Saturday, December 27, 2008

Nut ring with currants. (Sand cake)

Get
200g blanched almonds
100g currants
100g macadamia nuts
250g butter
4 heaped tbsp honey
8 eggs
350g wholemeal organic spelt flour
1 tbsp pear schnapps
butter paper

Do
Preheat the oven to 190°C.
Grind 150g almonds with a hand mill. Wash and dry currants and roll them in a little flour to keep them separate. Chop the remaining almonds and the macadamias.
Separate the eggs. Beat the whites stiff. Add 1 tbsp honey and beat again until very stiff. Set aside.
Beat the butter smooth. Add the remaining honey and beat together. Add egg yolks one at a time and beat well each time. Beat until smooth.
Add a little flour to the egg yolk mixture and mix it in. Add alternately flour and almond meal beating each time. When the mixture becomes too thick, add some of the beaten egg white alternately with the flour and almond meal.
Lightly mix under the egg white foam and the remaining flour and almond meal. Lift under the chopped nuts and the currants. Lightly mix under the schnapps.
Butter a 28cm baking ring form and powder the surface with a little flour.
Add the mixture evenly and press down lightly. Flatten the surface.
Bake in the oven on the second shelf from the bottom for 40 minutes. Then cover the cake with a piece of greaseproof paper and turn off the oven. Leave the cake in the closed hot oven for a further 20 minutes.
Remove from the form and cool.

Tip
An alternative to schnapps is rum, e.g. Bundaberg rum.
Image 2: Part of Vallotton, Felix, via Zeno

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Macadamia Falafel

get
200g Macadamia nuts
4 tbsp hulled tahini
1 small onion
several tips of fresh thyme and lemon thyme
4 tbsp erganic wholemeal spelt flour
water

do
Grate the macadamia nuts with a hand grinder into a large bowl. Chop the onion finely and add it. Chop and add the thyme. Add the tahini and mix thoroughly into a thick mass. Press it down firmly with a spoon.
Place the flour on a large plate.
Pour some water into an open bowl.
Use 2 tablespoons or one spoon and 1 clean hand to make the falafels. Wet your hands in the water. Wet the spoon(s). Scoop out one spoonful of the mixture and flatten it with your wet hand or the other wet spoon. Remove from the spoons. It comes off easily because the spoons are wet. Roll the falafel in the flour and leave it on the flour. Repeat with all the mixture wetting the spoon(s) and/or hand each time. Add more flour if necessary. Roll from time to time in the flour.
Fry the falafels in olive oil on a low flame until golden (light brown).
Serve with hummus and tabbouleh

Tip
Some cultures find it unacceptable to use the hands directly with food preparation, others find it essential, albeit if they are clean. In Germany, it is widely held that a lettuce cannot be cut with a knife but must be torn with hands. Some research shows that a cut lettuce releases bitter substances. Knigge asserts (German) that a lettuce should never be cut with a knife.
Image: Ambrosius Bosschaert, Still life, Fruit and Grasshopper, approx. 1635–1640

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Baked macadamia pumpkin

Get
1 butternut pumpkin, (Cucurbita moschata) about 1 kg
1 small brown onion
100g macadamia nuts
fresh thyme tips or lemon thyme or both
150g cheese for baking, e.g. young gouda, or low-salt elbo style cheese with vegetarian enzymes (”Nimbin”), cheddar

Do
Cut pumpkin lengthwise in two. Remove the seeds.
Steam the halves until quite soft for about 30 minutes depending on the size. Not too soft or it will become unstable. Let it cool down briefly for handling.
Place the halves face up in two baking dishes or in one large one.
Scrape out most of the flesh into a bowl leaving about 1 cm depth above the skin.
Mash the flesh. Add the finely chopped onion. Grate in the macadamia nuts with a hand grater. Add the chopped thyme. Mix all ingredients together.
Fill the mash into the pumpkin shells.
Top with cheese.

Bake at 190°C on the second shelf of the oven for 30 - 40 minutes until they are golden.

