Amaranth Pastas

I'm back from my TRT thru hike with fellow bay area hikers Jeremy and Tony.
We walked about 170 miles over 9 days, and had excellent weather the whole trip.
Jeremy did all the work figuring our resupply points, water supply points, etc. I showed up and walked. It was awesomely easy.

Part of my meal kit for the trip was pastas to go with the sauces and broths I made. I decided two shapes from a 30% amaranth dough, 60% semolina, 10% all purpose. This makes a very gritty pasta that survives the cooking and drying process, and a second round of cooking on the trail, without turning to a soggy bowl of mush.


310 grams of total flour, 30% amaranth


add 6 egg yolks, and 3 egg whites


mix it up


Wrap in plastic wrap, and let sit for an hour or so. I used the time to prepare the marinade for my jerky.


For the first shape, I did a spiral pasta, and it starts by rolling the dough thin, and cutting into 3 inch wide strips


The strips are subdivided into 1/4 inch strips


Each strip is hand rolled around a floured wooden stick, here I am using a chopstick.


The pasta is dried.


Then cooked, and seasoned.


Then dried again and portioned into servings of 120g.

My second pasta for the trip was a simple round shape.

It starts by rolling the dough into a log


Dividing and rolling the pasta in hand until it reaches the desired diameter.


The resulting pasta 'snakes' are cut into bit size chunks


and shaped against the thumb.


The result is a disk of pasta with a large dimple to hold sauce.


Repeat.


The pastas are dried.


Then cooked, and dried again, before being packaged. This is a turkey soup using the amaranth pasta, tomato sauce, and seasoning mix.

Thanks for reading my blog, I hope to get up more food and photos from the TRT thru hike soon.

Calories per gram ratio

Lets brainstorm about Calories per gram.

Fat is 9Cal/g
Carbs are 4Cal/g
Protein is 4Cal/g

For most intents and purposes, Calories only come from these components of food, and the amounts per unit of the food is known from internet databases.

Looking only at these components, there is a linear relationship between percentage of Calories from fat, and Calories per gram of digestible matter.

Calories_Per_gram = (PercentCaloriesFromFat / 20) +4

A "perfect" food would contain only these components in significant quantities. Crafting a recipe for any given Caloric density would be a simple matter of punching in the numbers into the equation to determine the needed fat percentage, and building from that.

PercentCaloriesFromFat = 20 * (Calories_Per_gram - 4)

Protein : Carbohydrate ratio would be a matter of when the fuel was to be burned. I like proteins at night, and carbohydrates in the day, both with generous amounts of fat.

I have a variety of isolated proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Preparing a menu could be a simple matter of seasoning protein and carbohydrate blends and preparing those with water and fat on the trail. Except I want, and need, texture to my foods.

The challenge in optimizing the Cal/g ratio then becomes a function of creating enjoyable texture from carbs and proteins, that can be dried and rehydrated later. These should be crafted in a way that would allow the maximum amount of fat to be tolerated during the meal. This would seem to be the next step in the fake meat project I started last year, but I am not sure. If I want to push the Cal/g ratio higher, I need to be able to find a texture I enjoy when prepared in fat.

Since I've never kept stats before, the bars are my current record on a Cal/g scale. I typed up the recipe for the bars today, so as soon as I select some pictures it will be ready to post.

I'm thinking I can make a hot dinner that breaks 6 Cal/g.

Cheers,

COMING UP !
Trinity alps trip report, and strawberry electrolyte chewable gel.

Jerky and Lentils

In preparation for my trinity alps hike last weekend I made a ton of food, but didn't have time to sort through the pictures and post the recipes.

The first thing I made was some jerky, but rather than a jerky for snacking, I made it specifically to season the lentil dinner. I really enjoyed the flavor of the jerky, and the way it worked with the mashed potatoes and lentils. It did cause a bit of gas when eaten dried, but prepared it was mostly fine.

