Besides, it’s early March, which here, in Sweden, is still technically winter – if you count -12C overnight temperatures and snow piles not yet melted outside as winter.  I mean, we have flowers now, too – the snowdrops are blooming their white little hearts out – but it’s still winter.  Not for much longer, though – and while I love the Scandinavian winter, I long for summer warmth.  And nothing screams summer like citrusy prawns with just a touch of heat and bite from chili.  When consumed, they instantly transfer you to a sunny spot in a garden – provided that you’ve remembered to shut the windows against the bright sunny -5C day outside after freezing airing the apartment out.  What I am trying to say, is that these aren’t just for when it is summer out – they are even more wonderful when you wish it already were.

The best part about these (after how divinely they taste – the clean, bright flavors are such an antithesis to all the winter soups and stews and roasts!), is how amazingly easy and fast these are to prepare.  You know me.  I will not wiggle a lazy little toe more than I have to, and yet I want to eat and I want to eat healthy and gorgeously.  And these prawns are it.  And you can start with a bag of them deep-frozen, like I have, because prawns are one of those foods that defrost quickly and well when submerged in a sealed bag in a bowl of cool water.  You can have these prawns out of the freezer and on the table within 30 minutes if you want – although I would recommend taking closer to an hour during which you do something else – like take a shower, read a book or vacuum the apartment out – while they marinate.  But because seafood soaks up flavors so fast, an entire 40 minutes of marinating is not strictly necessary – these will be fine just after ten.

Ready?  Here’s what you need for a summer-invoking lunch for two:

• 6 giant tiger prawns or 10-12 regular-sized ones
• 1 orange, zested and juiced
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, stripped off twigs and chopped (I just took scissors to my lemon thyme pot on the window with some rigor)
• 1 teaspoon of chili flakes (more or less depending on how hot your chili flakes are and how much heat you like)
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt to taste
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, pressed
• A squeeze of lemon (entirely optional – I added this because my orange was very sweet and lacked any hint of citrus tang.  If you are blessed with a tangy orange, this is not needed)
• 2-3 tablespoons of neutral cooking oil – I use rapeseed (canola) because it has a similar fatty acid profile to olive (very good for your health!) but not the strong olive taste
• A cast iron griddle
• Makings for a green salad and/or some bread – whatever you like with your crustaceans

Here’s what you do:

• Put your frozen-solid prawns into a plastic bag and submerge it while holding the top above water, into a bowl of cool water.  Clip top shut after the air is forced out.  Let float.
• In meantime, juice and zest your orange.  Discard pulp and put the zest and juice in a bowl.
• Press garlic into same bowl, add chili flakes and chopped thyme and swirl with a spoon to dissolve salt and taste, then adjust seasoning if needed.  Set aside.
• Poke your prawns.  They should be defrosted or nearly so.  Rinse them in cold water and using sharp kitchen shears cut through their backs and devein them if needed.  Devein if needed, cut through backs in any case unless they are already pre-cut.
• Drain on paper towel where they can finish defrosting if they are still a little stiff inside.
• In meantime add the oil to your marinade and swish with a spoon or fork to mix.  Add prawns one by one to the bowl, poking them about so that marinade gets inside the cut  backs of shells.  Push them into the liquid as far as they’ll go (mine stuck out some) and let sit 10-40 minutes, depending on how hungry you are.
• Five minutes before you take the prawns out of the marinade (or nearly right away if you are opting for the 10-minute marinade), preheat a heavy cast iron frying pan coated with a thin layer of lard (if you are against lard, use non-hydrogenated shortening, coconut or cooking oil, whatever floats your cookware!) on medium heat.  I use setting 6/9 on my induction stove.  The pan should get hot enough to sizzle if you splash a drop of water on it, but not nearly hot enough to smoke.
• While pan heats, arrange your salad on plates, toast bread, etc.
• When ready, fish prawns out of the marinade (I use a pair of steel kitchen tongs), shake excess marinade off, and set them onto the hot pan.  Prawns (over)cook very quickly, so don’t walk away!
• Cook without moving on one side until the prawn flesh has gone opaque at least to the halfway point in the cut you made in back of shell, and the shell on the underside has turned gorgeously pink.
• Flip the prawns and cook until the prawn is opaque throughout and no bits of shell are ‘uncooked’ grey.  Do not cook longer than that, because overcooked prawns, which you have all met in many restaurants and family dinners, are rubbery.  And that’d be a shameful thing to do to such wonderful food!

Pour yourself a glass of sparkling or just a good white wine, and sit in a sunny spot in your room.  Instant summer!

As a result of it having been winter holidays and us having been sick, I have decided to post about two things which came as holiday presents, and came to be needed.  The first thing is that my wonderful beloved, among other things, bought me a set of seasoning mixes from Rajah, which is a very nice English brand of seasonings – not for English food.  In the United Kingdom, they are mostly found in ethnic shops and the ethnic food departments of supermarkets.  The other thing – a result of us having been so sick – is that I am cooking a lot of rather simple, everyday food that is easy on the stomach and short on prep and effort. As far as the seasonings are concerned, I am not really worried – I have bought many Rajah brand mixes before (in particular their curry powders), and they have always been of great quality.

The ones I received this Yule – none of which I’d tried before – are Jerk Seasoning (insert immature giggle here), Barbecue Seasoning, Hot and Spicy Seasoning and Lemon and Chili Seasoning.  I also got a pack of good Ras-Al-Hanut mix which isn’t by Rajah and isn’t in the picture, but I’ll write about that separately once I have tried it.

The thing about seasoning mixes bought in bulk like this is that they aren’t at all the same as the single-portion packets of ‘taco seasoning’ and ‘dressing mix’ that are sold in supermarkets.  It so happens that I think those ‘shortcut’ packets – which are mostly not made of spices, but of cheap filler – are vile.  This is not to say that all seasoning blends are bad – quite the opposite.  Good quality spice blends found in the spice department of your supermarket, at your favorite ethnic shop or at the spice traders’ are incredibly good to have around the kitchen for when you just aren’t up for standing and measuring and mixing and grinding and… you get the idea.

So, out of these four packets so far, I’ve only tried the Lemon and Chili and the Jamaican Jerk Seasonings.  The latter was used as it was intended, as a rub for a roast chicken, and the former I have used for simply the easiest lunch of grilled salmon.  Now, as I’ve mentioned before, salmon fillets should be on everyone’s list of things to buy when you can get them for a good price  (with the reasonable exceptions of allergic people or those who hate salmon with a passion).  Why?  Because not only are they healthy and really, really good for you, but they are also one of the easiest things in the world to make into hot, delicious food in under 20 minutes.

How?

It’s really simple.  So simple, in fact, that you don’t need a recipe.  All you do is:  preheat the oven to about 200-220C, and smear a small drop of cooking oil over the bottom of a small baking dish.  Blot your salmon fillets with a paper towel and smear them in … well, any seasoning you like.  I used my new lemon and chili seasoning from Rajah.  It worked great.  However, you can use your favorite mix, or you can simply season the salmon with salt and pepper and rub those into the surface.  Put the seasoned fillets into the oiled baking dish, and place the baking dish into the middle of the oven and grill for 15-18 minutes (depends on how large your fillets are and how done you prefer them).

Salmon is a fatty fish and so while it can handle glazing really well, it doesn’t even need that – the oil in the fish itself will mix with the seasoning as it grills.

See the salmon fat pooling down there in the bottom of the baking dish?  Like so!

Toss some greenery onto the plate, chop a cucumber or ball a melon or something – or both, season that with a drizzle of good olive oil, spatulate the salmon over to the waiting plates and you have a gorgeously elegant, healthy and tastebud-tingling meal in less time than it would take to get takout pizza (even if you live above the pizzeria!).

As to seasoning mixes – I definitely recommend the Rajah Lemon and Chili, and the Jerk one isn’t half bad (it’s meant for chicken, not fish, however), but this post is not a plug for Rajah brand as such.  Most fish-friendly seasonings will work here – it is simply that if you have one on hand premixed – either bought or compounded by your very self, it makes a great meal come together without any effort.  And that is a worthy thing in itself.

Combined with a chunk of baguette, or a couple of boiled baby potatoes with peel on, and a glass of white wine or bubbly, this makes for a great dinner as well.

P.S. In case you are wondering, the salad here is just a handful of greenery topped with cucumber and melon, with some flaked sea salt, chili flakes and dried oregano sprinkled on top, and drizzled with a good olive oil.  Melon and chili work wonderfully well together, and I tend to think that anything more complicated than that would be entirely unnecessary.

Now, do you understand the depth of misery that this sort of allergy is?!  I mean, no real birthday cakes when growing up, no nice slice of chocolate cake at the cafe, no brownies, no… combine this with his pretty wide nut allergy and you get the full scope of the sadness of a food-allergic dessertless existence.

Till he met me, that is.  Now, I am a persistent creature and for a while now I’ve been trying, really trying to make him a good, non-dry simple cake.  The sort that we, non-allergic types, able to eat anything in a random coffee shop without a second’s hesitation (other than perhaps wondering what this amount of sugar will do to my waistline), and certainly without any fear for our life, take for granted.  Well, I take my ability to eat whatever and not fear for my life for granted no longer – it’s amazing how quickly acquiring a significant person with an allergy adjusts one’s perspective!

The search took me through alternatives such as milk-and-hot-water cake (which turns out pretty lovely with saffron and which I should write about at some point too), and the coconut and orange cake with egg yolks (which was also lovely but not very moist so required good frosting to make it really work), and after a while I nearly gave up on real cake – until I stumbled across a cheaty shortcut which I feel the desire to share with you, along with the recipe for this easy, gorgeous and absolutely delicious cake somewhat adapted to said cheat from a recipe found on Gourmet Magazine website.

And let me tell you – if you only make one autumnal dessert this year, please, do make it this cake!  It’s aromatic with orange flower water and cardamom, it’s moist (even with the egg substitute), and the nectarines dry and caramelize under their coat of sugar and spice into a stained-glass-like beauty.  The smell as it bakes is like the very essence of Fall, the sort of thing you’d dream of when imagining yourself on a swing with a mug of hot coffee or tea, wrapped in a thick sweater and a blanket and looking out over the colors of the turning leaves.  Well, I don’t know about you, but to me, that is how it is.

