Food – Page 23 – Hobbits In Rivendell

Sourdough Pizza

February 9, 2008

4:25 pm

We’ve finally broken down & gotten a sourdough starter going. I couldn’t resist it when a former coworker forwarded the following directions to me:

Mix 3 1/2 Tbsp whole wheat flour with 1/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for 48 hours at room temperature. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. (“Unsweetened” in this case simply means no extra sugar added).
Add to the above 2 Tbsp whole wheat flour and 2 Tbsp pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for a day or two. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. You should see some activity of fermentation within 48 hours. If you don’t, you may want to toss this and start over.
Add to the above 5 1/4 Tbsp whole wheat flour and 3 Tbsp purified water. Cover and set aside for 24 hours.
Add 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 or less purified water. You should have a very healthy sourdough starter by now.

We actually got a full-blown, crazily active starter within about three days!

We’ve named her ‘Sadie,’ and this pizza is her first try at giving us some true bread. We could’ve done something more … well, bread-like. But we were in the mood for a savory, whole-wheat pizza dough, so this pizza, with its fresh mushrooms, sweet red bell peppers, onions, Quorn sausage and cheese it is (or was, rather, there’s only the tiniest bit left to go with our salads for dinner). The crust is lightly sour and chewy and very tasty. As soon as Sadie grows up a little more, we’ll try out a crisp-and-chewy sourdough boule. Stay tuned!

Cauliflower / Broccoli Soup

by David T. Macknet

February 4, 2008

4:37 pm

10 Comments on Cauliflower / Broccoli Soup

Food, Recipe

This soup can be made just as well with either cauliflower or with broccoli. We’ve been getting a large head of each every Friday for several weeks now, as we’re subscribed to a “box scheme” whereby we get fresh seasonal fruits & vegetables. Well, the UK being what it is, we’re getting lots of root veggies & lots of things like cauliflower & broccoli. Seeing as it’s also been cold, we decided to figure out a nice soup for these.

Essentially, what I’m giving you is an ingredient list, and you can adjust it to your own tastes. Along with that, though, will come a bit of general advice for making this soup, and that’s to use far less water than you think you need, and far more spices. Broccoli & cauliflower are bland, and can take it, particularly if you’re getting large heads! That said, here’s what you do:
1) Throw 5 or 6 large whole cloves of garlic in a cold pan with a spritz of olive oil.
2) Turn on the heat to medium-low.
3) Chop an onion, add it to the pan with the garlic, and cover.
4) Trim florets from the main stalk & set aside.
5) If using cauliflower, feel free to discard the main stalk or chop it.
6) If using broccoli, peel off the outer skin (I do this by just getting my fingers under it and pulling). Chop the remaining stalk, discarding the woody skin.
7) When your onions have softened somewhat, add your broccoli / cauliflower.
8) Add just enough water to cover about half of the contents and cover – too little water is better than too much!
9) Grind up some spices (saffron maybe, but definitely a pinch of sage, a dozen cumin seeds, some white pepper maybe, a teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds, rosemary if you have it) and throw them in.
10) When mixture has softened (about 20 minutes or so), remove it from the heat.
11) Blend with your immersion blender until smooth.
12) Strain (optional – primarily to remove any sage twigs)
13) Add a brick of silken tofu (soft, firm, whatever so long as it’s silken) and blend until smooth again.
14) If doing broccoli, we added a teaspoon of red balsamic vinegar & blended that, too, along with some bouillon & a pinch of salt. Obviously, skip the red vinegar with the cauliflower, as pink soup would be kinda odd.
15) Ladle into bowls & serve, maybe with cheese, maybe with cheese toast.

What we’ve found with this is that 1) you can’t have enough garlic, 2) you can easily have too much water, 3) you don’t want to put it back onto the heat after adding the tofu, as it will tend to separate somewhat. Other than that, this is dead easy to make, and wonderfully soothing on a cold day!

This post is going up particularly for the No Croutons Required event, and also because Lori asked me for the recipe.

