Gone Crackers

My DH thinks I’m a freaking genius because I know how to make crackers. I hesitate to tell him that of all the baking I do, crackers are the easiest of the lot. They’re simple, cheap and lend themselves a million variations.

I learned how to make crackers from an ex-boyfriend who also taught me where my threshold for relationship BS was. Since then, I’ve gone crackers and I mean that in a good way ;)

I’ve been known to dine on nothing but hazelnut crackers and a jar of wildflower honey and shards of parma cheese. Sweet crackers go well with cheese. It’s the simple culinary equation of Salty + Sweet = Yummy Balance. Think of lemon-honey cracker with some Parmesan cheese or a sweet hazelnut cracker with a good piece of Natural Pasture’s Boerenkaas cheese.

As much as I enjoy a sweet cracker, I was hankering for a savory cracker this afternoon after my mid-afternoon wandering. Specifically, I was craving black sesame seed cracker (aka Gomashio Cracker).

It may have been partly due to a couple emails and phone calls from friends about what to do with the rest of the bag of black sesame seeds after they’ve made the gomashio dressing from yesterday’s blog that led me to this unleavened yearning. I like to think it was the symphony of fall leaves playing counterpoint to the lush evergreens and the crisp bite of in the air that had me wanting this comfort food.

As mentioned, these crackers are dead easy to make. Here’s my Fast & Dirty recipe for Gomashio Crackers

1 cup flour ( plus more for rolling) – I used stoneground Kamut flour from True Grains Bakery in Cowichan Bay

2 tablespoons of cold butter or vegetable or olive oil

½ teaspoon sea salt

4-5 black peppercorns

1/3 cup black sesame seeds

¼ cup cold water (plus more if needed)

1 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Preheat over to 400F. Prepare cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpat sheet.

Grind salt, sesame seeds and peppercorn in mortar and pestle or in spice/coffee grinder.

Combine the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. If using butter, cut it into the flour until it’s combined into a fine crumb. Dump in the water, vegetable/olive oil (if using) and sesame seed oil . Mix on low (or do it by hand) until it comes together. If it’s too dry, add water a ½ teaspoon at a time, mixing between. The dough should come together in your hand but not be sticky.

Now you’re ready to roll. Sprinkle work surface with flour. Pull out a golf ball size of dough and roll it out into a long strip about 3 inches wide and about the length of your cookie sheet. Roll out dough to at least ¼ inch thickness. I like my super-thin so I aim for less than 1/8^th inch thick.

A pastry cutter or spatula/flipper is helpful in lifting the dough off the work surface. Don’t worry too much about rips in the dough, just pat it back together.

Place onto cookie sheet and repeat. I can usually fit 3 strips into a cookie sheet. Score the crackers with a sharp knife or pastry cutter or pizza cutter so they’ll be easier to break apart later. You could make these even and square but then they would look like store bought crackers. What’s the point of making homemade crackers when they end up look like generic factory made crackers? I like mine with the edges uneven. I believe it makes the cracker taste better.

Pop them into the oven for 8-10 mins or until golden brown. Let cool on rack and enjoy!










These will store for up to a week in airtight container. Feel free to double, triple, heck you may even have to decuple the recipe once everyone gets a taste of them. They are quite addictive.

For other variations try herbs (fresh or dried), nuts and spices like cumin, coriander, curry blend, nigella seeds, fennel seeds, caraway seeds, 5 spice blend, cayenne and chipolte pepper are all great cracker additions in my book.

Cheese also does well in this recipe. Hard and semi-hard cheeses like a parma or aged manchego or asiago can be grated in with the dry ingredients. Soft crumbly cheeses like a blue cheese or a feta do great. I find that soft cheeses like Camembert and mozzarella are more difficult to work into the cracker dough and are better off as toppings once the cracker is done.

