CURRENTLY BUMPING UP MEMBERS TO 100 WITH EXPERIENCED HEALERS ONLY
"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
Are you passionate about healing people and earning money whilst doing it? Do you love and respect wolves and the packs they roam with? Then join Wolf Pack Revival today!
Wolf Pack Revival is looking for revivers/healers at all levels. If you are an experienced healer, or if you are completely new to Torn, we will warmly welcome you and help you develop both as a strong character and as a successful healer.
What we offer:
- the opportunity to earn money by healing others in Torn, abroad, or during special healing contracts (you can earn over a billion of TCD this way per year); - at a cost of only 25 E per revive; - guidance and resources to help you develop in Torn City; - the protection of Wolf Pack family - an experienced and well-respected top 25 faction - which will minimize your risk of being randomly attacked by individual players; - 10% gym stats (and rising)
Here at Wolf Pack, the Strength of the Wolf is the Pack, and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
Wolves are loyal to the pack: they defend each other when the pack is attacked, and they fight tirelessly. We therefore expect our wolves to be active, and stick up for each other. If this is something you also appreciate, if you are like us and value loyalty to family, then you are the right person to join us. (And as an added bonus, you can put up cute pictures of wolves - or fierce ones!)
So, send us your application today, or get in touch with any of the leaders of Wolf Pack family if you have any questions
My previous post was on crepes (what we call pancakes though in the Netherlands). Today I would like to discuss Bechamel sauce.
First, what is it?
Its basically a milk sauce that has been made to thicken. So milk is the main ingredient. The thickening happens by means of what chefs call a roux. (Dont panic, its easy to make). The result is a white sauce, and its the white half of a Lasagna. The cool thing though is that you can use a Bechamel for WAAAY more than making Lasagna.
How do you make it?
First, we need to make a roux which is a mix of butter (40 per cent) and flour (60 per cent) that has been briefly cooked in a pan. How long you cook it for changes the colour and thats why chefs talk about a white roux (not cooked), a blonde roux (half cooked) and a brown roux (fully cooked). If your roux turns black, you can guess you have been cooking it WAAAAY too long :-). EDIT: as Blunt pointed out this might not be the best ratio of butter and flour, so maybe go for 50/50.
So, put some butter in a pan and let it melt. As soon as it has melted add the flour and whisk it around so that you end up with what looks like cookie dough. You dont have to whisk it hard. Just enough so that the whole thing mixes and has time to dry out and change colour. No need to put the gas on high, take your time, and do it on slow heat.
Next, have some milk ready and pour in milk. I do this on sight. Im sure people do this using measures as well, if you are so inclined. I usually pour in the quantity of milk that I want the sauce to be. Keep whisking and let the sauce heat up. Only when the sauce starts getting to the cooking point will you see it thicken. So don't worry when it doesnt thicken in the beginning. It wont, since its chemistry.
During the whisking I add a couple of ingredients: salt, pepper, maybe nutmeg, a bit of a chicken bouillon cube, and a teaspoon of mustard. Why? Because so far all your sauce contains is butter, milk, flour. Although thats not a bad combo, it also does not taste like a yummy sauce. So you need to add flavour!
Final step, when it has thickened, take it off the heat. Grab an egg, crack it, leave the yoke in the shell and decant the egg white into a bowl. Put the yoke without the white in the sauce and mix it in. Put the white in the fridge and make an omelette with it the next day (or whatever).
I hear Duke say, why the egg? No reason really, except that it makes your sauce look smoother. More like restaurant style magic-ness.
So thats our sauce done. If you want a Lasagna, also make Bolognaise Sauce...**** it, look up the recipe for Lasagna on the Internet, because today we arent making Lasagna!
So what else can we do with the sauce? The sky is the limit. One of my favourites is to braise leeks. Easy. Cut some leeks in pieces, throw them in a casserole (that has a lid) with some butter and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Then pour a glass of water on it so that there is a layer of water on the bottom. For taste put a laurel leaf on top. Cover with the lid and put it on a low heat. When its it all tender, remove the laurel leaf, chuck all the leeks in the sauce (or the sauce in the leeks, however you want to do it), et voila you have a dish that is totally awesome and yummy.
The first time I really got acquainted with hummus was when I just arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland. On Bristo Street, in what used to be an old Church, there was an arts center with a vegetarian slash vegan cafe on the side. The main dish that they served in the cafe was a vegan burrito, which always came with some fresh hummus on the side that was just scrumptious and to die for. They would run an open kitchen so that you would actually see all the dishes being made right there behind the counter. When the guy started on the hummus he would chuck a number of ingredients into a food processor and the goo that came out was always just spot on and yummy. When I asked how he made it he wouldsay: Bit of this, bit of that. You taste it and then adjust it. Maybe throw in a bit of X and Y as well." It sounded all very magical to me, and kind of easy.
Anyway, when I tried it at home, it turned out not to be easy at all. I always messed up quantities: too much tahini, too much water, not enough water. Now, this is probably the moment where I should reiterate that the cafe I just mentioned was an arts center annex vegan cafe and therefore hippy as f**k. These guys where all free spirits, not bound by anything as strict or conventional as a recipe. The guy who made the hummus was brilliant at it but I'm sure it came at a cost of many experiments and probably quite a few failed ones, if going by my own experiences.
Now, in this post I want to tell you of the day that I mastered hummus once and forever. And then perhaps make a theory out of that experience, if I manage to do so.
So, on that day I was gonna try to make another hummus - again without a recipe and with the a-bit-of-this-and-a-bit-of-that method. I would typically throw everything in a food processor and take it from there, but on that day my food processor broke. This was a shitty development of what already had started out as a shitty day. Thehummus was meant to improve my shitty mood, not to make it worse. So at this point I was properly getting pissed off with myself: How was I gonna make hummus without a food processor, for **** sake? Moreover, I was hungry and I needed to eat that hummus badly!
