After about a week of carbolicious craving hell, I find myself doing fine. I no longer think incessantly about sugar, and though I occasionally am stabbed with the mad desire for mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese, I actually don’t miss the simple carbs much either. It’s the end of the second week and I don’t think the rest of the month will be much trouble.  I have had to admit that I’m actually addicted to sugar & simple carbs, though.  I know that I can’t eat any at this point.  Because if I do, I can’t trust myself to stop.  So my long-term eating plan is to get myself stable at the weight at which I’m comfortable (neither going up nor down), and then decide if I can reintroduce some simple carbs in a controlled fashion.  We’ll see what happens…

A couple of weeks ago I gave up sugar (every sort, including artificial sweeteners) and simple carbs like potatoes, bread and noodles.  It was hard going for the first week, while my body and mind adjusted to the change, but now I’m doing fine (and feeling much more alert and energetic), and instead of sweets I’m cravings spicy food.  My partner says I’m addicted to hot pepper, and I think he’s probably right, but there are certainly worse vices.  Here’s today’s recipe…

Migros (a Swiss co-op supermarket, for those who live abroad) often carries very nice salt cod steaks at a (for Switzerland) reasonable price.  I usually keep a package of them at home because salt cod is a basic ingredient for some of my favorite cuisines: Spanish, Caribbean, Portuguese.  The thing about salt cod that some cooks don’t like is that it takes forethought.  There aren’t very many recipes in which you use salt cod in its “natural” form.  Mostly, you need to soak it. And soak it. And soak it.  For me, this means that when I’ve got salt cod on the brain, I throw it into a big tuppeware container full of cold water, shove the container in my fridge, and then start dreaming about what I’ll do with it later in the week.

Depending on the thickness of your pieces of cod, you might have to soak it for up to 72 hours.  The first day I swap out the water as often as I remember — though no more than once every two hours.  The second day, I try to swap it out at least four times.  By the third day, I’m down to twice.  The only way to know if it’s “ready” is to taste it, and “ready” means different things to different people. I like my salt cod less, rather than more salty, but I don’t cook with much salt, generally.  Your taste may be different.

Since only my baking recipes are exact, you can feel free to vary ingredients according to your taste.  I didn’t use peppers, but you could — either fresh bells or canned roasted peppers would be fine.  If you don’t like capers, leave them out.  If you like black olives, toss them in.  Parsley would be great in there, too, but I didn’t have any today, so I used celery.  If you aren’t using this as a main course, you can easily leave out the rice but remember, the rice also cuts the salt in the dish, so soak your cod longer.

I’ve always relied on the graham cracker crust to cover my shortcomings, but graham crackers are wheat, and that’s no good for Chris. And today I was dying to try a version of Christina Tosi’s Brownie Pie.  Christina is the pastry chef at the Momofuku Milk Bar. I just bought the cookbook and have been laughing my ass off at her prose and her attitude — she’s my kind of madwoman in the kitchen.  Tosi’s Graham Crust recipe looks delectable, but I modified it to suit my needs and the almond version came out perfectly.  Here’s the recipe…

You’ll notice that my recipe calls for hare, and not rabbit.  In my opinion, rabbit isn’t really flavorful enough in a stew. In fact, most rabbit stews incorporate bacon or salt pork for flavor and, of course, if you’re concerned about calorie intake, that’s a deal-breaker.  The hare, however, combined with the mushrooms and some red wine, packs a lot of flavor.

In Switzerland and Germany you can often find hare in the freezer section, next to the deer and wild boar.  Fresh is best, but frozen will certainly do. What you’re looking for is a rich, red color to the raw meat, completely unlike the chicken-white of domestic rabbit.

The boxes have fussy little plastic snap-tops, though, and sometimes they break and don’t close properly.  This was the case for one of the cartons we had in the fridge, and when we noticed a day or so later the milk was spoiled. Or so I thought.  My husband heard me curse and stopped me before I poured it down the drain.

“Wait, wait! Let me taste it.”

I shuddered and handed it over and he poured (or, rather, plopped!) some into a glass.

“Wow, this is really good!”

I refused his offer of a spoon.  He shrugged and ate some more.  Then he said, “Can you pick up a couple of big glass jars when you’re at the market?”

I did, and that was the beginning of our yogurt odyssey.  He started the next batch with about a quarter cup of the cultured milk. It was summer and he left the two 2-liter glass jars on the counter. In 6 hours they’d solidified into yogurt and I finally tried it.  Delicious!  We weren’t sure where the culture had come from, but the milk was certainly not spoiled and the results tasted like the best fresh yogurt we’d ever had.  I’d never have been brave enough to try that kind of experiment, but my husband grew up in Russia where, he tells me, they culture milk all the time. (He also noted that in some areas of the world milk seems to spoil rather than culture.  In Berlin, he said, he only got a nasty inedible product that was definitely bad.)

We refilled the jars each time they almost emptied, and learned a couple of things:  the cultures get weaker as they get older, so you need to refresh them occasionally; and, eventually you need to wash the jars because they get gunky up at the top and start to smell nasty.  We have a nose for it now. When we get the faintest hint of mildew it’s time to swap jars.  To restart we’ve used various live culture yogurt, and recently we tried a yogurt starter powder from EuroCuisine which works really well.

When I did some research on the internet I found a lot of sites that insisted that the yogurt culture had to be kept at a warm temperature, and of course there are lots of yogurt makers to help you do that.  But we found that just putting the culture into the bottom of the jar, pouring in the boxed milk and stirring, covering the jar and leaving it alone for 7-12 hours always does the trick.  You do have to use boxed milk, though, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of heating fresh milk to 185 F before you mix it with the culture.  The purpose of heating is to get the whey proteins to coagulate, which makes for a nice thick, creamy yogurt.  But that’s already been done to the boxed milk, so it’s ready to go, as is.

I also read a ton of stuff about sterilizing jars. We don’t do it.  We put the glass jars through the dishwasher at a minimum of 65C/149F and every so often (when they start to get that mildew smell) I boil the rubber seals on the stove or super heat them in the microwave.  Then I let them dry and put them back on the jars.  We’ve been making and eating our yogurt this way for six months, without a bellyache, so it works for us.  Your mileage may vary.

Our yogurt keeps about a week before it starts to get “old” (tastes fine, but gets kind of grainy and separates in the jar), but it rarely lasts more than a couple of days.  We eat it too fast!  You can do the usual yogurt things with it, like stirring in vanilla extract and cinnamon.  I like to add some to my Blender Gazpacho when I’m in the mood for a creamier soup. I spoon it into my lentil curries.  I slather my chicken with yogurt and tandoori spices before roasting. I also love it mixed with a little cottage cheese, served over fresh pineapple. And sometimes we just drink it straight, with a bit of sugar or honey.  That’s the great thing about yogurt.  I can’t remember how I ever could have lived without my endless supply!