Press for our upcoming opus. . .

This actually even looks like us!!

We got a lovely little article about our upcoming book, Fresh Eggs Don't Float in today's Daily Mail!

CHECK IT OUT!

You can pre-order a copy here.

How to make Sprouted Wheat Bread: Part 1

The perfect sized sprout for bread

By Cookbad

I'm working on the right proportions to sub in sprouted wheat for wheat flour in bread. Once wheat goes from just a seed to a sprouted seed a whole bunch of it's properties change. They increase in digestive enzymes, proteins, good fats and fiber, overall making a healthier more complex carbohydrate bread.

With all those good things in mind, I'm not sure what replacing regular wheat flour with sprouted wheat will do to the dough. I'm curious to see how the gluten is effected.

BUT FIRST, I need to sprout some wheat, which is pretty much as easy as growing mold on bread.

I invested 8USD in a sprouting jar --it's just a large glass jar with a lid that is made of wire mesh. You can easily improvise one by replacing a large regular jar's lid with either cheese cloth held in place with a tight rubber band. Easier still, poke a bunch of holes in the lid of a jar. Don't use too small a jar. The seeds need room to breath.

Next, I put to use some wheat berries that have been sitting in the back of my pantry for 5 months. Wheat berries are wheat flour before it's ground down and processed.

What I did was:
Throw a handful or two in the jar with 3 cups of water and leave them to soak overnight, 8-16 hrs. Then, empty out the water, and rinse the berries by adding some more water to the jar, swishing it around some and then pouring it out. Do that twice.

Rinse them once or twice a day for the next 48-72 hrs.

In about 48 hours some will show tiny spouts. When most have 1/8-1/4 inch shoots -- like in the picture they are ready for bread making.

I'm going to try 2 different things with my sprouts. I put half in the freezer and the other half, I'm going to mill into flour.

To mill then into flour they need to be dehydrated, which is you can do in an oven at low heat. Spread them on a baking sheet and put them in your oven at 200 max. My oven is ancient and doesn't want to go below 300 no matter how low I set it, so I just left the door slightly open and checked them every 5 minutes, stirring them each check so the ones on the outside didn't get toasted. It took about an hour for them to dry. I checked by taking one berry out, letting it cool and then biting it. If ti was soft, they were still damp.

Eventually, one cracked under my teeth, so I turned off the oven and let them continue to dry. There they sit, waiting to take a turn in my soon to be very cleaned out coffee grinder/ flour mill.

Stay tuned.

S

Super Food Strata with roasted red pepper and tomato coulis

Healthy, hearty, and as simple as popping in the oven in the morning.

By Cookbad

I thought up this one for the Weekend Breakfast Blogging Balanced Breakfast Challenge!

A strata is a kind of eggy bread puddinngish breakfast dish that you make the night before and let sit overnight so the bread becomes almost custardy. It can be sweet, savory or both. It is perfect breakfast if all you want to do is pop something in the oven and don't want to do any prep. in the morning.

I've been working hard at getting my strata recipe down and think I have it.
For any kind of strata you want to make, a good guideline is:

For every 3 eggs you want use 2 cups of shredded bread and 3/4 cups of milk.
For a 3 egg strata use about 1.5 -2 cups of filling, and all the herbs and spices you like.

A couple more strata tips:
Cook your strata in a deeper souffle of oven ready sauce pan, not a flat casserole dish.

If the egg doesn't cover the bread, add a bit more.

If you are going to use a vegetable, cook it down first so it doesn't drown your strata and make it end up soggy.

Stratas do not photograph well.

Here is the recipe:
Super Food Strata with roasted red pepper and tomato coulis
FOR THE STRATA
In a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat:
2 tablespoons olive oil
Cook until soft:
4 clove crushed garlic
1 diced onion
Add:
5 oz. cremini mushrooms quartered and browned
Then cook for 3 minutes:
6 oz. baby spinach
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Let it cook a bit then in a souffle dish or deep oven proof bowl mix the vegetables with:
4 cups shredded whole grain crusty bread
1/3 cup of your choice of cheese, grated of crumbled (optional)
Beat together:
6 eggs
1.5 cups of milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper cayenne pepper
ground black pepper to taste
Pour the eggs over the bread and vegetables mixture, cover and set in the fridge overnight.

THE ROASTED PEPPER AND TOMATO COULIS:
Put all of the following into a food processor and pulse to blend:
1 roasted red pepper
1 tomato that has been chargrilled and peeled. You do this by just setting the tomato over your gas flame until the skin pops and turns black.
1 clove of garlic
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste
1/4 cup EVOO
1/3 toasted walnuts

Take the strata out of the fridge 30 minutes before you want to cook it. Take the coulis out to so it has time to get to room temperature before serving.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Bake 45 minutes covered.
It should be puffed up and starting to brown.
Serve with a dollop of coulis.

That lump of orange stuff is the coulis

I opted out of the cheese, but next time I make this I'm thinking fontina.

Also, the coulis is really good all on its own. I put it on a sandwich and turned it into a dip all while waiting for my strata to get down soaking.

How to make Hollandaise Sauce & Eggs Benedict

A superfast and easy version of eggs benedict

By Cookbad


Hollandaise is so easy, I could make it hungover - and I will, next time because Eggs Benedict is a potent hangover cure.

