Kitchen Archives - Another Day

Kitchen :: Nut Milks

July 18, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Winter hibernation this year has me immersing myself in curriculum; digesting and getting my head around Grade 1 material to start looking at laying the foundation for Chilli’s first formal academic year in 2015. It’s all very exciting. And while we’ve gently woven a few very basic first grade elements into this Kindergarten year we are currently doing, there’s a great anticipation from all of us for the new year that will soon be upon us.

Now you know where I’ve been and why this space has been so silent of recent times. I figure if there’s one time a blog can get away with a little slumber, it’s definitely Mid-Winter! Whilst my silence here has not been intentional, it’s definitely been productive. I’m feeling wonderfully confident and inspired with the curriculum material we have decided to use for our homeschooling journey and I’m looking forward to starting to build that very important Grade 1 program.

Through these cooler days, which have only just as I’m typing started to really feel like a true Winter, we’ve been enjoying some wonderfully warming beverages made on deliciously creamy home-crafted nut milks. Making nut milks is nothing new for us, we’ve been doing it on-and-off for many years now, but to be honest I’ve always found the process a little tedious and difficult to fit into a busy home based family rhythm. That might sound a little strange, but squeezing nut milk out through a bag and having to gently, slowly wring down the bag, inevitably having a stream of random milk squirt out here, there and everywhere – it really wasn’t a very efficient daily task. However in our recent efforts to reduce unnecessary sugars that have crept back into our diet over the years, we’ve decided to make our own nut milk again. I’ve been quickly and efficiently straining our nut milks through a fine mesh sieve into a glass jar and drying off the meal that results from the straining. This meal can be ground up easily in a spice grinder to be used as nut meal in delicious paleo style baking applications or raw food treats. Using a mortar and pestle is another way to grind the dried meal and makes a wonderful handwork task for Kindergarten homeschooling! The nut milk that results from straining through a sieve as opposed to a bag, definitely has a higher content of meal in it – however we’ve really been enjoying this for not only nutritional reasons, but also the fact that it makes for a much creamier milk.

::We’ve been enjoying super simple vegan custards based on our homemade nut milks. Sweetened with some maple and thickened with Kudzu – it makes for a super simple dessert or snack when drizzled over some of that preserved Autumn fruit. Jude Blereau also has a great vegan custard recipe using coconut milk in her ‘Wholefood for Children’ book::

With this amazingly creamy, delicious nut milk, we’ve been enjoying herbal infusions, silky smooth hot chocolates and creamy spiced chai. It’s also been wonderful for making thick, velvety vegan custards. Perfect at a time of year when the ladies are taking their annual break and eggs are scarce!

Some of our favourite nut milk blends are;
• Lucuma, Vanilla Almond Milk
• Lavender infused Honey Cashew Milk (I infuse the lavender after the nut milk is blended/strained)
• Spiced Brazil Nut Milk sweetened with Stevia (cardamon is my favourite spice to compliment brazil nuts)
• Date sweetened Walnut Milk

Using the sieve straining method, Brazil and Walnut milks definitely make for a furrier texture. The family hasn’t been so keen on these two milks, merely because of the ‘furrier’ texture, but the almond and definitely the cashew milks are quite silky smooth. Into our nut milks, we normally incorporate some hemp seeds for a super protein and omega boost.

Making nut milk is super simple. The steps we follow are here;
• Put 1C activated nuts in the blender with any additional seeds and flavourings/sweeteners
• Add 2C of water and whizz to blend
• After a minute or so, we top the blender up to the remaining 4C mark and allow to blend for a good 3-4 minutes for a creamy incorporation of all ingredients
• Strain through a mesh sieve into a jug
• We find the nut milks are best consumed as fresh as possible. They normally don’t last more than 24 hours in our home anyway!

For a creamy hot chocolate we heat 4C of nut milk, 4T rice syrup, 2T cacao, 1 vanilla bean and 1T of solidified cacao butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Once warmed to the desired temperature we carefully whisk with egg beaters until frothy and then serve in our favourite mugs, dusted with spices or extra chocolate on top. Our other favourite Warming Winter beverage is of course chai, which during our first season down here in Tassie, we really had to keep a check on how much we drunk. I think a pot a day was our consumption at one point – which was delicious, but an expensive luxury all the same!

