crumblingbiscuit

#recipe #FavaBeanPurée

Since last year, or thereabouts, we have a bag of fave secce (dried broad beans) in the larder. While doing the week’s shopping I had the idea to purée them and mix them, cold, with herbs and a vinaigrette.

By dint of my not complete reading of the product description when ordering, the beans were not peeled before drying, which turns the leathery skin of the ripe bean kernel into carapace. Good for the shelve life, I guess.

So I watered about 700 g, I forgot to weigh them, beans over night.

Then peeling commenced, this was, mostly, easier than anticipated. Some of the drier beans were difficult, but the rest went easy.

The beans were then cooked in water, together with one quartered onion, 3 sprigs of rosemary and 2 fresh bay leaves.

After about an hour the beans were done. The water, the bay leaves and the rosemary stalks, were discarded and then I let them steam off, while I made a lemongraitte.

First the peel of two lemons was grated and then mixed with salt, Dijon mustard, the juice and the olive oil into a very sharply lemony vinaigrette.

Beans and vinaigrette were mixed and puréed.

Now I’m waiting for the purée to cool before mixing in a bunch each of flat-leaf parsley, dill and chives.

First impression - tasty, but VERY lemony (from the peel)

Now the herbs have been added and the purée has cooled it is still lemony, but it went from VERY lemony to lemony, GREAT.

Made Tagliatelle Quattro Formaggi for the first time. Easy and tasty. Tasty I knew of course, but somehow I hadn’t understood how easy a #recipe it is.

Cut the cheeses, roughly equal proportions, in pieces. In a saucepan add the cheeses, cream and a little milk, slowly heat until the cheese melts, keep stirring.

As the sauce got ready I boiled the ready made tagliatelle, mixed with the sauce, done.

Cheeses used: Parmesan, Swiss Bergkäse (could be Gruyère), sweet Gorgonzola, Camembert (because I forgot to buy the Taleggio).

I see some happy experimenting in the future

#CuccinaItaliana #QuattroFormaggi #Pasta

Leaving aside my forgetting for the second week in a row to put steam into the oven, the #BreadRolls keep getting better.

Hydration reduced to 65%, 28% old dough (sourdough), 2% salt, 1% dry yeast.

Fermented overnight in the fridge.

Oven heated to 250C + and held there for 30 minutes to heat through the pizza steel. Put rolls into the oven, directly above the steel, reduced temperature to 220C and baked for 30 minutes.

I reduced the weight per roll to 80g, will go to 100g next time, too much crust for too little crumb.

#baking #sourdough #recipe

Still the easiest way to get to sourdough. Make your preferred bread (or in this case bread roll dough) and hold some back.

Mine goes into the fridge in a jam jar. One week later your nose will confirm, sourdough.

I feed once and then incorporate into my dough. When I start shaping one undersized bread roll goes into the jam jar.

#sourdough

Idiots that we are we, visited a late Roman hill fortification near Zell (Mosel), the Alteburg

It was only 2 km, with half going uphill (duh, hill fort), but it also was 34C

The fort never commanded vistas, it’s off the Moselle overlooking a minor, narrow side valley. Today it is in the middle of a forrest, and if there were no signage you’d pass it by.

But it’s on the way, so to speak, to one of our favourite spots on the bank of the Moselle.

Location: Dill
Height: 354,8
Coordinates: 49,91 - 7,35

Dill is a small village in the south-eastern corner of the Hunsrück. It sits below a castle and huddles on one side of the castle hill.

Friends are part of the organising committee (as seems half the village), so, off we went into the wild (such as it is).

The market is on two, closed off, roads. The stalls huddle between the houses to leave the road (narrow) for emergency access.

In a meadow below the village lies the Heerlager

Location: Alteburg (Zell (Mosel))
Height: 237,9
Coordinates: 50 - 7,23

Location: Dill
Height: 354,8
Coordinates: 49,91 - 7,35

Todays #BreadRolls are coming along. 8 rolls (100g) this time. Previously I made 6 larger ones (130g) which seemed perfect for three people. But appetites differ.

I’m willing them to cool down faster. Am curious what the addition of some of last weeks dough and a long (36h) fermentation in the fridge have done to the taste.

The rise is very good.

The crust is crusty, maybe a bit dark, the crumb is fine, the taste great, jay for old dough.

#bread #baking #BreadRolls

K2 and I took a day trip to the Freilichtmuseum in Kommen to catch up and take some photos. The museum is grouped into regions within the Rhineland and shows rebuild old houses, farms, workshops, barns, windmills, arranged in village patterns. Niederrhein, Eifel, Westerwald, Mittelrhein, …

It’s a quick drive on the autobahn from Cologne and we managed to be well on the way home before the thunderstorms and heavy rains from the weather warning struck.

Below some of the photos to convey a feel of the museum.

Food and drink are available at various places, including their traditionally baked breads and cakes. We also saw an exhibition on the history of the Rheinland where you walk through an indoor historama in the form of a Rhenish town from the Napoleonic wars to the reconstruction after WW2. Another exhibition looked at kitchen machinery, ranges and the like, and still another one looked at the history of Bakelite

The last time we were here K2 was maybe, we couldn’t quite figure it out, ten. In any case, it has been a while.

#FreilichtmuseumKommern