Dilly bag breakfast

I got the urge to collect together some things in a dilly bag and walk over to my friends house for breakfast. I didn't know if anyone would be home, and it was a good twenty minute walk through an industrial estate and along the vibrantly weedy creek. I arrived, my friend was home, I commenced frying polenta sourdough pancakes as he told me how life was going for him.
I realised I hadn't proposed any cooking so I brought it up, 'im just making us some breakfast, is that cool?' he responded favourably and said the momentum was allowing him to get onto the dishes. Symbiosis. It's interesting what we offer each other as part of community, momentum, togetherness, reality checking...

Go in for batter

Time to re-set the pancake mode... I got my sourdough culture out of the fridge and coaxed it back to life with some fresh flour. Then searching around for flour I found some coarse yellow maize and a generic gluten free flour mixture, I mixed a little of each together with some water, added some buckwheat sprouts and sourdough culture and let it ferment.

Late night dosa

Arrived in Sydney to play with the wonderful Tessa and Karl (of Makeshift fame), we fried up some late night dosa's with the mix I carried up from Melbourne on the train, and served them with organic sour cream and date & tamarind chutney.
--
dosa: soaked organic white rice and whole red lentils, ground up and mixed with coconut cream kefir, fermented 24 hours
when ready to cook we added 2 eggs, salt and a red capsicum

Making dosa for lunch

Ive made Dosa experiments several times in the last couple of weeks. I really enjoy the flavour and texture of these pancakes, they are delicious, though im sure mine would be quite different to traditional dosa, I was happy with todays recipe.
--
1/2 cup of organic white rice soaked for a day and ground up in mortar and pestle (you could use a blender)
1/2 cup of whole red lentils soaked and beginning to sprout, also ground up, some lentils were left whole
1/2 cup of kefir, I used biodynamic cows milk kefir because thats what I had, this is to kickstart the souring process. Which develops the flavours and extra healthful qualities of dosa. You could also use some sourdough culture (maybe even yoghurt?) or leave the mixture to ferment naturally for a few days.

The ingredients were mixed together into a thick paste and left in a jar for a day to ferment. When ready to cook I added some pink salt, a little extra water, a few dried garlic granules because they were beside the stove and I thought why not, and a little bit of cinnamon powder.
I fried them on a low heat using a thin layer of coconut oil in a heavy cast iron pan. It is best to let the dosa cook well on one side until the top becomes dry, then flipping is a simple endeavour and they hold together well. It doesnt need much cooking at all on the other side. Dosa are flavoursome enough to enjoy on their own, today mum and I ate them for lunch with salads and tahina sauce.

Bok Choy Strawberry Salad

--
fresh bok choy
strawberries
brazil nuts
flaxseed oil
served with dosa pancakes and tahina sauce

A light like taboulei

--

Sprouted buckwheat

avocado

fuji apple from local farm

fresh parsley from mum's garden

lemon juice

served on freshly cooked dosa with tahina sauce
eaten outside in the sunshine

The never ending batter

Pancake batter with grated pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, cabbage, red onion and dulse.
I've been using and replenishing the same sourdough pancake batter for over a week, adding new flours for the culture to feed on and adding some of the batter to a fresh selection of grated vegetables. As you can see there is a lot more veg than flour in my mix.

Sour-Oko

Sourdough okonomiyaki

Sourdough pancake batter made with a mixture of flours (sourgham, white maize and tapioca),
2 eggs from our chooks (not neccessary at all but its me being extra safe that they wont stick to my pan)
himalayan crystal salt
grated carrot and sweet potato, chopped up super fresh green cabbage
Fried with coconut oil, served with mayonnaise and dulse.

Later I made it again and served with coleslaw-sauerkraut (cabbage, carrot, red capscium) and fresh rocket.

Sour-pumpkin pancakes

Sourdough pumpkin pancakes

Using the continuation of the injera batter (made with red sourgham flour and a sourdough culture), i added some white maize flour, salt, lots of grated pumpkin and 2 eggs and then fried them in coconut oil. Lately I have been having trouble with sour-pancakes sticking to the pan (the mixture is holding together but the entire bottom surface is sticking), it happened again this morning, but I decided to see what happened if I added eggs and they flipped like a dream. I was so happy!

We had these pancakes with an platter of vegetable ferments, sprouts, greens and sunflower seed sour cream.

Injera

Injera
Eithopian sourdough pancake (traditionally this is beautifully spongey and aerated)

This was the first time I have tried to make injera, I've had the red sourgham flour I bought from an injera bakery from Footscray for about a year in my freezer and I thought I would finally attempt it and bring it along to Fermentation Friday. The recipe is straight out of Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation. They were a bit of a flop and no matter how hard I tried the bottom of the injera kept sticking to the pan. So I took my mixture along to FF and luckily there was someone that could help me out (go real life troubleshooting, way more fun than the Internet).I met Ben from Brisbane who runs Culture Club, he taught me many very useful and interesting things. We managed to pull together something of edibility, and I dressed the 'injera' with Megs delicious mango chutney I found in her fridge. But the most important thing I learned was that sourdoughs hit 'peaks' and when they are peaking you want to seize the moment and cook them. My injera mix had been well and truly bubbling with wonder in the morning but by the afternoon had passed a peak. I think I will need to further investigate if this makes a difference to the sticking situation. Sourdough peak watch...

Sour-Dosa

Sourdough Dosa (Indian pancakes)
I have made these three times in the last week following along the path of the recipe in Wild Fermentation. Each time I have made variances and experimenta.
- the basic idea is to soak rice and lentils separately overnight and then grind them up, make a thick batter and ferment it for a few days.
--
I have used brown rice and organic white rice and preferred the later as it was much easier to grind. I have just been using my mortar and pestle because I enjoy using it, and don't mind a coarser grind, the rice turns into powdered snow. Traditionally Sosa calls for urad lentils but I used whole red lentils. Instead of plain water I used cobnut kefir which kick started the souring process. When ready to cook add salt and water to thin the mixture then fry in ghee or coconut oil. These were really great and it was such a revelation that I could make pancakes without needing flour bug rather by sprouting things and smashing them, yeh!

Eating dosa

Dosa with mashed pumpkin and a fried egg for dinner before taking the rest of the mixture to Fermentation Friday