Onion Caper Bread

by David T. Macknet

January 31, 2008

3:27 pm

8 Comments on Onion Caper Bread

Baking

The continuing saga of baking in the UK continues. This week’s episode includes trying once again to bake French-style loaves upon the pizza stone … with the result that the stone has been retired until such time as we have a better oven. Past experiments with the stone have included preheating the oven for an hour, to see if the stone would get hot enough. That didn’t work. This time I moved the stone up in the oven, and it still wouldn’t get hot enough to brown the bottom of the loaves. The next option would be to move the stone all the way up under the broiler, get it good and hot, and then somehow relocate the stone to a lower shelf.

We’re just going to have to learn to live without bread baked on a stone, because shifting a hot stone about just isn’t in the cards. My knuckles are already burned quite severely, just from trying to squeeze four loaves into such a tiny oven – I’m giving up the idea of moving that stone as a bad idea. (As to how severely, well, they blistered up & scabbed nicely, and I look like I’ve been brawling or something, which is enough to put me off the idea of getting them burned any further).

The loaves, as expected with a cool stone, didn’t have a crusty bottom, nor did they get much lift. So, we sliced them on the bias, and enjoyed them anyway … or, at least, we enjoyed a couple of them – one went to a fellow Bay Area native who’s also over here doing his Master’s degree, and another went to a professor.

As to what’s in them, they’re the standard bread recipe, basically, but with steamed whole oats, oat bran, flax seeds, a chopped onion, a couple tablespoons of capers (soaked to remove the salt), some yellow and brown mustard seeds, some cumin, and some sage. Because of adding the steamed oats you need to bump up the salt a little bit, but other than that it’s just a straightforward matter of “throwing stuff in.”

Once again, no problem at all with UK flour: if I can get bread to raise with an added 1/2 cup of oat bran in each loaf, plus all the other stuff, there’s certainly enough gluten in the flour!

Next up will be to finally get a sourdough starter going. I just read an article on the microbiology of yeast fermentation, talking specifically about getting wild yeasts going, and some of what was in there we’re going to try. The gist of this 17 page article was to the effect that the initial pH of the sourdough starter is not acid enough. They suggest adding 6 oz of pineapple juice to the starter on the first day, with that being enough of a jolt of acid to get the starter producing yeast on the first day. Otherwise you have to wait for some nasty bacteria to get going in there, and then to die, so that after three or four days you’ll have enough of an acid environment for the yeast to get going. The instructions can be found at Breadtopia, and the microbiologist’s name is Debra Wink – Breadtopia will send you the article if you’re interested.

Not having any pH strips handy we’re going to just wing it & see what happens. It may not take place immediately – we have to track down pineapple juice – but we’ll let you know when it does.

The other (less preferable) method would be to include apple juice for the first few days, which we could do … and we actually have the apple juice … but it’s nice, fresh-pressed Braeburn juice, and I like to drink the stuff. Sigh. The things we sacrifice for our art. Maybe. Just … maybe.

Daring Bakers: Lemon Meringue Pie

by David T. Macknet

January 28, 2008

1:37 pm

51 Comments on Daring Bakers: Lemon Meringue Pie

Food

Oh, the decadence. This month’s daring bakers challenge was to make lemon meringue pie. Well, folks, what a pie this is! There were a few mistakes along the way, of course: I misread the amount of sugar to go into the crust, for example, so ended up with 1/2 a cup of sugar instead of 1/4 of a cup. This was taken to be a good thing by the tasters, though, who said, “it tastes like sugar cookies!” Serendipity? Perhaps. The other problem I ran into was the fact that I don’t know where our pie-plates are packed: we packed them with the glass things, and have left quite a few “glass / fragile” boxes packed, simply because we didn’t feel like bringing them out when we’ll likely move to a different flat towards the end of the school year. So, I was stuck with trying to make this work in a springform pan. Never, folks. Never.

Getting pie crust to work in a springform pan means that you’ve got to kind of drape it over the sides. Doing this with an 8″ diameter pan means that you’ve got a 3″ wide strip of dough which is 25″ long! Physically impossible to get right, let me tell you. So, I decided I’d cut the side dough into segments & try to patch them together when I’d managed to get them draped over. Well, it worked, mostly … but wasn’t anywhere near a perfect job, and left me not at all proud at the shape of things.

