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Singer and actor Liv Austen has turned a health issue into a passion for cooking, by taking control of every ingredient that goes in to her meals. Every week she shares something she has learned from cooking from scratch, and goes through a recipe she loves, so you can cook alongside the podcast. Cook from scratch - your body will thank you.
You are listening to the From Scratch Body. I'm Liv Austen, and I believe that anyone can cook. Since being diagnosed with endometriosis, I have been on a journey to find out what food makes me feel great. By cooking my meals from scratch, not only have I started feeling much better. I've also fallen in love with cooking completely.
Liv:So every week, we explore a new topic that can help us feel better and become better cooks. And then I share a recipe with you so you
Liv:can cook along with me
Liv:if you want. You can always find the recipes and the transcripts from the podcast on my website, the from scratch body.com. Here's my opinion. Pecans are superior to walnuts. Naturally sweet and wonderfully aromatic, I encourage you to use more pecans in your cooking and baking.
Liv:And here are some of the top health benefits you get from them. Welcome to the From Scratch Body. This week, we are talking about pecans, which I feel like a lot of people forget about. The walnut is kind of the one we go to, but a very similar but, in my opinion, slightly better nut is the pecan. Oh, goody.
Liv:Finally, a nut that is an actual nut. Pecans are tree nuts that originate in North America. I feel like they may be slightly more commonly used in North America still. I'm thinking of pecan pie and that kind of thing for example, which is maybe not so common here in the UK where I am. We often use walnuts, and there's nothing wrong with them.
Liv:But genuinely, if you're not using pecans in your salads, granolas, or baking, why not? They are so yummy. They have this natural sweetness to them. Even when consumed raw, that makes any honey or other sweetener pretty much redundant. I absolutely love them and they are probably the nut that is consumed the most in our home at the moment.
Liv:Like other nuts we have looked at, pecans are calorie dense. I think that's a wonderful thing because calories equals energy, which is fantastic. But it's something you may wanna consider if for some reason you are trying to cut down on your calorie intake. An ounce of pecans equal nearly 200 calories. They contain a lot of good fat.
Liv:Remember, fat is not the enemy. Or do you need a refresher? Find my fat is not the enemy episode or the blog post on my website, the from scratch body dot com. It also contains copper, vitamin b 1, zinc, and magnesium. We've looked at zinc and magnesium several times, so you can go back to previous episodes to learn more about those.
Liv:But what is vitamin b 1 really? Well, it's also called thiamine. Vitamin b 1 converts carbs into energy that your body can use. Nice. That ounce of pecans also contains about 4 grams of carbs, and possibly other food that you eat alongside the pecans will contain even more.
Liv:Copper, I believe, we've covered a bit before too, but let's just remind ourselves it's good for our immune system and our nerve cell function. I love to add pecans to my homemade granola. If you haven't done my homemade granola yet, please do check it out. I love making my own granola, and it's so much better than the processed granola that you buy in the shops or cereals or anything like that. I also pop some in my salads, and I add them to brownies, which is so delicious.
Liv:Do you like pecans? How do you use them in the kitchen? Message me on Instagram at the from scratch body. After the break, we're gonna make my favourite bread to have at home. It is the Scandinavian favourite, polar bread.
Liv:Don't go anywhere. Today, we're gonna make a polar bread. These fluffy, soft and sweet tasting scandipita type breads have a really lovely history, and they're so nice to make at home. Super easy to freeze, hence the name you'll learn, and always have them taste and feel fresh. It was about time I did another Scandi recipe, I think.
Liv:So polar bread is maybe unsurprisingly a brand name. However, the freezing of the bread is apparently what sparked the idea for the name. Polar bread is or polar bread is a family owned business started in the late 1800 and has been passed down through generations of the same family. It was in the fifties that they got the name after the family froze the bread and prepared sandwiches made with the bread in order to ship them and sell them fresh all over Sweden. These are also hugely popular in Norway where I've had them many times and loved them.