::Nut Milk based Chai::
Recipe by Elke at Another Day

Our chai blend is different on any given day and I think of the brew more of an expression of how I’m feeling in that moment, rather than an exact recipe. Our chai is made by me taking a pot of milk to the larder, standing at the spice shelf and being led by what inspires me at that time. Therefore the following is not so much a recipe as sharing what spices may find themselves in our pot when chai is infusing away on the stove.

Ingredients:

• Fresh ginger slices
• Cinnamon quills, ground cinnamon, cassia bark or ground cassia
• Nutmeg – whole crushed or ground
• Cloves
• Peppercorns
• Fennel seeds
• Cardamon pods or ground cardamon
• Star anise
• Bay leaf
• Rosehips
• Hawthorn Berries

• Rooibos
• Raw honey

Method:

• Into a medium sized pot, place 4C of milk and 2C of hot water (to allow for evaporation during infusing)
• Place spices into the pot
• Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes
• Turn the heat off and stir through Rooibos and honey – leave to infuse for 10 minutes
• Strain spices out of pot and serve in hand made pottery mugs, dusted with a little extra cinnamon, nutmeg or chocolate powder

I’d love to know what nourishing, homemade beverages are keeping you warm this Winter. Do you make your own nut milk? What’s your favourite nut to use for your milks? And if you are a chai lover like myself, I’d love to know your favourite foolproof spice that guarantees a tasty cup every time.

Eating Out :: Pollen Tea Room

May 12, 2014 | Leave a Comment

When you are as particular (some would say ‘pedantic’!) as us about your food choices, eating out can be challenging – if possible at all. Therefore you can imagine our delight upon discovering Pollen Tea Room in Battery Point, Hobart. I stumbled upon Pollen by complete accident when searching around online a few years back. I was in the early days of my pregnancy with Marlin and we were looking for somewhere Chilli and I could go in the wee hours of the morning whilst Papa attended a business network meeting in the city. Pollen fit the bill perfectly. It is cosy, inviting, friendly and of course serves mindful food that is inline with our eating values.

Pollen Tea Room is the brainchild and baby of Matthew and Shae – a couple that are the perfect picture of radiant health and abundant energy. Merely being in the presence of these two gorgeous souls is inspiring and uplifting. Matthew and Shae are the type of people who you come away from feeling refreshed by merely having just spent time with them. Coupled with the amazing food and beverages they serve, which nourish every cell in your entire body – Pollen Tea Room is a true recipe for totally revitalising you. Making a choice from their well thought out and planned with mindfulness, menu is the biggest challenge when you go to Pollen. The menu offers a lovely range – you’re not overwhelmed with choices, but there is a nice variety of dishes to choose from. The problem? Everything looks, sounds and is so delicious!

Shae has been featured on ES Wellness’, Well Women series – and rightly so! This couple really do practice what they preach and the proof really is in the (chia) pudding – so to speak! When we recently visited, Graham (my iridologist husband!) commented once we left, on both Matthew and Shae’s; friendliness, great energy and how clear their eye’s are.

Everything on the Pollen menu is created with love, thoughtfulness and attention to detail. Pollen’s instagram feed often features pictures showing something new Shae’s been creating in the kitchen, or Matthew’s latest herb and spice blend coming together for a seasonally supportive tea infusion. There’s the old story everyone knows about how love is the secret ingredient in every successful cook’s heart, that permeates their food with an undefinable deliciousness. I would have to say without a shadow of a doubt that apart from the mindful food, organic ingredients*, vitality of their kitchen alchemy and the passion that Matthew and Shae create food with – love for not only what they do, but also the food they create and serve to their customers is an unmistakable ingredient in their recipes. I’ve read a few various interviews with these folk now and each time it rings out loud and clear from their words, that they sincerely have a passion for feeding their community with nourishing food and that they honestly just love to meet and get to know their customers.

