Beer Bread

I made beer bread. I’m really proud and I tell everyone, like it’s some kind of mighty accomplishment, but in truth it’s actually an embarrassingly simple task. I made 4 loaves in three days. I even made a fruit loaf. The recipe was word-of-mouth from a friend. The bread toasts really well and has a bread-like consistency ( I was worried it would turn out more like a cake, enhanced by my use of a cake-tin…)

I have recently been taught how to brew my own beer, we have piles of crates full of long necks in the bathroom and there’s always a container of beer bubbling away whenever you enter the room to shower/brush your teeth. I could make beer bread every day.

One of the women I am living with (the only woman I am living with since the other remains missing…) is celiac so my next task is to use gluten-free flour and source out gluten-free beer to make a Liz-friendly version.

Combine 3 cups of self-raising flour + 3 tablespoons of sugar + 350ml (…or so…) of beer, mix thoroughly and bake for about an hour- until you can insert a skewer and remove it clean.

I added some linseed into the mixture and sprinkled poppy seeds on top prior to baking. I added sultanas, walnuts, pecans and dried apricot pieces to make a fruit loaf.

Zucchini Kill

Last night (at Barricade Books for Lebenden Toten and Straightjacket Nation), Lena and I discovered we make an identical zucchini pasta sauce. The only difference is, with her boyfriend Alex, she’s come up with a name for the dish- Zucchini Kill.

Every summer, we have an abundance of zucchini growing in the garden- and every summer, we get really fucking sick of eating zucchini: zucchini muffins, zucchini bread, zucchini soup, zucchini pasta, zucchini salad, etc. This summer is no different, except that my parents are away and I’m left to tend the zucchini plant alone. Thursday morning I found 2 large zucchini’s whilst raiding the garden for spinach- and so decided to make a zucchini pasta sauce for dinner that night.

Zucchini’s grow attached to a large yellow flower, a flower which is edible, a flower which I had previously ignored. I thought I ought to experiment and, upon “googling” zucchini flower recipes, I discovered they are commonly covered in a batter before deep frying. Most of the batters I found included egg in the mixture, so I made a simple vegan one and it worked very well. Fried zucchini flowers are AMAZING.

Fried Zucchini Flowers

Ingredients:
- Zucchini flowers (thoroughly washed with stamen removed)

- Soy milk

- Flour
- Salt
- Pepper
- Nutritional yeast
- Spices (Optional)

Method:
This is easy. Wash flowers thoroughly prior to use, as bugs are often found hiding in the petals. Remove the stamen with a knife. You basically just dip the flowers in soy milk and roll them in the flour mixture, before dropping them in the fry pan with quite a bit of olive oil. Fry until golden and then let sit on a paper towel to drain the oil. Eat while warm.

Zucchini Kill Pasta Sauce

Ingredients:
- Zucchini, grated (1 medium-size zucchini per person, or less, if you’re not sauce > pasta ratio obsessed)
- Fresh chilli, finely chopped
- Garlic, finely chopped
- Basil or mint or both (Only a few leaves)
- Pine nuts, blanched or slivered amonds, walnuts, any nuts (Optional but great)
- Olive oil

Method:
1. Chop nuts into smaller pieces before roasting in a dry fry pan until slightly brown and then put aside to later add to the sauce.
2. Put garlic, zucchini, chilli, basil and mint in the fry pan with olive oil. Add the nuts once content with the zucchini- you won’t need to cook it for long, just until it heats through and softens a bit.

Serve warm on top of pasta. Nutritional yeast always goes down a treat.

P.S. I promise I don’t only cook spaghetti with a green sauce.

Spaghetti w/ Rocket & Mint Pesto

Today I had a premenstrual food craving of pesto with spaghetti. There was no basil sitting in the crisper and the plants growing in the garden are too small to pick the leaves from, but I found a bag of rocket becoming soggy in the fridge, so I decided to create a rocket-based pesto. I’d used rocket in a pesto sauce before, to fill-out a lacking amount of basil, and it worked really well, so I decided to use rocket as the base this time- with some mint from the enormous bush growing outside the kitchen window. It tasted amazing and my sister agreed, so this isn’t just my “weird vegan taste buds” talking.

Vegan Rocket And Mint Pesto Sauce

Ingredients:
- Rocket leaves (many)
- Mint (only a few leaves, the taste can be very overwhelming)
- Pine nuts
- Walnuts
- Blanched or slivered almonds
- Sunflower kernels
- Garlic
- Nutritional yeast
- Olive oil
- Salt

Tools:
- Food processor (not smoothie blender, for the Cale’s out there)
- Saucepan
- Fry pan

Method:
1. Blanch rocket (bring water in saucepan to boil, add the rocket for one minute before transferring it to a bowl of cold water, allow to cool before draining)
2. In a fry pan, toast the nuts until slightly golden. You may want to chop the walnuts and almonds up a bit to get an even toasting.
3. Put all nuts and seeds in food processor and blend until they are moderately chopped
4. Add rocket to food processor along with nutritional yeast, mint, garlic, salt and pour olive oil into the feed tube while blending

Blend until all ingredients are finely chopped up, but before it becomes a smooth paste, the rough texture is what makes pesto so good. The amount and variety of nuts tend to make a thicker sauce than usual.

Serve pesto cold on top of warm pasta.