So I had a lot of coffee.... It's been a really grey day in Sydney. Not what I was expecting in the middle of summer but hey, gave me a chance to spend some quality time at home with my boy and (Yey!) clean the kitchen, re-arrange all the cupboards and label all the shelves with one of those cool little clicky machines (That I'm now informed, is called a Dyno..??). Seriously, when you live in a share-house, it's entirely necessary... Right? Did I mention there was coffee?
Anyway, I soon tired of that and decided to bake instead, leaving aforementioned boy to do all the fiddley finishing off bits while I made yummy muesli bars:
Yummy muesli bars
Hand-full Pumpkin seeds
Slightly less Sunflower seeds
Some chopped nuts
Some cacoa nibs
6 Medulla dates (Chopped up all nice)
Some oats
Some Tahini
Some Agave nectar
Some honey (If you like)
Splash of Soy milk
- It may be slightly obvious that I made these without any recipe. I got a bit obsessed with making tahini and honey cookies a while back and eventually varied the recipe so much that I realized that it was totally pointless. and that all you need to do is add as much wet and sticky stuff to your dry stuff so that it all sticks together. I will, however try to get a bit more precise with my measurements in future.
Anyway...
Put (probably) about a cup of tahini and half a cup of agave in a mixing bowl
Toast your seeds in a dry pan
Chop the nuts
Crush up the cacoa nibs in a pestle and mortar
Stick everything in the mixing bowl with your wet sticky stuff and stir it together
Add the dates and keep on stirring
Add oats and mix in until its a big solid goo of oats. If it gets too dry add some more tahini. I also added just a splash of soy milk.
Have a lil taste. Add more agave or honey if you want.
Line a cake tin or baking tray with baking paper
Put the mixture in and press it down HARD. It should be about 1/2 inch thick or the size of a standard muesli bar.
Bake in the oven at about 160C for maybe 20 mins, til it starts to turn brown and crispy at the edges. Turn the oven off and just leave it in there while the oven cools down... this continues to cook the mixture slowly so you don't get a burnt/gooey mess that you can't cut up.
Take out of the oven and put the tray on a wire rack and BE PATIENT. Let it cool before taking it out and cutting up into squares or bars.
Put them in a jar or in your face with some COFFEE and be proud :)
In the course of our mammoth clean up I found some sweet potatoes that looked like they might be on their last legs. I let far far too many things go to waste so i was determined not to let these guys die! My partner (he of the no refined sugar) is also a bit carb averse, which makes my little pasta loving eyes weep salty tears... But Kumara, the Potato of sweetness, who can object to that? Nobody, that's who (Besides, he was distracted).
And, so...
Sweet potato gnocchi with veg thing and first-time pesto of win
Pesto of win
Hand-full of pumpkin seeds
Bunch of coriander
Some red capsicum
1/2 clove minced garlic
Olive oil
A pinch of chilli flakes
Salt n pepper
Toast the seeds then bash them to bits in a pestle and mortar. I did try to grind them in an electric spice grinder but they wouldn't give in!!
Finely chop the capsicum and coriander
Stick it all in a blender or food processor and pulse. Add oil, chilli and seasoning. Keep pulsing 'til it all comes together. I'm pretty sure if you didn't have a blender that you could do this all with a pestle and mortar and some serious elbow grease. Did someone say coffee?
Season with salt and pepper
Gnocchi
2 sweet potatoes
1 3/4 cups of plain, whole flour
Pinch of salt
Pinch of nutmeg
Skin the potatoes
Steam the potatoes until they're soft
Mash them!
Add salt and nutmeg
Add the flour 1/4 of a cup at a time, stirring each bit in before adding more. You're aiming for a fiendishly sticky dough (seriously sticky. Prepare to be coated with dough) so don't be tempted to add too much flour or you'll end up with little rubber bullets when cooked. Eurgh!
Once you have a dough-like thing dust the living fuck out of everything within sight with flour, including you. Prepare for stickiness to ensue.
Knead it for around 3 minutes on a seriously floury work-surface. Do
not overwork your dough, yo!
Roll a lump of dough out into a sausage not much thicker than your thumb and then cut it into 3/4 inch chunks.
Fork your chunks! By which I mean, press each lil gnocchi against the tines (not the pointy bits) of a fork, using your thumb. You're meant to end up with a thumb-print on one side and little lines on the other. You don't actually
have to do this bit. However it sure do look nice and it's meant to help your sauce stick to the gnocchi.
I reckon this made about 8 portions so I put half of the gnocchi on a baking sheet, froze them and them bagged them up for another time.
The rest I plunged into boiling water for around 4-5 minutes (until they float to the surface, and you fish on out and test it and go "oh oh too hot but doesn't taste of raw flour so hooray, my gnocchi are done!") before tossing in with some courgette, thinly sliced and fried in olive oil with garlic and italian herbs, spinach and diced tomatoes.
Serve with pesto and parmesan (if you like that kind of thing).
So, coffee, cleaning, coffee, baking, eating, feeding, smugness and sleeplessness. I'm one happy vegetarian. And now I have blogged. Get me. Productive.... sleepy... full.
