Sourdough Carioca

Don’t you love Michael Pollan’s Netflix documentary series, “Cooked”?  A few nights ago I watched the episode about bread and it’s historical and cultural significance to humankind.  It inspired me to take my own bread-making one smug step further and create my own sourdough starter.  

I have never thought very much about the yeast I use, but apparently wild yeasts in the atmosphere create much more delicious, complex breads than those baked with the dried packets I normally use. 

I did some research online which left me totally confused, but the basic idea is to leave a loosely-covered jar containing an equal weight of water and flour on the kitchen counter to ferment.  Every 12 hours you have to dump out half the mixture and add some new flour and water ad infinitum until you have this magical bubbly starter.

I’m about 72 hours into my experiment and it’s provoked all sorts of questions.  For example, how much chlorine is in our water here in Rio?  I have been leaving out the tap water overnight so that the chlorine can evaporate (more than once my husband has poured it away – ever vigilant about not leaving standing water for the mosquitoes to lay their eggs in).  Also, what is the best quality flour I can get hold of in Rio?  I haven’t been able to find anything that says unbleached or stone-ground on the packet.  Most disturbingly, I have opened my eyes to the nature of all the invisible microbes that are floating around my house (or are in the water?). Something turned my first batch a shocking pink colour.

So far, my second batch isn’t looking too great…I’m beginning to think there is a reason that San Francisco sourdough is a thing, and Rio de Janeiro sourdough is not a thing…but I’m going to persevere and if I manage to make a successful starter I’ll post an update.

A pair of Toucans have taken up residence at the farm, where we spent new year.   Early morning they would be in the sweetest mango trees, calling to each other in their distinctive croaky voices.  There is a wire basket on a long bamboo cane that we use to scoop the fruits for ourselves but it's no less unwieldy than the Toucan's oversize beak and I'm sorry to say I sent good old and short-sighted Ze onto the roof to grab a bucket-load for my mango chutney before the birds got them all.

As far as the fruits of the garden, 2013 bodes well: The lychee tree, unlike some years, is in a generous mood.  Truly nothing better on a hot day than a tangled armful of knobbly pink fruits on the vine, fresh from the tree.  Peeling off the papery skin and then slurping at the slippery, sweet, fragrantly juicy flesh.  Best eaten outside, so you can throw the seeds and skins into the jungle, and then wash the stickiness away by plunging in the pool.  Tough life.

Papaya as always, limes too, and truck-loads of bananas of various girths, picked green before our hungry feathered friends got to them.  We stuffed all this fruit into our tiny car, the kids periodically yelping as huge displaced ants crawled over them.

Now we're back in Rio I have to figure out what to do with all the fruits before they rot and succumb to a whirling swarm of fruit flies!

Brazilian Oranges, British Marmalade

Oranges at the Feira

Brazil might be the world's largest orange producer but it sucks at marmalade!  You can't beat the taste of a bittersweet Seville orange preserve with chunks of rind on buttery bread, so I set about making my own this week.


Bitter oranges are not readily available here.  Instead the popular types are Laranja Lima, Laranja Bahia, Laranja Pera and Laranja Seleta.  


The Lima orange is the one that the guy in the market will call out for you to buy when he sees you have kids.  It is the least acidic, and is actually one of the first weaning foods that Brazilians feed their babies.  I find it pretty bland, which I suppose is the point.  


Laranja Bahia is a naval orange, the best type for eating - easy to peel, no seeds, and delicious.  It's not that juicy so not the choice for freshly squeezing.  


Laranja Pera and Laranja Seleta are the ones recommended for juices and cooking, including for jams.  The Seleta always seem to be much greener in colour than the others, it is a surprise when you discover they are actually ripe.


In the market this week they didn't have Lima da Persia, which is a kind of lime that looks like an orange and might make a good marmalade...I'll try that when I see it.  In the meantime I just got a sackload of Peras and threw in a lime for good measure...


MARMALADE LIKE HOME - RECIPE

• You need a sack of oranges - if you can get organic, that's great - a lime and equivalent weight of sugar
• Scrub the skins in warm water
• Boil the oranges in their skins for an hour and a half.  I forgot to do this, which means although my marmalade tastes divine, the pieces of rind are still a bit hard.
• Chop oranges into pieces, with the skin too, and throw in a pan with lime juice and equal weight of sugar
• It is the pectin in the peel that helps the marmalade set.  If you want a chunk-free marmalade you can just put the peel wrapped in a muslin bag and remove it at the end.  I won't judge you.
• Add lime juice and equal weight of sugar
• Dissolve sugar and let boil rapidly until it sets (do the wrinkle test by putting blog on saucer and cooling in fridge.  The surface should wrinkle when you push it)
• Put in sterilised glass jars

Perfect breakfast - home made marmalade on home made bread...

