Improve your Dairy Free Baking with Lemon Juice

I am a bit of a chemistry nerd so lately I have been trying to learn as much about food chemistry as I can find. One little tip that has made a massive difference to my cooking is to add a bit of lemon juice to recipes that contain milk alternatives. It is not enough to replace dairy milk with soy or almond or other milks in any recipe that you want to rise up or get fluffy. Baking soda and baking powder are basic and need a bit of acid to react to so you get some bubble action. Dairy milk is acidic so if you are substituting it for another milk you must also add some acid like a citrus juice or vinegar. I started adding a touch of lemon juice to my pancakes and the results have been fabulous. They are nice and light and fluffy. This trick should work for any recipe that doesn't already contain an acid.

How to Make a Simple Vegetable Stock

I have never been  to culinary school so there is probably a proper way to make stock that I don`t know about but I find this method easy and cheap. I can`t bare the thought of chopping up a bunch of good, edible veggies, boiling them all day then throwing the veggies out. It`s too wasteful. I don`t have the cash to justify that kind of action.

Instead, I keep a big ice cream container (not my ice cream, my husband would eat it a while ago so I saved the containers) in my freezer. When I chop up veggies through the week, I take the best trimmings and add them to the container. Ideal trimmings can be anything really but mine include pepper middles, herb stems, tops of leeks, mushroom stems, celery leaves etc. Be sure to wash well and don`t add anything spoiled, rotten or moldy.

When you have a good pile of veggies, add them to a stock pot with ample water and 2-3 bay leaves. I use the broken up bay leaves because you will not have to fish these out anyway so it is a good time to use them up. Bring the whole thing to a boil then turn down the heat to a simmer. Simmer until half the water has evaporated and your done. You can salt as desired or maybe use some lemon pepper instead if you are avoiding salt.

The stock works well as a soup base. Just add some veggies, water if needed, maybe a handful of sunflower seeds and a few cubes of tofu then boil a bit and your done :)

Roasting Red Pepper in the Oven

I must admit, I am a jarred roasted red pepper gal. Though way too expensive, it is just easier to buy roasted red peppers by the jar than to roast them myself. But then yesterday I finally had no choice. We had company coming over, I was serving a polenta dish with red pepper coulis. The polenta was made when my hubby came back from the grocery store with four plump red peppers instead of the two jars I requested. The store had run out. My poor husband had to make a call, get the pickled red peppers or get some fresh ones. He made the right choice, the pickled would have been useless.

So I was forced to roast the peppers myself. It was a bit of work but it was much cheaper, made a larger quantity and tasted great in the recipe. All I did was turn the oven to broil, put the clean whole peppers in a large casserole dish and broiled the peppers until the skin bubbled. I turned the peppers a few times to expose all of the skin. Once all the skin was bubbly I took the dish out of the oven, put on the lid and left the peppers to steam for 15 minutes before peeling off the skin. It was a bit of work but not overly difficult. Given the price of the jarred red peppers I suspect I will be roasting them myself going forward.