Tag Archives: Gluten-free

Home-made Miso Tasting.

July 18, 2015 Munchkin

Hello there every-one!! Hope you are having a good day. Today, I have two miso tastings from the time when we “were mad about the beans” and made buckets and buckets of home-made miso.

The Shiro Miso: has a higher proportion of white rice to bean (we used blackbeans instead of soya beans since we live in Belize). We have actually been eating through our supply for the last month or so and I was afraid that I would munch my way through it all without doing some proper feed-back.

Shiro Miso Tasting:

Gnome says: overall, it is a light fermentation product; will continue to build complexity with aging. Less salty, sweet and mild tasting.

Munchkin says: I have used the shiro miso in soups, marinating of meat and to flavour pot roasts. All flavour packets have been replaced with a dollop of shiro miso (in fact, we have ramen noodles with this miso). It is so mild tasting, you need a whole tablespoon in a bowl of miso soup.

Hatcho Miso with Beef Jerky: Miso made from bean (blackbean) koji alone. We also added beef jerky and black pepper to make it into “Meat Lover’s” Miso.

Meat Lover's Hatcho Miso. — Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.

Meat Lover’s Miso Tasting:

Gnome says: Obviously needs more time to develop but at this stage, still very, very tasty. Has strong mushroom overtones with meat undertones. Can do with more black pepper. Will certainly reach an exquisite taste and will peak in ten years or so. A true masterpiece that has to be waited for.

Munchkin says: Beefy!! Let’s start eating it!! Yum. So rich and creamy. This miso has such intensity of taste, you only need one teaspoon to make a bowl of miso soup.

There is nothing like home-made miso…you can’t buy it for love nor money!!

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Belize, Farming, Food

Curried Ripe Jackfruit with Lentils

July 14, 2015 Munchkin

Remember a couple of weeks ago we had the big baby?

And I had explicitly mentioned that all parts could be eaten…even the unformed arils:

Well, here is a recipe for this part of the jackfruit, which is usually discarded. I recommend that you do not eat this part raw because it still has some sticky latex attached to it. The best thing to do is to cook it and so this is a yummy recipe for Curried Ripe Jackfruit.

The ripe jackfruit caramelises nicely to compliment the mustard seeds, cumin, tumeric and paprika. Fresh curry leaves are used to enhance the flavour of the whole “sweet and savoury dish.”

We both enjoyed the curried jackfruit with lentils and agreed that NO part of the jackfruit should be thrown away!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Cooking with Cashew Fruit.

June 21, 2015 Munchkin

I have discovered the wonders of cooking cashew fruit and Ioving it! I have managed to get most of the tannic properties out of the fruit by peeling them. At first, I thought that I would peel them llike tomatoes (boil them, take them off the heat quickly and then peel) but when I actually got down to peeling the raw fruit, it wasn’t that difficult. So, here is a picture of the peeled fruit:

Here is a picture of the chopped fruit:

For all you vegetarians out there, this fruit has the texture of chicken breast so you could use the following recipe but omit the sausage. It has a good enough texture to give a satisfying bite.

My recipe is: Pork Sausage and Cashew Fruit Casserole.

I used some curry leaf in the recipe. The Curry plant actually grows very well here in Belize:

We were both very pleased with the cooked cashew fruit! The only problem is that that every single fruit is getting gobbled up by the paca (gibnut) community and as soon as one drops from the tree, it disappears. Gnome says that this is fair exchange for eating two gibnuts a year.

Belize, Farming, Food

Baked Wax Apples Stuffed with Chilli Beef.

June 16, 2015 Munchkin 2 Comments

We have so many wax apples on our farm this year…we have even been giving them away to our piggies.

We have been eating a lot of them raw. Because they have the crispy texture of an apple, I thought that they would do well baked. And, then I thought of chilli beef and hey presto, I came up with this recipe: Wax Apples Stuffed with Chilli Beef.

To stuff the wax apples, you just need to cut a wedge into the bottom. Like so:

Stuffed wax apples:

I slow-baked the stuffed wax apples with onions so that the onions could form a nice gravy.

