Hello Everyone!! I am attempting to manage Gnome in the house since his sinus problem seems to get worse every time he does some heavy work outside. I have ordered him to make Rice Koji which takes 4 days in total; I am hoping to preoccupy him with miso making. After all, he metered out a measly 9oz (270g) of home-made miso which we promptly finished in 48 hours and now, I have made him bring the whole gallon jar to the kitchen so I can feel comforted by the presence of a larger quantity. Anyway, if you have read the previous blog, Gnome will have already explained that he has been bestowed the job of Miso Maker. I just need to be patient and ration out the gallon of precious miso.
We have been eating Miso Soup with Ora-Pro-Nobis.
Ora Pro Nobis Leaves.
About a week ago, I wrote about this plant Pereskia aculeata, also known as Barbados Gooseberry. I thought it very interesting because this is a popular vegetable in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais and outside of this place, it is not known or consumed. Well, the fact that I do not live in that state does not stop me from eating this vegetable!
I cooked it as a kombu (seaweed) substitute in miso soup and it worked a treat. It has a degree of succulence which makes it similar in texture to seaweed.
As a result of this wonderful discovery, we have decided to grow hedges and hedges of Ora-Pro-Nobis:
Pereskia aculeata. Flowers and Fruit.
What a lovely plant…you can eat the gooseberries too!
It is day three of the enforced ban on heavy work. Very bad headache yesterday (Tumulkin Day) but fortunately today there have been no problems…just a gnawing inner feeling that the brush really, really does need to be cleared since it is perfect dry season weather for it. Munchkin won’t budge and won’t even allow an elixir tasting to happen (The irony of life: when I want to sit around and do F-all, she can’t wait for me to work…when I’m dying to get off my butt and do something, I’m not allowed…).
So, I’ve permitted myself to be overwhelmed by Miso Madness: I just realized that the test gallon we made is only going to last 28 days!!! That means we have to make at least three pig-tail buckets a year in order to eat miso every day. The frenzy that this knowledge engendered inside my gnomish heart (the Munchkin’s too but she won’t admit it!) got us into town at 0800 on a non-town day to purchase 50 pounds of rice and 50 pounds of black beans…to find out that the Chinese wholesaler was still closed!! We ended up going to Quality Chicken instead and thankfully they were open…BZ$72.50 for 50 pounds of black beans and BZ$44.00 for 50 pounds of rice later, our happy humanoids were rushing home (BTW no diesel in town today)…
We’re going to start with some shinshu miso first and that means making rice koji. Time to wash some rice:
Washing all the dirt and starch from the rice (Can you see the gnome foot?).
Have to get all the starch off of the rice so it doesn’t get gummy and sticky at steaming time tomorrow when we enter day 2 of making rice koji…
Hello Everyone, hope you are all having a pleasant Sunday. Today was Maya Day in Toledo which represents a celebration of the Mayan Culture. It takes place once a year at Tu’mulkin (an agricultural high school) in Blue Creek.
The grand ceremonies opened with a Deer Dance:
Deer Dance.Close up of Costume.
There was lots of entertainment including a “corn shucking” competition on stage. There was lots of Mayan Foods involving different types of Kaldos (mainly chicken soup) and there was even some Creole influence with cowfoot soup.
We set up our stall with Copal Medicinal Soaps, Ointments and Oils:
Our Products.
Luckily, we got a school table for our display, Basically, all the school furniture was brought out to be used at the stalls so some people used school desks. It wasn’t a big deal really and it made the whole event more real and authentic. People traveled from surrounding villages on charted buses to get this event so it was definitely well attended.
What a perfect combination! We have been harvesting sweet potatoes on the farm; a combination of pinks, reds and whites and we have been grating and drying most of them; great time to sun-dry because it is so hot and dry in Belize right now.
Sweet Potatoes.
If you have read the last post, you will know that we now have our very own home-made miso, ready to eat. We are so pleased because it has such a great taste plus, I am sure it has gathered some of own house yeasts so with time, it will a Belizean strain miso! It is only 9 months and it tastes sooo good; it will definitely be worth making more. Gnome and I have already discussed the urgent procurement of many 5 gallon buckets.