We’ve been warned repeatedly about the differences between UK flour and Canadian / American flours, so we were expecting to have more trouble with the texture or composition of the dough for the crust. This was not the case, except in that the amount of water called for by the recipe was by no means necessary, so I’m guessing that some of the problems people run into in making the transition to the UK is simply that UK flour may have a higher moisture content, which would tend to throw things off, for sure.

How did it turn out? Well, we had some friends over, and timed it such that I pulled the pie from the oven just before their arrival. After a lovely dinner, we were in the right mood to try pie. You see, unbeknown to us, our friends do not like eggs, either. So, here we were, with four people who don’t particularly care for eggs, eating meringue pie! We figured that it’d be a good bet that some locals would like this – it is a British pie, after all. Once again, though, we’re reminded that Scots are not British: the crust was great, the filling wonderful, and the meringue was left in clumps on the plates.

After our friends left for the evening, I packed up two slices for our next-door neighbors. Since I’d just heard them come home, I proceeded to offer them their slices … to be told, “I have to be honest with you, I really don’t like lemon-meringue pie. My partner might, though.” Sigh.

Two slices sit in the fridge, awaiting someone to eat them. Is it a good recipe? Certainly! Would we make it again? Not unless an army of egg-lovers were to come by, needing dessert!

Be sure to check out the other daring bakers and their pies – there are over 100 of us doing this now, so that’s quite a few experiences with this same recipe, in case you needed to know that it’s been thoroughly tested! This month’s host is Jen, from Canadian Baker. At some point she’ll post the recipe up for all to see.

Mango Soufflé / Custard

by David T. Macknet

January 20, 2008

8:47 pm

12 Comments on Mango Soufflé / Custard

Baking, Food, Recipe

This one could be said to be a bit on the exotic side, drawing, as it does, from any number of cultures, but actually the recipe just came out of thinking, “what would go well with this?” We had two mangoes, you see, which had been sitting around, glaring at us … and, well, they “needed eating up.”*

Mango Soufflé / Custard

2 mangoes

1 block silken tofu

3 Tbsp coconut cream

1 Vanilla bean

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

1 Lemon zest

1 Lemon juice

2 Tbsp Rose water

3 Tbsp tapioca starch

1/4 cup sugar (to taste)

Blend everything except sugar and tapioca starch.

Taste it. Add sugar if it needs it; omit if it doesn’t.

Blend tapioca starch into mixture.

Pour into ramekins.

Bake at 350°F / 175°C for 25 minutes or until center is just set.

The entertaining thing about “until center is just set” with this particular dish is that … well, it’s not gonna set, probably until you pull it from the oven and let it sit for a while. What it’s going to do, unless you had the sense to put these in a water bath, is to turn bubbly around the edges & form a skin on top. Now, for us, this isn’t a problem. For you? Well, solve it by starting out with a water bath, or finish it by maybe putting on a sprinkling of sugar & caramelizing it with a torch.

Flavorwise, the reason to hold the sugar & the tapioca starch is to see how sweet it’s going to be. We didn’t want to overwhelm the flavor by making it too sweet, so by holding the sugar & starch, you can taste it & get a good idea of the sweetness of your fruit. If you put the starch in sooner, then you’re going to have a sample with a rather chalky taste … which isn’t terribly bad, but isn’t as easy to determine flavor as it could be.

This is also a very forgiving dish because of one thing: it doesn’t use eggs. You can’t overcoagulate the proteins in this because … well, they’re pre-coagulated in the form of silken tofu. The binder here is the tapioca starch, which holds up to heat very well. So, if you feel like it, cook it as long as you want, or as little as you want – it’ll only gel so far, and that all depends on the amount of starch you added. If you want it to be firmer, then you’ll have to do up another batch. If you experiment with using cornstarch (or corn flour as it’s called here), let us know how it turned out.