We ate it with a side of green vegetables:

We really enjoyed this dish and this is also a great way of cooking other fruits in the Syzygium family, notably the Malay (Molly) Apple.

Enjoy your evening!! It has been raining all day.

Belize, Food, Plants

Glazed Cashew Fruit and Ham with Basmati Rice.

June 13, 2015 Munchkin

We have discovered the wonders of cooked cashew fruit because they absorb flavours really well and they have the texture of chicken breast. Cashew fruit can be eaten raw but tends to have tannins in them which stops you from eating too much of them. Cooking this fruit in sugar helps to off-set the tannin taste.

We had some left over roast ham so I came up with this recipe: Glazed Cashew Fruit and Ham with Basmati Rice.

After eating this, we both agreed that the cashew fruit was worth eating. In previous years, we have just let this fruit drop to the ground and rot…what a waste! The only problem is that there seems to be a health community of pacas (gibnuts) feasting on the fruit as soon as they drop to the ground. This means that we have to get up at the crack of dawn to collect the fruit before all the critters (including doggie) get them!!

Belize, Food

Mamey Sapote Beef Burgers.

June 5, 2015 Munchkin

It is mamey sapote season in Belize.

A ripe mamey sapote is soft to the touch when you press hard with thumb and fore-finger. Cut around the shell lengthwise (like an avocado) to obtain the two halves of the fruit with a central large seed. Remove the seed and spoon out the pulp to eat. The flesh should come off easily in a ripe fruit. You can eat this fruit out of hand or you can transform it into a savoury burger meal:

This is a unique and tasty way of eating this tropical fruit. Mamey sapote has a reddish-brown, smooth and creamy flesh with a sweet flavour reminiscent of caramelised brown sugar. This marries very well with beef giving a caramel velvetiness to the ubiquitous burger.

Check out the recipe for Mamey Sapote Beef Burgers in Belize Wild Recipes!

Belize, Farming, Food

Miso Pumpkin Bake.

June 4, 2015 Munchkin

It has been two months since we made our Good Friday Shiro Miso; so, I reckoned it was time to try it out!

Shiro miso contains a higher white rice to bean ratio, therefore it can ferment faster and be ready to eat in 2 months. Compare this to hatcho miso which is only made of fermented beans which takes at least 12 months to mature.

I also had a huge pumpkin (14lbs/7kg) in weight, just waiting to be eaten:

So, this is what I came up with; Miso, Pumpkin and Onion Bake:

After eating this, we both agreed that the miso was ready to eat…it gave a unique umami savoury taste to the dish. What a treat and the miso and pumpkin are fresh from our farm!

Belize, Food

Brown Rice, Pineapple and Ginger Casserole.

May 15, 2015 Munchkin

I am writing early today because it is thundery and blustery outside and I don’t know how long the Internet will hold up today (touch wood). Today I am posting a recipe for a warming and exotic vegetarian dish made with fresh pineapple and ginger.

This slow cook casserole allows the spiciness of the ginger to complement the sweet taste of the pineapple and the brown rice absorbs all the flavours really well. A dish recommended for stormy days like this one…feels like the Flood Flies might be coming out tonight!

Check out my recipe Brown Rice, Pineapple and Ginger Casserole in Belize Wild Recipes.

Belize, Food

Pork and Cassava Hotpot (Not Lancashire).

May 2, 2015 Munchkin

Today, it has been raining all day non-stop. It is a cool 28 C (or 82 F) so I am still continuing along the theme of hotpots. If you haven’t read the last post, Gnome had asked me to cook a Lancashire Hotpot for him. Those people who are not familiar with this dish, it is a meal made with lamb (sometimes beef), onions and carrots with a layer of sliced potatoes on top. This traditional stew is cooked slowly in the oven at a low heat to make the meat and vegetables tender and succulent.

Well, anyway, the running joke is that I keep on intending to cook a Lancashire Hotpot but instead of using the traditional ingredients, I substitute alternatives so that the resulting dish isn’t really Lancashire.