A low mood is not good for anything, but anger you can work with. I wasn't gonna give up. Not today. So I started thinking about what needed to be done. Enter Google, first line of defence against hopeless situations. The main question I still had was: what is hummus?? I mean, I knew what it tasted like - as a gift from the gods (no doubt due to the hight protein and fat content) - and I kind of knew what went in it. But I still didn't know what kind of animal hummus was.
So I googled hummuss long and distinguished ancestry going back to the Mediterranean and I saw several pictures of home-made hummus dishes. People have been making this dish as a staple for thousands of years, and guess what, not a single person used a food processor - that's clue number one right there. Turned out also that hummus was basically mushed beans mixed with oil. Thats it, you dont need anything else (theres the next clue). Some salt, and maybe some water if you want to make it a bit smoother. You dont need a food processor because you can mush the cooked beans with a fork. Its very easy, you just need to put a bit of work in it, which nowadays we seem to hate doing. But because we put everything in food processors we lose touch with simple methods like that, and we loose touch with the ingredients. Let me say that again: we lose touch with the ingredients. When you mush something with a fork, and add oil to it as you go, you see the texture develop in front of your eyes. For instance, you start noticing that the beans are all contained within a hull that comes off when you mash them - did you know this? Only when you keep mushing do the hull and the actual bean mix together and start becoming like a paste. Since you see this process develop in front of your eyes it is way easier to get the quantities right. In a food processor it is way harder to adjust. You have to wait till you can taste the outcome, and you dont see the process. By hand, everything is suddenly under your control. Moreover, you start the recipe from its most basic ingredients: cooked beans and oil for the texture, salt for taste. Its dead easy and already incredibly yummy. Everything that makes hummus yummy - the protein from the peas and the fat from the oil - is already in there. From then on Paradise awaits as we can now add anything we would like. Want to perk up the hummus? Add some lemon juice. Lemons are another ingredient that grows wildly in the Mediterranean, and that is why they cooked with it: availability. Then a classic: tahini, or sesame paste. Sesame paste, you notice, is mashed sesame seeds mixed with oil. Suddenly that sounds super familiar: didnt we mix mashed beans with oil to make our hummus? Similar method, similar ingredients. Moreover, if we are going to mix tahini in our hummus we dont need to add as much oil becausethe tahini contains oil. Since we are doing everything by hand we are learning all of this as we go. Chances that our hummus is gonna taste bad drop to zero.
To me, all of these realisations opened my mind to how cooking should really be done: build up everything from the foundations as close to how our ancestors would have done it. In fact, at some point that day I even chucked my fork away and started mashing the beans with my hand. Why? Because it was ridiculously efficient to use my hands. It went waaaaay faster. For instance, you can use your fist like a mortar if you need brawn and your fingers if you need more finesse. I realised I could do this probably with almost anything and felt even more in touch with the generations of people that came before us and who invented all of this in the first place. Hummus is probably ten thousands of years old, maybe older. When you make and eat hummus, you stand at the apogee of those traditions.
I love making pancakes because it is so easy. So here is my recipe:
2 eggs
500 ml milk
200 gr white flower
salt
tbl spoon olive oil
A word on the ingredients: start by learning the measures. Its always the same: 2 eggs, 500 milk, 200 flour. Pancakes is based on a VERY liquid base. It's got to be runny. As you can see, milk really is the main ingredient and not the flour. For vegan recipes, experiment with vegan milk.
I never put sugar in the pancakes because you will add sugary toppings afterwards. Im a big fan of jams.
Add some olive oil (or some butter that was first heated up so that its now liquidy as well) to the mix.
Method of cooking: The devil is in the heat. Use medium fire. If your pancakes burn easily, turn it down a bit. But you need heat to cook them quickly, so don't dial it all the way down. Once you have the correct temperature, leave it at that setting. Use some butter (but I guess oil would define) to grease the pan, but just enough to kind of cover the frying pan. Every couple of pancakes add a bit more butter so that they dont start to stick.
Extra tip: pancakes cook more easily if you dont use too much liquid. Americans make thicker ones, but us Europeans make the thin kind.Thats it. Enjoy!
CURRENTLY BUMPING UP MEMBERS TO 100 WITH EXPERIENCED HEALERS ONLY
"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
Are you passionate about healing people and earning money whilst doing it? Do you love and respect wolves and the packs they roam with? Then join Wolf Pack Revival today!
Wolf Pack Revival is looking for revivers/healers at all levels. If you are an experienced healer, or if you are completely new to Torn, we will warmly welcome you and help you develop both as a strong character and as a successful healer.
What we offer:
- the opportunity to earn money by healing others in Torn, abroad, or during special healing contracts (you can earn over a billion of TCD this way per year); - at a cost of only 25 E per revive; - guidance and resources to help you develop in Torn City; - the protection of Wolf Pack family - an experienced and well-respected top 25 faction - which will minimize your risk of being randomly attacked by individual players; - 10% gym stats (and rising)
Here at Wolf Pack, the Strength of the Wolf is the Pack, and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
Wolves are loyal to the pack: they defend each other when the pack is attacked, and they fight tirelessly. We therefore expect our wolves to be active, and stick up for each other. If this is something you also appreciate, if you are like us and value loyalty to family, then you are the right person to join us. (And as an added bonus, you can put up cute pictures of wolves - or fierce ones!)
So, send us your application today, or get in touch with any of the leaders of Wolf Pack family if you have any questions