After 12 hours my Zarathustra Bread was done. It is actually very delicious with a really satisfying toothy and chewy texture with an occasional crunchy berry and surprisingly moist. It has a bit of sourness to it, and is more more like a hearty oat bar (or a Scottish oat cake) than bread exactly. I brought this for my lunch with tuna salad, made with homemade mayo, and some dates, feeling like I might have walked out of ancient Greece. You could make these smaller and serve with soup. If you make these and they still have a flavor of doughy-ness they can probably be in the warm oven longer.

I have been eating bites here and there with honey, cream cheese, or jam. Versatile, but not without a bit of an appreciation for the basic-ness and maybe slightly an acquired taste, though I think it’s pretty mild.

                          

The name of this bread tells of how ancient it is. Wheat berries (pre-ground wheat) soaked for 2 to 3 days, ground up with salt and dried underneath a hot sun.

I ground mine in a food processor and baked them in a warmed oven (150 degrees)

The appeal to this bread I guess is its basic-ness. It feels like pure sustenance, as old as dirt. I imagine the taste and texture to be less like bread and more like a chewy oat bar. I’ll let you know in 12 hours after their ready.

After soaking for three days (they were ready after two, but I could only get to them later) they had sprouted teeny white nubs and the water they sat in smelled sour. (A smell I am getting used to as productive, not off.) In the food processor with some salt and not completely drained of their soaking water they started to produce a wet dough and sticky, stringy gluten. Though the direction say to process until smooth, after a certain point there seemed to be no change and many of the berries, while smooshed, remained whole.

I formed them into small loaves and slid the pan into my oven set to warm. And waited half a day.

We’ll see next post how this Zarathustra Bread turns out.

                          

Everything is totally right about this dinner. It is quick and made of all whole and active ingredients, organic and local. And the flavors are beyond. Beyond.

Pictured above is Taco Night deluxe with a fresh pupusa rather than a simple fresh tortilla. The process was inspired by a Rick Bayless recipe, which at first seemed overwhelmingly complicated, but he has a knack for doing this to what are really simple foods. (And he could use about four times as many paragraph breaks in his descriptions. Just a note. )

The trick to these, for me, is to keep them thick. I use parchment paper and a heavy pot as I don’t have a tortilla maker. It works fine.

I start with fresh masa dough from the farmer’s market. 1 pound of dough for $3. That is a lot of amazing toothy tortillas, it goes a long way. I mix in just a spoonful of lard into the dough.

(Yup, lard. My vegetarian mother cringes. Freshly rendered, also from the farmer’s market. Good whole fats also go a long way and the flavor is mild and it really helps them to get crisp. Read more about this maligned whole fat here. This can certainly be omitted though and they cook just fine. )

At this point you have a perfectly good simple tortilla you can flip off your hand into a hot dry skillet, but the taco night deluxe called for a little extra.

(I don’t have a picture of that middle step, but don’t try to peel the tortilla off at the stage pictured, slide one hand under the paper, flip the whole thing on your other hand and peel the paper off. Then you just flip your hand over above the hot skillet and let go.)

For pupusa, the black beans are spooned onto the pressed dough while it still rests on the parchment paper. Then using the paper to help it fold without sticking to your hand fold the sides into the middle and carefully pull off the paper. Then do the same to the top and bottom. You end up with a masa bean dumpling. With the paper still folded over gently press the dumpling into a thick disk.

This then goes into the pan. I decided to fry them just a bit with additional olive oil. Deluxe remember?

The great thing about this process is that one side cooks in the time it takes to make the next one, then the first is done by the time it is time to put in a new one. So it goes quick.

Toppings can very but the toothy tortilla and rich meat (lots of cumin and chili powder cooked into it) is matched with heaps and heaps of fresh raw slaw. Use any kind of cabbage and other herbs or veggies. Carrots, cilantro or parsley, green onion, lime, are all good. Dress with just salt and pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. We top with creme fraiche (just like sour cream) to get in something active and cultured to help digest the mess.

