Exceptions suck Error handling and reporting is something that has always bothered me. If you use a checked exception model, your code rapidly becomes very verbose and your interfaces very brittle, which can often push programmers toward very lazy exception handling. On the other hand, if you use an unchecked exception model, you are completely dependent on the developers of the code you call documenting every exception that can be thrown so you know what errors can occur (unless you want to go spelunking through their code anyway).

The New England IPA has been a pretty controversial style in the brewing world, but at this point it seems, at least to me, that it is here to stay and isn’t going to be a flash-in-the-pan style that fades to relative obscurity like a bunch of other IPA variants like brut IPA, black IPA, red IPA, brown IPA, and others. That said, actually brewing it still seems to be an area of confusion for a lot of homebrewers.

Pizza with lactofermented plums and fuyu When the folks at Noma published their guide to fermentation, besides the grasshopper garum, the ferment everyone seemed to be talking about was the lactofermented plums. I’m not sure if it was due to the simplicity of the recipe, because the Amazon preview contained enough information to try it, because of how good the result is, or simply because René Redezepi specifically mentioned lacto plums in many of his press appearances.

Recently, I was discussing the vegetarian ramen offered at a local restaurant with one of my friends who had quite enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I was less enthusiastic about it since, while it was a very tasty, the broth largely just seemed to be miso soup with a bit of sesame oil added to enrich it a touch. In my opinion, while this made a tasty soup (and is quite similar to something I often make, although usually with soba or udon noodles), it doesn’t really capture the level of heartiness that I want out of a ramen broth.

I really enjoyed exploring the idea of acaraje last week, so, this week, I decided to try making a baked loaf in my mini-cake pan out of the batter. Baked Acaraje Miniloaf Version 1 Ingredients 75g dry red lentils 60g onion 0.5 tsp tomato paste 0.5 tsp miso additional fermentation cultures (for this iteration: 1tsp of gingerbug) dechlorinated water 1/8tsp baking soda Process Soaked lentils for 12 hours then discarded water Blended together with onion, cultures, miso, and enough water to make a blendable batter Left, covered, at room temperature to ferment for 24 hours Preheated oven to 450F Whipped air into batter Mixed in baking soda Put in mini cake tin and baked for 25mns Let cool for 10 minutes then turned out onto cooling rack to further cool Discussion Last week, I noticed that the batter foamed up quite a bit during fermentation and once again when the baking soda was added.

There’s a section in The Art of Fermentation where Sandor Katz describes a fried fritter found in Africa and Brazil called acarajé that was made out of a batter formed by fermenting a paste of black-eyed peas and onions. For whatever reason, the dish caught my fancy, so I decided to try riffing on the concept. Iteration 1: Pancake of fermented canned black-eyed beans Since I decided to try this a little last minute, I didn’t have enough time to do a proper soak, so I decided to start from canned black-eyed beans and only fermenting for a few hours.

Found Ingredients This is simply a list of ingredients that I’ve found in Toronto that are relatively uncommon, are only available from unexpected places, or seem like they’d be uncommon even if they are not hard to find in practise. 00 Flour Queen/Portland Loblaws, 4 Life Natural Foods, Harvest Wagon, Dominos Bulk Foods, Bayview Village Loblaws, Tutti Frutti, Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws, Nations, Cheese Boutique Activated Charcoal Nuthouse Adzuki Beans Bulk Barn, PAT, Nations, Lucky Moose