With the sourdough starter alive and bubbling well, I have to come up with ways to use it everyday. This time is kale and bell pepper pancake. Pretty good as kale shrinks a lot on heating and can with stand heat, so you end up eating a lot of veg in a thin pancake.
Cut kale and bell pepper in to small pieces, season with salt, oil and curry powder, rest for 15 minutes before mixing with sourdough discard. Pour on a paper lined baking tray, compact and flatten into a disc as much as possible. Bake at 170˚ for 15 minutes, turn pancake over to crisp up the bottom, another 10 minutes.
These are small mackerels caught last year by my fisherman, it is time to finish them before new ones come in. They are small and not oily, best to serve with a sauce.
I make a light curry sauce with seared onion, garlic, red curry paste, coconut milk, carrot & spring onion, bath the grilled mackerels in the sauce and serve with a few slices of semi-dried tomatoes.
畫畫的朋友，和先生三月初駕車由廣州出發，經雲南、西藏，昨天到達烏魯木齊，一路上主要欣賞野外大風景地方，在翻大風天氣欠佳不能進入景點時，就在房間內畫畫。今回的旅遊目標，是由中國，經中亞五國、俄羅斯、芬蘭，玩完北歐數國後回轉，歷時一年。
第一份工的同事們，那時大家都是剛畢業的年輕人，他們好快就拍拖，年年放大假都一起旅行，當年去的地方，已經不是東南亞、歐洲大城市那麽簡單，且回來後會認真處理照片，放在大照片簿中，記下行程、旅遊點滴，在公司傳看。
一起工作十年，由他們帶頭，覺得公司的同事們都似特別喜歡旅遊，且是選擇自由行而非跟團或參加輪船旅遊那麽簡易「輕鬆」。
然後，公司把亞洲總部由香港搬去星加坡，他們隨公司移民，我選擇留下，一別廿多年，沒有聯絡，至去年才因當年上司由瑞士回港，主動約舊同事見面，才重遇。
好高興發現他們亦選擇了提早退休，五十出頭成為自由身，談天時知道並沒有長糧，有積蓄過活但不豐厚，所以退休後每次出門，都玩足一年，為的是把自住房子出租一年，以租金補貼旅遊費用。
也是個辦法，有嗜好，又想到如何實行，選擇做自由快活人。
I love raw clam sashimi, full of wonderful sweet umami flavour and crunchy texture, Hokkigai clam is one of my favourites. I would never thought that there will be a chance to get hold of fresh Hokkaigai clams, to prepare it myself in my kitchen in Ireland.
Invited vegetarian neighbours to come over to
meet up. Made some finger food snacks to serve with drinks, honey
fremented garlic, nori pancake, Cheesy egg mayo tarts, Fried hard tofu with sweet sour sauce/sloe jam and Strange flavour hazelnut.
Cheesy egg mayo tarts
Using cheese biscuit recipe to bake as pastry shells, fill with egg mayo. Cheese biscuit is made with 100gm butter, 100gm parmigiana and 100gm flour.
Fried hard tofu with sweet sour sauce/sloe jam
I always want to use more seaweed in daily meals, and not just sprinkling of seaweed flakes that does not show its flavour. Saw the use of nori as wrapper on internet, like making spring rolls using minced shrimp as filling, then fried.
I thought of making this nori pancake instead, and using up the daily sourdough starter discard.
First brush olive oil on the smooth side of 2 sheets of nori, then spread sourdough starter (season with salt and oil) paste on one, sprinkle sesame on top and cover with the other nori sheet, oiled side outside.
Bake at 180˚C until edges of sourdough turns golden, pancake puffs up, around 20 minutes. Cut into squares to serve. Slightly crispy and tasty.
The sourdough starter that I kept in the freezer since last November comes back to life after one change of flour, water. No intention to make bread yet as I am enjoying having long cooked mix beans with egg as breakfast.
Dugged out yacon in February and have been eating them regularly, raw or cook with veg. Thought of making this pickle when I saw the bottle of honey fermented blackcurrant in the pantry.
That was an experiment last year with a good blackcurrant harvest. Can’t use so many jams so add honey to ferment the remaining berries, thinking of making blackcurrant cordial. Turned out that blackcurrant is so sour that the resulting cordial is impossible to drink. So might as well use it like vinegar! Gives a beautiful pinkish red hue to Yacon.
Got introduced to a hunter living nearby, who shots wild deers that roam around nearby hills and farms. A nuisance to farmers as they eat grass and damage fence posts. We bought a few cuts and he gave us this neck cut for free.
We will include venison into our meat quota, great to eat wild meat with different nutrients.
Season venison neck with salt & black pepper, place in baking dish with an inch of liquid (water, liqueur, soy sauce, Garam Masala and raspberry coulis) and herbs rosemary and fennel. Bake at 180˚C for 1.5 hrs, turn over every 20 minutes.
Deep red meat tasty and tender.
A rare sunny day, spring flowers look so much better under a deep blue sky. Cherry blossoms are opening well, so as others : daffodils, bay, camellia, viburnum, gorse.
After a week at a reef atoll, it is time to move back to mainland for the last part of the tour. St Ignacio is inland in the west surrounded by mountains, it is a stopover spot to enjoy birdwatching, river sport and Mayan ruins.
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| red custard apple |
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| soursop & custard apple |
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| Xunantunich |
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| Barton Creek cave canoe to see offerings |
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| Caracol, the tallest amd most extensive Mayan Ruin |
The last day in Belize we joined the famous ATM Mayan
cave tour. This is an underground cave half filled with water, where we
need to wade across 3 rivers to get to. Once inside the totally dark
cave, we wear life jackets, helmets and headlights to swim, climb over
stalactites, squeeze through gaps, climb up 2 floors, and return the
same way .
The total trip is around 3km return and took 3 hours. Along the flat areas in the cave, where there are shallow depressions, we could see offerings, near the entrance are pots carrying grains gradually changed to human remains, from commoners to nobles further in, then small children. The timeline of thr offerings coincide with the long drought period from 750 to 900AD, suggesting that the Mayans were desperate and had been increasing the preciousness of the offerings to please the underworld powers to pray for rain, but in vain, leading to mass death and deserting the sites.
One contribution to drastic climate change was the vast deforestation during the Mayan period to sustain population growth.
It may look like the settlements were surrounded by forest, but actually it had been cleared to bare ground for farming, and trees burned to make lime to use in stone wall building.
History is repeating itself, and there is a lot to learn from past events.