For sweet variation, decrease the salt in the above recipe to a pinch and add in a teaspoon or 2 of sugar, honey, maple syrup or pomegranate molasses. A spoonful of fig or other fruit preserves can be worked into the dough for added richness and sweetness. Sugar can also be sprinkled and pressed onto the top of the dough before baking. However, I find this makes it too much like cookie. For a sweet touch, I often do nothing more than some spices. Think apple or pumpkin pie type spices. I also like them with citrus zest. If I’m feeling really decadent, I’ll pop in some freshly ground nuts.

For a gluten-free version, replace flour with pretty much any other flour from rice flour (brown or white), corn flour, potato flour (not potato starch) quinoa flour or amaranth flour. The textures will differ from flour to flour. I personally like it with 2 parts brown rice flour, 1 part cornstarch, 1 part corn flour.

It’spast 7pm & I haven’t started on dinner yet. Even though DH is quite enamored with the crackers, he’s not warming up to the idea of crackers for dinner.

Later,

Jen

Thai one on

I finally got around to freezing the 15 pounds of tomatoes I got from Gary Argyle’s farm this past weekend. Of course, now I had to find room for 15 pounds of tomatoes in our tiny chest freezer. In order to make more real estate, I pulled out a few odds and ends to be made into dinner including some corn (from McNab’s farm) and a few meatballs leftover from a Frikadeller dinner a few weeks back, a couple cups of beef stock and a block of Pete’s organic extra firm tofu. Tofu freezes beautifully and can be thawed either at room temperature or immersed in boiling water. Just make sure to press out the excess water. The tofu takes on a meatier texture after being frozen.

The possibilities are endless, especially with a vat of ready-to-go roasted veggies at my disposal. I could have done a stew or a tomato based chowder. I could have done a funky Ma Po Tofu or a miso-marinated stirfry. I could have done a savoury risotto with corn & tomato salsa. Or just toss the stock back into the freezer and used the rest of the ingredients as the base for a super-simple pasta.

I was still savoring last night’s noodle dish and wanted something warm and comforting. So I decided on my Thai One On noodle soup. Here’s the Fast & Dirty directions for soup:

3-4 oz rice sticks

5 meatballs – quartered

1 heaping teaspoon minced ginger

1 garlic clove- minced

1 green onion/scallion chopped

3 cup cilantro chopped

2-3 oz of extra firm tofu – pressed and cubed

2 cups roasted veggies

½ cup frozen corn

2-3 tomatoes chopped into chunks

2-3 cups diluted beef broth. Basically 2 part broth to 1 part water. Veggie or chicken broth would be fine. Use low-sodium if you’re using pre-fab.

2 tablespoon fish sauce

½ teaspoon sambel oelek

2 kaffir lime leaves minced fine – use fresh or frozen

juice of ½ lime

couple shots of sesame seed oil

peanut or veg. oil

Topping options – chopped cilantro/parsley/scallions, shredded carrots, fresh thai basil, lime wedges, shredded egg omelet/scramble egg, bean sprouts, dry roasted peanuts or any other nuts or seeds

Soak rice sticks in boiling water. Cover and set aside. Once soft, drain and rinse in cold water. Set aside.

In a wok, heat up the oil over high heat. Dump in meatballs, ginger, garlic, cilantro, scallions. Stir fry for a few minutes. Take a moment and inhale the wonderful aromatics.

Dump in tofu and let that brown a bit. Dump in roasted veggies, tomatoes, corn, beef broth, fish sauce, sambel oelek and lime leaves. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer for 10 mins.

Finish off with the lime juice and the sesame seed oil.

Arrange noodles in bowls and top with the piping hot soup. Garnish as desired. I just had some lime slices on the side just in case folks wanted a larger slap of citrus.

So good on a cold fall night. This is one of my favorite soups. I love the beautiful, robust flavours of Thai cooking. I often keep a small jar of 'Thai It Up' sauce in my fridge. Here's the fast & dirty recipe for that:
1/3 cup fish sauce
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1 teaspoon organic cane sugar or honey
1 thumb of ginger grated
1-2 garlic cloves crushed
2-3 kaffir lime leaves minced fine
1/8 teaspoon sambel oelek (you can use more if you want)
a couple shots of sesame seed oil

Dump everything into a jar and store in the fridge for up to a month. Shake before using.

