mycookerygarden

Dark rye flour. What to do with it? Make bread with easy recipe. I used the one below, halved it and substituted molasses with honey and cocoa powder with chopped baking chocolate chips. http://takebackthebread.com/printrye.html For first rise in the fridge Rise, after 4 hours. Rough shape in tin, slashes, wait another 2 hours. Out of oven, does not 'drop' out. Greased tin! After some effort, it came out. Bottom a little wet, rebake few minutes. It's soft. Can taste the chocolate. Slightly sweet from the honey too.

Attempted the BBC cheat sourdough bread recipe again. This time with a long fermentation time for the starter dough - more than 24 hours. The last stretch was an overnight in the fridge. Then a rest time at room temperature for an hour or so before mixing with the other ingredients. I added cooked onions to give more flavour to the bread. The starter dough. Before baking. Fresh out of the oven. Cooled for cutting. See the holes! The bread was light. Whole room smelled of baked onions!

Made some farfalle - I was intrigued by the prettiness of the shape. It's hard work though, all for the sake of the jagged edges. I cleaned out my old craft scissors to do the cutting. Now I realised that the commercial pasta only has jagged edges on the ends of the 'bows'. Not the other side! Well, I may not make this again. The middle of the bow is thick, as expected. So, there's more 'bite' there! But the lemon sauce with cheese, spring onions, cherry tomatoes and lemon zest - that was really refreshing. Uneven sizes and thickness but they still look pretty. Simple lemon, olive oil sauce with some cheese.

Another pasta dough. But I think I have my recipe - it's egg, plain flour and a bit of olive oil. That makes a smooth, elastic dough that yields soft noodle strands. Almost silky if I manage to make it thin enough. The picture below doesn't show much but the pasta is thinner and smoother than my previous attempts. And the sauce! I saw a recipe for lemon pasta sauce, like the links below. I used lime, olive oil and grated Parmigiano Reggiano. It was simple and good. Pasta with lime juice, olive oil and cheese. http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/david-rocco/spaghetti-al-limone-spaghetti-with-lemon-sauce0.html http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/lemon-spaghetti-recipe.html  

Tried to cook chickpea curry. I thought the same brand of premix that I used for the dal would work as well. But it is not the taste I am looking for. And the color is not the same as t he p icture o n the box? Taste ok but I think it can be improved. How? This dal premix is excellent. The recipe at back of box works perfectly.

I read that using semolina flour will give the pasta some bite. Mmmm, maybe too much for me. More likely, I need to refine my technique more. #2 2nd attempt with semolina flour. The texture is very grainy. Cooked with roast duck fat. Good flavour but heavy. And pasta was thick too! #3 3rd attempt with a mix of semolina and all purpose (AP) flour. Trying to make the texture smoother. Spreading out the strands to try to prevent clumping. The pasta texture is still tough and thick. #4 And the journey continues ... This pasta 'sauce' is great. I read somewhere to use butter, garlic, black cracked pepper and cheese with the boiled pasta water. I used plain black pepper but I had some great Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. So, the sauce was creamy but not overly rich. Delicious. 4th attempt with less semolina.   Better texture but still not silky. #5 Did some googling. Aha! Supposed to roll out the pasta sheet and let it dry up a while bef...