The cheat in question is a vegetarian egg substitute by Bob’s Red Mill (purveyors of high-quality grains and flours and the like).  I have chosen it after reading about a lot of different egg substitutes, and checking their ingredients to find the least objectionable one.  This one is made from wheat, soy and algin (extract from seaweed), and while I am not a huge fan of soy, the small amount of soy this would add to our diet is not something I will quibble with when it allows me to simply mix and substitute this in any baking recipe where beaten eggs are called for – and have it work so wonderfully.

To top it, the cake transports without falling apart (great when you want to bring a dessert to a party!), and it keeps very well in the fridge wrapped in cling film (plastic wrap) for 1-2 days.  I can’t say if it would keep any longer as I simply don’t know – it’s not survived longer than till the morning of the day after the day it was made here.  And that was with me avoiding helping with the eating of it, too.

What you need to make it:

A bowl, a handheld (or stand) mixer or a wooden spoon, some baking paper and a standard-sized springform cake pan.  Oven doesn’t hurt either.

• 2.4dl (1 US cup) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1g (1/5 of a teaspoon) salt
• 125g (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small bits and softened
• 180ml (3/4 US cup) sugar + 1 tablespoon sugar (divided)
• 2 large eggs (lightly beaten) or 2 tablespoons of egg replacer whisked with 6 tablespoons room-temperature water
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon orange flower water
• Zest of 1 lemon or orange (optional but very recommended!)
• 2 nectarines, pitted and sliced into wedges.  I used a golden and a white one in the cake pictured, but the golden ones have a better flavor (more acidic), so the second cake (that got devoured without getting a photoshoot) only used golden and I liked it better.
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 175C.
• Butter the cake pan lightly and line the bottom with a round piece of baking paper (you’ll thank me later!).
• Mix the egg substitute with water in a small bowl and set aside to stand.  It will thicken a little, but it’s not essential that it does.
• Whisk together flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and citrus zest (if using).
• In a separate small bowl, mix the cardamom and the remaining tablespoon of sugar, set aside.
• Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then pour in the egg substitute (or beaten eggs) slowly in 2 stages, beating well after each addition.
• Beat in vanilla and orange flower water.
• Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just combined.
• Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and level the top with a butterknife or a spatula.
• Push nectarine slices into the top of the batter in a circular (or any other) pattern, and sprinkle the top of the cake (batter and fruit slices) with the sugar-cardamom mixture.
• Place on a middle rack of preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes (ovens may vary so check after 40 minutes and keep an eye on the cake afterwards), until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
• Cool in the pan on wire rack for 20-30 minutes, then remove the sides of the pan, and cool completely.
• Carefully loosen the bottom of the cake with the parchment paper off the bottom of the pan with a spatula, and slide the cake onto the serving platter.  The parchment bottom will help avoid screeching noises when cutting the cake on the platter, and the cake slices come off it effortlessly.

Slice, pour up your hot drink, grab that blanket and go sit on the balcony in the chill wind watching the leaves turn.  Happy Autumn!

Obviously, as the time and stomach volume permits, I munch away at all of this glorious bounty raw, or in pies and tarts, but there is something incredibly comforting about preserving some of the perfectly ripe fruit at the peak of its flavor in jam jars, to keep for when the landscape turns white and blue, to remind us (and the lucky recipients of such jars) that winter is not forever.  And that, for all it’s -20C and pitch dark at 6pm outside, at home there is warmth and candlelight, and in the meantime, there’s jam.

Best thing about plum jam is that of all the jams I’ve ever tried to make (with the possible exception of the very pectin-rich quince), it’s the one that sets the fastest and most reliably, without the need for any added pectin.  So all you really need to make it is sugar and plums.  And if you’ve got whole cloves or star anise or cardamom pods in your pantry, it’ll be that much better.

The second best thing about it (though not unique to plum jam in my experience) is that you can make it in tiny batches, and you can make it fast – far faster than the hours-spent-at-the-stove image a jar of homemade jam might evoke, so that you can cook a tiny batch of it whenever you have a couple of handfuls of plums on hand, and be able to gift (or keep to yourself greedily) the jam jar the very next morning, and channel the domestic goddess without much effort at all.

I sincerely recommend using the spices listed (one of, not all three together!) in the cooking process.  They do not detract from the plum flavor, but in fact enhance it and elevate your jam to heights far above the regular off-the-shelf shop-bought stuff by giving it that extra-fancy complex scent like the really expensive gourmet stuff you might or might not have tried – or the best-ever homemade jam that I hope you have.  If you haven’t – just do it, you won’t regret it!

Star anise or cinnamon stick can be used in either golden or purple plum jam, as they are easy to see and therefore get out at the end of the process.  Cardamom is harder to see in purple plum jam, but is easy to remove from golden (unless you tie it in cheesecloth, in which case it’s easy either way), and cloves can be left in the jam after cooking, so use them in either.

A note about ripeness of plums:  you should use mostly or only ripe fruit.  If one or two of your plums are hard, it is no trouble, but if all of them are just slightly underripe, your jam will set so hard, you could slice it with a knife – underripe fruit are too rich in pectin, making them ideal to add to overripe ones to set a jam, but not to make a jam of on their own!

And then, of course there’s the problem of canning apparatus and tools.  Or not at all, as it happens – if you use small jars (250ml ones are great for gifting!), you don’t need much at all, and all you need is probably already there in your kitchen.  That is because the plums have high acidity, and so boiling-water processing is all it takes to make plum-based preserves shelf-stable for about a year (or more, but don’t quote me – most reputable canning websites suggest eating homemade jam within 1-3 years of preparation).  What this means is that you don’t need any fancy apparatus to process the jars – a stockpot, a silicone trivet and a pair of jar tongs (or if you are like me and don’t have those, a silicone spatula and a wooden spoon to place jars inside the pot and fish them out) are all that is needed.

So, if you’ve ever thought that in order to have lovely rich-tasting jam, you either need to empty your wallet and hit the gourmet store, or have a country estate with a huge kitchen equipped like a miniature canning factory, you’ve been terribly misled.

So, how do you go about it?  It’s all really very simple!

This will make approximately 750ml jam (3x250ml jars of it).

Equipment:

• A 2L+ pot for cooking the jam
• A wooden or nylon spoon
• 3x 250ml canning jars, washed.  I use the sort with screw-top lids by preference, they seem to work best for me and seal reliably – though I’ve also made and processed jam in washed-out honey jars, it’s not generally recommended to reuse those.  Thicker-walled jars for home canning have a far lesser chance of cracking during processing or when filled with very hot jam.
• Your glasses (if you have them), or a pair of goggles such as pictured (mine are my old laboratory eye protection gear), which are entirely optional – but I like the safety that having something between my eyes and hot sugar syrup provides.
• A timer/thermometer is helpful, but not necessary.  If you want one, you should get a cheap and good dual-function one at IKEA – I love mine and it’s worth every one of the pennies (not many!) it cost!  (No, I don’t work for IKEA’s ad department.  Sadly.)

If you plan to gift the jam or store it outside the refrigerator, you will also need the following to process the jars:

• A 4L+ pot for boiling-water processing the jars
• Something (like a silicone trivet) to prevent jars from knocking about too much in the processing pot.  Some people use a 100% cotton tea towel, or a metal rack-style trivet.
• Jar tongs or something you can use to lift the jars out of boiling water.  I would recommend the jar tongs for safety – I’ll buy a pair myself as soon as I can find a good one for a decent price!

Ingredients:

• 500g ripe plums of any sort, pitted and sliced or chopped into small pieces.  I quarter the plums, and then slice them crosswise into pieces about 0.5cm thick
• 300-350g sugar (I would not recommend using less than 250g or half the weight of the fruit as the jam may not set)
• 1 cinnamon stick (be careful what sort you buy!), OR 3 stars of star anise, OR 12 whole cloves OR 4-6 cardamom pods (all optional, any are recommended)

That’s all!  Now, what do you do?

• Put your jars and lids opening-down on the oven rack and set the oven to 75C.  This will sterilize and dry them while you make the jam.
• Put your plums and your sugar in the smaller pot and turn on medium-high heat.  I use 6/9 setting.
• Set the larger pot with 3L of water in it on the back burner.  Stick your glasses or goggles on if using those, and feel like a scientist tinkering in his or her lab!
• Stir the plums with sugar and mash them a little until sugar dissolves.  Add the whole spices.  Keep stirring until the jam boils.
• Set a timer for 15 minutes.  This is a guideline, not an absolute measure.  Keep watching and stirring the jam so that it does not stick and burn (it isn’t prone to that, really, but you don’t want to chance sugar burning – it’ll ruin the entire batch).
• Reduce heat a little if the jam boils too vigorously – it should boil but not spit.
• To know when the jam is ready to be jarred, you can follow this easy guideline courtesy the National Center for Home Preservation:

Jelling Point Spoon Test

• At first the syrup will drip off the spoon in a single drip (not pictured so well), then after a while it’ll drip in two simultaneous drips (it really does!), and then, after a little while longer, it will sheet or drop off the spoon in blobs (see rightmost picture).  At that point your jam is going to set.
• Once you’ve reached this point, turn off the heat, stir the jam well and remove the cinnamon stick, anise stars or cardamom pods.  If you used cloves, feel free to leave those in the jam, they will do it no harm.
• Take your jars out of the oven using potholders.
• Pour or scoop the jam into the prepared jars, and screw the lids on thoroughly.  The lids and jars will be hot, so use a tea towel.
• If you plan to eat the jam within 2 months and store refrigerated, go no further.  Allow the jam to cool to room temperature and place in the refrigerator.
• If you want to make the jam shelf-stable and/or plan to give it away, bring the larger pot of water to a boil if it’s not yet boiling.  Place the trivet inside.  Carefully lower the jars into the water using jar tongs (or whatever contraption you come up with), and time 10 minutes.
• Take the jars out, place them on a wooden board, and allow them to cool.  Once cooled, the tops of the screw-top lids will ‘ping’ into the depressed position, indicating a vacuum seal – that’s your sign that processing succeeded.