* Full quote: “She’d announce at lunch, ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favor.” Terry Pratchett, Thud, p 287

Angry (with) Leeks

by David T. Macknet

January 20, 2008

1:38 pm

5 Comments on Angry (with) Leeks

Food, Miscellany

So, we’ve been dutifully plowing our way through the never-ending supply of root vegetables brought to us by our local box scheme. We’ve not known what to do with some of the things – such as parsnips & swedes – but other, more familiar things have been just as shocking. Take, for example, the leek. Now, in the US, we think of leeks as rather bland, sort of onion-like vegetables, and there aren’t too many recipes that centrally feature them — they’re good in soups or roasted with other vegetables in gratins and such. The few times we’d buy them, they’d generally be disappointing, as they were just rather crunchy and fairly flavorless. Well, the UK must have some radically different soil! Leeks over here are … well, angry. We now understand that the Welsh may have had something going when they chose their rebellious national symbol.

The box scheme has been giving us leeks, and we’ve been eating them – in casseroles, on pizza, and finally as a leek soup, to get rid of all of those which hadn’t made it out of the fridge fast enough. We decided, after a few leek salads, that we needed to cook the things, ’cause they were very persistent, sticking with our digestive system for hours, if not days. Well, in all of this, we’ve also found out that leeks have a darker side: they are quite high in oxalic acid.

For those of you who are prone to forming kidney stones, or who have certain enzymatic deficiencies (like this one), oxalic acid is not your friend. In fact, oxalate has had us going crazy, going to the doctor to try to figure out why T’s anemia has returned, leaving her with no energy, and joint pain. We’ve been looking into all manner of our food choices, trying to track down whether we’re getting different additives, when all the while it’s been …the leeks. Sigh. Angry leeks, indeed.

Swede Fries

by David T. Macknet

January 20, 2008

11:53 am

6 Comments on Swede Fries

Food, Recipe

This isn’t much in the way of a recipe, but more along the lines of a procedure. This would be “what to do” when you end up with something called a swede, otherwise known as a rutabaga, in your house. For some odd reason, these seem to be popular here in the land of root vegetables. We can’t determine why, as they take forever to prepare, and are an absolute hazard to try to cook.

We’ve been told to mash them – with parsnips and potatoes, of course – but … well, we’ve found that the flavor of parsnips is all-pervasive, as is the flavor of the swede. So, we thought we’d see if we could improve them by turning them into ‘chips’ or ‘French fries.’ Thus begins the saga.

First off, peel the thing. Then, when you’ve gotten it peeled down to where it looks kinda greenish: peel it again. The idea is to remove the whole outer skin, not just the bit which contacted the soil. You’ll know when you’ve gotten through, because you’ll start to see that distinctive orangish hue that says ‘swede.’ Now – here’s the tricky part. Get out your 5-pound rubber kitchen mallet. Wait – what? You don’t have a sledge hammer just for your kitchen? Well, get one. We’ll wait.

Take your largest chef’s knife (or, you know, a cleaver if you have one handy), and place it along the swede. Now – carefully – whack it with the sledge hammer. You’ll have to really pound it – not as much as you would, say, with a Kabocha squash, which is why we bought the sledge in the first place, but fairly hard. Once you’ve cleaved the thing in half, you can revert to normal methods, if you have to – but you could keep using the sledge to drive the knife through the tough flesh.

Slice the thing into something about the width of your little finger, then slice again to give yourself something resembling the shape you’d like to eat as a crisp / fry. Now – boil the things in water for 1 to 2 hours. Yep – boil them. Don’t boil them until they’re limp, but until they don’t have much snap left to them. After that, douse them in cold water to stop the cooking process, and dry them. You’re now ready to portion them out to be frozen and/or seasoned & baked.

We now have about 3/4 of the swede in the freezer, all prepped and ready to spring on anybody who comes to visit. Because, really, the swede just isn’t an easy-prep vegetable!

It’s about YEAST!

by David T. Macknet

January 4, 2008

2:15 pm

6 Comments on It’s about YEAST!

Baking

OK, I’ve been absent a bit from the blog, what with all of the holidays & with essays to write & all manner of things. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that I haven’t been baking, though! As a matter of fact, I finally figured out what’s been going wrong with baking bread in the UK: YEAST! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not about the flour or the water, but about the yeast. I finally finished off my Scotland-purchased yeast and broke into my stash of yeast shipped from California … and my bread turned out right!

