The north wind was slamming into the cottage, this morning when we got up at 4:30 or so, whipping and whistling. I looked out the window, to check the temperature on the church sign, across the street, it read 23 degrees. I ran the math in my head. Cold + Really windy = Really Cold. Oh well, middle of winter, what should I expect? Vickie mumbled something about soup and pointed to various bowls and drawers, brimming with groceries from our trip to the city a few days ago, as she walked straight out the backdoor and into the frigid north wind, teeth gritted, off to slay another dragon, out here, on the High Planes.
I poured another cup of coffee and poked around in the kitchen, noticing some seeds on the counter, Chia seeds, Flax seeds, and I have some quinoa flour. Bake a loaf of seedy bread, to help keep the cottage warm, in the north wind and to dip in the soup. So I made some dough:
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup quinoa flour
- 1/3 cup oats
- yeast
- 1 tbsp chia
- 1 tbsp flax
- salt
- 1 cup warm macadamia nut milk
- 1 tbsp honey
- water, just enough
- 2 tbsp MCT +/-
I like to make bread dough early in the day, knock it down every few hours, checking how well the yeast is working each time. Baking it in the mid afternoon, warming the kitchen for making the soup.
- Mix all the dry ingredients with mixer paddle.
- Heat milk to ~115 add honey and 1/4 cup water, stir to dissolve honey
- Add MCT and about half the milk/water, beat with dough hook until shaggy dough forms
- Add milk/water a little at a time, until bowl walls are clean and a nice ball is formed
- Remove from bowl and nead by hand, adding just enough flour, so the ball is not sticky
- Lightly oil bowl, place dough back in and cover with plastic wrap and towel, place in the oven that was preheated to 100 – 120 and then turned off, leave the light on
- After about two hours or so, nead it out flat, roll it up and put it in a pan
- Put the covered pan back in the oven with the light on for another hour and a half or so, to rise
- Take the pan out, make a couple slices across the top and keep warm and covered on back of the stove, while oven heats to about 425 or so.
- Bake for 34 minutes, until golden brown. If it browns too much, cover with foil
Many of the soups I make, start with the same stock, an onion, half dozen celery stalks and some carrots, chop them all pretty small and saute’ them in the big dutch oven, usually in coconut oil, MCT or some other plant oil. I keep it up on medium high, until I start to get browning on the bottom of the pan, then turn the heat up to high and pour in 4-8 cups water. I guessed 8 on this batch, since I am going to add a cup of dried lentils and the cooked beans. Seems to be about perfect after the lentils cooked through. The Adzuki beans scared me a little bit, I have no experience with them. Seems they are used frequently for oriental deserts. The recipes I perused had pretty long cook times, so I decided just to pressure cook them in the instant pot to make sure they are completely done. Nothing ruins soup like some little uncooked pebble of a bean or other nasty legume, that refuses to cook, like the rest of the good little plants. The instant pot always shows them, who the boss is. Something roughly like this:
- 2 tbsp MCT
- The following, finely diced
- 1 medium onion
- 1/2 dozen celery stalks
- 4-5 carrots
- 8 small red potatoes
- Garlic, whatever that looks like for you, I like a lot
- 8 cups water
- 1 cup lentils, I used a pretty orange variety
- 1/2 cup Adzuki beans, pressure cooked and rinsed
- Salt and Pepper
- most of a small can tomato paste
- Soy Sauce – optional
Simmered everything for an hour or so and got a nice stock, then added the lentils and beans and cooked for a half hour or so uncovered, thickening and reducing. Once the consistency is right, shut off the burner, put the lid on the dutch oven and let cool, when cooled, put in refrigerator until an hour before devouring, and reheat. One of the recipes in the research for this soup, used soy sauce, so I tried some sprinkled on a small bowl and it is very satisfying, having a more exotic flavor palette, but I think it needs to be under control of the eater and not the preparer.
Time to try out the bread and what better way than slather avocado all over it as thick as possible and add a few sprinkles of salt and red pepper. Very nice indeed.
The seedy bread and the soup were both awesome. Vickie agreed, so give it a go, perfect for the middle of winter. Try it with a few sprinkles of soy sauce. If you don’t have any Adzuki beans, bon’t let that stop you, use what you have, go with Jamaican red beans and some smoked paprika perhaps.