So, here is my recipe of the day:
Miso and Sweet Potato Cakes.
The miso helps to round off the flavour, giving a unique floral fruitiness to the whole taste experience.
I’ve been banned from doing any real work today (using heavy machinery to clear brush) since I’ve been afflicted with horrible sinus headaches and a substantial load of snot and mucus (probably from smoking too many cigars…naughty, naughty!). I’ve tried to cooperate with my doctor’s prescription but being an obsessive compulsive git makes this sort of thing difficult…
Anyway, the results of my “light duties” include the following:
I finally managed to take a couple of shots of one of the toucans that come every morning around 0530-0600 and hang about on our Cotton Tree (Ceiba Tree) while we have our morning hot beverage. Check it out, I actually succeeded in taking not one but yes, two reasonable photographs!!
Toucan on the Ceiba Tree.See, I can take photographs!! Two in less than a minute. Eat your heart out!!
Getting excited about miso, koji and fermentation again. With the help of Munchkin, we took out our three jars of experimental miso and bucket of soy sauce for a quick look-see:
This is what real (commercial) miso looks like.This is our miso.
You can see that our miso needs another six months at least before getting that smooth even texture. Our miso was made with rice koji and the ubiquitous Belizean Red Kidney Bean. It is still young but has a lovely floral, fruitiness that imparts a wonderful umami-ness to food.
The next jar we tried was our Chocolate miso: Rice koji and cacao nibs. Definitely needs another year to do its thing. We’re hoping it will turn out like a vintage hacho miso.
Chocolate Nib Miso.
Noni miso is the next lot. I have to say this technically didn’t start off to be miso. It was an attempt to use rice koji to “malt” some rice to then ferment into a rice wine/beer; I didn’t like the way it was going though so, I mixed it all up with some noni fruit and seeds instead. Again, this would benefit from at least another year. Great umami-ness in this one as well that marries very well with the noni-ness. I predict that it will be a favourite.
Noni Miso.
Finally, the soy sauce…which doesn’t have any soy beans in it but rather black beans, fully fermented craboo (you can tell we are becoming Belizean), peach palm fruit and balam (and the necessary koji, of course). Yup, you guessed, needs another year and more frequent stirring. Came up with the idea to use a paint stirrer to really get everything agitated:
Paint stirrer to mix up the soy sauce.
And here is the bucket:
Non-soy sauce after paint stirring accomplished. You can see the orange bits of craboo and balam in it.
We really need that Mallard reaction (no ducks are to be harmed in the process, I promise!!) to start happening in order to be taken seriously as a real non-soy sauce.
Oh yes, I also wrote a post after a long hiatus from the keyboard.
Anybody out there want a photograph of what is coming out of my sinuses?!?!?Munchkin not happy with that last statement.
We had another Elixir Tasting at Cotton Tree Lodge last night. This time round, it was concentrated around individual flavours of Elixirs.
We started off with a Limecello…an elixir made from lime zest. This is a very interesting one to point out because I have noticed that in the last three tastings, somebody has consistently noted on its anise-like flavour. This is an amazing example of how a liqueur can capture and encapsulate such fine layers of taste and with time, the expressions of particular flavours become more accentuated to give such unpredictable and complex tastes so that the final result isn’t just one flavour. Wonderful!
And somebody always, in jest, compares the Lemongrass Elixir to a type of house-hold cleaner or “Pledge”. This time, Gnome shouted it out first so that no-one could get the chance!
Lemongrass Elixir.
The Lemongrass Elixir is always a winner with its unique spicy and citrus notes. If you are a beer drinker, one shot of this in beer gives it an extra twist…similar to a Shandy which is beer and lemonade. We like to call this concoction Atomic Shandy!
I brought out the sapodilla liqueur since this is the season for this fruit (you must realise that by now because I have taking about it for weeks) and passed pieces of the dry fruit around so that people could compare tastes. Everyone found the sapodilla liqueur warming with tastes of caramel and cinnamon…definitely a unique experience!
Dried Sapodiila Fruit.