Tip
The amount of ingredients depends on the size of the pumpkin. The above amounts are for a small butternut, but should be increased proportionally for larger pumpkins. This recipe is also delicious with other types of pumpkin, especially if they are fleshy rather than watery. It is important that the flesh is cooked soft.
Images: 1. Pumpkin, not Butternut and 2. unshelled macadamia nuts

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Black Sapote

Most people are familiar with the orange persimmon fruit, but the black variety is better than any chocolate mousse.The Black Sapote (Diospyros digyna) has been cultured in Mexico, Central America and India. The green fruit can be obtained, the flesh will ripen into a chocolate-like mousse ("Chocolate pudding fruit"). One has to get the timing right – because over ripeness can change the taste a lot. In Mexico the fruit pulp is mixed with orange juice and honey, but it is awesome just on its own.Thanks to the Nahuan language speakers of Mesoamerica, yet again for culturing this plant.
More Images at Google

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Hummus and Tabbouleh

GET
Chickpeas
1 cup organic washed chickpeas
3- 6 cloves of garlic
200 g organic hulled tahini
4 lemons, lemon juice (do not use preserved lemon juice!)
cooking water, to make a paste
Olive oil

Tabouleh
1 cup of organic Bulghur
2 bunches of flat (organic) parsley or more
6-7 medium organic ripe tomatoes
3 sprigs of mint, (round leaf for tea)
3-4 cloves of organic garlic
1 lemon
Olive oil

Bread
Flat bread or organic white sesame bread - all toasted

DO
Chickpea Hummus
Soak the chickpeas overnight. Drain, add a lot of fresh water and cook. It can take longer than you think for them to get soft. When they can be squashed between your fingers, they are ready. Drain and keep the cooking water.
Put half of the slightly cooled peas into a large bowl.
Prepare the lemon juice, 3 Tbsp. of olive oil, the garlic and the tahini.
Add half of that mixture to the chickpeas and mash ( I use a puree stick, food processors probably do the trick too) Then add the rest of the chickpeas, the tahini mixture and mash.
Should it be too stiff, add some of the left-over boiling water, as if making a mayonnaise. There should be no chunks, just a smooth cream.
Most people add salt here, I prefer to leave it up to the eaters to add. Flatten in a bowl or two, sprinkle with olive oil. Refrigerate. Should you want to eat it immediately, leave one bowl out, as it tastes much better at room temperature. Before serving, stir, add some parsley or tomato wedges etc to decorate.

Tabbouleh
Soak bulghur in cold water for at least 30 min. Drain well and sprinkle with some lemon juice. Chop the parsley, not too fine. Cut the tomatoes into fine cubes. Cut the mint leaves fine. Mix it all gently together. Mix olive oil, lemon juice and minced garlic. Pour over 'salad' and mix.

This ancient Middle Eastern dish is excellent for hot days or picnics. In Lebanon it is served with Falafel, but nut burgers are ok too. Mint tea also goes well with it.

Images:
August Macke, 'In the Bazar' and 'Turkish Cafe', 1914, via Zeno

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Baked honey marzipan

get
500g insecticide-free almonds
3 tbsp good quality honey
a little spelt flour

do
Pre-heat the oven to 190°C.
blanch the almonds, dry them in the sun and grate them finely with a hand grater. Add the honey. Mix and knead to a thick mass of marzipan. Cool for at least 30 minutes.
Sprinkle very little flour on a linen tea towel to prevent sticking. Turn a rolling pin in the flour so it becomes dusty.
Place the marzipan on the tea towel and roll it out. It should not be too sticky. Roll it out quite thinly, as much as possible given that it is more sticky than pastry, but avoid mixing too much flour into the marzipan. Stamp out biscuit shapes and collect the off-cuts for the next batch.
Place the marzipan shapes on a buttered baking tray and bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for 12-15 minutes until slightly golden.
Cool.
Store in a paper-lined tin.

Baked honey marzipan is a simple recipe and depends greatly on the quality of its ingredients. The result is easy to chew sweet nuts. Make sure the honey you use is one you really like. I prefer it to be mild but aromatic for this recipe with almonds, such as organic coastal Australian heath honey
Image: Flegel, George, still life with parrot and mouse, 1610, via Zeno

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Omelet with mushrooms and thyme

get
6 medium mushrooms, e.g. champignons, chanterelles, porcini
a few tips of fresh thyme, or best lemon thyme
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
50g goats milk fetta cubed
4 organic, free-range eggs
2 tbsp water

do
Slice mushrooms in 4. Fry in a large pan in the olive oil on both sides until golden and dry on a low flame. Add thyme tips. Push to one side of the pan.
Add the butter.
Beat the eggs and water well with a fork until smooth. Pour into the pan next to the mushrooms. Let it fry until almost set on top and golden underneath. Cut across the middle and look under the omelet to see if it is stable. Flip the halves from the round side so they keep their shape.
Place half of the fetta cubes on each omelet half. Fold lengthwise to cover the cheese so it has the shape of a quarter circle filled with fetta. Let it melt briefly. Then serve with toast. Some mushrooms will be incorporated into the omelet, others next to it.
Image: Boletus & free range organic eggs

