The Mad Scientist's Smashing Samosas

The Mad Scientist recently made an Indian-style curry with a topside beef roast cooked in the pressure cooker until it began to fall apart, and then in another pan mixed together with a curry sauce and potatoes, peas, tomatoes and onions.

This was a roaring success, but what to do with the left-overs? The Mad Scientist had the idea to buy some puff pasty from the supermarket and make some triangle-shaped curry samosas using a new gadget (yes, being a scientist we love gadgets!), and this worked really well.

The samosas were frozen and then cooked in the air fryer (no fat involved!) until golden and crispy on the outside. Lovely!

 

The Mad Scientist's dried zucchini, capsicum and tomatoes

All of these worked well. They can be eaten 'as is' or used in cooking.

The Mad Scientist's (non-psychedelic) 'magic mushrooms'!

A terrific result with sliced mushrooms!

The Mad Scientist experiments with drying oranges ...

This was the first experiment with oranges. It worked, with a nice zesty focused flavour, but eating the slices was a bit problematic in that you either had to eat the rind (bitter) or tear the rind open to get at the fruit. The second attempt (not pictured here) involved removing the skin first and then slicing the oranges horizontally in the same fashion. This worked much better.

It also works to split the oranges (or mandarins) into segments and dry them laid out individually on the rack.

The Mad Scientist discovers 'The Food Dehydrator'!

Ah, what a wonderful day it was when the Mad Scientist decided to purchase a food dehydrator from Aldi on the recommendation of several colleagues in the search and rescue arena.

Since then, if it resembles edible fruit or vegetable matter the Mad Scientist will have a go at dehydrating it for later use. Triumphs to date include tomatoes, stone fruits, apples, pears, bananas, strawberries, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, capsicum, beetroot and (yes, really!) oranges and mandarins.

Even though it takes a bit of time and effort, the Mad Scientist can only say good things about this process, and the most wonderful part is that the food doesn't go off and you have it there when you need it with the yummy concentrated flavours (which sometimes become a bit caramelised).

There is also a 'feel good' aspect when you buy fruit in bulk 'reduced to clear' that would otherwise be thrown out because it is a little bit blemished or starting to show its age.

Here are the photos of the first batch of apples. Future posts will show other types of food being dried successfully.