Holy Guacamole

A belated wedding present showed up on our door step late last summer, a lava stone mortar and pestle. In traditional Tim Martyn style, Marie carefully assembled a magnificent guacamole. For now here's the picture, if you're lucky she'll tell you how to make it.

Dumplings

We tried our hand at some pork dumplings last night. Click here for the full instructions, they're great and really worth the effort. Our new kitchen aid food grinder attachment made mincing the ingredients for the filling really easy. We used unbleached whole wheat flour for the shells. Not bad for our first attempt. The dipping sauce is important, ours was 2:1 soy to red wine vinegar with some Sambal Olek (Chili Garlic Sauce) to taste.

Yogurt

We got a yogurt maker last week, so far i've made 1 batch and ruined 1 batch. Latter today I will make another that I hope will work. It's not rocket science really, bring your milk to a near boil in a pot on the stove and then cool to 95 degree's Fahrenheit.

Next mix in some yogurt from a previous batch or use a starter pack of bacteria and then pour into individual jars and leave it in the yogurt maker for 8-10 hours, follow this with a few hours of refrigeration and you've got some great tangy yogurt.

If you're even thriftier than us you could probably use your Ronco style food dehydrator to heat the yogurt for the necessary 8-10 hours. I like the individual 6oz. jars ours came with, and it was only $30. Seeing as how we tend to run our dehydrators fairly constantly (although not so much lately) it's nice to have the separate yogurt maker unit. Other's i've read about online use ice chest or coolers filled with jugs of hot water, whatever works for you.

Hot stuff

Ok, so it's been a long time since we wrote anything on this blog but it turns out people are actually looking at it, I'm impressed!

I consider myself spoiled to be able to live so close to the farmers market and over the last 2 years we've spent plenty of time shopping there. In the last year or so Peppahead has showed up at the market. Do yourself a favor and get some of his chili powders, or at the very least check his website out and try some recipes.

http://www.peppahead.com/

This guy grows all his own peppers in his back yard in sunny San Rafael (hey that's where we live!). And he's not fooling around, to quote Troy McLure "that's flavor country". It's not all hot stuff either, lots of rich smokey tastes.

Pizza

More catchup, here's some pizza i made a while ago, I promise it only looks ugly, it's super tasty.

1. Combine 8oz flour, 1tsp sugar, 1/2tsp salt and 1 packet of yeast in a large bowl.
2. Combine1tblsp. olive oil, 3fl oz. milk and 1/3cup warm water, and then mix them into the above dry ingredients, knead for 5 minutes.
3. Put your dough ball in a lightly oiled bowl, rolling the dough around to get it covered. Cover and let rest for 1 hour in a warm place..
4. Meanwhile make a tomato sauce by cooking a finely chopped onion and some garlic until it changes color, add fresh tomato's, salt, basil and whatever else you think tastes good in a sauce. Simmer until it's turning into sauce.
5. After 1 hour, punch down the dough ball to expel the air and knead for a few minutes. Roll the dough out to around 12 inches in diameter. Spread the sauce over the dough, along with any other topping you wish to add. In this case we did some sliced green peppers and fresh mozzerella.
6. Bake in the oven for around 15 minutes at 415F, or until crispy and bubbling.

November Chili Cook-Off

The last freezer post motivated me to do something with the 5.14 pounds of ground beef sitting in the freezer.

There is enough ground beef for us to make two different chili recipes, each from our trusted cookbooks. One is a crockpot chili (1 lb ground beef) and the other is a mega batch (4 lbs!!) that cooks on the stove.

It will take a while for the beef to thaw so it will be a day or two until you hear about the results.

We Love Our Mini Deep-Freezer!

We have been really slack in adding new posts to Big Eats these last few weeks. During that time we were occasionally using up our variety of homemade frozen meals to make room in the freezer for a new round of recipes.

Last summer, we purchased a small 3-cubic foot freezer from a church rummage sale for 50 bucks. It is about the size of a mini-bar fridge. The previous owner didn't bother to clean it, likely ignored the "growing" problem inside, and in a last ditch of desperation, must have decided to sell it instead of properly cleaning it.


As the saying goes, one persons trash is another man's treasure. In this case, we saw the diamond in the rough, and it's been worth every penny. With a little bit of time to let it air out outside, some elbow grease, and determination, we ended up with a great appliance to supplement our small kitchen.

Our trusty little freezer gives us space for our homemade broths....meat, poultry, and fish...homemade ravioli...berries and fruit for dessert...soups...Jonathon's homemade bread dough..... Are you guys hungry yet?

Preparing meals and freezing them ahead for later use has been a lifesaver for us this year.

• Economically: we are less tempted to cave to the easy-way-out and order takeout or eat at restaurant. We also get more for our money, as meals can easily be doubled.
  
• Health: this year has been a year for improving our eating and exercise habits. Knowing what is in your food and where it comes from is important and gives you the control over what you put into your body.
• Mental Will-Power: Sometimes a person just doesn't feel like cooking. There's times where we have lost inspiration for cooking, so we fall back on our freezer meals. When we are in cooking mode, that's when we enjoy the fresh meal but also freeze the leftovers for another day.
• TIME!!! Fast food could be considered a necessity these days...but that doesn't mean fast food has to be less than healthful.

In later posts, we'll give you a glimpse of the cookbooks in our culinary arsenal. Stay tuned!

Pumpkin Custard Pie!

I can't believe it's been 2 months since i've posted anything. In the spirit of thanksgiving, Halloween and the fall in general i've been cooking pumpkin. I try as much as possible not to use any pre-made ingredients, so this pie uses fresh pumpkin and a homemade crust.

Pie Crust
sift 1&1/3 cup flour and 1/8tsp. salt into a food processor (I used the trusty immersion blender). Add 8 tblsp. cubed butter (1 stick) and blend for 1-2 minutes until mixed well. Add 2tblsp. water and 1 egg yolk and blend some more. Remove from the bowl and knead for a little while, shape into a disc, wrap in plastic, and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Pie Filling
Use 1&1/4 cups baked and pureed pumpkin (bake pumpkin for 1.5 hrs at 350f, then blenderize it). Mix in 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks, 1 cup & 2 tbsp. milk, 1/2 cup cream, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/4 brown sugar, 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract and 1/4 tsp. nutmeg together.

Put it all together
Roll out the pie crust to fit your pie plate, something around 1/8 inch thickness. Bake the crust only for 8 minutes at around 400f. Our oven is hard to weild, and ended up around 375f without problems. Remove from the oven and prick any bubbles in the crust with a fork. Pour in your filling and bake at 350f for 40-45 minutes, check the centre to make sure its set, it'll firm up a bit when it's done. Remove, cool to room temperature and eat!

Whiskey Baked Figs

We got some figs a couple of days ago and I found this recipe online at http://www. recipies4us.co.uk last night, it was too interesting sounding not to try. Vary the amount of sauce to taste, I made just enough to cover the bottom of the dish, but you may like more or less. Save electricity and do this one in the toaster oven. The sauce is pretty sweet so i'm sure you can cut down on the amount of honey if you like, i was surprised how the whiskey mellowed out and wasn't overpowering.

1. Preheat your oven to 425F, and grease a dish lightly with butter.

2. Place equal parts whiskey and honey in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, stirring constantly and then remove from heat. I used 2 oz.'s whiskey and 2 oz.'s honey.

3. Wash and cut your figs in half and place cut side up in the dish. Drizzle your honey/whiskey mixture over the figs, and sprinkle a couple of table spoon of crushed roasted nuts over the top. I used a mixture of almonds, cashews, and walnuts roasted in a pan on medium heat for a couple of minutes, and then crushed with a mortar and pestle. Bake for 7-10 minutes or until just tender.

Caffe

Get your self one of these nice guys from Bialetti and get yourself some of this. Sit back and enjoy.