So, I did my first "live oats" baking experiment today. I put 1 cup of oats to soak yesterday, to see if sprouting them would loosen the husks (I'm not sure of the terminology here -- is it a husk, or a hull, or chaff, or something else? I'm referring to the straw-like stuff that the seed is wrapped in -- it's not attached to the seed, but it doesn't just wash off.) Soaking didn't help much with that, but I did discover that when I added the water most of the seeds that had husks on floated to the top, so I was able to skim them off without too much trouble. So I think the husky bits are just going to become chicken feed. (see update: Clean Oats!)
This morning I rinsed and drained them, and by mid afternoon they were looking sprouty. I tried putting them through the oat roller damp, but it was a disaster (it instantly gunked up and stopped feeding.) I didn't even try the flour grinder, after seeing what the roller did -- I just went straight to the blender. I had to add about 1/2 cup of water to get it to grind effectively, but the result was thick enough to make a biscuit dough by mixing it with cornmeal & buckwheat flour. All in all, I think it was a successful experiment.
Today's Menu
breakfast: grits with honey and almond milk
lunch: roasted summer squash, Oasis GF bread w/spiced apple butter (made by a friend)
dinner: baked black beans, biscuits with honey & currant/raspberry jelly, amaranth greens
dessert: peaches with black currant/blackcap/maple syrup
(berries from Kestrel Perch, 1/4 mile)
Finger Lakes Baked Beans
1 1/2 cups black beans, soaked and cooked
1/3 package bacon ends (Kingbird Farms, Berkshire, 22 miles), chopped
2 medium or 1 large onion (back yard)
finely chopped hot pepper to taste (back yard -- or Kingbird or Daring Drake)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/4 t cumin
dash of cloves
1/4 c maple syrup
splash of cooking wine (or cider vinegar, if I had any left)
Fry onions & bacon ends, add seasonings, combine with hot beans & enough bean water to reach the surface, and bake until done. (baking time and temp are pretty flexible -- I cut it short tonight b/c we were hungry, but I think it would have benefited from an hour or more.)
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ReplyDeleteI love the baked beans. DO try this at home.
Marty failed to mention that we also broke open a bottle of Lucas Vineyards (http://www.lucasvineyards.com/) "Dry Dock" to go with the baked beans and birthday dinner. (I suppose we didn't literally break it, but the cork wound up IN instead of OUT and a bit of the wine wound up ON instead of IN us.) Anyway, this was a nice wine for the occasion because it had enough body to stand up to the flavor of the beans.
Another variation on baked beans that we enjoyed when eating some from our Crooked Carrot Community Supported Kitchen [CSK] share, was grilled peaches to add a little smoky and sweet flavor. I've enjoyed their foods this summer, particularly when they've managed to include smoked or lacto-fermented beets into things that my DH wouldn't have eaten had he known.
ReplyDeleteI've read that oats won't sprout and that unhulled oats are only good for animal feed. We get organic unhulled oats from Barry Farm in Genoa for the chickens. We buy hulled oats from Cayuga Pure Organics and flake them at home as needed. They still have some hulls, but not so many that it is a problem.
@Nancy: That's true for most oats. I tried sprouting the regular Greenstar oat groats once, and they got pretty skanky. Cayuga Pure oats are a special hull-less variety that needs less processing, and they're still alive at the end of it. They still seem to have the straw-like outer covering, but I guess there's an inner, attached hull too on other varieties, that has to be polished off. Or something.
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