Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

It seems a bit tragic to write a post essentially about making toast, but here goes anyway.

In Chad Robertson’s wonderful Tartine Bread, he offers over thirty different recipes for using up old bread. The entire book is fabulously inspirational, but that chapter particularly so, given that I have a freezer full of loaves from all my baking experiments (I appear to have filled the neighbours’ freezers as well).

Midway through the chapter, Chad recounts how he asked the legendary Alice Waters what she did with her old bread and the reply was, simply, “bread crumbs”. That was what I had in mind when I tore apart our failed Römertopf loaf and laid it out to bake for three hours in a low 100C oven.

What I didn’t realise was how delicious oven dried sourdough is – it reminded me of the little squares of melba toast from  my childhood. I’d baked the bread until it was dry all the way through – there weren’t any soft bits of crumb left at all. Before I’d even had a chance to think about whizzing them up in the food processor, Small Man devoured half of them.

I figured it had to have something to do with the crunchiness.

A few days later, I cut the crust off a sesame loaf (the tribe had spoken, and these loaves had been ignored by everyone except me). I sliced it up thinly and baked the pieces in the oven, again at 100C (no fan) for a couple of hours. I also tore apart half of another loaf and baked it on the lower shelf…

As they were cooking, I made a batch of frijoles negros refritos (refried beans) using precooked defrosted black beans from the freezer and a little of our recently rendered lard…

The boys scoffed the bread and dip for Sunday lunch with enormous enthusiasm. The crunchy dry sourdough made a great substitute for corn chips (without the deep frying)…

Any leftovers (providing the pieces have been baked completely dry) should keep for a while in an airtight container, in much the same way as breadcrumbs would. They make wonderful croutons for soup, can be whizzed into crumbs in the food processor (or crushed with a rolling pin as Chad Robertson suggests), and they work well with cheeses and dips. Slicing the bread produces prettier results, but the torn pieces have a certain rustic charm which we found very appealing.

In the end, lunch for the entire family cost us very little – the bread was surplus, the beans were dirt cheap, and running a low oven isn’t hugely expensive (according to my engineer husband). More importantly, we didn’t have to waste any bread!

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Pete read this post over my shoulder as I was drafting it and said, “More Römertopf evangelism?”  Sorry folks, I’m on a roll.. x

. . . . .

All my friends have gone Römertopf pulled pork crazy.

PeteV has made the dish twice. Carol baked a large pork neck, and the entire two kilo cut was demolished by her family in one sitting. Dredgey managed to get a pork shoulder into his Romy (I still haven’t figured out how) and ended up with meat so tender that he couldn’t lift it out of the pot.

The Spice Girl told me today that she’d made this (with a dozen extra spices added) and her son had requested it for lunch and dinner three days in a row. Our friend and neighbour Will squished a small pork neck into his baby pot, baked it until it was falling apart, then ate it like a caveman.

My friend Lisa, a Römertopf novice, no longer hates me for posting photos that made her son nag her into buying one. On the first night, she made the pulled pork, and on the second, a chicken stew which her family devoured. The ease of cooking in the clay baker surprised both Lisa and Carol – once it’s in the oven, all the hard work is basically done, and after the meal is finished, the pot goes straight into the dishwasher.

Caught up in this wave of enthusiasm, I’ve been trying all sorts of dishes in my well seasoned Römertopf. The latest were these pork ribs, a riff on one of our earlier recipes.

I began by rubbing two large racks of what we call American spare ribs (I think these are known as baby back ribs in the US) with two tablespoons of brown sugar and a tablespoon each of paprika and sea salt…

Following a similar method to the pulled pork recipe, the ribs were layered into the presoaked baker and placed in a cold oven. I turned the temperature to 200C with fan and set the timer for 30 minutes. After that time, I added two cups of hot water and turned the oven down to 150C with fan for a further 1½ hours baking time. The cooked ribs were tender and moist…

I removed the ribs from the pot and spooned over our barbeque sauce marinade:

• ½ cup tomato passata
• ¼ cup runny honey
• 1 tablespoon (4 teaspoons) light soy
• 1 tablespoon (4 teaspoons) Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon (4 teaspoons) white wine vinegar

They were then placed on a lined oven tray and put back into the oven under the top element to colour up. The end result was delicious – not quite as tender as I’d hoped (I think I overcooked them a bit in the final browning stage), but packed with flavour. My hungry wolves devoured the entire platter’s worth…

I poured all the liquid from the clay baker into a large bowl and put it in the fridge overnight to set. The following day, I scraped off the flavoured fat (which went into a batch of Pan Cubano the day after that) and stashed the two containers of rich jellied stock in the freezer…

A week later, I defrosted some of the stock and used it (plus a little annatto paste), to season a batch of Basmati rice. The end result was this incredibly flavoursome pilaf…

…which we topped with frijoles negros refritos, (defrosted) pulled pork, tomatillo salsa and corn chips…

That’s it for now, folks – I’ll try to give the Römertopf posts a rest for a while!

PS. I buy all my Mexican ingredients online from Sydney-based Fireworks Foods. They have a huge range, great prices and quick delivery!

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