A sunny Sunday breakfast

Whole wheat, white spent grain toast

Poached egg

Cubed chicken (leftovers)

Brussels sprout greens

Orange juice (one large orange squeezed)

Coffee, (Sumatra )

Sour cream 

Dried hot red pepper

Cracked black pepper

An effort at a balanced breakfast

Considered a bechamel sauce but opted for sour cream.

Enjoy the last day of the weekend!

More Eggplant

The garden yields eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and herbs…  more recipes    …..

EGGPLANT CALZONE and Bread

SPAGHETTI and EGGPLANT

 

 

Dice and fry eggplant

while your at it, make some dough…

Divide the dough…

Pan one of the dough balls for bread, using spent grains for topping and lining the bread pan

roll out one of the other dough balls on a 1/2 sheet pan lined with parchment paper

start with sauteed onions…

pick some fresh herbs like basil and oregano

add to the pan…

add all the ingredients and cook to your liking.

top the dough with the eggplant  mixture

Add a layer of sliced tomatoes…

roll out the last dough ball large enough to cover the mixture and seal at edges

mean while the bread has risen…

bake the calzone and bread…

enjoy the bread and ….

enjoy the calzone !

you could go wild and add cheese and sausage !!!

Were not done yet!   Another night some pasta and eggplant !

Using diced eggplant as a base, saute and add what ever you have for a compliment.. like fresh garden peppers, onions and garlic seasonings etc.

1/2 lb spaghetti…

al dente.. !

plate it and your good to go !

Garden update

The weather , very cool this morning and an effort to get out of bed early was successful. Did some gardening work weeding around the tomato pepper and eggplants. Some spent grain that was stored from previous beer brewing was used as mulch.

Next is to repot or plant some pepper plants .

Some of the herbs growing this year .

rolls and bread

life goes on here, dough a regular staple, I took the time to form 1/2 recipe into buns, placed into muffins tins , a traditional form that is usually reserved for special occasions and to accompany Boston Baked Beans which I had previous made.

a small addition of spent grains accounts for the speckled appearance.  Some spent grain is also used to coat the bread pan giving the bottom a dark color.

The conditions must have been very right as the bread was first placed in the pan to rise, as I formed the buns the bread was “flying out if the pan” as they say. Even while baking the dough continued to climb. very light airy textures for this batch.

Follow along !

oh, just a brief explanation, would be hard to photograph this process while doing: divide the dough into 12 portions, now each portion into 3 each. Grab the dough ball and pull it with your fingers stretching the top down the sides and tuck under the bottom. Do this several times to produce a smooth ball. Place the dough ball in the muffin tin smooth side up and tucked in portion at bottom. Repeat 36 times, 3 to a  muffin cup, for a dozen. Let rise, bake and serve. Next day treat is leftover buns pulled apart and toasted with butter, incomparable !

NICE BUNS !

Brewers Bread

A tasty, grainy bread with a hint of hops.

2 loaf recipe.

3 Cups white flour reserved , and additional flour.

2 tablespoons  fast acting yeast (dry, for bread, 2 tablespoons)

1 tablespoons refrigerated yeast slurry ,  from brewing (this batch, Coopers)*

“Beer” from refrigerated yeast *

additional liquid, water milk etc.
Salt
Sugar, to taste
Dried spent grain ( whole, not ground)

*I use recycled yeast from the fermenter to use on subsequent  batches of beer. When stored in the refrigerator to slow any additional fermentation, usually, over a period of time, beer will form on the surface, with the yeast slurry below it. Pour off the beer, to add to the liquid portion of the bread. Now,  add about a tablespoon of the yeast slurry to also go with the liquid portion of the dough recipe. Since the yeast is saved from the primary fermenter, there will be some of the hop flavor in the yeast. You could also just substitute 1/2 a can of beer and fresh beer yeast if you don’t recycle yeast from your primary  fermention, and a pinch of hops.

Put the 3 cups of flour along with the dry yeast, sugar, and  salt  in a mixer bowl and mix slightly.

Add the wet ingredients to the 3 cups flour; water, beer, and beer yeast to total about 2 cups. (Heat the water to about 120 to 130.)

Mix thoroughly either by hand or in stand mixer big enough to handle the load.

Now add some spent grain, type and amount to your liking.

Add additional flour (will probably be about 2-3 more cups), and finish kneading either by machine or turn out and knead by hand.

Dough from the mixer

Kneaded and shaped

Dough divided

as you can see, this was from a dark beer recipe

Panned up, ready for oven

Baking

Cooling

Soft crumb, grains are chewable and not crunchy.

good flavor with a hint of hops, excellent when toasted and buttered.

Cranberry Drop Biscuits

Cranberry Drop Biscuits adapted from Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook page 423
Butter substituted for the shortening
Flour less 2 tablespoons
Add 2 tablespoons spent milled grain from brewing process
One cup cranberries
One cup milk
Sprinkle tops with Demerara cane sugar.
Add a dollop of whipped cream and pipe on some cranberry raspberry jam, optional suggestion.
The spent grain addition gives the biscuits a whole grain flavor, yet they are still light.
(Scrape Pad App IPad )

Spent grain noodles with chicken cutlet, broccoli , onions and corn.

I didn’t measure any of the ingredients. One egg was used for the pasta.
A standard noodle recipe with some light spent grains added. The dough was a bit soft and easy to roll out, refrigerated dough for about 15 minutes before rolling and cutting.
Roll out and cut the noodles into desired width, boil, drain and plate.
In a fry pan, stir fry chopped broccoli, diced onion, sliced chicken cutlet* and corn. Serve over the bed of noodles with Prime Stout beer

*Sliced chicken cutlet was prepared earlier, several chicken breasts were pounded into a thin cutlet, flour, crumbed, and pan fried. Kept refrigerated for a variety of meals.

Stout Bread, spent grain bread

 

 

Note: Also posted on my new Blog  “Peabody Pico” 

 

As a home brewer, I read several sugestions as to what t0 do with the spent grains after brewing beer. Most  the spent grains from brewed recipes, I drained well after sparging and bagged them and sent them to the freezer. Some of them I transferred to 1/2 sheet pans and put them in the oven (with a standing pilot) overnight at least to dry. Depending on the progress, I would raise the heat to a slow oven setting to quicken the progress and fold them as needed. I usually have enough from a 1 gallon recipe to fill two half sheet pans.

Now as dried spent grains there are many recipes to use them as is, but I wanted them ground for an addition to white all purpose bread flour. Since I yet to have a grain mill, I could try the coffee grinder to at least grind a small amount.

Setting the grinder, a Cuisinart model, to fine grind I did a small amount at a time giving the motor a break and ended up with about 2 cups of fine grind grain. The dryness of the grain made the grind easy on the coffee grinder Given the nature of the beer grain bill, from a beer that I call Prime Stout, a variation of an Imperial Russian Stout, the resulting flour is very dark.

Enough with the details, lets’ look at the results !

I started off with the standard e-z mix  bread dough recipe of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast

.

The Spent grain before and after grinding.

I figured about 3/4 cup of ground spent grain

Mixing up the base of the dough

Addition of the ground spent grain

Adding the remainder of the white flour. A dark dough resulting !

Let the dough rise

Form  into loaves and let rise again

The finished product, one loaf inverted.

The dough was a bit on the wet side , but still airy and not heavy.

The crumb, lighter than I though it would be and the taste reminiscent of pumpernickel.

NO ! It does not taste like beer!

(maybe I should have added some hops?)