Liv:And I was reminded of Polar Bread when I watched one of my favorite YouTubers, Kent Survival. Check him out if you're into hiking or food or both. Do a trip through Sweden and Norway, and he had these with him. My first thought was these are perfect for hikes. But then I quickly realized, these are perfect every day, especially if we can make them at home and avoid any preservatives or unnecessary processing.
Liv:And considering how easy they are to freeze and reheat, there's absolutely no need for any weird preservatives in our homemade version. There are quite a few recipes out there for polar bread, especially in Swedish and Norwegian. I found one that I used as a base from got.no, but I simplified it a bit and I cut down on the sugar and the salt. I'm really happy with the result. Do try it for yourself.
Liv:Here's my polar bread. Makes about 18 to 20 polar breads. You need 50 grams of butter, 300 milliliters of milk, 200 milliliters of water, 2 teaspoons of fast action dry yeast, one tablespoon of honey or syrup or sugar. I used the amazing Odyssey pine and fir tree raw honey, and it was incredible. Half a teaspoon of salt.
Liv:Pink Himalayan is great for lots of flavor without using tons. A 100 grams of ground oats or oat flour. Basically, you just blitz oats in a blender for a few seconds. You can even use leftover oat pulp from when you've made oat milk. Check out that episode if you haven't heard it.
Liv:250 grams of wholemeal flour and 300 grams of plain flour. This is what you do. You melt the butter gently and pour it into a bowl. Add the milk and water and mix in the yeast. Let it all blend well and settle for a minute.
Liv:Add your sweetener of choice and salt, and then bit by bit add your flours until you have a nice dough. Knead it gently. You don't have to knead it for too long, and let it rise under a damp cloth or cling film in your bowl for 45 minutes to an hour. On a floured surface, roll the dough into a long sausage shape and cut into equal parts like small buns that fit inside your hand. With a rolling pin, flatten them until they are about half a centimetre thick and and round in shape and look like round pittas or thick pancakes.
Liv:I got 18 rolls when I made this, but your dough might give you 16 or 20. Use a fork to prick holes all over the surface of the breads. Mine looked horrible in the photos on the website as my baby started to fuss when I was doing this, and so it became a bit haphazard. Anyway, you'll understand roughly what you need to do if you look at the photo. This lets the steam out when they bake, so it's important to do this.
Liv:Put a tea towel over the breads and let them rest for about 15 minutes. Heat your oven to 250 degrees Celsius or the hottest it goes if it doesn't reach that. That's 482 Fahrenheit by the way. Possibly a bit less for a fan assisted oven. Put your baking tray or trays in the oven and let them heat up.
Liv:Do not forget that the trays are hot when you put them back in with the breads. And once the oven has reached the desired temperature, take the trays out, cover with baking paper, and place the breads on them. Bake the breads for about 4 to 5 minutes only, maybe even less. All ovens are different. You don't want them overly cooked as they won't be soft.
Liv:These breads are going to be soft. That's the most delicious part of them. Let them cool on a cooling rack and freeze the ones that you're not going to have there and then. Have a few warm though straight out of the oven because it's so delicious. They thaw quickly, so you can take some out each night and have them fresh the next day, or even take them out and defrost in your toaster.
Liv:Polar breads are delicious with any kind of porleg, as we call it in Norway, which basically means any kind of spread or food you choose to top your bread with, be it Norwegian brown cheese, highly recommended for polar bread, jam, egg, avocado, jarlsberg, honey, my Nutella. You could try that. Or whatever you want, really. Did you make the polar bread? Did you like them?
Liv:What did you have them with? Share on Instagram and tag the from scratch body and hashtag the from scratch body so I don't miss it. And I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode remember that you can always check out the recipe on my website the from scratch body.com, if you want to have it in front of you when you're cooking. But be brave and make it your own too.
Liv:Also, check out my Instagram at the from scratch body and my YouTube channel, the from scratch body, for lots of food inspiration that you can totally recreate yourself. Remember, cook from scratch and your body will thank you.
Liv:See you next week.