Monday, September 29, 2008

Satay Tempeh with Rice

GET
Brown organic rice

1 packet of unflavoured organic Tempeh
Soya sauce, organic
Tasmanian Pepper, (Tasmannia lanceolata) or any other fine pepper
Olive Oil
Apricot Jam
3 (hot?) chilies

'Satay' sauce
3 Tbsp. of Peanut butter (or better organic Macademia/Cashew butter)
1 tin of organic coconut milk
1 Lemon grass stick, 3 x 2 cm of the white bottom bits
2 Limes
Soya sauce
1 sm. onion
3-4 large cloves of garlic
3 - 4 Chilies of your desired 'hotness', 'Birdseye'
1 tsp. of rapadura sugar

DO
The Rice
Take a cup (mug for 2 people) of the rice, wash it. Add to pot with good lid. Add 2 1/2 of the same cups of water. Boil up for 5 min. Turn down the heat and simmer with the lid closed. Do not open! After 45 min. switch off the heat and let it stand on the warm oven for another 15 min.

The Sauce
Fry the finely chopped onion golden. Add chopped chillies and garlic. Fry for a short period. Take off the flame. Add the peanutbutter/macadamia butter, stirring. Add the coconut milk. Add 3 small hot 'Birdseye' chilies, 1 Tbsp of soyasauce, 2-3 pieces of the lemon grass, 1 lime/juice, the rapadura sugar, let it gently simmer for a short time, or till it has a sauce consistency. Switch off and let it rest for a while on the warm stove.

The Tempeh
Mix soya sauce, apricot jam, 2 Tsps. Olive oil, Tasmanian pepper and 3 small chilies, let it rest
Cut up Tempeh, paste mixture on the pieces, cover and let it soak in the marinade for at least 30 min. ( if not more.) Fry golden in olive oil.

Serve with freshly copped coriander leaves, mango slices and a lychee-drink. The dish also makes for a nice 'picnic' or as a skewered BBQ.
Image:
Koehler's Medicinal-Plants 1887, Arachis hypogaea - 163, uploaded via Wikipedia
Links:
Diy Tempeh
Tempeh burger recipe

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Meat and gastro - What is the human caused connection?

97% of bacterial gastro-enteritis in humans is traceable to 'domesticated' meats. " Chicken and cattle are the principal sources of C. jejuni pathogenic to humans..." Animals living in their own habitat only accounted for 3 %. Campylobacter jejuni, living in the gut of poultry and mammals is being distributed into the human food chain. Preparing or consuming the infected meat is the main route for infection.
A lot needs to be done at the source of meat-production, transportation and processing, to not 'spill the guts' around. Sporadic gastro-enteritis through water or restaurants is very common. Even by being a vegetarian, one is still exposed to this 'slop-back' via water and implements. What a 'culture'!
The DNA sequencing research was conducted by Daniel Wilson, of the University of Chicago, and formerly Lancaster University, United Kingdom
via Wilson DJ, Gabriel E, Leatherbarrow AJH, Cheesbrough J, Gee S, et al. (2008) Tracing the Source of Campylobacteriosis. PLoS Genet 4(9): e1000203. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000203
Image: Egyptian relief, Berlin Museum 08

Friday, September 5, 2008

Bread - Storage - with Linen and Cinnamon

Organic bread is best bought daily from a place that stores it in an airy, dry place on untreated wood. It can be tossed directly into a washable cloth bag (no packaging necessary), thrown into the bike or backpack. In the household it is best to place it in a washable pure-linen bag. In summer it is slightly moistened and then it is placed tied up into a large pot. Quality bread stays fresh that way for a long time.

In the fast-life, industrial bread has to travel long carbon-belching distances. Freed out of its plastic bag, it is quickly befallen by black bread mold. A new paper has been developed that is coated in cinnamon essential oil and solid wax paraffin which it is said should enhance anti fungal activity.
Maybe, one could add a cinnamon stick to one's bread bag/container?

Update
Cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia ) May Prevent Common Types Of Foodborne Illnesses, 0714

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Cacao & Vanilla

Cacao a la mexicana - for four cups

Get
½ litre of milk
½ cup of dark, organic cacoa powder
2 tsp. of Rapadura (cane) sugar
½ teaspoons of cinnamon powder
1 pinch of salt
1 small vanilla bean
½ cups of whipped cream, optional

Do
Heat up the milk.
Add the the scraped out vanilla bean to the milk
Mix in a bowl all dry ingredients and add to the hot milk while quickly stirring it.
Allow to boil and than remove the chocolate from the stove. Now stir in (the cream and) the vanilla.

