Okay, last night’s gnocchi recipe in one single Instant pot:
You’re gonna need gnocchi. I happened to have some that I rolled a while back, hanging out in the freezer. It’s cold mashed potatoes, flour, egg. Simple. But also, store bought is FINE!

Let's talk about nuts. It's #LesFoodFacts time

Ok, let's start at the most obvious question. Why are nuts so bloody expensive? You need to understand what nuts are and how they grow and how they're processed.

The price is based on processing and also on market demand. Let me explain those 2 points first #LesFoodFacts

Let me start with the most expensive nut in the world. The Macadamia nut.

Origin? Queensland, Australia. Eaten by Aborigines for centuries and called "Kindal Kindal" until the colonisers landed and renamed them after one of themselves. Some dude called Macadam #LesFoodFacts

Macadamia trees need to grow for around 10 years before they start producing fruit.
The fruit then needs to be harvested by hand, not machine, as they are so varied only a human eye (and hand) can sort them out.

They also only thrive in tropical places. #LesFoodFacts

Macadamia nuts also contain the highest fat content of all nuts. They're on average 80% fat.
The fat in them is good for you though, like olive oil. So the health market is one of the aspects that has driven the demand up. #LesFoodFacts

First broccoli cheese soup of the new year. I’ve made a pot almost every week since the pandemic started. Maximum comfort food.

I don't follow a recipe, I'll try to recreate what I do here.

3 heads of broccoli
1 onion
1 box container of chicken stock
1 cup of milk
2 tbls flour
block of sharp cheddar
salt/pepper/tsp mustard powder

Chunk up the cheddar and whiz it in the food processor. You want it to be little bits that will melt fast. I've tried using pre-shredded, but I think they put something in it to prevent caking and it makes a grainy cheese sauce.

Chunk up one of the broccoli heads and whiz it up.

Rough chop the remaining broccoli into bite size pieces.

Chop up the onion.

Prep the ingredients for the cheese sauce (two tablespoons flour, salt & pepper, mustard powder) in a little bowl so you can dump them in when needed.

OK, you want everything prepped ahead of time because the timing here is a little tricky (for me).

Sauté the onion in olive oil in a large pot. Once it's softened add your whizzed up broccoli (I like it to get a little toasted, I think it adds a nice flavor).

Today I made garlic bread.

You add flour, water, salt, and most importantly, yeast. When baking bread, you have to let the dough rise.

No reasonable intervention will significantly increase the speed the dough rises for really good bread, possibly the best bread in the world.

No matter how much you yell at the bread, the dough will only rise to the sufficient amount after a given amount of time.

If you go to the store for the mass distributed stuff, the copy pasted churned brand, whatever it is, will never compare to homemade bread.

If you get the store bought stuff, it’s optimized for shelf life, which always detracts from the quality of the immediacy of the homemade stuff.

If you go to a bakery, it’s better, but never as good as the manual kneading you can do for yourself for what you want.

Bread making is simple, and world-class bread making is even simpler than what you may think. Mostly because humans converge on the flavors, texture, and content of their perfect bread.

But world-class bread does have shared constants of quality you can get only from the best.

Flavorless bread is bland. I’m a huge fan of personal choices I get with the categorization one has under the term “garlic bread.”

“Garlic bread” gives me flexibility to experiment with some wild ingredients, knowing it’s always going to be delicious, just in different ways.