Note:  If a lid does not depress after cooling, store the jam in refrigerator for up to 2 months (I don’t recommend re-processing), and eat it or use it in dessert.

I’ve written about Tian d’aubergines before, and therefore it may well be superfluous to write about this again, but I am of the opinion that anything worth doing, is worth doing well (and again), at least where food is concerned – and besides, this is a far less fussy preparation, which will take a lot, I repeat, a lot less of your time, which makes it entirely worth writing about.  And in its golden, savory wonderfulness, it is a vegetarian dish to make even carnivores such as myself weep with joy – and put away a giant bowlful of, not wanting a single thing more for lunch.

You can, of course, serve this alongside some roast fowl, or with a well-marinated piece of grilled meat, or a quick-fried good quality steak, and it’ll make a large and filling celebratory dinner.  Or you can plate this into small ramekin-sized containers (or, indeed, as mentioned here, bake it in individual casserole dishes – but this is making things more complicated again!), and serve as starters at an autumn dinner party.  And, should there be leftovers (and there were some – far less than one’d expect! – from my large casserole dish), you can always stuff them into a sandwich (cold as they may be from the fridge), or between two tortillas with a little cheese and chipotle paste, and dry-fry into amazing quesadillas.  Although, if you serve this at a party, I doubt there’ll be any leftovers – and you will wish there were.

The main difference with the aforementioned recipe is the aubergines – both, the variety and the preparation (or lack thereof).  The method of baking remains very much the same (how much can one simplify the instruction of “put in oven, leave in there for X time“, really?), but is still gloriously simple and forgiving.

What makes the big difference, is using not the giant purple-skinned aubergines, which are notorious for having a bitter off-taste more often than not, and require a slicing-and-salting to leech the bitter juices out, but the adorable striped and/or tiny egg-shaped white ones, the latter of which, I believe, is what gives the vegetable its English name, ‘eggplant’.  I’d be surprised if there was another reason for it – just look at them!

The white and the striped ones, unlike their shiny purple cousins, are not bitter at all.  I know.  I licked them after slicing just to be sure, even though I’ve been told so before.  Which means, you can dispense with the pre-salting, and pre-frying of aubergines, and can, in fact, assemble the whole shebang as you slice and go along.

Note – the cornucopia of vegetables in the above photo was me having bigger eyes than a casserole dish, for all it was a large one.  I had to leave out a couple of the potatoes, 2 of the mushrooms, and 2 of the little white aubergines because they simply didn’t fit.  Since I cannot predict the size of your vegetables (they don’t come in standardized shapes and sizes, thank the gods!), my advice regarding quantities will be – take out more than you think you need.  Washing and drying vegetables and then putting the leftover ones in the fridge washed and dried does them no harm.

What you need to make this:

• Time: 2 hours.  This bakes for 1.5 of those.
• A large casserole dish.  I use a cast-iron shallow thing I bought ages ago.  Use whatever size you want the tian to be, so long as the thing fits into your oven!
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Rosemary (recommended), fresh, 2-3 large sprigs, leaves stripped
• Sea salt
• Aubergines, sliced
• Tomatoes, sliced
• Squash (zucchini or golden, not winter squash), sliced
• Onion, sliced
• Garlic – I used a generous handful of cloves, outer papery skin removed, clove shells left intact, root tips cut off
• Cheese to top, if desired (I always desire cheese)
• Other optional vegetables – some small potatoes, firm large mushrooms (baby portobello, for example), fennel bulbs – also sliced thinly

What you need to do:

• Preheat oven to 200C.
• Oil the casserole dish with olive oil generously.
• Grab 3-4 of your vegetables – I usually start with aubergine, tomato and zucchini, and start alternating slices of those in a repeating pattern:  zucchini-tomato-aubergine, zucchini-tomato-aubergine – in whatever order you like, and leaning them against the side of the casserole dish, going around the outside.
• When you have covered about 3/4 of the circle, begin inserting onions every repetition (easiest way I found is ‘after every vegetable x’), and moving the other veg along a bit as needed.
• Stick other vegetables into the spacing in order to close the circle as necessary.  Begin the same rotation with whatever is left, adding optional vegetables if needed.  Slice more if you run out as you go along.
• When you have filled the entire pan with concentric circles or rectangley-things (if your pan is rectangular), gently wiggle garlic cloves into the available spaces, and slip all remaining sliced-up veg into whatever sections look flatter than the rest of the pattern, evening it out.
• Scatter rosemary leaves over the vegetables, pushing some into any nooks, drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
• Cover with lid or foil, and place in the oven for 1 hour.
• After an hour, check and remove lid – the vegetables should be cooked through and steaming.  Add cheese if using (do, do, you know you want to!), sprinkling evenly over the tian, and place back in the oven for ~30 minutes to finish browning.
• Remove from oven when cheese is bubbling and browned.

Like so.

Shovel into plates while steaming-hot, add a bit of green salad (or nothing), grind some black pepper on top if you like it (it’ll do it good!), and celebrate autumn in all its colorful glory!

P.S. I tend to fish the garlic cloves out in my plate by the tail end, squeeze them out with the side of a fork, and spread the velvety-soft flesh on my vegetables.  Yes, I suck the shells clean, too, if it’s not in public.  You do as messily or as politely as you will!

Most comforting dishes such as my beloved cassoulet and various beef stews, are long-and-slow cooked creations that require thinking ahead and preparation.  Happily, this one is not one of those – the entire prep and initial cooking takes maybe 15 minutes, and then it is 40-45 minutes of doing nothing while the oven does its job.  An hour may not sound like it’s a very fast dish, but when you consider that most potato gratins take more like an hour and a half or two to achieve that perfect consistency, then an hour from start to finish with only a quarter-hour of active involvement really isn’t so much of an investment.  Especially – especially!!! – when the results are so creamily, comfort-heavenly good.

This generous portion will serve two for a generous dinner, or four as a decent side dish to steak or roast chicken.  The recipe is somewhat adapted from Nigella Express – quantities changed a little, and I chose to use heavy cream for part of the milk specified, black pepper instead of white, and a little more wine than was called for.  The results were just the right thing to take the edge off a tiring Monday night grown rapidly chill with sunset.

A word about the potatoes – the main star of this show:  I bought the pre-washed shiny golden ones that ambushed me in the entrance to the supermarket.  But really, any will do.  Don’t bother peeling, but if they are dirty, do give them a good scrubbing in addition to the non-optional rinse.

What you need:

• 700g potatoes, rinsed and patted dry, sliced into 3-4mm thick slices
• 150-200g mushrooms, sliced thinly
• 2.5dl full-fat milk
• 1dl heavy (36%+ fat) cream
• 0.5dl white wine
• 2-3 tablespoons butter
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Garlic granules or powder (optional), to taste

What to do:

• Preheat oven to 220C.  Butter a large casserole dish thoroughly.
• Put potatoes, milk, cream and wine into a pot.  Place on medium-high heat, bring to a boil and add salt and garlic granules if using (I did, and they worked wonderfully well).  Cover, turn heat down a little to avoid burning the milk, and let simmer while you prepare the mushrooms.
• Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan on medium-high heat.  Dump mushrooms into the pan and saute until they are giving off a tiny bit of liquid and are turning soft and a little translucent, maybe 5 minutes.
• Pour the entirety of the mushroom pan into the pot with potatoes and stir carefully, avoiding breaking the potato slices.
• Pour the contents of the pot into the buttered casserole dish, and pat gently with a spatula into a uniform layer.
• Place casserole dish on a rack in the middle of the oven and set timer for 40 minutes.  Go take a bath, power nap, or finish that last bit of business for the day to get it off your mind.
• When timer goes off, check the gratin.  If it is not quite golden enough on top for you, turn the broiler (top grill) on for a few minutes while you watch it (watch it, it will brown FAST!).
• Take out of oven, and shovel into plates (warm the plates if you want to be really decadent).  Eat on sofa off your lap, or serve with half a glass of white wine for a luxury workday dinner.

P.S.  I’d like to note that the clean-up for this isn’t half bad – if the casserole dish was buttered well (mine was), all it takes to loosen the browned dairy bits off the sides is a bit of soaking in water, and a light brushing.  No heavy scrubbing required!

Like this morning – I just got done watering all the orchids and picking up around the kitchen, and it was already lunchtime!  Where did the bloody time go, tell me?!

Guess where I take the shortcut?  Lunchtime.  More often than not, I end up opening the fridge and staring into it in fascination trying to figure out what I can take out and prepare in 20 minutes or less.  No, ramen noodles aren’t on the menu – ‘something to eat’ in our household which consists of myself and a spoiled other half needs to be healthy, delicious and fresh.

Unless I realize (in horror) that we’d run out of our resident packet of greens, what we end up eating on a daily basis, is some permutation of a green salad.  Frankly, I don’t have a single set ‘recipe’ for a green salad – I just grab all that looks promising out of the fridge: greens, vegetables, cheese of some sort, and cured or cooked meat of some description, and then figure out what sorts of seasoning and dressing it would go well with.

This salad, however, was memorable enough in its semi-accidental nature, that I think it ought to be written down and shared, for it turned out lovely and fresh and full of rounded flavor without any component overpowering the whole.  The delicate sweetness of roast figs goes oh-so-wonderfully with the smoky meat, and the freshness of the mint and basil set it all off to perfection.  I could wax poetic about how great it is to have fresh potted herbs on my windowsill, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Anyway, the salad!  The quantities given were enough for a large lunch salad for two people.  If you want to feed four, feel free to double the recipe as main dish for lunch or light supper, or use below quantities and have smaller portions as starters.

