Curry Laksa & Naan

I would have, on rare occasions, Curry Laksa from KC Cafe in Courtany Place, it is a Malay restaurant and serves good, fast Malaysian food that I enjoy.
I started looking at a few videos on how to make it and it required far too many ingrediants that I'd have to shop for specifically for the dish.
I then found the following video that I thought was a better way.

I had a chicken breast that I was going to use in a stir fry, in fact I was looking up Char Kuey Tauw stir fry with thick rise ribbons, they also do this at KC cafe.

Char Kuey Tauw 

Anyway, I went to Pak'n'Save and ended up getting a Thai can of the Curry Laksa paste, it was a bigger jar but more watery than the one in the video. I also put in a 440 g can of Coconut Cream and added some potatoes as another additive as well as Mung Beans, Spring Onion and parsley for garnish. I had some frozen Naan bread and that was a delicious meal. The quantities made enough for 2 meals so I have enough for another. Great tastes, definitely a different flavour of curry.
Both meals were excellent.  I left the other in the fridge and had it about 3 days later. Definitely a try again

Sunday 29th Sept

I'm doing this again with the Asam  Curry Laksa paste, it is only medium but pretty potent all the same. I'm going to cook it up and let i rest for a day or so, as I bought some other meats and food that I have to finish off as well before this, but I thought I'd leave it to imbue the curry flavours into the chicken and potato.
The jar size was smaller, I still used a 400ml can of coconut cream asnd 500ml of chicken stock (2 oxo cubes).

Tofu Puffs

I'm having another crack at Tofu, this time frying them to make puffs for the soup, hopefully the soup  will give the puffs some flavour as tofu is pretty bland. I tried in Air Fryer, but that didn't work, so I used oil in a frying pan instead.

I'll report back on it when I have the 2nd Cury Laksa.

Naan

I'd made naan before and bought a great big tub of yoghurt that I ended up throwing away, and I was pretty dissapointed with the naan. I thought i'd frozen some but I haven't found the dough again.
So I plan to give it another try and cook all the naan's and freeze them. So I want to try that next. 
This video looks interesting, so I'll try that one.

Compared to the video above my naan was pretty dry and needed a lot of working. The recipe is:

• 1 teaspoon Yeast
• 1 Teaspoon Sugar
• 1/4 cup of lukewarm water-

Mix above together and let sit for 5 minutes

• 1 cup white flour
• 1/4 cup yogurt (plain unsweetened ) basically half a pottle
• 1 tablespoon of oil
•  1/4 teaspoon Salt (actually I put this in with flour instead)

Mix the flour yogurt and oil, then add the yeast/sugar/water mix. Mix more, then add

• 1/2 cup flour

and mix all together.
Cover with oil  & Then rest for 1 hour
after hour knock back
 and then split into 4  pieces
Roll out and wet one side with water then use a skillet (non -stick frying pans not enough mass) and cook one side until it bubbles then turn pan over and use element heat and brown.
Then butter & garlic.

I did this twice. One with pain flour and once with strong flour.
Have yet to test as I froze both lots for next curry.
I was quite happy with the results from the cook.
A couple of them unstuck and fell on element and burned.
Will need to practice the technique.

I had one of each packet as well as one from the shop bought frozen packet. I microwaved them all for the 2nd meal. Both of mine were too thin. They did not have enough content for absorbing the liquid in the curry, that saying, the Laksa is a very watery curry. If it were more pasty then both of them would have been fine to soak up the food. I have moe so I'll try it sometime.
Overall not that much difference between either of mine, the shop one wa1 1/2 to 2 times as thick so better at absorbing the fluids.

Brews 5 & 6 Real Ale, Lager & costs

I have 4 batches of Stout now, so I thought I'd start doing some lighter brews for summer, so I got a couple of cans of Coopers Real Ale. I may move on to lagers later for a light drink for summer, but I thought I'd try the Real Ale first.

Too much frothing on fermentation

One thing I thought might have caused the frothing of the last 3 batches was that I put 2 sachets of yeast into the brews. So over frothing of the air lock. Also , I seemed to get a lot of sediment. Maybe the next time I do a double can I'll test out a single sachet. 

So, instead of using just dextrose I went to the Brew House and got some dry brew enhancer ($8.50/Kg x 2) when I went to pick up some PET bottles. I do not seem to have enough bottles, usually I have about half the amount of bottles so need to supplement with some more.
I suppose I'm developing a bit of a store of Stouts at the moment. I'm putting about 8 buy of each batch so that I can test them out at a later date.

Costs

1/ $13.50 for can of Real Ale ,  Brewblend $8.50 , carbonizing drops $5- Also 15 PET bottles $16.50  So about $27 + $33 for 2 lots of bottles = $50
23 l  is about 70 bottles of .33l
Heineken for 24 bottles = $40 (on special), 72 bottle = $120
So costs are good.
2/ For the Stouts its about $13-15 for 6 in the shops, so between $156 to $180 for 72 bottles
So for the double cans, with Coopers $13.50 x 2 + Brewblend $8.50 , carbonizing drops $5- Also 15 PET bottles $16.50 is about $64
One of them is 6.55% alc /vol  (other is 5.76%)whereas a lot of the shop standard stouts are at 4.2-5%
3/ The 2nd batch was oatmeal and those tins were around $30 each, so that was a bit more expensive so that added up to about $96. alc/Vol 5.76%

On tasting batches 2 (Oatmeal)& 3 (Coopers Stout) I haven't seen a real difference so far, although I'm still drinking them before they are supposed to be drunk. A slight headache from both, maybe due to lots of yeast in the brews.