- Recipe in altered form via Vanilla Trade
- Thanks to the pre-Columb
ian Mayan cultivators who have " been managing their forests for millennia to cultivate cacao and to make chocolate, and we know they were also cultivating vanilla to use it as a chocolate spice.The Maya created these forest gardens by introducing different types of species of wild cacao and vanilla from the surrounding forests, which meant that species that had previously been geographically separated were then able to hybridize because they were in the same place. That's the scenario we present in our research paper for how Tahitian vanilla got started. It is an evolutionary product, but also a Maya artifact." Pesach Lubinsky, University of California, Tahitian Vanilla Originated In Maya Forest, via Science Daily 260808

Hot chocolate without sugar

Friday, August 22, 2008

Coriander pesto

get
1 large bunch of coriander
1 large piece of garlic
100g cashews
200g goats’ milk fetta cheese
10 tbsp olive oil

do
Pluck the leaves from the coriander. Wash and drain them. Chop very finely.
Press or grate the garlic into a bowl.
Finely grind the cashews with a hand grinder.
Roughly grate the fetta cheese into the bowl.
Add the coriander.
Mix.
Add the olive oil while mixing until a thick green paste forms.
Press down in the bowl and add the remaining olive oil on top to cover the paste.
Store cool covered with a plate.

Serve with noodles of your choice. Goes well with noodles and tomato sauce. Also goes well with potatoes.
Can also be made with parsley, basil, or a mixture of herbs. Macadamia nuts are a good alternative to cashews.

See
Macadamia Pesto

Image: 'Anacardium occidentale', from Koehler's 'Medicinal-Plants' (1887) via Wikipedia

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Tomato sauce with noodles

Get
1.5 kg Tomatoes (e.g. Roma, fleshy)
lots of Garlic
4 Tbsp Olive oil
Pepper corns
Bay leaves
Noodles of your choice.



Do

Heat the olive oil in a large pan or flat, wide saucepan.
Press the garlic into it. Fry it just a little - do not brown or burn.
Put tomatoes in a large bowl. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes slowly, so they stand in the hot water for a few minutes. Then pour in cold water. This loosens the skins.
Peel them and remove any hard core.
Add to the hot garlic. Cover with a lid.

Cook at a very low heat all day, occasionally removing the lid for a while. Add the pepper and bay leaves after a couple of hours.
Most of the liquid should evaporate away leaving a thick 'sugo'.
Boil a large pot of water. Add noodles to fast boiling water and keep it boiling.
Cooking time depends on the noodles. Test them from time to time.
Pour off water when ready and add the noodles to the sauce. Serve immediately.

Goes well with Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano) either grated or sliced thinly. Also goes well with a pesto made of basil or coriander. And a green salad.

A variation on this sauce for non-vegetarians is the Italian style sauce which includes just one sardine in the initial stages with the garlic. (thanks Sabine of Zweitrad)

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Food Buzz without consent

Scraping the content of (food) blogs without their consent.

Edible Culture was invited three times by FoodBuzz.com to “intelligently connect” with their “audience”. Two invitations to their 'Foodbuzz Publisher Program' were by e-mail (14.03.2008 and 12.06.2008), the other as a blog comment (24.04.08). Part of the promised 'benefits' consisted of “above-competitive compensation for ads, community networking, and ad campaign management.”

As Edible Culture is ad-free and has a “Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia CC- license, it was obvious that one did not even need to reply to such requests.

In short, permission was NEVER granted to publish/aggregate
Edible Culture.

The license does state that:
The user must not use this work for commercial purposes.
The user must share Alike, that means that if the user, transforms, or builds upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license.
These conditions were not waived by the authors of Edible Culture.


In this case (comment by Rosie 140108), even a refusal apparently lead to being included on their database. The
blogging community is discussing the issues.

Some blogs of course have nothing against joining to monetize their contents and change their layout to belong to “community”.