I thought I had a photo of another taco night with the chicken from making stock (see freezer pictures in post below) but apparently that was eaten too fast to capture. The tortillas on these were topped with this extraordinary sauce sikil p’ak (purchased from the same booth as the masa). Now that was also deluxe.

Taco night has been a weekly affair since the first of the year, all I can say is 2009 thus far has been very good in our kitchen.

                          

So to be honest I guess I like the idea and product of the bowl of flavorful and healthy rice and beans much more than the process. But a recent post on the Culinate Blog about various foodies’ favorite rice and beans combos made me feel that maybe avoiding this primary dish could be a glaring omission on my Eat Healthy on the Cheap repertoire. So I was inspired to make my favorite rice and beans dinner, not just to have for a dirt cheap dinner and hearty leftovers but to overcome my general aversion and get the process under my belt to make it easier in the future. (When I think about the ease with which my parents threw together healthy vegetarian meals after full days of stressful work I think about how many dinners they had made by the time I was 18- thousands! So I try not to get too discouraged when my fourth or fifth attempt at something is still slow and awkward)

The post on Culinate was clever and helpful, especially the reference to this post about cooking beans generally which I only just read, but I wasn’t directly inspired by the famous foodies’ particular choices. So I decided to make a classic straightforward black beans and red rice pilaf.

(As a side note, I am generally pleased with this Culinate blog, based mostly on writing from my hometown of Portland OR, it provides the type of recipes I feel never come across through a general google search which are usually simple meals based on whole foods with intelligent discussion. So this is my plug for others to check it out.)

The recipe for the red rice pilaf was from Alice Waters’ Art of Simple Food. The tomatoes of course making it red, it is just made with brown rice. But this is an important variation because the cooking time is significantly longer than she has as is the amount of stock. (Of course water is totally good to use to, I just felt like making something a little richer)

I made black beans from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen a great resource for a huge variety of traditional Mexican dishes- and a bit overwhelming both in the quantity and variety and the assumption of ingredients on hand and additional cooking ware. I am working on keeping more dried chiles on hand since they are of nominal cost, keep well, and add exceptional flavor. And I often have dried masa, but many times i look over dishes that sound delicious but I just don’t have a lot of the ingredients and he doesn’t really give alternatives. But the Classic Mexcian Pot Beans are much less particular than his other dishes. I used pre-soaked the beans and cooked them with browned onions in olive oil with a dried chipotle chile, which added the perfect kick, salting them after they were done and letting them sit for a bit.

The whole operation was a couple of hours really from start to finish. But it was largely hands off other than stirring the beans and adding water when needed. I made sure to cook them longer than I really wanted to because I am often impatient and don’t give them enough time. The rice was rich and creamy and the beans were spicy and delectable. A long process but certainly worth it. The change I would make for next time would be to make more of each so the long wait is worth more. Doubling the amount wouldn’t double the cooking time (I don’t think…) and then I would only go through the effort once for more meals. The nominal cost definitely provides incentive for the time commitment.

                          

The extent of the global economic crisis has understandably taken the majority of media attention in the last few months, and will likely continue to with the implications of the presidential election and the various decisions coming from the fed, but only in a few cases has the media brought up that everyday people have been having household level economic crises for the last few years. High debt, stagnant wages, more and more uncertainty. So I think its fair to say that while there has been more talk about thrift many of us have been at it for a while. And as more people pay more attention to their spending, and clearly they are cutting back, I think it is crucial that we not get tunnel vision when thinking about our personal economic situation. Now more than ever to we need to prioritize our spending so it supports workers, the environment, and health. These are investments. So while we need to personally cut back we need to be ever more aware of the impact of our consumer choices. Are the choices we make allowing other families to weather the economic issues. Or are we saving personally by undercutting others’ wages? (*cough* *cough* Wal-Mart).

Read the full post on this here