Bread flavored with wort

One of Johan's favorite at Christmas is bread flavored with wort. I've always had problems with bread which contains raisins and other fruits, but what do you not do as a good girlfriend sometimes? There was a lot of bread, after that I had in not even half of the flour, I realized that my big bowl would not be enough, so I had to bring out the extra big bowl instead, so that the dough would have room to rise as well.

Bread flavored with wort

Makes 4 loaves

50 g yeast

100 g butter

1 l wort (or 1/3 cup of concentrated wort and 3 3/4 cups of water)

1 tbsp salt

3/4 cup dark syrup

1 tsp ground cloves

2 kg sifted rye flour (3 ½ l)

1 3/4 cup raisins (optional)

Crumble the yeast into a bowl. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Then add the wort and heat until it is lukewarm. Dissolve the yeast with the liquid. Add the salt, syrup, spices, raisins, and almost all the flour (you can feel your way around with the flour, it is possible that you doesn't need all of it). Work it all together into a dough and let rise covered for 1 hour. Knead the dough on a floured surface and shape into four loaves (or use bread molds like me). Prover loaves once again, covered, for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and bake in the lower part of the oven for 40 minutes. Let cool on a bread rack under a tea towel.

macarons with chocolate ganache

I have received my first order of macarons! One of my friends works in a small cozy store that soon will have an event for their customers and I have been asked to bake for it. Great fun but a bit scary, I have not fully succeeded with my macarons recently. I think I'm a little bit coward in baking them and therefore all of them dont want come off my silicon mold, maybe I should try some different recipes from the one that I have followed in recent times.

Macarons with chocolate ganache

Macarons

115 g almond flour

230g icing sugar

144 g of egg white

72g caster sugar

seeds from 1 vanilla pod

½ tsp salt

Grind the almonds and icing sugar together in a food processor or, if you use almond flour, sift the almond meal and icing sugar in a bowl.

Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Whisk in caster sugar, salt and vanilla seeds so that it becomes a thick and glossy meringue batter.

Fold in the almond mixture (about one-third at a time) into the meringue batter with a spatula. When all the dry ingredients have been mixed in properly, continue to divide and fold the meringue mixture until batter is thick and shiny with a bit chewy texture.

Pour the meringue mixture into a spun or plastic bag fitted with a 1 cm wide tip around the nozzle. Pipe out on parchment paper, or do as I do and invest in a macaron mold made of silicone, it has given me much better results. Tap with your hand over the baking sheet so that any air bubbles in the macarons disappear. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes and heat the oven to 150 degrees C.

Bake for 10-15 minutes. Let the macarons cool for about 10 minutes and remove them from the baking paper.

Chocolate ganache

100 g dark chocolate

1/4 cup of heavy cream

10 g butter

Melt the chocolate with the cream in a sauce pan on low heat. When the chocolate has melted and you have a smooth batter, take the sauce pan of the heat and stir in the butter. Let it cool in the refrigerator until it has solidified into a consistency that you can work with.

Merguez style sausage

Now it is time for my first lamb sausage. It is a merguez, originally from north Africa.

This time I was a bit lazy so I bought minced lamb from my local butcher.

Merguez.

Recipe for 1000 g of meat:

• 1000 g lamb, fat content 20-30%
• 15 g of salt
• 17 g of black pepper
• 6.5 g of garlic, finely chopped
• 5 g of cayenne pepper
• 6 g of paprika
• 8.3 g of cumin
• 20 ml of olive oil
• 1.8 dl of water
• 2 dl of breadcrumbs

To my sausage batch I used:

• 1500 g of minced lamb, ~ 10% fat
• 200 g of pork fat
• 25.5 g of salt
• 29 g of black pepper
• 11 g of garlic, finely chopped
• 9 g of cayenne pepper
• 10 g of paprika
• 14 g of cumin
• 34 ml of olive oil
• 3 dl of water
• 3.4 dl of breadcrumbs

Ingredients.

Grind the pork fat and chop the garlic. When done, mix everything together.

Ready to mix.

Once everything is mixed, the color of the minced meat has changed color because of the paprika.

A mixed sausage batch.

Taste a bit to see that nothing has gone wrong.