Resources:
Internet Law:
General Internet Law Resources, Online Education Database
U.S. Copyright Office
Creative Commons

Information for bloggers:
Preserving the Evidence, Blogherald
FeedWordPress: Content Theft with Consequences, by iamparia

Terms of Service, Foodbuzz.com
Update 050908:
Edible Culture has now been removed from Foodbuzz

Friday, July 25, 2008

Honey biscuits with apricots

Get:
200g soft organic butter
150g organic honey
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2/3 nutmeg, grated
150g chopped dried unsulphured apricots
200g chopped blanched almonds
450g organic spelt flour

Do:
Preheat oven to 190°c.
Beat butter and honey smooth with a wooden spoon.
Add cinnamon and nutmeg. Beat.
Mix in apricots and nuts.
Add 400g flour and knead into a dry dough. Add more flour if sticky. Cool for 15+ minutes.
Sprinkle a little of the remaining flour on a tea towel (linen). Roll out half of the pastry quite thin. This will further crush some of the nuts. Turn the pastry once or twice so it does not stick to the cloth.
Stamp out biscuits. Press down hard to cut through the fruit and nuts. (Alternatively make the pastry into a roll and cut off round discs).
Butter a baking tray.
Place the biscuits on it and bake in the oven for 15 minutes on the second shelf from the bottom.
Repeat until all the dough is used up.
Store in a tin.

Tip.
Make biscuits of different sizes for different occasions. Small ones are good portable food. Big ones for home use.

How to blanch almonds

Friday, May 16, 2008

Strawberries

Get:
Fresh organic strawberries
Yogurt
Agave Syrup/nectar (instead of sugar), organic.

Do:
Wash strawberries gently, pluck leaves and stems and cut into halves or smaller.
Add 2 Tbs of agave nectar and gently lift under.
Let it rest covered for approximately 15 min.
Serve with the yogurt.
Alternatively:
Stir in strawberries & nectar with yogurt and serve immediately.

At the moment the forest floor here at Lake Constance is covered in small, wild strawberries (fragaria vesca, images) They grow amongst the scented Lily-of-the-Valley fields.

Image: Adriaen Coorte, 'Strawberries and Gooseberries', uploaded via Zeno

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Mushroom & Pasta - Basta!


Get
Mushrooms (organic Button mushrooms)

Onions & Garlic

Olive oil

Sour Cream
Herbs: Garden cress-sprouts, Chives, Dill

Nutmeg &/ white pepper

Pasta (organic semolina, or durum wheat, no egg), preferred shapes are Orecchiette or Fusilli.

Do
Fry onions & mushrooms
Boil pasta

Shortly before pasta is "al dente"
Add cream and (most of the) chopped herbs, garlic and spices to the mushrooms.
(If you do not want to use cream, just do it without.)

Heat on a low flame and stir.
Drain pasta and mix with mushroom sauce
Cover for a a few minutes.
Transfer to serving dish
Sprinkle with remaining herbs.
Serve with a green crunchy salad.

Both images are by Giorgio Sommer from around 1885 somewhere in Italy, the first one is a macaroni manufacture and the second one is just eating them. Both pictures are in the public domain, uploaded via Zeno
Could one still dry their pasta in the public today?

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Almond biscuits

get
450g wholemeal flour (spelt flour)
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
1.5 heaped teasp ground cinnamon
250g butter
450g organic almonds

do
Blanch almonds: add to a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. Pour out hot water and add cold water. Rinse twice in a sieve. Rub almonds repeatedly between the hands and remove skins. Wash from time to time to assist with separation of almonds and skins.
Mix honey and egg in the middle of the flour in a large bowl.
Add cinnamon, butter flakes. Grate 300g almonds and add to the mixture.
Knead to a pastry. Add extra flour if sticky.
Cool in fridge.
Roll out thin.
Using cookie cutting tools cut out shapes. Place a whole or half an almond on each cookie, pressing lightly.

Bake at 190°c for 8 minutes on a baking tray in batches. Cool.
Store in a tin lined with greaseproof paper in a cool place.

Also delicious as filled cookies
(as shown in the second picture).

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Meat without all the animal stuff

Consumers and their carnivorous pets devour gigantic amounts of meat. The “relentless growth in livestock production” cannot satisfy the insatiable demand. Dogs, bush meats, endangered animals are 'harvested' or poached from the 'wild' and sometimes even human beings. Meat 3 x a day confirms that top-dog position, and implies not being part of the world of starving grain-eaters. Social gatherings without the ritualistic incinerated slabs or sliced hunk are not worth attending.

One believes blissfully in the gently raised cow, by a loving family farm or even skillful cowboys rounding up delicious cattle fed on wild pastures and springs.

