baked Scotch eggs

I had Scotch eggs once, years ago, probably at a restaurant in Victoria. Unlike the fine people of Scotland I don't regard deep frying to be the apotheosis of cooking methods, but a breaded, sausage-wrapped hard-cooked egg hurled into boiling oil is indeed heart-stoppingly delicious.

Deep frying really doesn't seem necessary, though. I thought I'd attempt to make them in the oven.

I like baking eggs rather than boiling them. 30 minutes at 325 degrees is just right. The yolks become exceptionally creamy and it's much easier to hard-cook a dozen or two eggs this way than it is to boil or steam them.

I used a mild Italian bulk sausage mixed with a handful of minced onion and chives. I patted a couple ounces of sausage into a thin oval, dredged a wet egg in flour, and packed the meat around the egg. After being bathed in raw egg beaten with Dijon mustard, the egg was rolled in panko bread crumbs.

They rested on a cookie sheet in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, then went into a cold oven set to 350 degrees. After about 35 minutes I turned on the broiler for a few minutes to brown the bread crumbs.

The only problem was that the sausage split on most of them. I really didn't use a thick enough coating. I'd purchased only a pound of sausage and that just wasn't enough for eight eggs. Three ounces per egg would probably do the trick.

Despite this aesthetic glitch, the boys and I were quite pleased. The breading was crisp and not at all greasy, and the flavors and texture were just what I was looking for. And baking is so much more convenient than deep frying. I think I'll be trying this again.

first coffee roast in modified Popcorn Pumper

I cleaned off my work bench the other day, organizing and storing the bazillion fasteners, tools, scraps, instruction manuals, and spare household pets. It was a beautiful blank slate for the first time since we moved in, what, five years ago? And it was literally crying out for projects!

While cleaning up the rest of the garage I found the Popcorn Pumper, which I haven't used for roasting coffee since finding the Poppery II. Seemed like a good time to toy with a few modifications. I started small, simply bypassing the thermal switch (and thereby creating a magnificent fire hazard). This is just a matter of soldering a wire between the terminals on either end of the thermostat and fuse, more or less according to this Engadget how-to. This keeps the heating coil on constantly, delivering significantly greater heat. (This great article has more explanation of the circuitry in these things.)

I also made an aluminum chimney to replace the bulky plastic hood, which really does not care for these temperatures. This was just some leftover aluminum roof flashing, rolled and fastened with J-B Weld.

The first trial run was excellent! I took it outside, preheated for a minute, and added enough beans for there to be some agitation but no swirling. I stirred occasionally with a wooden spoon, which is now possible since I can get straight into the chamber. The difference in heat was obvious. Roasting time was greatly reduced, and it's clear that any desired roast can be achieved without baking the beans. The chaff was all blasted directly out the chimney.

I didn't take any measurements but the results are clear. This is an enormous improvement over the original machine and the Poppery II as well. This was Sweet Maria's Classic Italian espresso blend and I took it to a very dark roast with a speed and consistency I've never seen.

2010-09-13 update: Tried again, this time shooting for a lighter roast. 4.65 ounces for five minutes produced this:

It was just entering second crack. That may be a little faster than is desirable. The roaster could have handled more beans. Adding beans generally speeds things up but I'm not sure that would be true in this case where I'm doing some manual agitation until the beans are light enough to fluidize. I guess the best approach will be to vary the supply voltage.

gutter planter update

The gutter planter I built and planted back in March is now producing. We had a nice bunch of mesclun and baby bibb lettuce at dinner as a result of the afternoon's thinning efforts.

As I should have anticipated, the squirrels were disruptive and messed up a lot of the early seedlings. Since then I've put up a system for draping bird netting. The aesthetics are annoying but not egregious.

first try at a ginger beer

Based on this ginger beer how-to I set out to make my first ginger beer. I simplified and modified the recipe a bit, and also doubled it to produce two gallons.

In three quarts of water I boiled for 30 minutes a cup of shredded/pulped ginger, 16 tablespoons of lemon and orange juice, and a cup of white sugar. It should have been two cups, I realized later.

I strained into five quarts of cold water, cooled in an ice bath to 80 degrees, and pitched half a teaspoon of Muntons ale yeast proofed in 3/4 cup of water.

It went into four two liter bottles. Upon sampling I was surprised by its lack of sweetness. That is when I realized that I forgot to double the sugar. I added 1/4 cup of corn sugar to each bottle, but did not taste again or take any gravity readings.

I think the flavor has more lemon than ginger character. It could just be that my ginger sensor is a little blown out right now since I was nibbling on it raw.

It's now resting at room temperature. I think I'll probably test one, two, three, and four days of fermentation.

2010-03-30 update:

All bottles were rock-hard in less than a day. The first bottle went into the refrigerator after 24 hours at room temperature. The second went in after 48.

The first two are pretty comparable. Carbonation is stronger in the second, and it may be just slightly more dry. I think I pick up the slightest hint of yeast and a touch more ginger bite in number two. All of those differences could be the effect of the effervescence, but they result in number two being more successful.

It's really pretty good. I don't detect any of the orange juice. The lemon is strong; I'd actually dial it back a bit and try the lime of the original recipe. It's far, far less sweet than the commercial ginger beer I have had most recently, Reed's Ginger Beer, which is so cloying as to make me queasy.