What you need:

• Two large handfuls of baby salad greens
• 1 red sweet paprika – I used the long sweet variety that are thinner-fleshed and a little less watery than typical bell peppers, but using a bell pepper here would harm the salad not at all
• 1 good-sized tomato
• A chunk of cucumber 10-15cm long
• 8 very fresh mint leaves, rolled and chiffonaded
• 4 sprigs of Greek basil, snipped – a large sprig of regular basil, chiffonaded, will also work.
• 150g white brined curd cheese (I use a German white cheese which is a bit less salty than feta, but feta or anything like it will work too – you might need to reduce the amount of salt)
• 1-2 figs
• 1-2 teaspoons of honey
• Kabanos sausage, or other smoky-flavored dry-cured or smoked sausage, sliced into easily edible bits.
• A large (or small) pinch of sea salt flakes and a good grinding of black pepper
• 2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar
• 2-4 tablespoons of good extra-virgin olive oil

What to do:

• Slice the figs into quarters nearly all the way through, so that the four quarters remain attached at the bottom.  Drip a teaspoon of honey into each fig, place in a baking dish and bake at 225C for approximately 10 minutes or until the figs are open and bright-pink inside and ooze a little bit of pink syrup when prodded.
• Remove from oven.
• While the figs roast, toss the greens, chopped peppers, cucumber and tomato, finely snipped/chiffonaded fresh herbs and cubed brined curd cheese to the bowl.
• Sprinkle with vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and toss thoroughly.
• Add olive oil and toss again.
• Plate the salad out, and garnish with roast fig or figs on top, and smoky sausages on the side (or wherever the heck you want them!).

Enjoy.  The entire ‘cooking’ process for this takes approximately 15 minutes.  In fact, there’s even time to make a couple of cups of honeyed mint tea to go with it.

You don’t know how to make mint tea?  Nothing easier!  It is one of my favorite non-caffeinated hot drinks out there, and probably the easiest to make – and it is lovely, lovely, lovely for your throat if you are down with a cold!

Take a large (500ml or so) coffee or soup mug.  Place inside it a sprig of fresh mint, and a teaspoon of honey.  Pour over boiling water and let steep about 10 minutes.  Stir honey in and remove the sprig.  And it’s good with nearly any Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean-style dish you I can think of.  Try it, you definitely won’t regret it!  (Unless you hate mojitos or something.)

I think I will start today’s post with the why before the how.  Now that I think of it, it is how I usually structure my posts anyway, but in today’s case there are actually two ‘why’-s:  they why of why you should make your own sourdough starter, and the why I am writing this post at all.  After all, there are so many instructions on the internet about how to do this – right?

Right.  There are actually many instructions about how to make a sourdough starter.  In fact, I have read at least two good ones which have helped me immensely in creating my own starter… but!  But, in the year since I’ve made it (the starter has no name, in case you wondered – I don’t name what I eat), I’ve learned a whole lot about sourdough starters which I had not known back then, most of which has to do with making the whole business more foolproof and less problematic and labor-intensive.  And when you think about it, our foremothers and -fathers baked bread in their busy schedules for thousands of years without the use of sterilized this, special that, or having time to feed the starter every eight or however many hours, the way many internet ‘sourdough gurus’ would declaim you simply must!  The truth is, it’s far simpler than that, and a lot less messy, and this is why I decided to write my own guideline for making and caring for a sourdough starter.

And then, perhaps a few insights into microbiology offered in the previous post don’t hurt one’s understanding of how to take care of this, either.

The why of why should you make your own sourdough starter is far simpler.  Do you want to bake your own delicious and healthier-for-you sourdough bread?  Do you want to save money on it?  Do you want to have guests greedily reach for more bread at a table regardless of what else is on it?  Then you want to bake sourdough bread.  And for that you need a starter.  So, you should make it.

As an aside, if you have someone who can give you a starter culture, or can buy it in a shop to perpetuate for yourself, or would prefer to get a mail-order dehydrated culture, by all means, do so.  I did not opt for those (except for a piece of Polish starter which I managed to kill – Sylwia, if you are reading this, I will come to beg another bit from you at some point!), but decided to cultivate my own starter because I find microbiology fascinating, and I wanted something authentically mine.  And what can be more authentic than making your own local starter with locally sourced flour, local wild yeasts, and the resident population of microbes?  By now you probably suspect I don’t get out much (I do, actually), but if not, and you want the fun of your own starter, then read on!

The ‘how’ of making and perpetuating a starter is, like I’ve said, a lot easier than many people would have you believe.  Why they make it sound more difficult and complicated and labor-intensive than it has to be, I don’t know.  Perhaps it is to work on their own ‘blogger’ or ‘food writer’ cred.  Don’t get me wrong, some of their advice is very good, and the two places I’ve read for advice on sourdough baking (here and here) give no bad advice – if you follow their instructions to the letter, you will have a good sourdough starter.  It is just that I have found that a lot of the more labor-intensive bits which are ‘common knowledge’ about sourdough starter are either just not true (yes you can use stainless steel bowls and utensils!), or unnecessary.

So, let’s get to it!  What do you need to start and perpetuate a sourdough starter:

• Patience.  About two weeks’ worth (no, I don’t know where to buy any, either)
• Tap water (cold)  Addendum:  use tap water if it is drinkable.  If you filter your tap water to drink it yourself, filter it for the starter as well.
• Whole wheat flour (50g) – preferably local and reasonably fresh
• White wheat flour and rye flour (latter is optional)
• Bowl (glass, ceramic, plastic or steel – food-safe), spoon, glass jar with lid (washed out pickle or honey jar at least 1L in volume is good), volume measuring spoons or cup, kitchen scale or a measuring cup which approximates grams for flour, maybe a whisk if you want to be fancy

For cheating/troubleshooting/prevention of issues:

• 1 teaspoon of liquid accumulated in a bucket of live natural yogurt (ready source of food-grade lactobacillus)
• 100ml of supermarket-bought pineapple juice from a carton

What you need to do:

This section will be broken down into Day 1, Day 2, Days 3-? (usually 7-14), Troubleshooting (or in case you want to start things off with the cheats that aren’t for purists but work), and Maintaining Your Starter, for the obvious reasons.

Day 1:

• Mix 50g of whole wheat flour and 50ml cold tap water in a small bowl until fully combined.  Scrape mixture into the glass jar (it should fill your chosen jar no more than 1/4 of volume to allow for rise later on).
• Cover the jar with its lid, screwed on part-way (to allow a small amount of air flow but no direct contact with dust falling into the jar from above).  Leave until the next day.

Day 2:

• Remove about half of the mixture and throw it away.
  • Here is why:  until your starter is ready, you do not want to use the discarded portions of your starter for anything food-related – simple reason is that until you have an established symbiosis of acid-manufacturing microbes (a ready starter), which will make sure no spoilage organisms such as molds or pathogens can grow in it, spoilage organisms can be present in your starter.
• Add 25ml water and 25g of whole wheat flour to the remaining starter.  Add water first, mix the starter into it, then add flour.  Cover with the lid and leave be till next day.

Days 3-? (Usually 7-10 or so):

• Throw away half the mixture.  Transfer the remaining half to a small bowl.  Wash out the jar with dish soap and water, rinse well, and dry.
• Add 25ml of water and 25g of all-purpose or white bread flour to the bowl of starter.  I recommend mixing a teaspoon of rye flour as part of the flour as well (sourdough starters love rye.  I am not actually sure why, but they do).  Mix, return to clean jar, cover and leave be until next day.
• Repeat daily until starter is ready* or at least until Day 7.

At this point you will begin to notice bubbles which form overnight in the starter.  It might, in fact, even rise and fall in-between your visits, leaving some streaks on the glass of the jar (this is why you should clean it – so you can see what your starter has been doing while you aren’t looking!).  These are good signs.  Repeat the routine daily, stirring the starter so it collapses before throwing away half.

During this stage of development, the starter may well smell spoiled, and sometimes may have a film forming over the surface.  These are not a problem – they should go away by the time the starter is ready.

* Starter is ready to bake with (and to store for future use) when it is at least seven days old and it rises on a daily basis to at least twice its height (volume) in the jar, filling it with bubbles 6-12 hours after it’s been fed.  Please note the ‘and’ there – it should be at least a week old, and it should rise.  Not one or the other.

The third and very important thing is that any off-smells which may have been present during the initial week or two should be gone, replaced by a fresh and yeasty scent.  A small hint of acetone (nail polish) scent may also be present – it is not acetone but ethyl acetate, and it is an indication that acetobacteria are taking up residence in your starter, which is a good thing.  The starter at this point can be tasted cautiously – it should be quite sour to the taste.

Once the starter is at least a week old, rises regularly a few hours after feeding, and smells yeasty, you are ready for the next stage – keeping and storing the starter.

Maintenance:

A lot of sites tell you that you must keep your starter at room temperature and you must feed it every 8 or 12 hours.  I disagree.  This is unnecessarily labor-intensive, and would discourage even me from keeping this up and having sourdough starter around.

What I do instead, is keep my starter in the fridge.  The only thing you should know about this, is that it keeps better if you feed it and put it directly into the fridge (lid on but not very tightly to allow air flow), rather than stick it into the fridge after it rises and falls (is ‘ripe’).  So, after a feeding, you can put the starter into the fridge and forget about it for 2-4 weeks, no problem.

When you want to bake, get the jar out, and feed the starter.  If it has been less than 2 weeks, you can simply take a tablespoon of it and feed that and use it to bake, retaining the jar in the fridge – if it’s been longer, I figure the starter is getting hungry, and so I tend to take entire jar out, mix twice what I need, return half of it to a (cleaned) jar to the fridge, and use the other half for baking.  You can also freeze a ‘retaining’ sample in a small plastic tub in case you manage to kill the starter somehow – or bake up all of your starter.  I haven’t done that, but I’ve heard it’s traumatic if and when it happens, so you can have a bit of ‘insurance’ in the freezer.

If you want to keep more than just the 100g of starter around, feel free to feed it more for a larger total amount.  Once the starter is ready, I tend to keep approximately 150g of it in the refrigerator.  I prefer my starter to be 100% hydration – meaning that I advocate using equal amounts (by weight) of flour and water at every feeding, and all my sourdough recipes are geared and tested with this type of starter.  If you want yours thicker or thinner, feel free to experiment once you feel you have the hang of it – just keep in mind that the more water in starter, the faster it will both, rise and fall.

Troubleshooting and ‘Cheating’:

There are two additional pieces of advice I would like to offer here, one which I have used myself (not being a huge purist after all), and one that I have read about, but which appears to me to be both, microbiologically sound and easy to use (and won’t hurt anything in any case).