Cynical reason 'raises awareness' about the growth hormones, antibiotics in factory-logistics (aka farming), the state of sick animals and their feces that are making it into meat products. The deregulated "meat roulette", the associated diseases of aggregating in small, often unhygienic places. The long transports and finally the automated killing-factories. The suffering of the creatures.
Outside, 30 % of terrestial earth is devoted to livestock grazing. Motorised cowboys force the electronically tagged herds' meat-mass with 4x4s, snowmobiles and helicopters into the desired locations. Desertification follows, the water bodies and atmosphere are contaminated from this industrial production process. The territory yearns to be valorised for bio fuel and real estate purposes.Putting the nightmare of others aside – in our meatspace, meatbags engage in exchanges in the meat market which is defended by meat shields. Meatlifting a square watery chunk of meat molten on polystyrene out of a freezer, has detached us long ago from the presence of a warm blooded living organism in its biotope.
The next logical step is to grow edible animal muscle fibre in laboratories on an industrial scale. With molecular biological techniques a biopsy is taken from a living organism that has evolved for the last 500 million years. Outside the living being the muscular tissue is spurned into growth. Disembodied – the suffering of the individual creature is put to an end , as its muscle tissue, bathed in nutrition is grown into huge chunks or 'meat' for human consumption.
No more worries about a monoculture of grazing animals displacing bio-diversity out of a habitat. Let them eat meat without 'husbandry'. Away with nasty externalities such as environmental burdens, food, drugs and warehousing for stock. The costs of slaughtering and last but not least, the burden of 'human resources' expenditures.
Environmentally concerned scientists”, agribusiness armed with a patent for the engineering of tissue are determined to rid the world of its financial, ecological, health and ethical woes. Revenue streams could be turned to rapids of a vertically integrated industry of life. With in-vitro 'meat production the ever-expanding human population can be supplied with laboratory-grown meat, if they can pay. Choices could be increased as consumers can decide whether they would like the animal muscle fibre in the form of sausages, burgers, nuggets or meatloaf mash up.

Contemporary cuisine is attempting to familiarise our senses to molecular gastronomy. The installation “Disembodied Cuisine” has already displayed the growing of “steaks”. Meat without animals, 'something from nothing' is the dreaming of some aspiring people.

A reduction in the consumption of animal matter, or for that matter any reduction in consuming, is off the agenda. Even if that behaviour requires three to four earths. The insatiable desire for more (of the same) is stearing this spaceship (of fools) into a diy geological and ecological epoch of this planet. Whether this anthropocene allows for any non human life to exist or is itself inhabitable by human beings needs to be seen.

Links:
Disembodied Cuisine”, art installation
In Vitro Meat Consortium, "an international alliance of environmentally concerned scientists striving to facilitate the establishment of a large-scale process industry for the production of muscle tissue for human consumption.."

Future Food aims to inform and accelerate "the research into and development of cultured meat (in-vitro meat)"
Updates:
Eat less meat, G. Monbiot
PETA: "The first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices will receive a check for $1 million."
Dr Philip Thornton, Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects, Phil Trans R Soc B 2010 365: 2853-2867. 

The In Vitro Meat Cookbook, @nextnature,0814

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Filled almond biscuits with apricot and blackcurrent

get
450g wholemeal flour (spelt flour)
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
1.5 heaped teasp ground cinnamon
250g butter
200g blanched almonds(+)
100g blackcurrent jam
100g apricot jam
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp icing sugar

do

Mix honey and egg in the middle of the flour in a large bowl.
Add cinnamon, butter flakes, ground almonds
Knead to a pastry. Add extra flour if sticky.
Cool in fridge.
Roll out thin.
Using 2 cookie cutting tools, the same shape but different sizes:
  • Stamp out cookies with the larger cutter
  • Use the smaller cutter to stamp out a hole in the middle of half of them making frames
  • The frames should be about 1 cm wide or they are unmanageable and break easily
  • Use the cut-outs too.
Bake at 190°c for 8 minutes on a baking tray in batches. Remove delicate frames carefully from tray. Cool.
Spread a little jam of one colour on the outer edges of the whole cookies. Place the frames on them and press lightly so they stick. The outer edges should match. Mix cinnamon and icing sugar. Sprinkle a little on each cookie frame through a fine sieve. Put half a flat teaspoon of jam (same colour) into the hole to fill the biscuit to the level of the frame. Carefully press it flat with the spoon. Do not use too much jam or they cannot be stacked in a tin.
Repeat with half of the biscuits and then change colour for the other half.
Spread a little jam on half the cut-outs and put the other half on them. Sprinkle with cinnamon-icing sugar mixture.
Store in a tin lined with greaseproof paper in a cool place.