Penne With Artichoke Hearts, Winter Stew and Rye Sourdough

Today I was stretching for something easy for lunch (our main meal of the day) and spotted a lovely can of artichoke hearts. We adore artichokes in any form! So I concocted the following dish, bearing in mind that we are now embarked on a fat-free salt-free regime which requires some adjustments in ingredients (for us anyway) to distract attention from the two items that are 'missing' in such a recipe. I find a sweetish taste (as in red bell peppers) helps to make up for the lack of salt, and added herbs do the rest.

PENNE WITH ARTICHOKE HEARTS

For 2 persons. Can obviously be doubled, using a whole can of artichoke hearts and increasing the other ingredients appropriately.

120 g. penne, cooked according to package instructions
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes, rehydrated (in hot water for 1/2 hour, soaking liquid retained)
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large plum tomato, roughly chopped
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp crushed chilies, or to taste
1 red bell pepper (half to be sliced very thinly, half to be blended - see below)
2 or 3 canned artichoke hearts, drained and quartered

Put a large skillet over medium-high heat with a little water to ‘saute’ the onion until translucent. Add the garlic and stir well for a minute or two and then the chopped tomato, basil and chilies. Add the sundried tomatoes, chopped, but save the liquid for cooking as needed. Cook on medium heat until the fresh tomatoes have broken down.You may need to add a little water or liquid from the sundried tomatoes.

Slice half of your red bell pepper very thinly and set aside until the tomato mixture is almost cooked.

Chop the remainder of the bell pepper and add a little water to liquify in a blender.

When your penne is almost cooked and the tomato mix is almost ready, add the finely sliced red bell pepper to the tomato mix and stir well, raising the heat a little if necessary to slightly soften the bell pepper. Then add the artichoke hearts and the liquified red bell pepper from your blender jar and heat through.

Drain your penne and add to the skillet, stirring to mix well and to coat the penne in all those lovely juices.

Serve on plates or in pasta bowls (with a ‘cheezy’ topping if you like vegan cheez).

WINTER STEW

Now yesterday's lunch was a 'Farewell To Winter' Stew, with a white potato, sweet potato, some cauliflower and broccoli, onion and garlic and celery and mushrooms all cooked together with some Indian spices picked not quite at random from my spice rack.

We had it over couscous with a hunk of the RYE SOURDOUGH I had made the day before.

This bread's recipe needs some adjusting, as it happens, before I share it here. I veganized a lacto recipe from the net, but something happened with the proportions of flour. Either I was distracted and measured incorrectly, or the recipe has a typo. Nevertheless, I adjusted as I made it (it was far too wet) and it turned out very nicely, if a bit dry (I think it should be cooked at a lower temperature). I'll report back next time I make it!

WHOLEWHEAT SOURDOUGH BREAD

Sometimes this bread, like other breads, is a little temperamental. Yesterday it was having a bad hair day, but the results were very very tasty if not exactly perfect.

There are all kinds of ways of getting or making a sourdough starter, it seems, and everyone has their own 'Only Use' formula. I decided to keep it simple last October. I made my own sourdough starter from instructions in Barnard and Kramer's How It All Vegan(1999), p. 121. It's simple - no yeast, just flour and water. 1 cup of wholewheat and 1 cup of water stirred together in a clean dry jar and covered with a cloth for 3 to 5 days in a warmish place, out of a draft, for 3 days (or they say up to 5) but mine was ready sooner. You stir it every 12 hours. It will bubble and smell sour, after which it can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container. Use it once a week OR if you can't do that each week, remove half a cup of starter and replace with half a cup each of flour and water, stir well, let sit out a few hours and return to the fridge. (More details in the book - or available on the net.)

The bread recipe is equally simple. This is simply halving the recipe (there are just two of us so I only make one loaf at a time - and cut that in half and freeze the other half) and changing a few of the method details.

WHOLEWHEAT SOURDOUGH BREAD

With all ingredients at room temperature, the evening before you want to bake the bread -

Sift together:
3-1/2 cups wholewheat flour (they suggest wholewheat pastry flour)
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp instant gluten

Add:
1/2 cup or more (depends on your starter, you have to figure this out as you work with it)
1-1/4 cups water (depends on how wet your starter is - you may need a little more or less, so don't use all at once)

Mix carefully, adding the water, until all the ingrediets are in a nice semi-sticky mess. Knead it a little in the bowl then turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead until it is smooth. I usually knead for around 10 minutes, depending on the mood of my ingredients, the weather and the configuration of the stars (joking with the last, but not with the first two). As with any bread, you will need another handful of flour to help with the kneading process.

Place kneaded dough into a lightly oiled/sprayed ceramic bowl, rolling it around until it's all lightly covered in a film of the oil. Cover with a clean tea towel and set in a warmish place to let dough rise overnight or at least 12 hours.

Next morning, check the bread - it should have doubled in size. Punch it down and return it to the board to knead for another 5 minutes. Put in a prepared loaf pan. (You can also shape into a round and place on a cookie sheet, but I don't). Cover with the tea towel and let it rise until the dough doubles in size again - about 6 hours.

Place in a pre-heated 375F oven for around 50 minutes or until golden. Test with knife to see if done.

Here is my offering of yesterday, cut to show the crumb. It is a lovely flavour and texture, but it lacks the 'holes' in it that are the mark of a good sourdough.



I have since found this site: The Fresh Loaf which has a good discussion on sourdough which I intend to study. Trouble is, depending on which site one visits, everyone seems to have a different idea.

IRISH SODA BREAD

Confession time: I am addicted to making bread BUT I am not the world’s best breadmaker. Do I let this stop me? Not a bit of it. My worst errors I toss or make into breadcrumbs (after my little hounds have had a tiny treat). My semi-failures I use while still warm and fresh (nothing like that just-out-of-the-oven smell and taste to improve a poor loaf!) and cut up the rest for croutons (after my little hounds have had a tiny treat). My successes (other people’s failures) we happily gnaw our way through and actually prefer to bread from any bakery. Then I go on and make more bread.

The one excuse I offer: I use ONLY wholewheat flour - not half and half wholewheat with unbleached all-purpose or such combination that I know is a sane choice. The loaves are naturally denser than they might otherwise be. My yeast breads are fine - nothing to blush about there - and my quickbreads likewise except on very rare occasions.

That said, I had a couple of very doubtful (let you figure out where they fit into the scheme of things above) loaves from the oven yesterday. Sourdough and Irish Soda Bread. First . . .

The IRISH SODA BREAD
I made this on a whim (it was Paddy's Day, after all) and - although I hadn’t made it without baking powder ever before - decided to combine two recipes I found on the net. Prescription for disaster. It was, however, an interesting experiment - and it tasted fine, just a bit on the dense side.

I used the following ingredients:

2 cups wholewheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt (this turned out to be too much for us)
1/2 cup raisins
3/4 cup soy milk (low-fat)
1 Tbsp vinegar

I mixed the lot as you’d expect, turned the soft dough out onto my floured bread board, kneaded it for a few minutes until it felt ‘right’, shaped it into a round, let it rest a few minutes, and popped it onto a flat pan and into a 375F oven for 30 minutes, forgetting to slash the top (I DO keep forgetting to do that for some reason).

It came out as a strangely shaped little loaf that was very dense in texture and very good in taste. I shall work on this one.