You can use in absolutely everythng ;)
You can add it a simple brothy soup, drizzle it over scrambled eggs, use it as seasoning for a stirfry, add a spoonful to fish congee with lots and lots of cilantro, use it as a dipping sauce for gyozas/potstickers or dimsum (so good with har gow and sui mai), dump it over cellophane noodles and let marinate overnight for the best noodle salad or use it as a slaw dressing.


Speaking of slaw, (look Kev, a segue) for our first course I made a quick asian slaw with gomashio dressing. As mentioned before, gomashio is one of those items that is usually grossly overpriced when bought already made. Along with the fact that it will start going rancid as soon as it’s made, it’s just absurd to be paying $6 for something that really only costs 25 cents and 3 minutes to make. Just toast up a couple spoonfuls of black sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat until you smell the toasted sesame seed goodness. Then with a good pinch of sea salt and pound in a mortar & pestle for a few seconds or toss into spice/coffee grinder and pulse a couple times.

Here’s my Fast & Dirty Asian Slaw & Gomashio Dressing recipe:

In the bowl that you’re going to serve the salad in dump in (because you don't really need more dishes to do):

2 tablespoons rice vinegar – just eyeball it

½ teaspoon honey – I used a wonderful local wildflower honey

1 tablespoons gomashio

Mix until the honey has dissolved.

Then add in (again eyeball it because it would be stupid to actually measure this out):

1 cup finely shredded cabbage – pretty much any type of cabbage will do. I’m still working my way through a red cabbage.

½ cup carrots- sliced fine

½ cup English cucumber sliced fine

Toss and let sit while you prepare the rest of dinner. You could let the veggies marinated overnight too.

We had our usual last minute, drop-in dinner guest show up and the above recipe was enough to feed me and two grown men.

Of course, all the veggies and the meat from the meatballs are from local farms. Dinner itself took less than 30 minutes to make. You can play around with the vegetable and meat options for the noodle soup. Use whatever leftover meats or seafood you have on hand. It's a great way to use up leftover baked salmon. Just add right it to the soup at the very end so it does get too fishy. Or use tofu, tempeh & /or beans like chickpeas . Instead of rice sticks, you could use udon or egg noodles but I like rice sticks best with this soup. The veggie alternatives are pretty much whatever you can find. Again, leftover veggies do well in this soup. If you really want to go super-deluxe, you could even toss in dumplings.

Enjoy!
Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

What's for dinner?

It's 11.36 pm and DH is off guiding a trip and I have nobody to bug!!!

Ok, so I guess I should tell you what I'm eating as I journey through this 100 Mile Diet. The basic idea of this diet is that you eat whatever you want, then you run a 100 miles.

I'm kidding. Just checking to see if you're paying attention.

So I'm pledging to buy and eat more foods grown within 100 miles of where I live. I'm aiming to eat 90% within the 100 Mile diet criteria. It's not reasonable or safe to deny me chocolate or coffee. However, if I must, I will eat only locally produced chocolate and locally roasted coffee ;)

Luckily for me, we have some amazing coffee roasters and chocolatiers here on the Rusty Coast. So my coffee choices right now are Level Ground Trading's Café Pangoa, a fair-trade organic coffee from Peruvia. t's a nice mellow cup of wake-up juice. The company is based in Central Saanich on Vancouver Island and is run by a group of Canadians that were truly dedicated to providing a real solution to poverty in coffee growing areas. I also use their organic fair trade cane sugar which tastes a heck of a lot better than the so-called 'plantation sugar' of sugar corporations.