Passionfruit Jam

Passionfruit Jam

It befits the week of dia dos Namorados, Brazil's version of Valentines day, that I have fallen in love.  


Not with the lifeguard from the kids' swimming-class, nor their cute Capoeira teacher, but head over heals with the jam I finished making this evening from passionfruit.


This is only the third jam I've ever made, and by far the simplest and most scrumptious.  The amber jelly is a wonderful balance of tart and sweet, and the seeds, which I thought would annoy me, are little toasty nutty nuggets.


The passionfruit commonly found here in Rio is a large, yellow globe.  You want to choose heavy fruits with skins that have begun to crinkle.  I bought ten of them as yesterday's feira was coming winding down, when the vendors discount their wares.  Scrum.


PASSIONFRUIT JAM RECIPE

• You will need a load of passionfruit, their equivalent weight in sugar, a lime, and a collection of sterilised (boiled for 10 minutes) glass jars and lids. 

• Cut your passionfruit in half and scoop the gorgeous yellowy orange clots of fruit and seeds into a bowl.  

• Dispose of half of the skins, and soak the rest in water for 24 hours.

• After 24 hours, boil the skins for about 15 minutes.  Then fork them out of the water and use a knife to scrape the now-transluscent, water-logged, pectin-rich flesh from the harder yellow skin.

• Whizz the flesh in the blender with a little water until it's a rather bland, wall-paper-pastey pulp and put it, with the seeds, lime juice and the equal weight of sugar, in a big pan.  

• Let the jam boil briskly for 15 minutes by which time you can check to see if it's ready by doing the wrinkle test. (Put a spoonful of jam on a saucer and put it in the freezer to cool for a minute.  When  you push the blob with your finger, if it's ready you should see little wrinkles on the surface of the jam.)

• Ladle into your jars and marvel at your beautiful, delicious creation.

Welcome to my kitchen!

This is my kitchen.  Isn't it beautiful?  

It will be.  Soon.  Very soon.  

It bloody better be.  

I've spent a good part of the last year studying at the Google university of kitchen design.  Kitchen triangles?  Got them down.  The relative merits of one bowl over two bowl kitchen sinks?  I could write a dissertation on that.  The pros and cons of every conceivable countertop material? Bevelled or non-bevelled splash-back tiles?  Which shade of white for my kitchen units?  Fluorescent versus LED versus halogen lights?  Electric or gas appliances? 

The decisions that need to be made go on and on and on.  

The money that is being spent is dizzying.

My kitchen (and if the truth be told, the rest of the house too) has broken me.  

And when I'm broke, I bake my own bread.  

I don't know why, but when I bake my own bread I feel like everything is under control.  Just think of the money I could save baking my own bread and making my own jam.  A decent loaf of bread in Rio de Janeiro (which is hard to come by) costs over R$5, and jam R$15 at least.  Thats a few hundred Reais in just a few months if you eat as much of the stuff as we do.  A few hundred Reais spent on flour, water, fruit and sugar that could otherwise be spent on...a quarter of a kitchen tap?

OK, so making my own daily bread isn't going to get us out of the money squeeze while we renovate our new house, but it will make me feel better.  

Another thing contributing to my new found kitchen enthusiasm is that I have lately 'inherited' a whole new collection of interesting cookery books.  Those of you that know me from my old blog might remember the post about the crazy neighbour.  Shortly after that post, she was driven off in an ambulance in restraints, presumably to the loony-bin.  Well it turns out she was a hoarder...of cookery books of all unlikely things.  Every day she would go to bookstore Saraiva and buy a handful of foodie books.  Once home she never opened them, just added them to a growing pile. 

Last week a couple of guys were clearing the place out.  Literally thousands upon thousands of cookery books, many of which in English, were on our landing awaiting removal.  I was told to help myself, so I did.  Quite liberally in fact.   Possibly too liberally.  (note to friends and family - no cookery books for christmas please.  For at least ten years.)

I thought that it would be fun to share with you the evolution of my new kitchen,  the experience of cooking at home with Brazil's wonderful and varied ingredients and the exploration of my new cook's library.  

As I write, the first of many doughs is rising.  A fifty fifty whole wheat that I'm not too confident about.  Got to start somewhere.  Here we go...