The first advice is using the teaspoon of yogurt water (the liquid that collects in a bucket of any good live natural yogurt) in your initial starter culture – mixing that into the water quantity on Day 1 of your starter.  This will ensure that you have lactobacilli present in the starter from the get-go.  I have done this and it has worked really well, so I do recommend it, although by all accounts it will work fine without introducing the lactobacilli there – theoretically there are enough present on our skin and in our kitchens to inoculate the culture.

The second piece of advice is for those whose starter ‘misbehaves’ and either rises well for a while and then stops, or smells off.  This advice is to use shop-bought pineapple juice instead of water on Day 1 and Day 2 of the cycle, and then swap to the water per routine instructions above.  What this is meant to accomplish (and does according to the source), is ensuring an acidic environment for the starter to begin with, which will stop development of the wrong (non-acid-tolerant) strains of yeast and pathogens, and allow only acid-loving organisms to survive (which is what you want).  I have not tested this yet, but I am curious and might do so just to see how well it works.  According to all I’ve heard of this method, it works, and does so really well.

I realize this got wordy, so this is all there is to it, folks – once the starter is ready, you can use it in any sourdough recipe.  If the recipe calls for more starter than you have, making more is very easy – just add equal amounts of water and flour (by weight) to some of what you have, mix and leave overnight.  Oh and obviously you can first impress all your foodie friends with home-baked sourdough bread, and then magnanimously bestow pieces of the mystical bread-making grey gloop on them if they want to experiment themselves.  So, have fun!

So, in the wake of my trip to Barcelona and some home improvement, I have cooked and eaten, but not photographed much in the recent weeks. This all changed yesterday when I was baking this and realized that it’s too gorgeous not to photograph and tell about.  And it tastes (I write this anticipating the very last piece of this for lunch!) amazing – the bottom crust is browned and lovely with olive oil, the top is golden, the crumb is chewy and moist and aromatic, with just a touch of the sourdough tang to it – which sets the herbiness of rosemary and oregano off really, really well.  In short, if you like baking, you need to bake this.  If you have only tried the common cafe ‘focaccia’ (which tends to resemble dry toast more than anything, at least hereabouts), you truly need to try this.  There is just no comparison – this wins on every count (unless you compete in ‘dry’, then maybe not – but then it’s not a cracker!).

There are no complicated techniques involved here (other than owning some sourdough starter – more on that shortly), and the entire process is very very easy – and really, so very much worth the fairly small effort!

The other thing which spurred this post is feeling that I really ought to get the rant about what sourdough is and is not off my chest. Because, really, people (whom I, per usual, will not name) who have food shows and are supposedly ‘bakers’ seriously ought to get their heads out of where the darkness reigns supreme, and maybe take a class in microbiology. Or, barring that, at least one in sourdough baking.  Or do something else to acquire a friggin’ clue.

What I refer to, is the rather common phenomenon I see permeating both, cookbooks and online recipes and cooking videos, whereby a celebrity (or a blog writer, or whoever) goes something like “this recipe calls for a sourdough starter… if you don’t have your own sourdough starter, you can easily make it overnight by mixing some water, flour and bakers’ yeast…”  and proceed with the recipe without batting an eye.  This, frankly, annoys me – not because the recipe in question is not good (it may well turn out fantastic!), but because it’s not sourdough.  It’s a simple recipe with a ‘sponge’ or ‘biga’.  Which could be a sourdough sponge, but unless it’s made with actual sourdough culture rather than baker’s yeast, is not a sourdough sponge.

Why does it annoy me?  Because it muddles terminology, and I have a science education.  Things have names for a reason.  When a doctor prescribes you some antibiotics, your pharmacist doesn’t just go “have some antihistamines, they’re also pills and sort of sound like that too”.  When a reader or listener wants to bake sourdough, they imagine the sourdough flavor, or perhaps they want it for the health benefits (lowered GI, easier to digest), and instead they are being handed a recipe based on baker’s yeast is simply false advertising.  Oh, and I guess it annoys me as a student of food law, too.

Why is this common?  My guess would be, because foodie culture is making sourdough bread more popular again, people want recipes for sourdough that’d taste like that fancy levain bread they had at a cafe, or that sour-tangy loaf they bought at a bakery.  But… giving ‘difficult’ recipes or advice regarding making starter (7-14 days) aren’t going to sell food shows, or cookbooks – because, sadly, people who grew up with the 70s, 80s and even 90s idea that a béarnaise sauce can come out of a dried packet, don’t take well to being told something takes time and you can’t get around it by using something you have on hand as a shortcut.  And so, the “sourdough-but-you-can-just-use-any-bought-yeast” recipes proliferate.  And people try them, and they never taste the way sourdough did and they give up on sourdough baking before they even actually tried it.  So, the practice annoys me as a food blogger, too.  Make it trifold annoyance, then.  Sigh.

The really silly thing is, these days you can get sourdough starter from a bakery, or you can mail-order it dried, or you can even buy it at some of the better gourmet shops – at which point you can simply perpetuate it forever without the effort of making your own.  Or you can make your own like I did over a year ago – and mine is going strong despite me frequently leaving it in the fridge for a month without any feeding (or even checking to see what it is doing).  In fact, I think I need to write a better summary of making and care of starter after a year of experience with mine – note for the near future.  Either way, sourdough starter is not hard to make (or get), and it’s not at all hard to keep alive if you have a refrigerator (and most of us reading this online do – or I hope so, anyway).

But, back to the title of the post – what sourdough starter is, is a culture of lactobacilli (bacteria which sour milk to create yogurt, for example), acetobacteria (bacteria which make vinegar), and an acid-tolerant species of yeast (one of a few, none of which are the species sold as baker’s yeast commercially) living symbiotically in a mix of water and flour, together comprising the greyish gloop that is referred to as “starter”.  Because it is a living culture, it needs to be fed occasionally – daily if it is kept at room temperature, monthly or so if it is kept in the fridge (which is what I do).  Why is it special and different from regular yeast?  Well, the thing is – the “sour” in sourdough – the part that makes it both, taste great and helps preserve it for days on end when regular bread would just go moldy – are organic acids (lactic and acetic) which are produced by the aforementioned bacteria.  And the yeast that is living in the starter must, in order to raise the bread, be able to happily live and reproduce in a very acidic environment that these bacteria create – which baker’s yeast generally can’t do.  Hence the symbiotic culture of the right yeast which can naturally coexist with the bacteria in question.

The above also answers the other implied question – by process of elimination, what sourdough starter isn’t, is anything which is made by mixing baker’s yeast with flour and water and whatever else.  Whew, good to get this bit off my chest.

And now that I’ve hopefully not confused you at all, I will proceed to the really lovely focaccia that I have baked yesterday that begged to be shared with other people (food is happiness, happiness is bigger when shared – platitude, but not a bad one).

This recipe, somewhat unusually for me, uses both, a sourdough starter (for its flavor and preservative qualities), and a tiny bit of dry yeast to help this bread rise faster and to make it practical – and no, I do not contradict myself here.  The sourdough overnight sponge does not involve any dry baker’s yeast – that is added in the final dough mix, where acidity is reduced by mixing in a lot of ingredients.  So in a way, this recipe is the best of both worlds, though not one for the snob bread-baking purists (maybe, who knows – I certainly don’t talk to those types!).

This recipe includes an overnight pre-ferment (sponge), and it obviously does require a sourdough starter.  If you don’t have one, don’t use regular yeast – it may turn out ok, but the flavor and the lovely texture won’t be the same at all.  Instead, consider making your own starter (link leads to first in a series of my posts about making my starter with some observations.  Like I said, I will write a better guide soon – and will update the post accordingly).  Or buying it, or asking a friend for a piece – anything goes.

So, what do you need?

• A couple of bowls, a kitchen scale (recommended for weighing flour), a hand or stand mixer (unless you have strong arms and are really good with that wooden spoon, then you’re fine with a spoon), a half-sized oven pan to bake this in or equivalent (two square or large round cake pans may do).

Day 1:

• 1 heaping tablespoon of sourdough starter (mine worked fine from a jar in the fridge last fed maybe 2 weeks ago)
• 110ml cold tap water
• 85g flour (white, I mixed in about a tablespoon of rye because my sourdough starter loves the rye and goes crazy-bubbly when it gets some)

• Whisk the tablespoon of sticky starter into the water in a large bowl.  Add flour, mix until thick batter-like consistency, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, cover with a plastic wrap (clingfilm), and leave overnight.

Day 2:

• All of the above sponge (in its bowl where it should be bubbly by now)
• 325ml cold tap water
• 1 tablespoon good extra-virgin olive oil + a lot more for pan and brushing
• 1.5 tsp dry yeast of any description
• 1-2 tbsp rye flour
• 450g white bread flour + a few tablespoons more if needed
• 1 tbsp dry oregano, crushed in a hand a little
• 1 tbsp coarse salt

For Topping:

• You can really use whatever you like here, but in the picture I used:
• 1 package of tiny baby plum tomatoes (I happily ate the last four or five that didn’t fit on the focaccia)
• 100g chopped feta-style fresh cheese (I buy a German cheese which is less salty and not technically ‘feta’ as it is not from Greece)
• Three sprigs of rosemary cut off my potted bush, leaves stripped.
• Olive oil, flaked sea salt

What to do:

