Easy Bread & Pomegranate Chutney
Bread at the push of a button. Next Generation? – No, already here! How does it work? Just like a capsule-operated espresso maker: Fill up the tank with water, slide the capsule into the compartment, press start and watch the baking programme run its course! It's not quite as fast as an espresso, but it gives you delicious, crispy bread inside of 2 hours. Isn't this unbelievable? I was blown away when I first heard about it at the Allergy & Free From expo in Berlin. This concept is just the thing for coeliacs and other gluten-avoiders - fresh, gluten-free bread at the push of a button. A very rare luxury indeed.
Naturally, I love baking from scratch. Just last weekend, I baked my amazing quinoa rolls (soon to be featured on this blog). But alas, there's not always time (or motivation) to bake bread, so the "Easy Bread" capsule breadmaker is very handy. I particularly like the fact that aside from the rice flour, almost all of the product ingredients are directly sourced from the Austrian Bodensee region.
The breadmaker can also be set on a timer, so you'll have fresh bread right when you get up in the morning - a huge advantage when you're feeling lazy on a Sunday and don't want to get out of your PJs to run to the store. The guys from Easy Bread I met at the expo told me that there will soon be three different gluten-free flavours - this warmed my gluten-free heart! There also have five different types of gluten-free bread on offer. Have a look at their website – hier to read up or order directly. If you want to know more about this machine, let me know in writing - I might just organise a cozy afternoon with coffee and freshly baked bread and do a tutorial.
The Allergy & Free From expo in Berlin was absolutely amazing - I made really interesting acquaintances and got to try a lot of delicious new products. More about this soon.
So what's an ideal accompaniment to freshly baked bread? I took the plunge that afternoon and tried my hand at turning my apple chutney into a pomegranate one whereby the apple as well as several other ingredients remained the same. How did it turn out? Fantastic, or rather foodtastic!
The delicious-looking gunk in the pictures however is my yummy chokeberry fruit spread - at the time of the photo shoot, the pomegranate chutney was still a "work in progress". But I can assure you it doesn't just look great, it tastes divine.
Granatapfel-Chutney
Ingredients:
- 2 whole pomegranates
- 2 onions
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 6-8 TBSP apple cider vinegar
- 30ml strong red wine
- 100g preserving sugar (2:1 from cane sugar)
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 4 cloves
- ½ tsp chilli powder
- 2cm piece fresh ginger
- ½ lime
- 2-3 TBSP olive oil
- salt
Preparation:
- Squeeze the lime. Peel the ginger and grate finely. Halve the pomegranates and juice it with a lemon juicer. Take some of the seeds out and set aside. Pour the pomegranate juice into a pan, add cinnamon, cloves, ginger, red wine and lime juice and bring to a boil. Set aside and let cool for 5 minutes. Add preserving sugar and bring to the boil again until it has a honey-like consistency (if the mixture is too thin, add a bit of sugar).
- Peel and finely chop the onions. Wash and halve the bell pepper, de-seed and cut into pieces of roughly 1cm. Heat up the olive oil in a separate pan, add the onions and gently cook them until they are opaque. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 3 minutes. Pour in two thirds of the vinegar and keep cooking for a further 3 minutes. Now add the cloves and season with the chilli powder and generously with salt.
- Let the chutney simmer for around 15 minutes over a medium heat. Add sugar and salt to taste. Then mix in the pomegranate juice and seeds as well as the rest of the vinegar (the mixture should have a consistency like honey).
- Fish out the cloves and discard. Fill the chutney into jam jars. Keeps in the fridge for about 10 days and tastes delicious with cheese and fresh bread.