The small sample for the chef.

Actually it should be lamb casings to merguez but I had some hog casings at home that I used.

Fill the casing.

When all the batter is in place, tie the sausage.

Finished merguez, cook and eat.

Sourdough bread

From the course at River cottage we got a sourdough with us. It was not just the macarons that got on a flight this trip, so did the sourdough. It survived against all odds and is thriving now. On the course, I also learned that you can slit the bread with a bread knife, a knife with serrated teeth. I always thought that this should be done with a smooth, sharp knife. I can tell you that it goes so much better with a bread knife! When I used a standard straight blade, I have often had to put some eight behind the slit with the result that the bread floats out and not retain its shape. With a bread knife I get a clean cutting at once with a very small impact on the bread.

Sourdough Bread

Sponge

250g strong bread flour

240 g water

1 ladle full of sourdough

Mix together all ingredients the evening before you plan to bake the bread. Mix the dough by hand and work it till you do not see any flour lumps. Set the bowl in a plastic bag and let rise at room temperature overnight.

Sourdough bread

300g plain flour

25 g salt

150 g water

In the morning, you mix the flour, salt and water with the sponge until it starts to look like a dough, add more water or flour if you think it is necessary. Once everything is mixed, Turn out the dough onto a clean surface and knead it for about 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a round ball by first flatten it and fold the corners of it a few turns. Then turn the dough and place your hands, palms upwards in the dough. Spin the dough by moving your hands back and forth. Then put the dough in a clean bowl and let rest for an hour. Repeat the procedure 2 times.

Once the dough has rested for about two hours, Turn out on to a clean surface again and take the air out of the dough by pressing it with your fingers. The shape the dough into the shape you want and let rise until doubled in size. This may take a few hours depending on how active your sourdough is. When the bread is almost ready, turn the oven to 250 degrees C, and at the same time, put in an oven tray. When the oven is hot, remove the oven tray and put the bread on it and inject some water into the oven, let the bread bake at 250 degrees C for 10 minutes then lower the heat to 200 degrees C and bake for another 30 minutes. The bread is ready when it sounds hollow if you knock on the bottom. Let cool on a bread rack.

Chili popcorn

Now that I have some oil flavored with chili, it is time to use it. First thing is popcorn.

Popcorn and chili.

Pour some maize in a saucepan and add some chili oil. Depending on how strong the chili oil is it might need to be diluted a bit with regular oil.

Maize and chili oil.

 Pour the popcorn into a bowl when they are finished and put some salt on them.

Chili popcorn

Notes 

Some chili flakes became black in the end when there was little oil left in the bottom of the pot. It did not affect the taste but it do affect the presentation a little.

I need to take more care with the timing and remove the popcorn earlier from the heat.

Paolo's chili oil

This is my first attempt to recreate Paolo's chili oil from memory. Because he's a little secret of how he does it will probably require a few attempts.
The reason for making the oil is easier to spread the chili flavor, and that no one should get a big piece of chili in one bite.
The basis of the oil is dried chili, which chili it will be should depend on which you think is good. A day before you need the oil take the amount of dried chili you needed and add the oil to let it absorb the flavour.

Chili and oil.

The habanero seeds I sowed earlier this summer are doing pretty good and all four plants are bearing fruit, but they are not quite ripe yet.

Almost ripe habanero.

In the absence of ripe habanero, I took some other milder chilies. I had not so many of them either, but it had to make due.

Other chili

I chopped the chili rough because that will dry it faster. The seeds were dried separately.
I put the oven on 50 degrees Celsius.

Chopped chili without seeds.

After a business day and a bit more in the oven, about 10 hours, the chili was dry, even if it looks the same as the last picture.

Dried chili.

How large you want the pieces of chili to be is a matter of taste. This time I grinded them to a powder.

About to be crushed chili.

This powder can be saved for some time. It can also be the base of a lot of other things.

Chili powder.

 But since I did not get that much chili powder this time I used it all at once.

Chili oil.