• Combine all the dry ingredients in a clean bowl, mix a bit with a random kitchen implement (whisk or wooden spoon both work).
• Add water to the sponge and whisk to mix.  Add 1 tbsp olive oil.  Add the dry ingredients and mix with a mixer and dough hooks (I use a handheld mixer) until all flour is incorporated.  At this point the dough will be very wet and sticky.
• Continue mixing, turning the mixer up to medium speed, and adding white flour by tablespoonful at a time (I think I might have used 3-4 extra tablespoons) until the dough is still very wet (it won’t achieve the smooth elasticity normal bread dough gets when well-kneaded), but sort of pulls away from the sides of the bowl with the mixer hooks, though leaving sticky bits still, and sticking right back to the bowl.
• Clean and very generously oil the other bowl and your hands.  Transfer the sticky lump of dough into the oiled bowl, and turn it over so it’s all coated.  A tiny bit of oil in a ring around it is good.  Cover with cling film and leave for 2-4 hours (I went out for about 3 hours to shop and then fussed with the dough maybe 40 minutes after coming home).  It should have at least doubled in size during this time.
• Oil hands, lift the film, and stretch and fold the dough a few times right in the bowl, without taking it out on the counter (less mess!).  It’ll degas and be far more amenable for being made into a ball at this point.  Put the ball back into the bowl, cover and leave for another hour.
• Pour enough olive oil into your pan(s) to have a couple of mm of oil on the bottom, and use a pastry brush to brush the oil up on the sides, covering those thoroughly.  If using more than one pan, cut the dough lump in half.  I didn’t, so I just transferred it to the rectangular half-oven pan as it was.
• Use your hands to stretch and poke the dough into the shape of the pan.  If it resists too much, give it five minutes to relax and continue.  Be gentle and avoid deflating the dough – you want those air bubbles in there.
• Take your toppings and push them deep into the dough, as far down as they’ll go, making little wells.  I pushed the rosemary leaves in with bits of cheese and tomato to help them stay stuck in.
• Brush the top of the dough with more olive oil, and turn the oven to 225C to preheat.  Allow to rise for 30-40 minutes – the dough will become puffed up.  You may need to shove the toppings down again in places.
• Place in the middle of the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then move into lower part of the oven to avoid scorching the top and turn heat down to 210C.  Bake for another 10 minutes or so (for me it was total of 25 minutes) until the top is golden brown and internal temperature reads 93C (200F) on instant-read thermometer (fantastic way to tell when bread is done, by the way – get one, they are cheap as chips at IKEA!).
• Remove from oven, brush the top with more olive oil (I am not kidding!), and use a metal spatula to tease the bread out of the form and onto a rack to cool.  Wait as long as you can and then devour!

We had ours with roast pumpkin-and-garlic soup topped with fresh bacon bits and some chopped flat-leaf parsley.  You do as you will – you can just eat it as-is with a cup of tea or coffee.  Trust me, it won’t disappoint.

Submitted to Yeastspotting!

Yes, I know it’s been a while.  In fact, it’s been about three months that I’ve spent away from blogosphere, both reading and writing, and thank all of you who have told me that I have been missed – especially Ping, Zoe and Juls!  I’ve missed you all as well (gods, do I have tons of blog reading to catch up on now – yay!!!), and trust me when I say that I have had a good reason – in fact, two good reasons! – to be gone.  I make no excuses, only that law school can suddenly drop buckets of workload on one’s head.  Or stacks of books, to be precise.  But, the essays for this half-term are turned in now, and the grade for the first one I got back is good, and I am also back from Barcelona (there will be pictures of food in upcoming blog posts along with restaurant reviews – the great, the good and the awful), and most significantly to my daily nom, I have repaired my kettle grill.

Oh, you didn’t know my grill was broken  - or that I had one at all?  I am not surprised.  You see, it was purchased broken – by design, not by defect – and after the spectacular inaugural failure of its first use, it sat on my balcony for a year, fading in the sunlight and snow, forgotten and unloved.  I rued the €20 or so that we had spent on it and wondered why the hell would anyone sell a grill so structurally bad as to be unusable.  To make it a bit clearer – inside the rounded bottom of it, it had a screw-in bowl thing which the coals were meant to be placed into – that did not have any vent holes in its bottom or sides.  None.  There were vent holes in the sides of the actual grill body around it, but according to the instructions, the bowl thing was to be screwed into the rounded bottom of the grill and the coals were to be placed into it.  I tried it, barely got any heat at all, and gave up on the grill as clearly too badly designed to use.

Then, upon having finished the aforementioned law essays, I felt uplifted and my brain uncramped – and also, it had gotten warm and sunny, and all the neighbors were grilling and … I had a genius idea.  What if I took out the stupid bowl thing and just put the coals into the rounded bottom bit of the grill which does have holes in it.  Would it work?

And – amazingly! – with the removal of the offending and useless thing, the grill was fixed!

To be quite honest, I still wonder why the thing was provided with the grill and why anyone bothered to make it and waste money on materials and such in order to render the grill inoperable.  On the other hand, the beyond-useless part is now resting in peace (or in the garbage to be precise), and we are grilling.  Well, not today – today it’s raining and thundering out, but we did grill yesterday and also a bit over a week ago before we went to Barcelona, and you know what?  That moment when the sizzling meat scents up the entire building and you are vindicated to all the neighbors who tormented you with their grill-scents for weeks – it’s glorious.

The food is, obviously, too.  I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like char-grilled food, be it meat, shellfish, vegetables or cheese.  Or even that thing I normally refuse to mention as food – tofu.  I do believe even tofu would be improved by grilling – but as I don’t eat it, you may have to ask a vegan about that.  Me, I go for meat.  I really ought to get one of those fish-grilling holders in order to do fish on the grill as well.  And seafood – but, it occurs to me that prawns would be great on skewers… but I digress (and drool).

Grilling really is one of the most rewarding ways of cooking – it has the ability to turn ordinary food into extraordinary just by the method of cooking, without any seasoning.  With seasoning added, it’s simply divine.  What follows is less of a recipe, and more of a description of how travel-fatigued and lazy, we managed to make and eat the above corn and pork-and-Padron pepper skewers.

Normally I am a stickler for making my own marinade, and letting the meat soak properly.  However, the skewers in the picture were a result of cheating – we were freshly returned from a week in Spain – exhausted, our fridge was mostly empty, and we wanted to grill but had no meat that was marinated, nor desire or strength to bother.  So, we bought a pork loin pre-seasoned in a vac-pack in the supermarket.  Typical supermarket marinade is pretty insipid but what it does do, is tenderize the meat and brine it.  So, while it does not really flavor the meat much, it does provide the shortcut of hours of marinating time, and when using small bites of meat, added seasoning soaks in/sticks on beautifully in just a few minutes.

I cut the loin up into skewerable pieces, added a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a good thick sprinkling of garlic granules, chopped up a large fat sprig of fresh rosemary into it, drizzled on white wine vinegar and olive oil, and gave the meat a couple of turns in the bowl to coat it thoroughly and distribute seasonings.  If the meat hadn’t been pre-marinated, I’d have added some salt, covered the bowl with cling film and stuck it in the fridge for 2-3 hours, but as shop marinade is mostly salt, I skipped that.  I left the bowl of meat to sit on the countertop while I prepped the corn for grilling.

If you have never prepped corn on the cob for grilling, there is a truly lazy way to do it.  I know, I’m the queen of lazy – particularly on vacation!  Here’s how you do it – you peel back the husks while leaving them attached, thickly smear the corn in lightly salted spreadable butter (the sort which has a bit of vegetable oil added so it stays soft – Lurpak may be available in the States, and I know this variety is available in the UK), and sprinkle on some of the granulated garlic and crushed cayenne flakes generously (or less so if you don’t like eating fire).  Then you fold the husks back over the corn and seal the tips with a bit of kitchen foil before sticking them into a potful of cold water husk-end down to soak.  Then you go light the grill.  Or, if you are lazy and/or happen to be me, you shout for the guys to go light the grill.  Trust me, guys are very easily motivated by the idea of impending grilled meat.

While the coals are heating up, skewer up the meat with whatever you like in-between (or nothing if you are that sort of carnivore).  My favorites are normally either bell pepper pieces, mushrooms, or baby tomatoes.  But, while I was in Spain, I have discovered a new addiction (it’s ok arugula, I still love you!) – I am now officially in love with the delicately scented and oh-so-full-of-flavor pimientos de Padrón.  I had snagged a box of imported dark-green beauties immediately when I saw it at the supermarket upon my return.  In Spain, these are sauteed in a bit of olive oil with flaked sea salt (and they are amazing prepared so), but since they are eaten with seeds, all you have to do with them for skewering, is wash, dry and halve them, and then toss in a bit of olive oil – which is all I did.  You could probably buy any sort of a bell pepper and chop it and it’ll work just as well – but it would be sweeter and with less concentrated pepper flavor (not to be confused with heat – these aren’t very hot, if at all).

Turn the corn once while you skewer the meat – or ask the guys to – and put into a baking dish into a 75C oven to keep warm.  Grill the skewers turning a few times until the meat is cooked through (it’s pork, it’s not nice undercooked), and serve with the corn.  And your choice of fruity white wine, or a cocktail or whatever really.

Then, put up your feet and enjoy the summer.  Here in Sweden, we have to hurry up to do it – as beautiful and sunny and warm as it is, it simply does not tend to last.  In the spirit of that, I’ve got a fridge- and freezer-full of meat and I’m not afraid to use it.  And once this travel fatigue goes away, I’ll be back with actual recipes, not just “what I’ve managed to slap together for putting on newly-invented *cough*repaired*cough* fire“.

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  Or rather, I am sorry I had not had time to write, but I am not sorry for the reasons – being busy happens to all of us, and I am no exception.  In consolation, I bring you chickpeas with chorizo sausage and chili in sherry sauce – a meal that is not only pretty to look at and easy to make, but is very rich in fiber, and also happens to be one of my most favorite things to eat.  One of my many favorite things to eat, but still!

Warning to the timid – this is not food for the faint of heart, as it packs not only a good amount of heat from the fresh chili, but a flavor punch that will be there whether you are as chili-happy as I am or not.  But if you love Mediterranean food in general, and garlic and chili in particular, then I urge you to make this – you will not have any regrets!

Recently, due to the impending summer and the need to look great in a swimsuit in Barcelona come July, I have been on a lose-weight track.  Which, for me, translates to tossing sugar and avoiding refined carbohydrates – I guess it is a personally-designed permutation of a LCHF eating style.  Chickpeas (along with other legumes), due to their high fiber and protein content, are an ideal solution when you (me in this case) are tired of the green salad and a piece of random protein, or want a bit of comfort food without the sugar high.

I would even go as far as to say that unless you are one of those people who definitely dislike legumes, this is a meal you need to make because it really compromises on nothing – from flavor, to its nutritional content, to the ease of preparation and the beautiful presentation, it wins on all points – at least it does for me.