My chocolate choice is currently Denman Island's Cocoa Loco with 70% cocoa mass that I picked up on the ferry over the weekend. This organic chocolate has a nice initial bite of bitterness that smooths out to a deep chocolate taste with no bitter aftertaste. One little square is all the dessert I need. This is one bar for savouring. Unfortunately, they don't use fair trade cocoa so I'm going to have to keep investigating.

I'm also on the hunt for local vinegars. I have a few leads and will get back with any updates.

So, now onto my 100 Mile Diet meals for today:

Breakfast: Local Red Haven peach and a wedge of melon (honeydew?) from the Nanoose Edibles farm stand cut in half with a dollop of Little Qualicum Cheesework's fromage frais (natural) and a drizzle of some local fir honey. Fir honey is so yummy. It's a dark brown honey with green tones. It's taste is mild and has a darker taste than lighter honey. And a bodum of coffee, of course.

Lunch: I had a bowl of beets leftover from dinner yesterday. They were the one's I picked up from the Duncan farmer's market. I also had a bunch of local organic beans and some romaine lettuce from my Nanoose Edible's weekly produce box. Along with some sliced carrots, again from Duncan, I made up a quick salad. I doused it with my Black Sesame Asian dressing (completely not within the 100 mile criteria, oh well). I had a small wedge of Natural Pasture's Wasabi cheese and a Paula Rose apple from Gabriola Island for dessert.

Black Sesame Asian dressing:
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup veg. oil
1/4 cup crushed black sesame seeds (either whirl in your grinder or a smashing in the mortar and pestle)
1 tsp of freshly grated ginger
pinch of salt
1/8 tsp of white pepper

Dump all ingredients into a jar. Screw on lid. Shake and serve. It keeps in the fridge for a couple of days. This is super good with a slaw or as a flavour booster in soups and stir-fries.

After running errands earlier this afternoon, I popped over to Piper's Meats on Bowen Road to pick up some flesh. Piper's carries a whole shop full of locally raised, non-medicated, non-hormoned meats. There's everything from local lamb to local buffalo. I picked up a nice looking top sirloin steak to serve as my main protein source for the week.

Once I got home, I popped the steak into a glass dish and squirted a fig balsamic vinagrette and some chopped red chili pepper from the garden onto it. The vinegar I picked up a few weeks back at the Gabriola farmer's market from Jocelyne of Auld Alliance Farm. Along with a fig balsamic vinegar, I also picked up a chocolate balsamic vinegar and a fig chutney from her vast and growing line of vinegars and condiments. I know, not neccesarily within the 100 mile criteria but at least I was buying it from a local producer and the figs are from her property.

As the steak marinated in the fridge, I had to step out for a short errand...

After returning from what was supposed to be a short errand that got hijacked by miscommunication and a spontaneous wander down to Departure Bay beach and a wonderful return wander into the arms of an almost full, heavy moon, I was grateful that I had a fridge of waiting produce and a marinating chunk of flesh. Already too dark to bbq, I broiled the steak. I pulled off a few large romaine leafs, sliced off the thick stems and plopped some leftover Indonesian rice salad into the middle of the overlapping leaves.
The rice salad is the one from Moosewood's cookbook with a few local substitutions. For the veggie ingredients for the rice salad I tossed in some local green beans, carrots, cucumbers, zucchinis, red peppers, sprouts and red onion, all either from the Nanoose Edible's produce box or from the Duncan farmer's market.

Once the steak was cooked, I let it sit for 10 mins then sliced off a few thin slices and placed them ontop of the pile of rice salad. I then rolled the lettuce leaves over it all so it looked like a green burrito. To top it off, I squirted more fig balsamic vinagrette. A slice of Hilary's Cheese Company's Red Dawn and a sliced tomato from my garden served as my second course. Dessert was a square of my chocolate bar and a cup of mint tea with mint from my garden. Simply stuff a bunch of mint leaves into a sturdy mug. Crush the leaves a bit with the handle of a big wooden spoon and pour boiling hot water over it all. Viola!

Well, it's now tomorrow so good morning and good night all.

Jen Lam