Ethiopian cuisine...

Yay!!! At last I’ve stopped whinging about my health – I’ve even got my cooking mojo back – a definite sign I’m feeling better

A couple of weeks ago I bought a bag of Teff flour and rather than doing my usual trick with wierd and unusual flours of letting them sit at the back of the shelf glaring balefully at me until they’re past their sell-by dates, I’ve been using it. My first attempt was to make a teff pie crust for a quiche – very easy – I basically used this one, but with a different filling – and loved the idea of pastry that you just press into the dish – none of this rolling it out nonsense, that always ends up having to be pressed together anyway as no matter what I do it falls apart hideously when I try to lift it.

Then there was John’s birthday cake, which was based on this recipe, but it was John’s birthday cake, and he doesn’t like bananas, so I improvised with stewed, pureed dried apricots instead – which worked fine, but next time I’m going to use more of them.

Then today there was the Ethiopian cuisine. Teff is an Ethiopian staple – it is the smallest grain in the world – 150 seeds equal the weight of a single grain of wheat. But far more importantly, teff is naturally gluten-free. I decided to try making Injera, so on Wednesday I measured out 1.5 cups of teff, mixed it with 2 cups of water and left it sitting in the airing cupboard to ferment. Then today I had a look at it – and sniffed it (couldn’t really avoid the whole sniffing thing – it was fairly potent), and decided that I’d rather make injera today than leave it for another 24 hours to ferment any further. So I investigated ethiopian recipes, and decided to make injera, doro wat (spicy chicken with eggs) and alicha (vegetable stew).

Except that when I came to cook the injera I bottled out. I made the first one, and tasted it and it was… not good. I’ve read that it should have a sour taste, so maybe it was fine, but leaving stuff to ‘go off’ before cooking it makes me nervous, so I improvised on the spot.

Anne’s very inauthentic Injera recipe

1/2 cup Dove’s Farm brown bread mix
1/2 cup Dove’s Farm plain white flour
1/2 cup Teff
2-3 cups water
1/2 teasp xanthan gum
1/2 teasp baking powder (don’t know if this was really necessary, but it was to make up for not leaving it to ferment for 3 days)

Mix together – it should be like a thinnish pancake batter – mine was a bit thicker than I imagine is ideal, but they worked out fine.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan (8” ) and grease with a little oil. Pour in a ladle-ful of batter and swirl round to cover the bottom of the pan. Leave on a low-to-moderate heat until the top ‘looks cooked’ then flip and cook the other side. (This is not authentic, they should only be cooked on one side, but maybe because I’d used different flours as well I much preferred the taste when it was cooked on both sides.)

Leave to cool – keep them separated (I used cling film) to avoid sticking.

Anne’s just as inauthentic Doro Wat

Chicken thighs cut in pieces(one per person) – I used 2 between 2 adults and 2 children – I could have used more.
Lime
Chopped Onion
Butter (or ghee) – 2-3 tbs
4 cloves garlic
ground ginger
ground fenugreek
ground cardamom
ground nutmeg
Berbere spice powder (or just use cayenne pepper)
small squirt of tomato puree
1 cup water
hard boiled eggs (1 per person)

I haven’t given quantities for the spices as this is largely down to personal preference. Since none of us here are particularly fond of very hot spices I used about 1/4 teasp of most of them, and 1/2 teasp of cayenne.

Combaine the chicken pieces with lime juice and leave to marinate for approx 30 min.

Dry fry onion over a medium heat for a few min. Then add the ghee, spices and tomato puree. Stir and simmer for a few min (don’t brown the onion). Then add water, cook for another few min, then add chicken – simmer for 30-40 min. When chicken has been cooking for about 20 min, add hard-boiled eggs.

Alicha (Vegetable stew) the way I made it
2 med onions, chopped
garlic puree
6 new potatoes, scrubbed and diced
1 very large carrot (equivalent to about 3 ordinary ones)
Brussel sprout tops (I think these are probably fairly similar to collard greens)
ground nutmeg
ground cardamom
fresh parsley (chopped)
fresh basil (chopped)

(Theoretically this recipe should have about 6 chillis in it, but I simply used a little chilli oil – again, we’re not that keen on things being too hot.)

Briefly fry onions, add potato, carrot, cabbage, nutmeg and cardamom and approx 1 cup water. Cook for about 30 min. Then stir in fresh herbs.

You can read here how I should have served it all. I didn’t. I used plates, but no-one used any cutlery.