I won’t lay any claims to the Spanish authenticity of this dish, nor, indeed to its authenticity in any cuisine, except that it is authentically inspired by the flavors of Spanish tapas, and more than one ingredient in it is Spanish, which to me justifies the Spanish-inspired claim.

Another plus of this is that most of the ingredients are storecupboard staples and can be easily kept on hand – chickpeas keep virtually forever if dried (or canned), and for a week or so in the fridge if cooked, and raw chorizo keeps in the cold meat part of the fridge for weeks.  And I am the sort of person who has onions, garlic and chilies on hand more or less at any time – though should you find yourself lacking garlic or chili, a bit of garlic granules or chili flakes won’t ruin this dish.  However, I’d urge against substituting both and/or onions with dried products – the quick preparation and the simple composition of this means that fresh ingredients really do shine – and removing or substituting more than one of them does take its toll.

Anyway – here’s what you need to make your own if when you decide to make it:

Feeds 2 hungry people

• 2 cups of chickpeas, cooked.  You can use canned (drained and rinsed) chickpeas, but I cook my own from dry which in my view results in much better flavor.  However, if you really can’t be bothered, 2 cans of chickpeas will do.
• 1-2 links raw chorizo sausage, cut into small quarter-circles
• 1 red onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large red chili, deseeded and chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped finely
• 1/2 teaspoon of sweet or hot paprika powder (go with sweet if you are worried about too much heat, but I use hot)
• 1 tomato, chopped into small bits
• Extra-virgin olive oil, a generous slug
• 1 sprig of rosemary, leaves torn off and chopped
• 75-100ml sherry – dry or medium.  I use Amontillado, which I keep on hand for cooking in general – it’s amazing in cream sauces, and anything to do with mushrooms, too.
• Sea salt (ground or flaked) to taste

What to do:

• Heat up your generous amount of oil in a saute pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce heat a little (5-6/9 for me).
• Toss in the onions and fry them until they are translucent and just begin to color.  Move to the side and add chorizo sausage.  Fry for a few minutes until the oil colors red from the paprika in the sausage, and sausage looks about 2/3 done.
• Move sausage over to the onions and sprinkle the paprika powder on the sausage area.  Add the chili to the pan and fry until it turns bright orange (a minute or so).
• Add garlic and fry just until it goes bright white and aromatic.  Add chopped tomato and cook a further few minutes until it is softened and heated through, then add chickpeas and mix everything thoroughly.
• Add the sherry, stir and cover, allowing the flavors to mingle for a few minutes, and the sauce to reduce.  Season with salt to taste.
• Serve in bowls, sprinkled with some fresh chopped rosemary or thyme.

In my opinion, this can make a lovely festive dinner if paired with a bit of green salad and a glass of good wine of your liking.  And some crusty bread if you aren’t avoiding it like I am.  Just saying.

If I have to choose between vanilla and chocolate ice creams, I invariably choose vanilla.  No, it is not because I am boring and have no imagination, or lack the refined palate that appreciates the chocolate in the chocolate ice cream.  My palate is very spoiled, thank you very much, and I prefer not to eat any ice cream than to buy one of those cones with something looking like plastic foam in it from the “fat-free sugar-free ice cream” stands.  Have you ever wondered about this – if it’s fat free and sugar free, pray tell me what does it consist of?  No, better not tell me, I am not sure I actually want to know.

But, I digress.  If the choice is between really good vanilla and really good chocolate ice cream, I prefer vanilla.  And I have come to resent the fact that this royalty of the flavor kingdom has come to be regarded as a synonym for ‘boring’, ‘unimaginative’ and generally ‘blah’.

I don’t need to search far and wide to know how we have arrived in this sorry state of affairs.  You see, the major flavoring component (but far from the only one!) in vanilla is vanillin (C₈H₈O₃), which is not a terribly complicated chemical to make (in fact I remember us making it in the lab early on during my organic chemistry course), and entirely unproblematic to produce industrially.  And it is a good thing, because the demand for vanilla far, far outstrips production, and a lot of the products in which it is used are not nearly expensive enough to justify the expense of using real vanilla from the industry’s point of view.  I mean, who’d want basic candy bars to shoot up in price without any notable flavor difference? (and no, with everything else in them, the difference wouldn’t matter, not really)

Why is it then, that natural vanilla is so expensive*  (*I’ll come back to this as it is very relative!) and rare?  Well, that’s very simple too, really – vanilla flavor comes from vanilla ‘beans’, which are unripe pods of the climbing orchid in the genus Vanilla.  And as such (being orchids), they are not easy to cultivate to fruiting condition, and even in optimal conditions, they are not easy to propagate, and require fairly specialized care – not to mention hand-pollination.  Yes, if you have handled or seen a vanilla pod in the shop, it was likely the result of a guy with a dry paintbrush tickling a yellow orchid flower half the world away some months prevously.  If the resulting fruit set, it was allowed to mature some, then gathered and cured to develop the characteristic flavor.  In short, the process requires special climate, is labor-intensive and long.

Cheap ice-cream manufacturers don’t want to pay the premium.  Vanillin is used because people want vanilla, and they also want cheap ice cream and chocolate (ice cream and chocolate industries account for about 75% of vanilla use worldwide according to wikipedia), and so the industry responds by manufacturing cheap chocolate and ice cream – with vanillin.  And so the vanilla-flavored ice cream is born.  Which well… it tastes blah.  Like sugar, and not a whole lot else, really.  And because most people actually like the flavor of vanilla (I’ve never actually heard of anyone actively disliking it!), even approximated so, it is the most commonly bought flavor of ice cream out there.  And so we fall into the trap of “blah”, for vanillin simply does not have the rich, lush profile of natural vanilla from beans.

In contrast, chocolate, which is a far stronger flavor, does not taste nearly as blah when it is made as cheaply – it tastes at the very least of cocoa (which is a lot cheaper than real vanilla), which is not a bad thing in itself.

And so the misconception of vanilla = boring is born.  I think it is a grave injustice.

Furthermore, judging from the consumer behavior (and we aren’t talking about high-end shops in better parts of town), a lot of people do not actually know how different and lush natural vanilla extract is, because I see “artificial vanilla extract” and “vanilla sugar: made with vanillin” fly off supermarket shelves – while the pricier bottle of natural vanilla extract doesn’t sell nearly as well, and neither do the test-tube packed vanilla pods.

On the surface, that’s market economy – people try to get value for their money and when they can get something-vanilla for cheaper they do.  In reality, it’s neither good economy, nor do you get what you pay for.  To the industry, manufacturing vanillin-based “vanilla sugar” is cheap.  For you, buying it is expensive.  And if you consider that “artificial vanilla extract” is just some water in a bottle with a few crystals dissolved in it, then it doesn’t look like such a great deal anymore.

Let’s look at it from a shopping-cart point of view.  A box of vanillin-based vanilla sugar or a bottle of the artificial stuff (about 50ml) can run about 1.5€ – while buying 1 vanilla pod right next to them is only 2€ or so. (I am talking average supermarket price here in Stockholm.  You could probably get cheaper vanilla pods if you order them on the net for example.)

But, that one vanilla pod, which doesn’t look all that big or impressive in its pack?  It gets you one heck of a lot more than a whole jar of vanillin-based sugar and a bottle of artificial extract!  I’m serious.

Remember when I wrote about the glorious and easy to make vanilla ice cream and how it tasted absolutely amazing because of the fresh cream and the homemade real vanilla extract?  Well, here’s the thing – all it takes to make real, rich and gloriously aromatic vanilla extract at home is a small bottle (blue or brown glass is best as it protects it from sun damage), half a pod (yes, I used the whole pod but that is because I wanted mine extra rich), and about 100ml of vodka or rum.

Cut your pod in half across, and then slice the half of it you plan to use lengthwise to open up one side of it.  Drop it into bottle.  Top up with vodka or rum.  Close and let stand out of direct sunlight for a week.  Your extract is ready to use.

The other half a pod?  Cut it lengthwise too, and stick it into a glass jar and cover with fine caster sugar (I recommend that rather than powdered sugar for this as it is less likely to stick).  Close and store for a week, shaking occasionally.  It will very quickly perfume the entire jar with a very strong vanilla scent!  There, real vanilla sugar, too!

So all right, 100ml of vodka may run you another 1€, and let’s assume jar and bottle are free (I wash jars and bottles for such uses and keep them), and the sugar will run you a few euro-cent (pennies, whatever).  For the price of about 3€ and about a week’s time, you have yourself a better extract than you could easily buy in any shop, and a jar of sugar already.  But, it gets far better!

You see, vanilla pods keep their flavor for a long time.  Simply put, there is a lot of flavor packed into it.  So when you run low on the extract, just top if off with some vodka or rum again, and if you run low on sugar, refill the jar – and keep using it another few months!

With this sort of economy, there is no reason whatsoever to touch the expensive, blah artificial vanilla again.

So please, do yourself a favor.  Go to the shop.  Buy that 1 pod of vanilla.  Make extract or sugar (whatever you think you’ll use more!), or both, and get reacquainted with the rich and wonderful vanilla as it is meant to be.

Trust me.  Whatever else you may think, you will never reach for the artificial extract bottle again.  And I sincerely doubt that you’ll use the word “vanilla” for “boring” either.

I know I’ve said it before, but we are not rich enough to buy “cheap” things – not to mention that you usually get what you pay for, and in this particular case, what you lose is the enjoyment which could (and should!) be yours – and besides, if you want something done right, do it yourself.  In this case, the difference is truly remarkable.

It happens to all of us, and I am entirely unapologetic for having a life outside the blog, much as I love it.

And besides, to quote a recently-seen on the internet and absolutely brilliant photo:

“IT’S SPRING.  WE ARE SO EXCITED, WE WET OUR PLANTS!”

As you can see, the plants are happily blooming – at least some of them, and others look like they are preparing to, and if you are like me and like houseplants, then it’s exciting.  What can I say, I am easily excited.  I think that’s a good thing.  Surely beats sitting there looking bored and feeling blasé about the world.

So um, yes.  I have been busy, it’s spring, which means my plants needed more attention, my studies are kicking back in, and I have not had so much time to cook anything impressive, nor, mostly, to photograph it.