I could tell, from smelling the yeast proofing, that it was going to be a good set of loaves. They were just plain old bread (well, OK, they had oat bran & flax seeds in them, but that’s “plain” for us), but they turned out marvelously! They went through multiple rises just fine, with the yeast having enough guts to actually go through a second rise, and they turned out bread that we oooh’d and aaaah’d over, immediately recognizing as “bread” rather than … well, something so not bread as to be something we’ll never do again. They kneaded well, they formed gluten fairly quickly, and they were … well, right.

Hear this, friends from the States: admission to this flat will henceforth be 1 industrial-sized ‘brick’ of Red Star Yeast. We don’t care if the customs people look at you like you’re crazy: tell them you’ve crazy friends on the other side.

Because it’s not about the flour or the water, but about having good yeast!

All is Quiet on New Year’s Day…

by David T. Macknet

January 1, 2008

12:56 pm

3 Comments on All is Quiet on New Year’s Day…

Recipe

Psst. Are you awake?

Glasgow is not open for business. Unlike New Year’s Day in California, today is a bank holiday in Scotland, a stay – in – and – shut – the – blinds day of quiet. At 9:30 we counted four cars on the bridge getting onto the freeway. Four. And here we thought this was a city that never slept.

Since our revels ended earlier (we felt overdosed on indulgence a bit sooner than others this year), we’re in an inventive frame of mind. A brick of Blue Dragon tofu whipped in a small food processor in the process of making a healthy soup sparked the idea for a lower fat version of pots de creme… (More dessert ideas already!? DANGER, DANGER thighs and gut!) But while we’re still on the straight and narrow — it’s ONLY the first day of the year, after all, a bit soon to throw the penitent eating schedule out of the window just yet (we’ll wait ’til February!), we’ll subdue our urges with this tasty Asian “Chicken” Salad. There’s nothing like a vinaigrette of ginger and chilies to wake up the taste buds, and combined with sobe noddles, shredded red cabbage and carrots, this is a tasty and very filling meal, and it only has a few calories. A few chopped peanuts give it a more Thai character, and add more protein.

We *would have* added bean sprouts, but we can only get them from the Farm, which has them infrequently. Area supermarkets only have canned bean sprouts. Those of you in California, you may now get up from the floor. I know — it’s horrifying, but we will survive. After all, bean sprouts are only sprouted… beans. A jar, a wet paper towel and some mung beans, and we’ll be fine.

But still: CANNED bean sprouts. In salted water no less. Wonder what they’re used for?

West Coast bloggers are taking advantage of post-holiday sales and stocking up on the goodies of the season: squashes and sweet potatoes and cranberries. We, sadly, aren’t able to do that; imported items are available for a limited time, then disappear. So, though we squirreled away a pound of cranberries in November, they’re all gone now, with the last of our sauce eaten. Boo!

There is hope — dried cranberries abound in the market, and we’ve found that a tasty sauce is still available using those. The recipe below does not include sugar, since if you use dried fruit may not need to add more, as very few stores carry unsweetened dried cranberries. Some people add from a quarter cup to a full cup of light brown sugar, but you’ll have to fiddle with this to your own taste; we prefer a more citrus, puckery-sweet cranberry sauce, and usually add no additional sweetening at all.

This recipe is based on one from Gourmet magazine, and has been fiddled with, by using ideas from another recipe in Epicurean, as well as our own ideas — we’re sure you’ll fiddle with it yourselves, too. It reportedly goes well on chicken or Quorn fillets; friends report that it’s tasty on pork or quail as well.

Dried Cranberry Orange Relish

1 tablespoon cornstarch (or corn flour, for those in the UK)

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup cranberry juice (try to get pure cranberry juice, or at least a juice sweetened cranberry juice blend)

1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 cup dried cranberries

A pinch of salt

Optional: a cinnamon stick, to be discarded before serving

Optional: 1 orange, rind chopped finely, and roughly chopped, de-seeded sections

Optional: 1/8 teaspoon dried tarragon, crumbled

Optional: 2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley leaves, plus sprigs for garnish

In a small saucepan whisk together the juices and the cornstarch and add the wine and the rind, whisking until the mixture is smooth. Add the vinegar, the cranberries, the orange sections, the cinnamon and salt to taste and simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. The sweetened sauce can be served cool, and will gel slightly.

