On Skólavörðurstígur is an Asian soup restaurant which only sells three variations of the same soup (vegetarian, chicken and beef). The soup is awesome and today I tried to recreate it:

For one person:

some oil

1 tbsp chopped ginger
2 handfull sliced Chinese cabbage
1 tsp peanut butter (crunchy)
1/2 soup cube (vegetable)
1 cup of water
1 pack of Chinese egg noodles (the squares)
a pinch of chilli powder
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of cumin

a handfull of sprouts

1 chopped spring onion
1 chopped chilli
1 tbsp of roasted sesame seeds


Preparation
Fry the ginger, add the Chinese cabbage and the peanut butter and cook for 5 minutes. Add water, the soup cube and the noodles. Let simmer for 5 minutes and add spices.

Fry the spring onion and chilli in a skillet.

Put the soup in a bowl, add the sprouts, top with the spring onion and chilli and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Update:
I forgot to add these to the spices:
1 tsp coriander
1 pinch of anis

Also if you like the soup with beef, cut a beef filet in small pieces and fry with the spring onion and chili and some salt.

I have started to make bread again, but have not gone all sourdough yet but am still using the recipes from the best damn bread making book ever, where breads made with yeast are concerned "The Bread Baker's Bible" ISBN: 9781843094135.
It has been sitting on my shelf the past 6 months, in my old place I did not feel like getting my bake on as my kitchen was also my bedroom.

space = motivation

My goal is to get back into my bread making vibe and to see which recipe might be good to adapt to sourdough. I'm also playing with vegan baking. The two breads I made were both recipes I had experimented with before and here are the updated recipes:

Granary Cob
The original uses Granary or Malthouse flour, flour with malted wheat flakes. I decided to add the malt flavour by using the Icelandic malt beer and wheat bran.

Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 2/3 cups wholegrain flour
1/3 cup rye flour

1tsp salt
3 tsp dried yeast
3/4 cup water

1/2 cup malt beer
1/2 cup wheat bran (I forgot this, this time)

Topping:
2 tbsp water + 1/2 tsp salt and oat flakes

Pour the malt beer into the wheat bran. Let it sit 5 - 10 min to allow for the bran to get mushy.
Sift flour and salt together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the water and yeast. Mix it with a little flour than add the bran/malt beer mixture. Mix to a dough. Knead for ten minutes.

Let rest in a warm place (I chose on top of the heating) for 1-1 1/2 hours or until double in bulk.
Knock back, knead 2-3 minutes, form into a ball and put it on a baking sheet.
Let rest for 20 - 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 230°C

Mix the salt and water and brush it over the bread. sprinkle with the oat flakes.

Bake 15 minutes at 230°C then reduce to 200°C and bake 20 more minutes.

I was not completely happy with the bread, it could have used more salt and taste in general (even counting for the missing bran). I might try to use a rye sourdough starter and less yeast next time.

Vegan toast
I changed a recipe for a split tin bread into a toast recipe some time ago (adding butter and apple sauce) and now I decided to make it vegan, by using margarine instead of butter and almond milk instead of milk. It came out great.

Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 cup wholegrain flour
1 tbsp salt

2/3 cup water
1/3 cup almond milk

35g margarine
1 tbsp apple sauce

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the water, milk and yeast. Mix some of the flour into the yeast mixture until you have a batter like dough. Sprinkle flour over it and let rest in a warm place for 20 min. It will start to bubble.

Add margarine and apple sauce. Mix with the remaining flour to a dough. Knead for 10 minutes. Let rest for about 1 hour or until double in bulk.

Lightly grease a loaf tin. Knock back the dough and shape into a rectangle the length of the tin. Fold the upper third of the rectangle down and the lower one up. Fold over, tug in the ends and place into the loaf tin.
Let rest for 20-30 minutes or until double in bulk in a warm place.

With a sharp knife make a cut through the length of the bread. Let rest for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 230°C

Bake for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 200°C and bake 20 minutes more. Turn out on a wire rack to cool.

Now we only need a toaster...

I made my first vegan cake on Friday. It was my friends birthday, so of course I made a cake. As my flatmate is Vegan I decided to to try and change the recipe for my strawberry, marzipan, chocolate cake to vegan. As the cake to 90% consists of the before mentioned ingredients, this was very simple. I cut the marzipan in cubes, covered them with flour and then "flaked" them into the flour. Then I added oil and coffee (50/50) and a few drops of lemon juice until I had a cookie dough like dough. I pressed the dough in the baking form on and around the strawberries and baked the whole thing on 180°C for about half an hour. After cooling I covered it with dark chocolate.

It is awesome!

never create a sour-dough starter with anything but flour and water. No yeast, sugar or fruit juices. It will get moldy.

P.S I don't know how to comment on your webpage

Original post by Barnaby: https://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/4Ye8wT/

As I wrote before I took apart an old sweater in order to knit fingerless gloves out of it to sell on the street. Most of them found a home and I do not have pictures of all of them, but here are some of my designs.
The sweater had three colours, brown, beige and cream. I made a pair of unicoloured of each colour. For the cream ones I used "Fetching" a pattern from knitty.
I did the same for the beige ones, using "Portlander", but as my needle sizes were a bit different, the zig-zag pattern now covers the whole of the back of the glove.



I'm very sad I don't have a picture of the brown ones, it took me long time to make them, I ended up unraveling them a lot. I wanted to have a flap, or something pretending to be one. In the end I knitted in the round, but had three stitches lapping over. By using increases and decreases I created the illusion of the flap forming an S with a nice cable pattern at the edges.

I wasn't sure whether I had enough yarn left for a unicoloured pair, so I ventured into stranded knitting. I used an old fashioned diamond pattern and as I couldn't increase or decrease due to the pattern, everything was knitted in one size. They ended up being quite wide at the top, so I made fingers. They were sold before I had even finished them, but I used the same method to make fingers for the next pattern, which is my favourite multi coloured slip stitch.



When I think of knitting stranded, I think of Icelandic knitting. I can knit the traditional Icelandic patterns in my sleep, the repetitions and counting are like meditation to me. I wanted to design a glove, which mimics the in the pattern incorporated decreases in a lopapeysur. I decided to move from a 5 repeat to a 4 repeat. Here is the result.



After these two I was down to a lot of leftovers. I decided to use a traditional Victorian slip stitch pattern to make short gloves with finger holes. Out of the very rest I knotted a tiny button, which goes together with the Victorian stitch.



Except for the Icelandic pair all of them have been sold. Now it is getting spring, so I think I won't be buying another old pullover...