On Mother’s Day we stopped in, after a morning of picking rosehips and hawthorns, for a lunch date with Pollen Tea Room. We couldn’t have chosen anywhere better to visit for a nourishing, wholesome and refreshing meal after an early morning adventure to one of Tassie’s most gorgeous little nooks. Thank you Matthew and Shae for the space you have created there, for the wonderful food you serve and for the gorgeous memories I have of sitting in Pollen with my family, chatting about this and that over a cup of hand blended, amazingly delicious, organic chai.

* I wanted to add a foot note that whilst not every single ingredient used in the Pollen kitchen is organic, I do know from not only talking to Matthew and Shae, seeing the ingredients in their kitchen, but also devouring their plates of deliciousness – that Pollen Tea Room does use a substantial amount of organic ingredients and it is their preference to source chemical free and locally produced food wherever possible.

:: Please excuse the fact that most of our photographs are of half eaten plates or half drunk cups. Pollen’s presentation is of course, exquisitely delightful – but everything looks so delicious when it is served that taking a photograph doesn’t even creep into my mind until I’m half way through the meal!::

Harvest :: Jam Making and Home Preserving

March 20, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Being an Autumn baby, it’s no surprise that this crisp, crimson season is my favourite the whole year through. Sure, there’s elements of each season that I truly love and I enjoy wholeheartedly each for it’s own beauty – but there’s something extra special about Autumn, something that makes my heart sing and gives me that ‘jump up and live again’ feeling.

I love the abundance of the season – bags filled with apples that need to be cooked up, wild trees loaded with pears that we’re watching closely to make sure we get in for a share before someone appears in the middle of the night stripping them bare and berries begging to be turned into jam. This year we even infused sherry with hawthorns for the first time, apparently it’s a great Winter heart tonic – you just have to remember to strain the hawthorns out of the sherry before you drink it, apparently they contain arsenic in the seed! After a quieter harvest store last year, due to being immersed in newborn land, we’ve enjoyed a wonderfully busy and productive harvest season this year. The larder shelves are looking very full and every time I stand back looking with joy at the preserves, Papa comments “I really hope those shelves are strong enough to hold all those jars!”

::Blackberrying ‘Milly-Molly-Mandy’ style – with the help of a crook::

This season is the most diverse preserving we’ve done so far;

Blackberry vanilla jam
Gooseberry jam
Elderberry jam with cinnamon and star anise
Elderflower cordial in the Summer – I didn’t realise how super simple this was to make, we’re stashing lemons for the season next year because that’s what made it difficult – organic lemons aren’t readily available down here during elder flower season.
Wild chai spiced apple mousse (with the 23kilo’s of wild apples Papa spontaneously picked during a Sunday family road trip)
Vanilla poached whole pears
Chai spiced quinces (the first time I’ve ever had these – now I’m wondering why I waited so long to try these delicious morsels.)
Jelly from the remaining poaching liquid (using Great Lakes gelatine, again super simple and wondering why I haven’t been on a jelly making flurry before now, especially considering how therapeutically beneficial the Great Lakes gelatine is.)
Hawthorn infused Sherry
Tomatillo chutney
Cinnamon sprinkled dried apple and nashi & cardamon sprinkled dried pear
Our annual raw pressed apple juice delivery is expected around Easter time and this year we think we’ll try our hand at our own cider. Last year’s 20 litre tub of apple cider vinegar that we put on is also now ready for us to finally taste our first ever homemade ACV. The evaporation level through the year has been surprising – wondering how big our mother is deep down in the belly of this brew.

Over coming times I’ll share more harvest and preserving recipes including my new favourite method of poaching pears and quinces, but here is our go-to jam recipe in the meantime.

::Chai spiced jam::
Recipe by Elke at Another Day

Any jam we make generally ends up ’chai spiced’. I love the synergy of syrupy berries or poached fruit that are complimented by gorgeous warming chai spices. The spice blend I define as ‘chai spice’ for jam making though is actually not as complex as the blend we normally use when brewing chai for tea. The general rule of making jam is ‘kilo for kilo’ fruit and sugar, but I find I need a lot less sugar and especially if I’m using rapadura – in that instance I near on halve the sugar amount. I never add pectin or any jelling agent to our jams – a few lesser ripe berries do just the trick with their natural pectin content. The beauty of organic home preserving is that each batch is unique – some are quite thin, others gel beautifully and some turn out like tar. I love the way each takes on it’s own character and that often two batches made with identical ingredients in exactly the same way can be totally different. It’s the beautiful surprise of organic kitchen alchemy.