But I goofed big time. I may have thought “I should take a picture of this” as I was carrying it through to the dining room, but that was as far as it went.

I’ll have to make it again and remember about the camera next time…

Decadence...

Knitting with the pink merino that Liz bought me is like eating Montezuma’s chocolate while drinking champagne in a bubble bath while surrounded by a hundred candles… this stuff is pure luxury…

I don’t think I’ll be using the whole skein, which means that I’ll have a skein and a bit left over. It keeps nestling up to me confidingly and whispering that I should knit something for myself – but what?

Media Studies and other things...

It’s one of my pet peeves that too many people are media-illiterate – and that they can’t understand basic statistics. So it was refreshing to discover that when I found the headline for this article on Bloglines (“Half of schools must do better” ) that they weren’t bringing up the old one about ‘Shock, Horror, Half our Schools are Performing Below Average’ – because, well, yes, they would – that’s what the average is all about – it represents the middle of the data set, so of course half the data set is going to lie below it. (Yeah, yeah, I know – if the average you’re using is the median – it may be slightly different if you’re using the mean, or indeed the mode). But no, statistically this article is fine. The double speak is however quite incredible:

“Ofsted inspectors found 49% of secondaries [schools] were rated no better than “satisfactory”, which is no longer deemed good enough.”

Er… so ‘satisfactory’ now means ‘unsatisfactory’? Excellent!

Moving on…

You remember I had resurrected Swatch because I was avoiding knitting socks? (Where has that sock-knitting mojo gone? – I have buckets of the most delicious sock yarn marinating in my stash, and I just can’t be bothered.) Well now I’m knitting mittens to avoid knitting Swatch:

Handspun BFL – v slubby and lumpy, but being stranded (and yes, I am knitting these flat, and yes, that does mean stranding on the purl row, and in fact it’s fine) these will be WARM, which is the main thing I’m after. (That and fitting, but I’m in that stage where I still firmly believe they will fit, despite not really following any kind of sensible pattern… )

And now I know what I’m going to knit to avoid the mittens:

2×100g of 4ply from Touch Yarns. It’s meant to be a shawl for Ruth, but I may simply cuddle it. Liz enabled me when I was at a low ebb – thank you Liz – this is perfect. I’m off to browse Ravelry for a shawl pattern…

Itty Bitty Scarves...

I missed Tuesday’s knitting night (whinge, moan, laryngitis, chest infection, whinge moan), but read the KnitCambridge blog about this.

The other day I spun up the silk hankies I bought on holiday in N Wales. I’m not right good at handling such fine, sticky silk – my hands are much too rough – although just getting stuck in and doing it made me realise that it’s a much more forgiving activity than I’d thought. Anyway, I was left with a diddy little ball of scrumptious, but very slubby (designer, yummy slub of course) golden silk. I wanted to do something with it, so thought of the Ginger Essence scarves. Having checked the website, they define Christmas colours as red, green or gold.

So here are 5 itty bitty, golden, handspun, silk scarves, just waiting to be sent off:

Resurrection (and other stories)

A long long time ago I bought some Kauni Effectgarn with Christmas money (for those of you who can’t be bothered to follow the link it was Christmas 2005). Although I had other projects with higher priority I started “swatching” pretty much straight away. But then I had a WIP crisis, there were too many projects, too much startitis, not enough things being finished. (I know, I know, but it was getting to the point where it was making me unhappy – which is silly – knitting is for fun, not for stress.) So my “Swatch” was put to bed for a bit.

But now I’ve finished Kiri…

... and I want something else lacy to knit (because, you know – I’ve got socks to finish for my mother… ). So I’ve resurrected “Swatch”:

Hmm – I’ve fiddled with the image the best I could, but it’s never going to show up that well – and of course it’s unblocked lace doing its “I’m a pile of laundry” act. But it’s shooting stars/frost flowers in the middle, with the edging from the Field of Flowers Scarf from Heirloom Knitting. And it’s fun – although each row is still taking me an age – it’s a doddle if I concentrate, but that’s a big IF – especially since the purl rows are also lace (there’s a difference between knitted lace and lace knitting, or something like that, and one of them has straightforward purl rows, which is lovely and mindless, and the other has complicated counting stuff to do on both rows, but I can’t remember which is which, and just now can’t be doing with looking it up.)