Setup equipment

On top of the basic measure for measure is equipment.
The brewing starter kit was $110
The initial bottle press (that didn't work) was about $25-30
The bottle press that works $70
Bottle Caps $7 for about 150 - these seem to be lasting as I'm onl capping about 20 bottles at a time, the rest are PET
Sanitizer- $6 (on 2nd one- first came with kit)

So extra stuff - 110 + 30 + 70 + 7 + 6 = $223
Divided by 5 batches so far = 223/5 =44.60
Divided by 6 batches so far = 223/6 =37.17
Divided by 7 batches so far = 223/7 =31.85

So factoring this into costs
1/ 50 +45=     $95  vs  $120
2/ 64 + 45 =  $109 vs $156-180
3/ 96+45 =    $141 vs  $156-180

So not that great until the setup equipment costs is distributed across a lot of brews.

Whats standing out?

From processes so far:

• Paying for brew blends seem to add extra alcohol to the brew, and hopefully flavour too. 
• Too much yeast may be causing over frothing and lots of sediment. 
• I'm testing the cheaper extracts (Coopers) at the moment, they are half the price of the ones in the Brew House and even the extracts alone in the brew house are more expensive that the cooper beer kits. So I'll persevere with those.

1.  I Need to test 2 cans and only one sachet of yeast. It may take longer but less sediment (I think). 
2. All I can do at this point is brew a few batches and keep, then do a tasting of a few of them together. That way I can compare what is the best balance of value/flavour/alcohol content versus cost. 
3. Hard to do on a few batches, I need to collect and brew a few first. So, carry on brewing. 
4. I'm on a 10 day ish  cycle at the moment. I'll maintain that at present and try and create a number of batches to try and get an overview of what works. 
5. Later I need to add Hops as extra dimension to the beers

Back to the Real Ale

My next objective is to brew a few lighter beers, I'll try single cans but boost flavour with the Brew Blends. I can't seem to find the Cooper Enhancers anywhere in Wellington for sale.

If the Real Ale is Ok I may want to see if I can get the alc/Vol up to the 5% of all the standard beers, then I can always play with the hops for flavour.

I decided I wanted to try 1/ A lighter beer, and 2/ A weaker beer. I've been brewing some stronger ones but want some weaker ones (so I can drink more- for summer).

Brew 5. Real Ale 1

The OG of the Real Ale which was just one can, 1Kg of Ale Brew blend and a further 290g of Dextrose (just to push the alcohol up a little bit) was 1040. So a bit light.
I'll try this one out and as I have another can I'll do the same, maybe with a bit more dextrose for the 2nd batch.
It is far lighter than the stouts I've been brewing, in fact it looks quite watery. I've noted on some of the posts that they let it sit for a few days to get the beer to clear a bit. Its still a bit cloudy.
The OG was about 1.006 so about 4.45% Alc/vol
Not quite the  5% I was looking for. It settled at about day 7 so I bottled it early. It was a bit cloudy but hopefully it will settle in the bottles. I see there is another fermenter where you can take the yeast out of the bottom, but they are about$145 so I'll leave that for the moment.
It was a bit chill at times so I had to put heater on , sometimes for day and night. It did dip to 16 deg C but then it was back up in 20's. 
Overall brewing process went well. I'll have to wait for tasting.
On getting bottles from Brew House (and enhancer for Lager) I went to Countdown and saw they had some brew kits there. The Coopers web site say use Brew Enhancer # 2 , which they sell for $10. The lager enhancer in Brew House was about $7.20.
I'll think about doing a single can stout with coopers and use Brew Enhancer # 2 from there. That is the first place I've found that has the Coopers Brew Enhancers in Wellington.
Countdowns cans are about $14.50 where they are about $13.50 in Pak'n'Save so I'll carry on using Pak'n'Save  for Cans and other bits.

Brew 6. Lager Friday 13th Sept (sounds ominous!)

I thought I'd  break from the Real Ale and do a straight lager. I went to Brew House and got some lager brewing enhancer. I also added in, with the one can of Coopers Lager, 300g of dextrose, just to get alcohol content up. So OG was 1.042 at start.
Friday 20th FG at 1.008
Saturday 21st FG at 1.007
So this is about 4.58 alc/vol
Final check on Tuesday 24/9 OG at 1005
Which brings it up to 4.87 so around the ballpark for a general lager. 

I went to Brew House to get some PET bottles and talked about issue of frothing over, his suggestion was more yeast OK. I'll try a double extract with only one yeast another time.

Anyway, on chatting, I talked about lager being a bit turbid and he suggested putting some Beer Finings in. As this is a lager I thought it would be worth doing.

 So I bought a couple of sachets (each 1.90$), although you can get a litre of clear fluid to do the job and that is 13.50$ and you use 100ml per time, so get 10 uses out of a bottle, so that works out at 1.35/time. I'll try out first on the light beers and see how that goes.
 The thing is, I now have to wait a couple of days for the beer finings do their work. I can't bottle until Monday.I'll set aside some time to do that.
I bottled on tuesday 24/9 and it was still a bit cloudy. The sediment was definitely more settled. I was impressed.

 After a week I looked at the La ger and it is pretty clear, so the finings seemed to do the job. I also looked at the Real Ale that had no finiings and that was pretty clouded after the first week but after 2nd seems to be settling down

 I'm holding the bottles in my hand and camera so a bit wobbly, but both are quite clear.