I did bake a half-rye bread on the basis of my two-fifths rye no-knead recipe, and it turned out gorgeous.  I have, again, let it proof entirely too long due to the same reason (I went for a walk and returned later than planned), but it was delicious and lovely nonetheless.  One of those days I will actually bake it in time and see if it can be made taller, but between the high rye content and the high hydration of no-knead method, I am not sure.  On the up side, the narrow slices make fantastically elegant open-faced sandwiches with slices of cheese, salami, dried ham or cured fish.  Anyway, no recipe here – merely a note that the two-fifths rye recipe works exceptionally well with a half and half split between the types of flour.  And, I will try a closer to 65 or 70% split in favor of rye next.

And then there is my newly-found fascination with moss.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting and downright bad information about how to grow it on the internet.  And doubly unfortunately, I managed to spray the two original moss-homes I made with the wrong water spray bottle.  What’s so wrong about the wrong spray bottle?  Well, it used to contain agricultural soap-and-oil mix for treating bugs on one of my orchids last summer.  As a result, I think one or two applications of that instead of water are killing the moss slowly, which made me very sad.  It is still alive and struggling to stay so (and I am helping), but I am not sure it will win the battle, and it is entirely my fault.

So, I did a lot more reading, and gathered more moss.

And then I followed several other new instructions which changed or negated the things I originally found.  For example, I did not use any potting soil on this round.  Instead, I made a base out of aquarium-filter activated carbon, and piled sterilized gravel bits, re-sterilized bark chips (from my orchid potting bark bag), and pieces of terracotta (broken flowerpot that did not survive the winter freeze) on top of that.  Added aged tap water with some activated carbon swirled in it via my new, clean spray bottle, and arranged the moss on top, above the water level.

Note: to sterilize rocks and bark chips, soak in boiling water, let stand, pour water off and repeat.  This won’t sterilize them for purposes of neural surgery, but it should kill most mold spores and random microfauna present on and in them.  If you want to be more sure about it, boil a pot of water and toss them in there for a while.  Do not salt.  ;)

The second thing I found important is having a lid for your moss-growing dish.  A more reputable moss-growing website owner mentioned in his blog that he covers his moss dishes overnight and leaves them to air out during the day – so, upside-down flat candle plates were found to cover the little terraria, to maintain good humidity with periods of drying-out and fresh air.  Since, unless your moss is swamp moss (mine isn’t, it came off rocks and tree stumps), it doesn’t want to sit in a swamp.  (Deep wisdom right there, for various houseplants other than moss as well!)

And a third thing was washing the moss when I had initially brought it home, removing all debris and clinging dirt under running water, and then quarantining it in sandwich boxes with partially-shut lids for several days before using it in the arrangement – to make sure no pests or molds surface in the meantime.

The new terraria are now a few days old, and are so far doing well.  I’ll just avoid spraying them with insecticidal solution by accident and see what happens.

So, there it is.  Coming soon(tm) – posts about vanilla, and about the two entirely new to me white whole wheat flours (That is not a typo – they are whole wheat flours made from white, not red wheat!) that I have just received in the mail and all excited about – but obviously, first I need to bake something from them and see how that works out!

For those of you curious about how the moss is doing – well, so far, it appears to be doing fine.  In fact, it does not appear all that different from how it looked about 4 hours after watering – see for yourself!

Day 1 on the left, Day 3 (today) on the right. (Click to enlarge)

The light is a bit different (today’s photos are taken a bit earlier in the afternoon but on a cloudy day), but the pot has not changed a whole lot.  It is not at all surprising as mosses are incredibly slow growers and I don’t expect sprouting like you’d see on higher plants.  I think I may keep taking a benchmark photo every few days – it would make seeing progress a lot easier.

Throughout yesterday and today, I have misted the containers a few times, and I have added water into the reservoirs as the moss was slurping it all up at a surprising rate – in the glass container, it nearly emptied the reservoir!  I heard that some mosses can hold up to 4x their weight in water but I did not actually see it before!  From what I can tell, it is happy.  It’s still too early to tell whether it’s going to survive, so I am serious about giving this a couple of weeks before pronouncing it any sort of success.

There is also something I’ve noticed about it after a closer observation, and perhaps a day or so indoors and moistened:

The moss is not just a single carpet of Hypnum.  It appears to have in it a few leaves of a larger, curlier species which is a little lighter in color (not pictured in this clip as they did not come out in focus at high magnification), and also tiny star-shaped deep green growths with reddish stems.  I had noticed the cup lichen (Cladonia) earlier, but it bears mention all the same for sheer cuteness – the largest cup is about 1.5mm across.  I really hope it survives as well!

I have a very mild concern that the water we have here, however pure it is, may be a little too harsh for the moss that is a non-vascular plant, so I have put 2 small buckets to gather rain outside should it fall, and will also age some tap water and check supermarket bottled waters for pH and mineral content listing and maybe buy a bottle of that till the spring rains come.

Also, I am really getting rather attached to the cute tiny green things!  T even teased me this morning about staring at the moss meditatively while we were having coffee, to which I replied that he should not disturb my “moss appreciation time”.

Whatever you say for it, it’s certainly incredibly relaxing, and soothing to look at – a tiny piece of forest of your own within arm’s reach.

Today’s post is not at all about food, but about spring, and green growing things.  I love greenery, I’ve mentioned that before, but when the days turn sunny and the chill in the air is no longer a biting cold but a refreshing breeze, my fascination with the green stuff goes into overdrive.

I literally cannot have enough green things around the apartment, and preferably new and interesting ones at that.  Yes, I did say apartment – had I had a house, and a garden, there’d be a lot more green things around.  As it is, I have to fit my desire to see things grow into a city apartment.  Which means, windowsills and tabletops and maybe balcony… actually definitely balcony, as my lavender bushes not only survived the winter outside unprotected except by what snow fell on them, but are alive and sprouting happily.  I’ve trimmed them down and fertilized them and can now look forward to an abundance of purple and white flowers and a heavenly fragrance… but I digress.

Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that if I do not yet have a moss dish garden, I need one.  Need.  And she showed me some photos, and I realized that yes, she is right and I do indeed need one, right now.  Right then it was too late in the day to go gravel-gathering, or moss-hunting, but that is precisely what I did this morning.

Why?  Because it’s green, it’s alive and because it is incredibly beautiful, at least to those like me who think just about anything in the forest short of animal poop is beautiful.  And a moss dish garden is very far from that end of the spectrum indeed – it is as small as you want to make it, elegant and stylish, and has the certain quiet beauty much admired by Japanese gardeners (who have encouraged moss to grow in their gardens for centuries before we have gotten the idea to do this – probably from them).  And it’s supposed (supposed does not = works out that way) to be pretty low-maintenance.  This latter part, we’ll see about.  Once it establishes, that is.

Important: before you rush out and strip the moss off the nearest boulder, first make sure that it is not protected or endangered wherever it is you live.  If it is, then you may be better off buying some from a nursery or get some (legally sourced) spores online.  Of course, collecting it in your own garden or in a garden of people you know works too.  Just – make sure you aren’t breaking the law and ruining the environment by gathering an endangered species – after all, the point of this (at least to me) is to grow something beautiful because you love green things, not to destroy what is possibly irreplaceable!  For reference, in Sweden, some lichens and mosses are protected, but it is legal to gather a little bit of other varieties for personal (non-commercial) use in public forests.  The variety pictured above is a species of Hypnum genus of mosses, a very common forest and bog moss.

After the ethical and legal concerns are out of the way, putting together a moss garden is apparently very easy – you just need a ceramic or glass dish, some gravel and pebbles, a bit of non-alkaline potting soil, and the moss.  However, and that’s a big however, I imagine it will take more than just putting it together to get it to establish and thrive.  So, this is my moss dish garden experiment – day 1.  I will update over the next several weeks on how the mosses are doing before I pronounce this a success *knocks on wood*.

So, what does one need to make a moss garden?

Apparently, not that much.  Mosses don’t like alkaline environment (at least most of the common ones don’t), and they dislike direct sunlight but like a bit of light all the same.  They also do not develop true roots the way higher plants do, and so must be kept moist but not waterlogged (except bog mosses that sometimes just float in bogs).  Most websites recommend watering with filtered or rainwater.  I agree in theory, but in practice, the tap water in Stockholm is clean and soft enough that it should not be a problem.  I did put a bucket outside to collect a bit of rainwater should it fall, but in the meantime, the moss will get the same water as my orchids do.

The basic idea is a layer of pebbles in the bottom of a shallow dish, then a bit of gravel (this is to provide a place for excess water to drain into, and also a reservoir for keeping the soil moist), then a little bit of soil on top of it, and then the moss itself.

After I have put everything together around lunchtime today, it looked like this:

It hasn’t rained for over a week before I went out today to collect it, so the moss was looking a little dry but not dead – we have a beautiful patch of untouched forest behind our apartment building, a landscape feature I love about Stockholm.  It’s very common here to build around old boulders and between them, leaving the actual forest biome intact between the houses.  It makes for a beautiful view out the windows as well.

So, as per instructions, I constructed the base, watered it thoroughly, and then gently pushed the moss patches onto the soft and wet soil.  For a while, nothing visible happened.  I took the above photo, then sprayed the moss thoroughly with a spray bottle and wandered off to do other stuff.

Then, after a few hours, I came back and looked at my dish garden – and the somewhat-unexpected (but not unwelcome!) has happened:

On left, photo taken at half past noon. On right, photo at half past four in the afternoon.

The moss has soaked up water, plumping up visibly – and turned a beautiful lush green!  And while I know it’s too early to be happily assuming that the moss will survive, it certainly does look happier already, which means I am happier too – how can you not be, looking at something turn beautifully alive nearly before your eyes?

All that remains now is an exercise in patience.  Check moss daily for drying out, mist and admire.  Water weekly (or as soon as the glass container looks dry on the side) by pouring water in.  Wait to see what happens.  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat here with impatience – I have never been the patient sort, ever.  I’ve always been told that patience is a virtue.  I suppose at least where growing moss is concerned, that has got to be true.

Wish me – and the moss! – luck.