The pic above shows my current favourite way of wearing Kiri. It’s warm and snuggly for sore hurty ears and a sore hurty neck and a sore hurty throat. (Come on, you didn’t really think I’d manage a whole blog post without whining did you?) This bug has really got me (maybe it’s cross because I’ve rumbled it’s plan for global domination?) – today was another day off sick – I mooched around the house for the morning and then when I picked the children up (at which point I discovered that in fact my voice isn’t better – I hadn’t really realised with spending the day on my own :-o) I took them to a Vital Communities event – this term they are doing portraiture – and it was wonderful. Everyone, children and parents alike, was given paper and a pencil, and we were talked through how to draw a face. Now I’m really not good at drawing, but I think these are recognisably supposed to be human:
(again, I’ve fiddled with these to try to increase the contrast, but that’s the best I can do).
And by the time I brought them home it was time to cook dinner, and they were happily ensconced in front of CBeebies, and I didn’t have the 2 1/2 hours of trying to keep them entertained while all I want to do is sit down and not have to SAY anything.

Kiri

This post is brought to you (for a second time, I’ve just deleted my first effort ) in a whisper – the aforewhinedabout cold has now given me laryngitis.

I’ve finished Kiri:

Thank you for the suggestions. Various people have kindly offered to take it off my hands. While I appreciate the gesture, I feel it would be wrong, so won’t ask anyone to make such a sacrifice. (Translates as “It’s MINE! Keep your sticky paws off!” ) Baboushka-style over my head appeals (especially given the way my head feels right now, although not in the current rain), as does getting a shawl pin. I definitely need to investigate shawl pins. Does anyone have any suggestions?

And now I need to go and get some marking done.

Still whining... and a quandary...

(Reposted to fix broken link)

Hey ho – I did have a whole 2 days of feeling properly fit and well and up to getting on with life (you know, attacking that pile of dishes that had almost evolved far enough to wash itself up), and then I went down with a cold. The local theory is that it’s a local cold – it seems that everyone at Adam and Ruth’s school has gone down with it – to the extent that she was the only child in afternoon nursery the other day. But being a good blog-reader I know that the local theory is mistaken – this cold is working on global domination – Jessie has it and … someone else – yes, I know, that’s really lame, but I know I put an empathising comment on someone’s blog, but now I can’t remember who… it’s hard to remember stuff when your brain is dripping out of your nose.

But enough, I don’t enjoy whinging, and I’m sure you don’t enjoy reading about it, so I shall distract you with my quandary.

I’m getting near to an FO…

It’s Kiri (link to pdf – heh – if you do a google search for Kiri, the shawl is the first hit, Dame K te Kanawa is the second!), knitted in my own handspun BFL, dyed by the aforementioned Jessie-who-also-has-a cold.

I love it. I love the colour so much that I could almost be persuaded to declare that purple is my new favourite colour, despite the fact that it’s been red since forever. I even love that the quality of the yarn changes – it’s almost a journal of how my spinning skills have improved. I’m still scared that it’s going to be on the small size, but I’ve seen the magic of blocking before – it’ll be fine. The big quandary (which doesn’t involve chocolate – there is no quandary around chocolate. It’s for eating. And if you eat it now, then you’re saving yourself from eating it later), no – the big quandary is that I don’t know how/when to wear it.

It’s gorgeous. It’s purple, and purple suits me. But it doesn’t go with any of my new autumn wardrobe, and I can’t picture when I can wear it. I cycle to and from work, so can’t wear it then, and can’t be doing with ‘stuff getting in the way’ when I’m teaching – I generally have to remove jumpers etc because the sleeves are too flappy when I’m writing on the board. At church I’m all covered up in a choir robe most of the time, and I’ve decided to forgo spinning this term. (A total of 3 well days since the beginning of term is rather giving me the message that I need to let something go – spinning is it – or at least, going out to spinning is it – I’ll still spin, but at home.) I’ve already discussed this a little with Daisy – she says I need a new lifestyle to accommodate it – more sitting around in pub gardens apparently. It sounds good, but it’s not really the right time of year… any other suggestions?

So proud!

Dave of the Cartoon Church Blog issued a challenge last night – the first five commenters to suggest a topic would have their ideas illustrated with a cartoon. I was first! (John was sixth, he just missed out). My suggested topic was “Counting up your portions of fruit and veg for the day.” Here is the cartoon (or rather cartoons) in all their glory:

Tee hee! The vegetable rack is of particular interest – note the five-shelver.

(Oh, and yes, I’m knitting, and I’m developing a quandary, but I’ll save it for another post.)