1. 10g salt
2. 15g black pepper corns
3. 5g coriander
4. 9g cumin
5. 4g all spice
6. 8g molasses
7. 2g agave nectar
8. 1.6# beef
9. pinch of cayenne
10. double pinch of cinnamon
    
11. 15mL tamari
12. 1/2 small onion fine dice
13. hand full of garlic cloves, minced
14. 5mL champagne wine vinegar
15. 200mL water
    

I start with a blend of spices consisting of black pepper,
coriander, cumin, allspice, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon.


Toast the seed like spices, and grind to a powder


combine spices with 10mL molasses, 200mL water, 5mL vinegar
15mL tamari, and blend well, add in 1/2 small onion diced fine,
and 6 minced cloves of garlic.


I am going to marinate this 1.64lbs of london broil over night in the refrigerator.


Because this is a small batch of big pieces, I will dry it flat
rather than hang it as I did with the mango-chipotle jerky
last season.


the jerky laid out for drying


130g of the dried jerky will be chopped into bites
and added to 75g of lentils and 45g dry mashed
potatoes per two person meal.


bite size pieces.


More coming soon , this is backpacking season !

Beef Stew

I wanted to see if I could make a beef stew in a trail friendly format.

I start with big chunks of beef, a sprinkle of salt and dash of black pepper.


Brown the meat over fairly high heat to get a good sear, and begin building some fond on the bottom of the pan.


Set the browned meat aside, lower the heat to a med-high and cook some onions for 3-5 minutes, adding garlic during the last 45s or so.


Deglaze the pan with some wine and chicken broth, add the meat back into the mix and bake @ 225 for an hour or so, with the lid on. I tossed in some more garlic too.


Then we add in the carrots and potatoes, and let it stew @ 275 until they are cooked.


This is what it looks like when I've finished cooking.


I remove the beef chunks and shred them before drying


It dries down into a big sheet.

Done drying. I took out the big potato pieces and busted them up and dried them
further with some more carrots, beans, onions, and garlic to enhance the flavor.


No much to look at, and light on flavor too, which is why I added more onions and garlic to mixture that I took on the trail.



I also added some fresh steamed carrots and green beans to the final trail mixture,
for color and texture.

Um, I don't have my notes handy to write up the exact recipe, but look for it in the future to magically appear in the recipe list. You can pretty much guess the amounts from the pictures. 2 onions, 6 cloves of garlic, 3/4lb of carrots, four potatoes, bay leaf, thyme, half bottle of wine, some chicken stock, 2lbs of beef, a little flour etc.

Happy Holidays,
Cayenne

Ravioli :: No Recipe

I haven't posted anything in a while. I got sick with bronchitis, and pretty much took a month off from life. I'm still a little bit depressed, but things are starting to look up again.

I am thinking about making a ravioli for the trail, a nice protein rich packet of flavor wrapped in a high carbohydrate dumpling. My gut instinct says I want beef stew inside a chewy dumpling, with a gravy type of sauce. I'm still thinking about the best way to go about doing such a thing for the trail.

While I don't have a recipe to share yet, I do have some gratuitous photos, just keep scrolling till you find them. I'm still playing with the fake meats, here as a ravioli filling.

Enjoy, and Thank You,
Cayenne


Four egg yolks, some egg white, and a splash of oil are massaged into one cup of flour, wrapped in plastic and set out to rest for an hour at room temperature.


roll it thin, and cut out ravioli halves with metal shot glass


add some filling


put another circle of dough over the filling, and seal with a fork


repeat until you have enough to cook


cook and serve. I ate these with browned butter and a carrot chutney

A Masala Sauce (recipe)

Okay, so lets start with the masala sauce. This sauce forms the body and soul of the worlds most popular pseudo-indian dish. I'm working to bring it on the trail with me next weekend. Because heavy cream is not trail friendly, I've decided to substitute mori-nu tofu for the heavy cream. This dish, as prepared, is vegan and vegetarian.

