’s how to make one.
  • That lactic acid also produces a flavorful tang as well as bread that lasts a long time on the counter (acid is a preservative).

This recipe is also super easy. There’s no tedious shaping or worrying about a loaf deflating in the oven. Breads made with 100% rye don’t hold their shape–rye is low in gluten (though, it’s important to note, not gluten free) and that gluten doesn’t behave like the gluten in wheat–you bake it in a loaf pan which makes it easy as cake, so to speak.

100% Whole Rye Bread
Based on a recipe by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou from How to Make Bread
Ingredients Day One
Before going to bed mix:
150 grams/1 1/4 cups dark rye/pumpernickel flour
150 grams/scant 1/2 cup rye sourdough starter
200 grams/3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon cold water
Let sit overnight at room temperature.
Ingredients Day Two
In the morning when you wake up mix in the dough from the previous night with:
200 grams/1 1/3 cups dark rye/pumpernickel flour
1 teaspoon salt
150 grams/2/3 cup hot water
1 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
Directions
1. In a large bowl mix the 200 grams cold water with the sourdough starter. Add 150 grams of flour. Allow this mixture to ferment overnight.
2. In the morning add the rest of the ingredients.
3. Spoon into a well oiled and floured standard loaf pan. Smooth the top of the dough with a wet spatula. Flour the top of the loaf and cover with a kitchen towel.
4. Allow to ferment for 2 to 3 more hours. The dough will rise a little but not much.
5. Pre-heat your oven to 425º F.
6. Cover your loaf pan with aluminum foil. Put the bread in the oven.
7. After 15 minutes remove the aluminum foil
7. Bake your loaf, uncovered, for at least another 30 minutes, until brown or until the internal temperature is 210º F. Your oven may vary greatly. The best way to check is by internal temperature. Second best is the color of the loaf.
8. Remove bread from the loaf pan and let cool on a wire rack.
9. Let this loaf sit before you break into it! It will taste better the next day if you’re the patient type. At the very least don’t’ slice into it for a few hours.

A note on scheduling

Since there’s no kneading, this loaf goes together quickly. Instead of starting the loaf in the evening, you could start it in the morning and finish it in the evening after work. The fermentation times are flexible since you don’t have to worry about the dough keeping it’s shape. If at anytime something prevents you from completing a step just put your dough in the refrigerator (which is kind of like hitting the pause button).
Troubleshooting
The longer the bread sits the more sour it will get (note that it could get too sour if you really extend the fermentation). Too short a fermentation will lead to an overly dense loaf. That said, you’ve got considerable flexibility. A few hours in either direction won’t make much of a difference. This is one loaf I’ve never managed to screw up.
If you try this loaf please let me know how it works out. Also let me know if you try any variations such as adding nuts and sprouted grains.

The canning lid conundrum

Avatar photo
Domesticus, Food Preservation
38 Comments

canning lids

How do you guys store your used canning lids and rings?

We keep a lot of them around because we use canning jars for so many things other than canning: dry goods, leftovers, food-to-go, body care, etc.  My collection is driving me crazy.

Never was there a set of more awkward objects than a pile of slippery, jangly rings and lids.

Ideas?

[Mr. Homegrown in my Master Food Preserver mode chiming in here–as per USDA advice we use two piece canning lids only once for actual canning]

How to Make Stock

Avatar photo
Food, How-to
17 Comments
painting of a kitchen scene

The Old Kitchen by Hendrik Valkenburg, 1872 (image courtesy of Wikimedia)

By reader request, we’re going to cover the basics of making soup stock today: how to make it and how to use it.

Let’s start with the why you’d make it and how you use it.

Why you make stock:

  • It is the basis of good cuisine: everything tastes better with stock
  • It boosts the nutritional value of anything you cook with it.
  • It’s thrifty: it puts all your odds and ends and slightly past-prime veggies and leftover meat and bones to good use.
  • Because boxed and canned stock is foul. Seriously. It’s terrible. In an emergency you’d be better off using a bouillon cube than that stuff.
  • It’s easy.

How do you use it?

Think of it as super water. Substitute stock for water whenever you can. Use it:

  • As the basis of any soup or stew
  • To make sauces and gravy
  • To cook beans
  • To cook rice
  • To cook any whole grain
  • To cook pasta and couscous
  • To make risotto
  • To make polenta
  • For braising vegetables or meat
  • For sauteing vegetables
  • Straight, as a broth

Preparing for stock:

Stock is traditionally made with scraps. So you may want to start a scrap bin for stock in your fridge or freezer. Save those parsley stems, that half onion, those carrot stubs and celery tops!  Similarly, meat stocks are made with scraps and bones. Chicken stock can be made with a whole chicken carcass. Fish stock is made with fish bones, shellfish stock is made out of shrimp, lobster or crab shells. Save it all!

How to make vegetable stock:

Continue reading…

Sourdough Rye Bread Class at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

Avatar photo
Bread, Events, Food
6 Comments

ryeclass

Ditch the preservatives and plastic wrap. Join us and learn how to make homemade, all-natural bread from scratch.

Learn to bake the healthiest bread on the planet: a 100% whole grain sourdough rye. In this class you’ll learn how to start and maintain a sourdough starter and how to work with whole grains. We’ll reveal the secrets of whole grain baking, plus you’ll learn how you can grind your own grains.

In the end, you’ll take home a loaf to bake in your oven. You can’t buy this kind of bread so you better learn how to bake it yourself!

By baking bread at home, you’re in charge of what goes into every loaf and can choose to incorporate local and organic ingredients. Other benefits of baking at home include using less energy (used in harvesting, processing, and shipping store-bought bread), using less plastic packaging, and spending less money.

Become a baker and join us for the rye class on Sunday, June 22, 1-3p.

We’ll provide ingredients, and everyone will go home with a jar of starter ready to make bread.

Instructor: Erik Knutzen

For more information or to sign up head over to the Ecology Center.