Macarons with salted caramel

Macarons again, but they are so good! Johan thought these were so good that he got the idea that they would come with us to England so that our friends, who we lived with for a few days, would get the opportunity to taste them. Said and done, they ended up in the bag we checked in and the little ones got to go in the luggage compartment of the plane to England. They were not particularly pleased when they arrived and were ingested, they looked a little sad, the little macarons, but they still tasted really good! So if you ever make macarons one day before you are going on a trip, take, by all means, them with you, but pack them carefully so they do not jolt around so much.

Macarons with salted caramel

Macarons

115 g almond flour

230g icing sugar

144 g of egg white

72g caster sugar

seeds from 1 vanilla pod

½ tsp salt

Grind the almonds and icing sugar together in a food processor or, if you use almond flour, sift the almond meal and icing sugar in a bowl.

Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Whisk in caster sugar, salt and vanilla seeds so that it becomes a thick and glossy meringue batter.

Fold in the almond mixture (about one-third at a time) into the meringue batter with a spatula. When all the dry ingredients have been mixed in properly, continue to divide and fold the meringue mixture until batter is thick and shiny with a bit chewy texture.

Pour the meringue mixture into a spun or plastic bag fitted with a 1 cm wide tip around the nozzle. Pipe out on parchment paper, or do as I do and invest in a macaron mold made of silicone, it has given me much better results. Tap with your hand over the baking sheet so that any air bubbles in the macarons disappear. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes and heat the oven to 150 degrees C.

Bake for 10-15 minutes. Let the macarons cool for about 10 minutes and remove them from the baking paper.

Salted caramel filling

1 cup salted caramel

125 g butter, room temperature

Beat the butter until it is soft and fluffy. Then incorporate the salted caramel and mix well.

Minced lamb scramble

It is time for another dinner after a day at work. Here is a suggestion for a minced lamb dish that is easy and quick to prepare.

Minced meat, vegetables, cheese and an egg.

The ingredients are flexible and should be what you like:

• Minced lamb, in the pictures there is about 200g
• Corn
• Green peas
• Grated cheese
• Squash
• Red chili
• Fresh rosemary
• Garlic
• Salt and black pepper

Cooking time: ~ 20 min

Today's ingredients

In the next picture we see two of the extra ingredients, salt and garlic, which are not present in the previous image. It's easy to think of more things that you want to add to your cooking.

Taste givers

 Fry the minced lamb in some butter or oil.

Minced lamb in hot frying pan.

Add the garlic, chili, rosemary, salt and pepper while the minced lamb is frying. When it is almost cooked through, add the vegetables.

Halfway there with spices.

In order to fry the egg, I pushed the meat and vegetable mix towards one side and covered it with grated cheese.

All the ingredients in the frying pan.

 With a few fresh spinach leafs the dish was very nice.

The finished dinner.

salted caramel

I have for a really long time wanted to try to make salted caramel but I have hesitated some because of the fact that I know how I get when I make toffee. When I do, no one wants to be near me, I'm screaming and stamping when I pour the toffee and the damn small molds fall to one side and all that fine toffee is running out over the plate. But since there was no such element in making a salted caramel,  I decided that I dared. It was really good but apparently I did not whisk it enough when I had in the butter because it separated.

Salted caramel

2 cups granulated sugar

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup heavy cream, at room temperature

1 tablespoon fleur de sel 

 Add the sugar in an even layer over the bottom of a heavy saucepan, with a capacity of at least 2 or 3 quarts. Heat the sugar over medium-high heat, whisking it as it begins to melt. You'll see that the sugar will begin to form clumps, but that's okay. Just keep whisking and as it continues to cook, they will melt back down. Stop whisking once all of the sugar has melted, and swirl the pan occasionally while the sugar cooks.Continue cooking until the sugar has reached a deep amber color. If you are using an instant-read thermometer, cook the sugar until it reaches 350 degrees F.As soon as the caramel reaches 350 degrees, add the butter all at once. Be careful, as the caramel will bubble up when the butter is added. Whisk the butter into the caramel until it is completely melted. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the cream into the caramel.Whisk until all of the cream has been incorporated and you have a smooth sauce. Add the fleur de sel and whisk to incorporate. Set the sauce aside to cool for 10 to 15 minutes and then pour into a glass jar and let cool to room temperature. You can refrigerate the sauce for up to 2 weeks.