So, the Pork and Cassava Hotpot was another attempt at being Lancashire…honestly!! This time, there are carrots included and I had to use pork because I could not find beef or lamb! Also, I can’t bring myself to buy potatoes when I have a huge plethora of exotic roots on the farm. The cassava does make a lovely hotpot; it is warming and comforting and is great for these cooler spells in Belize.

I have to admit though, that I am a bit of a rebel cook at heart and I love to tweek and change recipes. Only once in my life, I actually made a serious whole-hearted attempt to follow a recipe to the letter. This was for Duck a l’orange and it took three days to prepare…it was excellent! It was solely tempted to change it to Duck a le pampelmousse but made a deliberate effort to follow instructions!

Have a good day everyone…may we all revel in being rebel cooks!

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Fermentation, Food, Pets, Saving Money

Tuesday Night Storm, Internet Down and Pineapple Melomel.

April 30, 2015 Munchkin

Hello There!! I will try to catch-up with this post and bring you up to date. On Tuesday night we had a scary, gusty storm that resulted in a power-cut for most of the night and of course, the Internet went down with it. The storm has brought cooler weather with grey clouds and it even rained heavily this morning. The Internet started up again today…yay…it is so insidious how we feel that “we need Internet” and life just isn’t the same without it. When I down-loaded my bunch of late emails, they weren’t all that exciting and most of them were spam, anyway!

Well, since it was a Rainy Day, we made Pineapple Melomel (mead with fruit). Yesterday, I had bought 20 ripe pineapples from the market for BZD 30.00 (USD 15.00) in an attempt to excite Gnome into making some more booze (nice, sparkling, champagne-like stuff) for me. After I got the pineapples loaded onto the truck, he gave me a whiny look and said that he was hoping that I had bought the plantains instead of the pineapples. That remark got him a “Chinese Woman Look” and stopped the complaints quick smart.

This is what we did.

We removed the heads and scrubbed them in the sink:

I then started chopping up the pineapples. Whilst I was doing this, I kindly asked Gnome to take some pictures of this process. All the pictures were soooo baaaad!! They were out of focus and made my hands look stumpy and small…or, are they really like that? I had to re-take some photos:

Chopping Pineapples...Look No Hands!! — Chopping Pineapples…Look No Hands!!

Gnome put the pineapple chunks through the juicer to get the juice and the pulp:

We ended up processing 10 pineapples in all because it was actually a lot of work and the juicer was over-heating and complaining with the work-load. So, we managed to get about 6 litres (1 and 1/2 gallons) of juice from it all.

We got an extra 2 litres (2 quarts) of juice from the squeezing of the pulp:

We waste nothing!! We gave this and some pineapple peel to the duckies this morning. It was a Pineapple Feast…look closely at silly white duck…he even has a bit of pineapple stuck to his head.

We have noticed that our duckies are totally neophobic with food unless it is yellow in colour. So, I was received by joyful and frenzied quackings today when I brought out the basin of pineapple waste.

While I was out playing with the duckies, Gnome proceeded with the making of his pineapple melomel; honey and fresh Toledo rainwater (very fresh!) was added to make the batch up to 5 gallons. Gnome will be posting up the recipe in Bored-in-Belize over the next few days.

Heating Melomel:

Yes, I know…it all looks very yellow (just like all the other pictures) but believe me, this will taste great! Tomorrow, we will be processing the rest of the pineapples and adding honey and fresh ginger. In the words of Gnome, “Make it a Metheglin.”

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Tag Archives: Gluten-free

Home-made Miso Tasting.

Curried Ripe Jackfruit with Lentils

Cooking with Cashew Fruit.

Baked Wax Apples Stuffed with Chilli Beef.

Glazed Cashew Fruit and Ham with Basmati Rice.

Mamey Sapote Beef Burgers.

Miso Pumpkin Bake.

Brown Rice, Pineapple and Ginger Casserole.

Pork and Cassava Hotpot (Not Lancashire).

Tuesday Night Storm, Internet Down and Pineapple Melomel.

Everything Handmade in Belize.