The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

I call this Home-Brew GAG

Grapefruit and Ginger Switchel here.  This is my latest concoction.  It is a sort of hybrid between switchel and kvass.  It needs a few more days/weeks to get ripe, but I keep pouring out a little into a shot glass to taste test it and it is so yummy I do want another taste--and another.

No, it doesn't contain any alcohol...yet.  I only started it yesterday. In addition to ginger and grapefruit, it contains apple cider vinegar and maple syrup.

Warning:  Before experimenting with something like this the first time, know that these beverages are alive and can break the glass container if left unattended too long.  It is necessary to open them up and let out the gas once in a while once carbonation starts to form.

Here is another one:

After an overnight ferment of vinegar and the sweetened juice drained off from mandarin oranges, I did a second ferment after adding fresh cranberries and diluting with water.

Making Huevos Rancheros in the 10-in1

 

Sent this by email from smart phone, but the photo got rotated 90°.  I will turn it around when I get a chance.  Meanwhile, eating these yummy eggs with beans and rice, etc. 

Never washing a skillet again

For someone who used to hate cauliflower I sure like this cauliflower rice with colorful orange sweet peppers and onions.  It comes out perfect every time in the Gourmia Robotic oven and I don't have to lift a finger. 

Cooking for two, it takes 1/2 blended head of cauliflower, half an onion, half a pepper, avocado oil, Bragg's Amino Acids (or soy sauce), and any kind of seasoning.

I coat the chicken in corn starch moistened with chicken stock (yeah, "bone broth" in today's vernacular) and let the Gourmia 10-in-1 stir fry that for me first, then I set tbe cooked meat aside to stay warm and pour the "rice" mix in for the same preset time and temperature. 

Gourmia sells extra cooking trays for $25 each, but I have been lucky in finding scratch and dent priced new ovens for $70 and up for all the spare parts I should ever need.  I seriously plan to never use or wash a skillet again.

 

PSST:  I braised some chunks of chuck roast in the Gourmia (on Grill) and then pressure cooked them on Low for 70 minutes in a cup of beef stock, then poured the stock into the Gourmia on stir fry to let it make gravy.  Put the meat right back in the Gourmia on a lower temp setting right in the gravy where it stayed moist and warm until dinner.  Easiest "pot roast" I ever made and hardly any clean up.  I am seriously never using (or cleaning) a regular oven, or skillet, or cooktop again. 

 

Sprouted Multigrain Soda Bread

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This is my current favorite Gourmia 10-in-1 robotic cooker bread recipe.  I make this often, so to save time I premix the dry ingredients and store them in pint mason jars.  One pint jar makes a 9" round loaf about 3' high, which is 3 or 4 servings at my table. 

Dry ingredients:  1 /2 C Pioneer buttermilk baking mix, 1/4 C sprouted rye flour, 1/4 C sprouted spelt flour (and/or quinoa or oat or sprouted wheat), 1 tsp baking soda, a pinch of sea salt, and a pinch of brown sugar.

Liquid ingredients:  Buttermilk and/or whey and/or kefir or plain water

I mix to make a very soft dough just thick enough to form a ball that holds together loosely, then bake it on a silicon rack in the Gourmia 10-in-1 set to Grill for 35 minutes.  Personally, I would use all whole grain sprouted flours, but someone else who eats at my house prefers a lighter texture.  To keep the bottom from overcooking I put the dough on a silicon baking mat on top of an inverted silicon six-muffin pan

 

Another Mistrake

 

After reading  Mercola's article about cauliflower flatbread I made some and it was OK.   Learning curve on liking it at first,  but it is a taste I can acquire.  I think.   Nutritionally dense.

So I tried to tweak it,  and came up with something porridge-like that has an interesting texture and tastes good to me,  but it is not remotely bread-like.* No problem,  as I am OK with gluten and am eating it with a slice of fresh warm rye/spelt straight from the Gourmia 10-in-1 robotic air fryer/oven thing.  

I now bake these microloaves in the Gourmia 10-in-1's Grill setting, lowering the temperature to 365 and raising the time to 35 minutes.   I place the unbaked loaves on top of an inverted muffin pan with a bowl of water alongside.

From the bottom left photo you can see how "runny" this dough is.  I made it from my own premix of 1/2 cup Pioneer buttermilk baking mix,  1/4 cup sprouted rye flour,  1/4 cup sprouted spelt flour,  1 tsp baking soda,  a pinch of sea salt,  and a pinch of brown sugar.   Then I just add whey (from making buttermilk/kefir cheese) until the dough is slightly mixed and thick enough to handle.  If you don't  have whey,  water is probably fine.   You can probably get by with less soda,  but I like the taste of it.

 *The porridge stuff was 1 cup riced cauliflower, 1 egg,  1/2 cup grated cheddar,  black pepper,  curry powder,  cayenne,  and Creole seasoning from the dollar store.

More on the Salt Flats

The first time I saw the salt flats near Amboy was from an airplane.  I was fascinated by them, but did not have a chance to see them for many more years and drove past them somewhat by accident the first time I saw them from the ground.  Since then I have made it a point to pass them many times and every time they look different.  The last time saw them the ditches were emerald green.  This time they were sky blue.

 

If you want to see this area from the air, here is one of several YouTube videos Steve King took with a Phantom 3 Professional drone flying above the salt mines at Bristol Dry Lakebed. 

Drone Over the Salt Flats

At this writing not many people have see this video, but I think it is really cool.  This area, near the Mohave National Preserve is under the oversight of the Bureau of Land Management.  National Chloride Company mines over 2000 acres of government owned land in this area pursuant to mineral rights they obtained under federal laws. 