I got distracted when cooks illustrated covered chicken tikka masala in their current issue. I made their recipe, and I didn't see what was so great about it. Honestly. I found it lacking in flavor, and color. It had great texture, but with heavy cream, texture isn't much to brag about.

I've tried to keep this recipe as trail friendly as possible. I didn't take pictures during the preparation because my battery was charging. I'll take pictures when I prepare it for this weekends adventure.

To make this dish backpacker friendly, I will prepare a simple spicy tomato sauce and dehydrate it at home. This will give me a fresh flavor tomato sauce without weight. It will also save me the need to carry an extensive spice rack with me.

On the trail, mori-nu tofu will be whipped into the sauce to add protein and thickness.

Masala Tomato Sauce
---------------------------

• 6-8 ripe tomatoes
• a slice of butter/veggie stuff (optional. I don't use fats in things I want to dry)
  
• 2tbls minced garlic
• one medium white onion, minced and optional
  
• 1-2 jalepeno or equivalent chillies
  
• 1-2 tsp Paprika
• 1-2 tbls fresh coriander
• "1/2 amount of coriander" cumin seed
• 1/2-1 tsp cinnamon
• 1-2tsp garam masala spice blend
• 1 inch minced ginger root

1. toast whole coriander and cumin seeds till fragrant and aromatic before grinding with mortar and pestle.
   
2. puree tomatoes with Jalepenos, seeds and ribs included
   
3. Cook onion in butter over medium -medium high heat 3-5 minutes
4. add spices (parika, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, garam masala blend ) and cook 45s-1:30, till fragrant
5. add tomato-jalepeno puree and minced ginger
6. cook 10 minutes
7. dehydrate on parchment paper till dry . I use my over on the lowest setting with the door propped open. I flip the sauce after 8 hours to dry the other side of the slap.

**NOTE: If you are making this at home, you could puree the tofu in with the tomatoes and jalepenos, or whip it in by hand during the cooking. **

On the trail, rehydrate the dried tomato sauce in boiling water, and add mori-nu silken soft tofu to cream up the sauce. I recommend mashing the tofu up right in the box with your knife or spoon before adding it to the sauce. This sauce is delicious with rice, noodles, dumplings, falafel balls, breads, and eaten plain with a spoon.

I'll be posting an update on my fake meat recipe soon . . . Thank you for reading my blog,
Cayenne


Tofu and Tomato sauce with masala spices (below)

teaser, recipes coming soon

Hello internets, I babble on and on in this one, just keep scrolling, there are pictures down there . . .

I have a shiny new hard drive, and I am glad to be online and posting again !

A little background information : I'm a few years old, and I work as a chromosome mechanic for a world class university in Berkeley California. I hold a degree in biochemistry, and I have 10+ years experience covering protein chemistry, molecular biology, fermentation science, DNA & RNA sequence manipulation & analysis, and computer programming.

I need to be honest with my eaters. I think I can make a better fake meat than the seitan I used in my amaranth soup recipe. I'm not vegan, and I was challenging myself to work without rice, lentils, and soy for the last trip too. I chose to do seitan because I thought it would be reasonably easy for the trail. I found it fussy. Without having control of the water termperature, and measurments, the recipe was hit or miss. I felt that without limiting my ingredients, I could I achieve a better texture, better chew, and better appearance than anything on the market. I was wrong. There are some incredible fake meats on the market today, but, I couldn't find anything particularly friendly to the lightweight backpacker.

So, I set out to develop a backpacker friendly recipe de novo. I've made a half dozen attempts, and I am near ready to share my progress with you. I have a short trip coming up this weekend, and I will be developing a new dinner recipe. My ambition is to develop a trail friendly tikka masala , using the fake meat. I will be releasing several versions of the fake meat to appeal to my vegatarian and vegan readers, as well as my backpacking audience in the next few weeks.

Anyways, I have myself back online, new recipes later this week !
Here are some pictures of fake meat development, enjoy.