I don't think the degree of carbonation can actually increase much, so the next two bottles should give me a pretty good read on how the sweetness changes.

I wouldn't say that I can detect any amount of alcohol. A half cup of table sugar and a half cup of corn sugar per gallon gives an original gravity of only about [(3.5 oz 46 ppg + 3.5 oz x 42 ppg) x 1 lb / 16 oz], or 1.019. Even if it attenuated completely it would be less than 2.5% ABV, and I'm sure it will be less in actuality. This stuff should be only 80 - 90 calories per pint -- that's compared to 145 in 12 ounces of Reed's. This is quite a nice light summer drink.

2010-03-31 update:

Added number three to the tasting tonight. Absolutely massive carbonation, demanding several minutes of bottle opening ministrations. It wasn't quite chilled. One effect of this is that it kicks up all of the sediment, which probably affects the result.

That said, I don't actually notice much difference between two and three. Possibly a bit more dry. I'll have to try again tomorrow when both are equally cold. Number one is not entirely flat, but it's close to lifeless. Definitely dominated by the others.

I bought a bottle of Reed's Extra Ginger Brew. Bleah. It's like syrup compared to mine.

2010-04-02 update:

Tasting number four completed the flight. I compared to number two and it is assuredly drier. I measured the gravity of both. With temperature adjustment, number two was 1.014 and number four was 1.011. I don't know that I have a preference. Assuming that my original gravity estimate is correct, that would be about 1% ABV, or nothing to worry about if the boys want some.

I think it's pretty easy to experiment with the recipe in very small amounts. Unlike beer, I don't think that any yeast strain I'm likely to use is going to make much of a difference. Starting with a base of ginger and sugar it should be easy to incrementally add ingredients until reaching something that seems worth upscaling and bottling.

a gutter planter

I've toyed with vertical gardening ideas for a long time. Before I decided to build the greenhouse last year my thoughts were largely of going vertically up the back wall of the house. It still seems to me that with the right approach a big south-facing wall could be enormously productive without being a ton of work. But, that's not what I did.

The other night I happened across this article about using rain gutters as planters. It mentions people using gutters around deck railing, too. My deck is perfect for this, and I've always meant to build planters to run along that sunny rail. A trip to Home Depot and a couple of hours of work and I now have nearly 19 feet of seeded planter in a supremely convenient location.

It's worth mentioning that the gutter itself is dirt cheap at $5 per 10 foot segment, but man do they put the screws to you on every other bit you need. I was about $40 by the time I had the end caps, connecting segment, and supports every two feet. But compared to the wooden planters I've built and hung in other places it's less expensive, rock solid on the railing, and should last forever.

It's a bit of an experiment, but I'm pretty confident that I'll find something that works in it really well.

2010-05-22 update: It's working nicely.

stovetop versus hot air roasting test 1

I'm finally getting around to doing some controlled tests between hot air coffee roasting and stovetop popper roasting. For this test I used Sweet Maria's Moka Kadir blend.

Stovetop roasting was outdoors at about 50 degrees, high humidity, no wind. Hot air using the Poppery II was indoors at about 68 degrees. Beans started at room temperature in both cases.

I roasted 10 ounces in the stovtop roaster, ending up with 8.43 ounces. Temperature was 550+ at bean drop. I ran it hotter than usual, staying above 350 for the duration and climbing to around 450 at the end. It came out at 4:20 with heavy smoke and some beans well into second crack. This was a fast and uneven roast.

I roasted 5 ounces in the hot air popper, ending up with 4.2 ounces. I preheated the popper for a few minutes and agitated the beans for the first few minutes as well. By three minute it was fluidizing unassisted, with a few already very dark and others barely colored. It came out at 8:00 with moderate smoke, when I judged the color to be comparable. It was even, as usual for hot air.

The closeness of the final (proportionate) weights may be a good indicator of the average darkness being nearly identical.

Toss-cooled both outdoors. There's a nonlinear relationship between mass and cooling time; the smaller batch takes perhaps one fourth as long. I don't have a way to measure the internal bean temperature so don't know whether that's also a factor.

Stovetop results:

Hot air results:

Tasted after resting for a day, pulling single shots. The grind was a little fine (30+ seconds). The hot air beans were a touch slower.

The stovetop-roasted coffee's initial moderate acidity mellows into sweetness, some fruit. Can detect both the very dark and bright tones, probably due to variability in bean doneness. It has both a slightly underdone and a slightly overdone quality, but it's quite good. I think it will be better in a day but it's totally drinkable.

The air-roasted coffee produced much more crema and the espresso had a much stronger coffee aroma. The acidity stays on the tongue considerably longer, with the sweetness blending into it. There is less complexity in the flavors and it's just not as lively. More body. Also good, but I think I slightly prefer the stovetop variant.

For the next test I should slow down the stovetop roast and try to reduce the variability in darkness. This can be done by starting at a lower initial temperature, running at a lower gas setting, or using more beans. Weather is a factor, too. While my opinion is that some variation is actually desirable, being responsible for the more interesting flavors, a better comparison can be made if it is limited.

Overall, a pretty successful test. I'll happily drink both of these roasts straight, with milk, and as Americano.