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Thoughts on Cauliflower Pizza

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Squished Bread

Instead of taking the tray out,  I reached into my new Gourmia 10 in 1 Robotic cooker to check the bottom of this partially baked loaf and accidentally flipped it over and squished it.   No matter,  it was still delicious.

Somewhere I have a silicon gadget that serves as a rack to keep the bottom of the loaf from getting too brown.

NOTE TO MYSELF (because this was a delicious loaf of no-recipe bread and I will never remember what went into it if I don't write it down now):

Dry ingredients:  (Can mix ahead)
1/2 cup Pioneer Baking Mix
1/4 cup sprouted rye flour
1/4 cup sprouted spelt (and/or quinoa) flour
1 tsp baking soda
A pinch of sea salt
A pinch of brown sugar

Liquid ingredients:
Splash of Braggs Amino Acids
Honey
Buttermilk (or kefir/buttermilk hybrid)
Liquid cornstarch

Coat with avocado oil and knead lightly. This dough should be almost runny,  just firm enough to hold its shape.

Baked at 428F for 15 minutes in preheated Gourmia 10 in 1 standard GRILL setting next to bowl of water (in rack or turn halfway to avoid burned bottom... or cook longer on lower heat
Total time: 20 minutes

UPDATE:  I made up a few jars filled with the dry ingredients in proportions listed above.   On 2/8/17 I  mixed the contents of one of these with whey and kneaded lightly with oil before baking on Grill at 365 for about 1/2 hr.   The mix made 3 perfect mini loaves which I placed on an upsidedown silicon muffin tray as a rack.   They were delicious.

A

Gourmia 10 in 1 Robotic Cooker

It took me far too long to buy one of this:

I really loved my NuWave oven, but retired it after finding an open box special on what I consider the next generation of cookware.  The Gourmia GCR1700 Air Fryer which makes stir fry, bakes, grills, steams, and everything in between.  This takes up a little less space than the NuWave and you don't have to pick the heating element up and lift it off to open it.  Instead, the very light weight hinged top flips back and you can just reach in and/or lift the cooking pot out. 

So far, everything I have made in it turned out delicious.  Today I baked in it for the first time.  

This is a tomato tart made with a crust of oat and sprouted spelt flours.  The topping from bottom up are garlic, cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, and fresh basil from my AeroGarden planter.  I used the grill setting on high to precook the crust and turned the temperature down after adding the toppings. 

The controls on the GCR1700 are pretty intuitive.  You just plug it in (I have an on/off switch at the plug so it can stay plugged in and I just turn it on when needed) and select one of four modes.   The 2 on top (Grill and Steam) are for use without the stirring arm.  Grill is for dry cooking (steaks, baking, etc.) and Steam is for moist foods.  These modes have preset temperatures, but you can override them with the set button and press "+" for higher heat or "-" for lower. 

The two buttons on the bottom (Stir Fry and Stew) are for foods that require stirring, and it is amazing how well the so-called robotic arm works.  I have only had my Gourmia for a few days, but I have made both stir fry and a stew, and with excellent results.  I also used the robotic arm to refry a batch of precooked pinto beans.  Yums! 

Although it is true that there are not a lot of recipes online for this device, common sense works well in deciding how long to leave the food cooking and how and when to adjust the temperature.  You can pretty much see and smell when the food is ready and it cooks really fast.  It also doesn't make a mess, no splatter, no spills, and the easy to lift cooking pot comes clean with nothing more than a spray of water.    I seriously do not plan to ever use or have to clean a frying pan or stove (or oven) again. 

In addition to this appliance I do heavily rely on my Insta-Pot multicooker and the Bella 8 in 1 grilling system (think Panini sandwiches, Belgian waffles, bacon, and grilled cheese sandwiches!)

 

Sprouted Rye Noodles

Merry Christmas, 2016!  To celebrate I wanted to make something really different for breakfast here at our winter vacation cottage.   That was a challenge because we are only here for a few weeks and I haven't shopped lately.  But I have some pork on hand, super greens (baby kale, chard, and spinach seasoned with carrot shreds, thank you, Sam's Club), and a hard boiled egg. 

 

Lying in my nice warm bed, with a goosefeather comforter pressed up against my ears, for some reason I start envisioning a nice steaming bowl of Asian Noodles floating in a rich broth with strips of pork.

 

 

 

 

Another Kitchen Gadget that I'm Nuts About

Egads I love being retired and now can put prepositions at the end of sentences, as in the above title.  The Hamilton Beach burrito maker seemed on the surface to be rather like a preposition at the end of a sentence.    Something kind of useless that just takes up space?  How wrong I was!  But having bought far too many gadgets that promised to make great sandwiches and then ended having a huge footprint, being impossible to clean, and not working that well anyway, I was reluctant to try another one.   So glad curiosity got the better of me.

This thing is tiny, cleans up in a snap, and makes the cutest and fluffiest little one-egg oval.  Make that an ordinary egg, not extra large or jumbo, as the ring that gives the egg its shape is not very big, and as some reviewers have found out, if you put too much egg into it, you could get a mess.  I haven't tried making burritos in it and probably won't.  So far all I have craved is egg on toast:

This is one medium egg with some grated cheese, a chunk of butter, and a splash of water stirred in.  It fluffed up nicely, almost like a tiny soufflé, but did not spill over, so cleanup was a breeze.  The most fun part of making this was sliding the little plate out from under the cooked egg and watching it fall down onto the warm already buttered toast. 

The salad shown alongside my yummy egg is made from organic greens harvested from my AeroGarden computerized indoor planter.  It has 3 kinds of lettuce, red Swiss chard, collard greens an apple, tomato, blue cheese, Vermont cheddar, and French vinaigrette (seasoned with my hydroponic basil, of course) .