We had a thoroughly enjoyable tasting with this group of ten. Two of the group were repeat attendees from two years ago and so it was a pleasure to have their company again. Everyone was very lively and engaging and we found the enthusiasm very inspiring. Thanks to all who participated!!
The days are becoming hotter and drier, with rains becoming fewer and far between. This is the time to harvest anything that you can get your hands on and dry it.
Sapodillas are still in season:
Sapodilla Fruit.
We have gathered quite a bit to sun-dry.
Dried Sapodilla Fruit.
When dried, they make a very good substitute for dates; they are intensely sweet and would be good for baking. Gnome will be making mead with dried sapodilla…watch this space!
We have also been drying orange peel:
Dried Orange Peel.
Dried orange peel can be added to savouries like stews, curries and soups to impart a warm, orange flavour. It can also be ground up and used in cakes and breads. It is extremely versatile and uses up something that you would normally throw away. I hate to waste anything, especially when it involves something edible! Look out for my recipes which use orange peel:
Sapodilla Curry with Venison.
You will find this recipe in Belize Wild Recipes; this one is an orange peel curry.
Okay everyone, start sun-drying all your fruits now!!
Everything is pretty peachy at Paradise Pastures presently. Last night, our first mother was admitted into the brand new maternity ward with cervical dilatation and contractions. Later on this afternoon, the proud first time mother gave birth to two beautiful female babes:
Baby Dehlia-Piggie. Oh, what a beauty!!Dehlia-Piggie Frolicking. Moving all four limbs!!Juanita-Piggie. Perfect Poise.
All Piggies are happy and making their happy noises; their hearts sing out to Mayor Gnome for providing the Maternity Ward.
The Susan B Anthony Maternity Wing.
The Susan B Anthony Maternity Ward comes fully equipped with water, biscuits (Cachorros) on tap, plenty of leafy greens, cabbage and a Midwife!! Mayor Gnome has certainly pulled out all the stops for this spacious facility.
This is a beautiful cactus, with spiny stems and fragrant smelling flowers. I propagated it originally from one single seed about two years ago and now it is producing globular, orange fruit which are edible.
Pereskia aculeata. Flowers and Fruit.
The fruit are acidic tasting like gooseberries and I imagine they would be good for jam making or fruit tarts.
Barbados Gooseberry Fruit.
I am really, really excited about this plant because I have just found out, on an Internet search that the green leaves can be cooked and eaten. Apparently, there is a particular place in Brazil where this vegetable is prized and it is called Ora-Pro-Nobis meaning “Pray For Us.”
Edible Greens!!
I can’t wait to try this as a vegetable. It has been growing crazy and out of control so it will be a good excuse to cut it back. I will definitely post a blog up about cooking with this new, exotic vegetable.
For those interested, this plant can be grown from seed or cutting and apparently, even from a fallen leaf.
This is Part II from yesterday when I spoke about how I cooked up 20lbs of venison meat. Twelve pounds of the meat was cooked up as Cantonese BBQ Venison (yesterday’s post) and the rest was made into a slow cook curry.
Slow Cook Venison Curry with Pumpkin.
The trick is to use plenty of onions to make up the base of the curry sauce (15 medium onions in this case) and to cook it in a slow cooker for 48 hours. After this time, the meat is sooo tender and falls off the bone and the curry sauce is so aromatic. The kitchen smells great!!
Lots of Onions with Other Fresh Ingredients.
I learned to cook curries when I was a medical student at university; many of my friends were second generation Indians (mostly Bengali) and they taught me how to make this wonderful dish. Besides, in Scotland, everyone eats curries…it’s the 2nd national dish after Fish and Chips!!
Hello Everyone!! I am attempting to manage Gnome in the house since his sinus problem seems to get worse every time he does some heavy work outside. I have ordered him to make Rice Koji which takes 4 days in total; I am hoping to preoccupy him with miso making. After all, he metered out a measly 9oz (270g) of home-made miso which we promptly finished in 48 hours and now, I have made him bring the whole gallon jar to the kitchen so I can feel comforted by the presence of a larger quantity. Anyway, if you have read the previous blog, Gnome will have already explained that he has been bestowed the job of Miso Maker. I just need to be patient and ration out the gallon of precious miso.
