Recipe of the day

Brownies

Ingredients

400 g dark chocolate
200 g butter or margarine
5 dl sugar
2.5 dl flour
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla (or 3 tsp vanilla sugar)
2 dl chopped nuts (pecan or other soft nuts)
2 dl chocolate chips or 100 g coarse crushed chocolate

Melt chocolate and butter on low heat, mix dry ingredients and eggs in a bowl, and pour in the melted chocolate, mix well. Pour into a greased 20x30 cm oven pan, and bake at 175 degrees C for approximately 30 minutes, the center should be a bit gooey. Let cool for 30-45 minutes, refridgerate for an hour, and cut into 5 by 5 cm squares.

Lasagne

Ingredients

500g ground beef or lamb, low-fat
500g Mozzarella di Bufalo
lasagne noodles
4dl tomato puré
oil
4 tbl parmesan cheese, ground

spices:
2-5 cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
2 tbl ground black pepper
1 tbl ground rose peppers
2-3 tsp habanero sauce

Dishes and utensils:
A deep oven pan and cover
frying pan and cover
a sharp knife
spatula

Heat the frying pan, pour a little oil on it. Fry the ground meat. Crush and cube the garlic, toss into pan, toss in spices. Fry on high heat until excess moisture has vaporized, pour in tomato, mix well, and let it simmer covered on low heat.

Put the oven on to 200'C

Slice the mozzarella into thin slices and put the slices into 4 piles. Butter the oven pan, and lay a layer of noodles on the bottom, break them if necessary as you go to make reasonalby solid layers. Divide the meat-sauce into 4 parts.

Layer sauce, mozzarella slices and noodles, do not cover the last mozzarella layer with noodels. Sprinkle the parmesan on top.

Put the cover on the oven pan, and put it into the oven. Bake for 30 minutes and take the cover off, bake until the top has a little golden crust, about 10 minutes.

Mead

Basic Mead

Ingredients:
6 kg Honey
25 liters Water
Champagne Yeast
Yeast nutrient

Equipment:
carboy or brewing tank
waterlock
thermometer
hydrometer
Sterilizing chemicals + rubber gloves
Large kettle
Big spoon
Sifter, screen or similar

Start by sterilizing all the equipment, and remember to rinse everything to get the chemicals out.
Prepare the must: Make a 1:2 - 1:3 honey-water mixture in the kettle, heat it up to 80'C and keep there for about 10 minutes, skim off all foam that forms on the surface, and pour into the brewing tank. Repeat if your kettle is not big enough to get all the honey at once.

Pour in cold water and stir well, cool off to 20'C so you can reliably measure the gravity of the liquid with the hydrometer. The original gravity can be used as a guide to the final alcohol content and sweetness, I started with OG 1.080, and the yeat I'm using should be able to make it really dry.

If the OG is 1.090 or less, you should be able to make a good dry sparkling mead with champagne yeast, if you have too much sugar, it won't be as good with sparkles, but at about 17% vol a nice dry mead tastes more than satisfactory.

Once the fermentation is done, you need to clarify the mead, and then finally bottle it. More on this when my Mead project reaches this stage.