Saturday, October 30, 2021

MJ Banana Nut Bread

     This is the first Marijuana Banana Nut Bread in the outdoor oven.  It has a real kik2it, which is nice.  Love you long time baby.

     When I trim the flowers from my plants I dry the trimmings well, then soak them in distilled water for 24 hours.  The resin is not water soluble and this treatment takes out the chlorophyll and about half the mass once the wet weed is dried again and powdered with fine screens.  It is a concentrating action, really.  Cooking is a great use for this type of plant product.

     I came across my medical marijuana seeds in a random way, the seeds are from the first flowers off commercial seeds who did the hermaphrodite thing and pollinated themselves 10 years or so ago.  There was some freezer time.  My stuff flowers mostly female but is prone to popping male flowers.

    The strains I have include Diesel, White Widow, Blueberry, and their  crosses which some people call Puck Yeah.  There are some low odor varieties too, and at first I was alarmed by those, but they do the euphoria trick just fine.  Some have quite a high THC content in fact, they just don't smell or taste strongly.  Later I found out these are favored for edibles.  

     I was kind of proud of tmy  MJBN loaf because I deviated somewhat on the batter construction method the book recommended, plus I use dried eggs and dried milk.  I have found that except for some rare instances a good stirring with my bamboo stick, I mean a GOOD stirring, is what most batters and breads benefit from most.  Billy Hobart.  Most breads get kneaded well after the good stirring/mixing too.

    This was the first time the new brick beehive oven was fired up to cook with.  I also did three pizzas.  I took it easy with the 2 banana breads I did, including the one with MJ in it, and they both came out very edible.  The nuts were walnut crushed up by hand.  I am needing to work on the browning of the tops, and I am working on it.  I baked until I could poke a straw in with no clinging batter, about 20 minutes.  

     I started with a small mesquite twig fire in the oven and maintained a flame as I went.  I wanted to really monitor the progress of everything I was doing, and I learned a lot.  Of primary importance I learned that monitoring is necessary.

    This Marijuana Banana Nut Loaf was done in a round, greased, iron frying pan.  The pan was a little too big for the batch of batter, but was still ok, and maybe worked best, seeing as it was my first time and all.  I will look for regular sized loaf pans in the future.  

     I also used a steel oven screen under my iron cookware, which was not as important as it will be when the oven is at top temperature, but it still kept bottoms from burning.  My cookware is either iron or steel, no aluminum because it wears easily into powder in any abrasive situation and can create toxicity which is never really addressed or even realized.

     Once the brick oven gets heated it stays heated for a while and it can get real hot too, 800 degrees or more.  It is best to get an early start on a clear day and make the oven hot with a larger fire, using it for different things as it cools.  The last two hours or so can be used to slow cook covered dish meals.  

     I have a door, and/or clay brick barriers for the opening of this oven, and I am still playing with all that.  A lot of heat is trapped in the upper area of the oven, so brick platforms inside will be used soon to see what  wondrous changes will be wrought.  Or not.  I will report progress as it happens.

 

 






 

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Fire Pizza

      I use my round cast iron flat griddle a lot.  When I make pizza on the grill I use it to make a flat bread, pushing the yeast dough out after the first rising/knockdown, then cooking both sides well on the flat griddle before adding sauce and cheese.   Make sure both sides of the flatbread are browned well and then put the side down you want to brown into a good crust, and quickly add tomato sauce and cheese to the top.  You are using the flat griddle to make a flat bread which is then turned into a pizza with the addition of the other ingredients.

      I try to mae do with basic ingredients when I can, and the cans they pile up, so instead of using canned ingredients for a sauce I just quick fry some thin tomato slices with thin onion and pepper slices in olive oil, adding any seasonings at that time like oregano.  I put this homemade pizza "sauce" on the flatbread pizza crust, then I sprinkle on parmesan cheese.




Thursday, October 21, 2021

How To Make Easy Bamboo Cooking Tongs

 

These were made from some bamboo I salvaged from a curtain bought at a craft store.  I never used the curtain because all the string holding the pieces together was bad.  I felt fortunate I did not spend a lot of time on a project using the bamboo as a curtain, and THEN find out the string was bad.

I put two flats together, and wired the top tightly, so it looked kind of like a whole branch of bamboo.  Then I pushed a rock into the V formed by opening the two pieces, making sure it went as far toward the wired end as possible.  Then I used heat shrink tubing to hold it altogether.  These are some of my handiest tools at the grill.

Friday, October 15, 2021

Welcome To The Thorn Fire Bakery Grill -- Mesquite Fire Cooking

All types of cooking will be undertaken at the Thorn Fire youtube channel, which this blog corresponds to, and all using wood fire flame.   The loaves of bread you see here were done before I finished the ovens, and were actually cooked in a covered cast iron frying pan on a regular grill.  There will be a video or two concerning this type of baking in the future.  The other stuff pictured here is fried chicken breasts, mushrooms, and shrimp, breaded in a simple flour/baking powder/salt and pepper mix.  I find that with flame and peanut oil a superior deep fried product is obtainable.

The youtube videos are the main agenda but posts will be made here fairly often too.   I was tempted to list all my  restaurant jobs, but that list would be lengthy, tawdry, tedious, and of little interest to anybody with anything better to do, which is just about everyone I would think.  So here is the youtube channel and the videos will be added as they happen.  Thanks for checking this out and I hope you find it useful.