Note: For a more savory sauce, replace the orange juice with stock, and stir in the tarragon about ten minutes in to the simmering process. Add the minced parsley and simmer the sauce for 1 minute more before removing from heat. Serve the sauce warm, garnished with the parsley sprigs.

The addition of ginger to this sauce will also wake up your tastebuds and maybe settle your stomach as well! Happy culinary adventures this year! Best of all flavors, textures and tastes to you, fellow gardeners, knitters, cooks, Daring Bakers and food bloggers!

Christmas Teacakes

by David T. Macknet

December 19, 2007

1:02 pm

2 Comments on Christmas Teacakes

Baking, Food, Recipe

OK, really quickly, here’re two recipes. The first is standard ginger teacakes, the second is a parsnip version of those same teacakes. Yes – parsnip cookies. When you live in the UK, and you’ve subscribed to an organic vegetable cooperative, you end up with these things … in bulk! What the heck do you do with parsnips?! Particularly if you’ve only ever seen them once before! Well, cookies, of course!

Ginger Teacakes

Flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground Cinnamon

1 Tbsp ground Ginger

1/4 tsp ground Cloves

1 small “arm” Star Anise (optional)

1 Cup brown sugar

1/2 cup apple sauce

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup molasses

1/2 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

1/4 cup flax seeds, ground (linseeds)

Granulated sugar, for rolling

Combine everything except for the flour (well, and also leave out the granulated sugar that’s for rolling, of course).

Gradually work in enough flour to make a very stiff dough. We used strong, wholemeal flour, but you could wimp out and use something light-colored.

Form into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar, and place upon parchment paper, with about 1.5 inches in between each cookie.

Bake at 300F / 150C for around 12 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before removing from parchment.

So, that’s the Gingerbread version. They turned out wonderfully, all light & fluffy inside. We used whole, dessicated ginger for our powder (you can find them at SFHerb.com, item # 87 or 687). This kind of ginger is much better than just plain old ginger powder, as it’s much hotter & more potent. We made two batches, one with the Star Anise & one without (because some of us don’t like the flavor it takes over the flavor of the cookies, and pretty soon it’s like you didn’t have any other spices in there). One note: be sure to use a mildly flavored honey, as somehow the flavor comes through (yes – experience speaking, here – we tried to use up some really strong honey, and can taste it in the end product).

Parsnip Teacakes

4 cups steamed parsnips (without the bitter core)

Guts of 1 Vanilla Bean

1/4 of a nutmeg nut, microplaned

3 Tbsp coriander seeds, ground & sifted

Zest of 1 lemon

3/4 cup flax Seed, ground (linseeds)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup xylitol (can substitute granulated sugar)

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup agave nectar (can substitute honey or corn syrup)

1/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp baking powder

5 cups flour

Mix everything except the flour and baking powder.

Let stand for 15 minutes, to allow the flax seeds to hydrate.

Mix in baking powder.

Mix in most of your flour, reserving some in case you don’t need it.

Once you’ve got a really arm-breakingly stiff dough, let rest for 5 minutes or so, to let the flour hydrate & let the dough relax.

Form into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar, and place upon parchment paper, with about 1.5 inches in between each cookie.

Bake at 300F / 150C for around 12 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before removing from parchment.

These could’ve been a bread, maybe, except that they’re way too tender for that. We concluded that they might have wanted to be muffins, really, because they are so incredibly tender. We’ll have to see what happens when they finish settling, but we’re certain that they won’t turn out to be “snaps” by any means, since they have the different sugars in them to keep them tender, and the honey to pull moisture from the air (fun stuff, food science).

They could have taken way more spices than we added, because the flavor of parsnips really overwhelms anything we threw at them. They could have used maybe the zest of 4 lemons instead of just 1, and, strangely enough, they smell & taste like they really would pair well with coconut – so the next try at these will probably involve the use of coconut milk powder (again, found at SFHerb.com, item 251).

The parsnip teacakes are heading off to our neighbors and our local health-care professionals (the ladies at the pharmacy and the doctor & nurse at our local surgery). There’s really no way we can leave these sitting about in our house, lest we eat them all up (as happened to the first batch of ginger teacakes).

Now, what could we make out of these silly swedes…?

Glasgow:
NY:
Grinnell:
Roswell:
Berkeley: