Baking things that’ll last

Posted by louisa on Friday 10 September 2010 in cooking, frugal, zero waste | 14 comments

I love baking bread, cakes and biscuits – the process is fun, the product is tasty and it’s very often cheaper than buying them ready-made from a supermarket. But I don’t have the time to bake every day at the moment – and that often results in having to buy expensive, pale imitations of nomminess, and sometimes food waste too.

Our slow rise bread is great – it’s edible as long as there is any to be eaten. Because it’s not quite so fluffy as supermarket bread, it doesn’t feel as instantly stale and it’s fine as fresh bread for three days or so, then good for toast for a couple more days. Other baked goods though – scones, cakes, biscuits – tend to be lovely on the first two days but then quickly stale – either going soggy or hard depending on which is undesirable in the item.

So what do you do to make sure your baked good will last until you can bake again?

Airtight containers (typically old ice cream tubs) don’t seem to help that much – perhaps with biscuits (cookies) I need something else in there to absorb the moisture… rice perhaps?

Freezing breads & cakes is a possibility – anyone got any preference to freezing them before or after baking (or part-baked)? I keep meaning to freeze homemade pizza dough – it can be frozen at any stage from after kneading or rising, through to full prepared pizza – does anyone have any preferences for freezing at any particular stage?

As for biscuits, I like the idea of making a roll of dough, which is then frozen and sliced & baked on demand (like for these Earl Grey tea thins) – but with all this breads, cakes and pizza dough, I suspect our freezer will quickly fill up! So what are your favourite longer-life biscuit tricks?

Any thoughts, recipes, suggestions etc would be gratefully received!

(Photo by hisks)

LILI’s two day Cheese-making course

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 7 September 2010 in cooking | 6 comments

Last weekend, I went on a cheesemaking course run by the Low Impact Living Initiative. I think it’s the third LILI course I’ve been on and the others have been great introductions to the subject and excellent value for money – so I had high hopes for this one and thankfully, it didn’t disappoint.

When I signed up for the course a couple of months ago, it was listed as being taught by Kathy Biss – author of Practical Cheesemaking and a renowned cheesery teacher – but unfortunately she was ill so Mark Robertson from the Northumberland Cheese Company stepped in instead. Mark admitted at the very start that he’d never taught before and was clearly nervous about doing so – but while the course was presumably very different than it would have been with Kathy, it was possibly more interesting — we learnt less about some more advanced techniques, but more about setting up small scale commercial production (which I find fascinating). Like the keeping chickens LILI course I went on last year, I think knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject goes a long way on these type of intro courses – and Mark had those in spades.

I shalln’t go into any detail about the cheesemaking process that we learnt on the course as there are lots of great tutorials/books available, and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice – this is more a review of the course than a tutorial.

Cold smoking eggs – first attempt

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 September 2010 in cooking, smoking | 0 comments

Last week I mentioned in passing that I had another go at cold smoking using my fantastic cold smoke generator. We very much enjoyed the cheese so I wanted to do more of that – but I also wanted to try a couple of other things too, namely eggs and chillis.

Following the directions in my smoking book (Home Smoking and Curing by Keith Erlandson), a week or so earlier, I put some of our girls’ eggs aside to age (since super fresh eggs are rather difficult to peel) then hardboiled them to perfection even if I do say so myself. Then they went in my make-do smoke house, with the cheese and the chillis, and the CSG loaded up with some lovely smelling hickory.

Because I was distracted during the day (carrying 1.5tonnes of woodchips down to the chicken coop then by a comic-book-bringing visitor), I didn’t turn everything as dutifully as I did the first time. I think I first turned the eggs after about six hours – they were a peachy orange on the top side but surprisingly still white on the side facing the CSG and the remaining four hours. (The CSG runs for 10hrs, not the 12hrs recommended by the book, but I don’t think two extra hours would have made a lot of difference in this instance.)

Using expensive freezer real estate efficiently

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 September 2010 in cooking, frugal | 4 comments

I’m all about space efficiency.

Our last house was so filled to bursting by the time we moved out that we had to be efficient. Shelves everywhere. Storage units/boxes everywhere. Sometimes I think the cats were lucky they weren’t attached to harnesses and hung from the ceiling to save floor space. We nearly cried when we moved here: cupboards can be opened without all their contents spilling out, there are shelves that are empty save for an ornament or two, and each room has space for me to dance the tarantella with the cats (the closest I get to spinning them around) – but there are still a few spots where space is not so cheap & plentiful. The kitchen in general is pretty packed – it’s the smallest room of the house (save for the understairs cupboard) and since we cook, bake & preserve, we use it a lot for a lot of different purposes. However, it’s the fridge and freezer where we feel the squeeze the most – two small under-cupboard appliances – which are always crammed full.

A few weeks ago, some of our favourite ice cream was on buy one get one free but we couldn’t get any because we didn’t have any freezer space. It was then when we realised we weren’t making particularly good use of our precious freezer real estate. One of the drawers – nearly a third of the total space – was filled with a huge lamb joint we’d got super-super cheap, some cheap burger buns bought on BOGOF and a bag of ice which someone brought to our party at New Year, which we’d barely touched. The first two items were themselves bargains but had both sat in there for weeks; the ice was just taking up space — and all three things were costing us money to store and stopping us benefiting from other bargains.

We now have a new usage policy regarding the freezer: we’re not regarding it as a deep freeze for long term storage any more. We’re using it as a way to extend the life of something fresh by a few days – a fortnight at most – but not for storing things for longer than that (with the exception being my small pots of chillis and spring onions – bought in bulk, sliced up and frozen they don’t take up much room but save us buying fresh all the time). Aside from bagels (which freeze well and are a great emergency-lunch bread), we’re not freezing bread and no more buying things – whether bargains or not – especially for the freezer unless we have a specific exit plan for them, ie, we’ll eat them within a fortnight. We’re also not storing any more than a tray of ice except in exceptional circumstances (namely, a big party).

It’s early days in the new policy so I’m not sure how it’ll pan out – we’re brilliant at forgetting about things in there – but it’s worth a shot. I think the most important thing is to be aware that it can be a black hole for food, and the longer food stays in a freezer the more likely it is to end up as food waste, because of freezer burn, it acquiring that cardboard-y taste or changes of taste.

How do you use your freezer efficiently? Do you have any tips for maximising the limited space? Is there anything you just won’t freeze – or anything you obsessively do keep in there?

Easy marrow and ginger jam recipe

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 31 August 2010 in cooking, preserving, recipes | 10 comments

After writing up the wild plum jam recipe the last week, I realised that I hadn’t written about the super easy marrow and ginger jam I made a few weeks ago.

We’ve had a lot of marrows this year – more by accident than design — too many courgette plants to keep up with. I used the early ones to make my marrow cake and misc cheesy marrow bake, and I gave some of them away – but we’ve still got maybe half a dozen to use up – so I’m jamming and chutneying like there is no tomorrow.

This jam recipe is very sweet but very easy. If you’re not a fan of sweet stuff, you might prefer to use less sugar and certainly not add the crystallised ginger.

Wild plum/cherry plum jam recipe

Posted by louisa on Monday 23 August 2010 in cooking, growing, preserving, recipes, wild food | 11 comments

So last week, we went fishing for fruit on the mystery fruit tree outside our kitchen window. We collected 5.5kg of the plum-ish fruit, probably sacrificed as much the floor gods, and there is still a fair bit up there (albeit not terribly accessible). We’re not sure if they’re wild plum or cherry plum as everyone seems to have different opinions on what constitutes one or the other. Whatever they’re called, they’re very tart but also very sweet.

John wanted to try making plum wine (more on that another time) so I only commandeered 2kg of the harvest for our first batch of plum jam. (I’ll do another smaller jamming once he’s decided how much wine he is making tonight.)

The recipe calls for preserving sugar but granulated sugar would work just as well – preserving sugar is more expensive but the bigger crystals result in a clearer jelly. You don’t need jam sugar (sugar with added pectin) as there should already be enough pectin in the fruit.

UPDATE: Just a quick note to say that in 2011, I added a few drops of vanilla essence to the jam and it added a lovely round flavour. I can’t remember exactly how much or when (I think it was after the sugar so it wouldn’t be cooking too long, but wanted to mention it anyway, because it was delicious :)