Ingredients;

1 kilo of freshly washed and picked over berries
500-750gm of your preferred sugar (we use either raw or rapadura)
Chai spices; cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, bay leaf (I generally use these all as ground spices with the exception of the star anise and bay leaf. Although sometimes using whole quills is nice as well. I often leave the whole spices in there when jarring as well – it’s nice to stumble upon these in the occasional jar of jam and spoon out around them. They infuse in greater depth over their standing time.)
Sterilised jars for storage

Method;

Put freshly washed berries into a large non-reactive saucepan.
Mix sugar through fruit and add spices.
Put the lid on and leave to meld for a few hours to overnight.
Turn the pan onto medium heat and bring to a boil.
Place a splash guard over the top of the pan and keep at a rolling boil for at least 20 minutes or until the jam has reduced down substantially (be careful of spitting liquid, this stuff is scorching hot.
Once you are happy with the consistency and reduction of your jam – turn it off. Remember the jam will set further as it cools and stands.
Have your sterilised jars waiting on a board lined with a towel (If you fill the jars directly on your bench you may end up with heat bubbles in your counter top!)
Using a stainless steel measuring cup or some other heat suitable pouring utensil – ladle the hot jam into jars and seal with the lid.
With a clean warm cloth, wipe any spills off the sides of the jar.
Leave to cool. The jar lids will most likely pop in themselves. If you do this in the afternoon it’s fun to listen through the night as the jars lock themselves “pop” goes another lid! Any lids that haven’t sucked in their button top you can push down the next morning and they will most likely stay down. If they don’t then it’s up to you whether you transfer to refrigerated storage or take a chance on keeping this jar on the larder shelf. Any lids that bulge during storage are an indication that something has gone wrong with your preserve and there is fermentation happening inside. Feed that concoction to your compost and try again. In all the years we’ve been doing this we’ve only once had that happen (this season actually!) with a batch of pear sauce that I think I added way too much water to.
Once cool, label your jars and transfer to a cool, dark place such as a larder shelf for storage.

Sterilising jars and removing labels;

You can buy expensive canning jars, but you also don’t have to. The jar your tomato paste came in from the store is absolutely fine to up-cycle into a canning jar. It’s what most frugal home preservers use very effectively. If it’s a glass jar and has a metal lid then you’re in business – if it’s got one of those safety button ‘pop-tops’ then all the more better, but Graham assures me that they aren’t essential. In our experience even if there’s no ‘pop-top’ they still seal well (so long as there’e the rubber ring around the inside of the lid) and store preserves effectively. Do your own research of course and make your own decisions on what you feel is safe and that you’re comfortable with, but this has been our own personal experience.
To remove labels – soak your jars in a bath of cold water that covers the jars fully, leave for a few hours or overnight is preferable, take a blunt knife such as a butter knife and carefully scrape off the labels with the side of the blade (even thought you’re using a blunt knife – be careful!), any remaining label or glue can be removed by a tiny bit of eco washing up liquid on a steel wool ball, rub the steel wool over the label and this should remove the rest.
Wash your jars and lids in hot soapy water, rinse in clean water to remove all suds.
Place jars in oven standing upside down on racks – heat the oven to 130ºC and then hold it there for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring all the lids to a boil in a large pot of water. Once the pot is boiling, boil the lids for 15 minutes. You can also include your jars in the saucepan and sterilise them this way, however I find it more convenient and efficient to do the jars in the oven and the lids in the saucepan, otherwise I have to do multiple batches in the saucepan.
Carefully remove the jars with oven mitts and tongs (remember the jars will be very hot) onto the lined board and fill with hot jam as described above.

What’s your favourite preserve to make?