All it is is butter, egg yolk, salt, pepper and lemon. It is a lot like mayonnaise, but made with clarified butter instead of oil.

In theory, it could be pretty easy to fuck up because you are trying to get the hot butter and eggs to emulsify without cooking he egg yolks, which cook pretty damn easily.

Here is my pretty hard to fuck up method:

Makes about 1.5 cups

4 egg yolks
1 1/4 cup butter
salt, pepper to taste
the juice of 1/2 - 1 lemon

Beat the egg yolks until they are pale.
Heat the butter in a small sauce pan and skim the white foamy stuff off the top. Keep it pretty hot but do not let it bubble. Let the milk solids in the butter sink to the bottom.

Melted butter after most of the foam has been skimmed.

discarded butter foam

Keep beating the egg yolks and very slowly pour in a bit of hot butter. Let it emulsify, then add some more, then a bit more until the butter is gone. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice, and you're done. Serve immediately. If you can't and you want to keep it hot, put it over a very low double boiler and stir often.

the finished unbroken product

It didn't break? Did it.

Now to put it to good use:

Eggs Benedict:

Makes 1 serving

Toast up an English muffin. If you don't have one, a nice thick piece of toasted good bread will do. If you want to make some english muffins, go here.

Poach 2 eggs.

Fry up some canadian bacon, ham or rashers of bacon. If you are making rasher and have some asparagus laying around, toss it in the pan with the bacon, It takes them about the same amount of time to cook and the asparagus is nice side.

Make the hollandaise.

Place ham on bread or muffin, place poached egg on pork, slather with hollandaise.

Eat.

Atethat, who lives in the UK told me that there are no English muffins there (makes sense!) and also, she had only seen eggs benedict at restaurants that cater to tourists.

I think that is a crime.

How to make Mayonnaise

Delicious homemade mayonnaise

By Cookbad

Just testing out the recipe we are using in the upcoming Fresh Eggs Don't Float book.

And hooray! It's good.

Makes about 2 cups:
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon of dijon mustard or 1/4 teaspoon of dry mustard
1.5 cups of virgin olive oil or canola oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
salt, pepper

You can make it in a blender, with a hand mixer or a standing mixer. You can make it by hand if you think your arm will hold out.

It's good to have all these ingredients as well as the bowl and whisk at room temperature, but I didn't and it worked out just fine.

Whisk the egg yolks and mustard until they are pale yellow. Put your oil into something that will allow you to pour it very slowly. While the egg yolks are being beaten slowly pour 1/2 teaspoon on oil into the yolk. When if has emulsified add another 1/2 teaspoon and so on. Towards the end, you can start to pour in the oil a bit faster, but if you incorporate it too quickly, the mayonnaise will break. Add salt, pepper, the juice of 1 lemon and 1/2 -1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar.

All told it took me about 30 minutes to make. I wouldn't have had that sort of patience or stamina if I wasn't using the standing mixer.

From mayonnaise you can make all sorts of sauces and spreads:

Aioli
Andalouse
Bacon Mayonnaise
Blue Cheese Dressing
Cambridge Sauce
Chantilly Mayonnaise
Gloucester Sauce
Green Goddess Dressing
Gribiche
Curry Mayonnaise
Remoulade
Rouille
Sauce Vert
Tartare Sauce
Thousand Island Dressing
Sauce Vincent

If you want very quick recipes for each of these sauces, click onto the mayonnaise family tree chart, find you sauce and add on to mayonnaise whatever ingredients are called for. Here is the chart. Click on it to see a much LARGER version:

double click for a bigger verison

All the chart recipes are the ingredients listed + 1 cup of mayonnaise

Joy of Cooking says that you cannot make mayonnaise in a thunderstorm, because it will not bind. I am so looking forward to testing that theory out.

Let me know if that chart is weird or hard to understand or just plain wrong.

MEGA Sandwich Chart

by Cookbad

As part of an ongoing effort to make our upcoming book, Fresh Eggs Don't Float (buy it now!) as awesome as it can be, I'm asking for a little input on a beta sandwich chart I'm been working on. The sandwiches included are:

Bánh mì, barros jappa, bacon lettuce & tomato, chip butty, cheesesteak, choripan, club sandwich, croque-monsieur, croque-madame, cubano, cucumber sandwich, dagwood, francesinha, french dip, gyros, hamburger, hero, submarine, hoagie, grinder, italian beef, hot dog, hot brown, lobster roll, loose meat, monte cristo, muffuletta, pan bagnat, panino, peanut butter & jelly, po' boy, primanti, ruben, sandwich de miga, smörgåstårta, sliders, sloppy joe, st. paul sandwich, tea sandwich, & torta.

The chart lays out what the sandwich is made of, entomology, variations, & origins.

I'm SURE there are spelling mistakes. Please ignore them.

The information is pretty solid, but sandwiches are very subjective. Any advice, opinions, ideas, blazing omissions, thoughts, design improvements, or fan mail would be greatly appreciated and might even land you a thank you in the book. Seriously.

CLICK ON THE CHART TO SEE THE ENTIRE THING

Thank you!!