Cake and neighbourlyness

A couple of months ago my mother burdened me with a sourdough cake starter. The starter and instructions for its nuture and ultimate baking had been doing the rounds of her workplace. Most people had dutifully tended their starter for 10 days, divided it into 4, baked one, and distributed the rest. They all took their completed cakes in to taste test the different versions. All sounds very lovely and communal.

But it appears my mum ran out of people to distribute starters to, so when my brother-in-law came to visit he brought with him the gift of 'Hermann the German Sourdough cake'. No explanation, no phonecall to see if I wanted to have a go. Just...there it was.

So, I cursed a little (who wants to wait 10 days for cake?) and then figured I'd have a try at the thing. The tending was easy - just feed it with flour and sugar every few days. It appeared to be realtively indestructable - an extra day here and there did it no harm at all.

But then I got to the point of dividing it up. I know no-one who might want to tend a cake for 10 days. Even if it is super easy. So I began "Operation bake LOTS of cake". I baked all 4. One went to my office, one went to Dan's. The final two were sliced up and half frozen, half eaten.

The beauty of this cake is that you can throw in pretty much any flavourings you fancy, so I emptied the contents of the dried fuit tub, the fruit from the fridge, and also made a carrot cake version. Also, it does freeze well. And it is rather tasty. (I shouldn't be being so grotty about it really - My only complaint is the wait-time.)

Even with lots of cake in the freezer there was far too much cake in our house for 2 people to get through before it went stale, so I took some over the road to our old neighbour. He's a funny chap - I've given him cake when we've had too much once or twice before, and he's always amazingly grateful. I guess its not the kind of thing he would make for himself.

Two days later Bob stopped me on the road and told me he'd never eaten anything like my cake and that he'd pay me to make him another. I felt guilty I'd jettisoned the project and had no more sourdough starter.

Well, I put it out of my mind - afterall I couldn't make him another. I didn't have a starter to do so, and I couldn't 100% remember what I'd put in his (dried apricots and bananas, with some fresh blueberries I think, maybe some vanilla or cinnamon.) But then last weekend Bob came round with a gift of runner beans and tomatoes from his garden, and apples from someone's orchard (probably stolen!). Well it seemed churlish not to respond, so I took some sourdough cake slices out of the freezer and dropped them round.

On tuesday I came home to find more runner beans and a pot of plum jam on the doorstep, along with a note:



After I stopped chuckling I dutifully dropped round more cake from the freezer.

But those were the last slices....so what happens now? I wonder if he can be mollified by a different kind of cake?!

Veggie comfort food dinner

I have had a few weeks recently when I haven't been feeling very inspired as far as cooking is concerned. I have excuses: a cold followed by a chest infection does rather rain on the cookery parade. Next week I hope to be getting my mojo back, but for tonight comfort food was in order.

I made an Ottolenghi recipe which I had bookmarked from his column in The Guardian - Mejadra. Its a Levantine recipe which can be eaten hot or cold. It reminded me a little bit of kedgeree; warmly spiced, and a good combination of soft texture and crunch. Tasty. Also easy. Ideal for a "can't be bothered" evening.

Here's where to find the recipe.

PS I hope to meet Ottolenghi - I'm off to Alex James's Harvest festival in a couple of weeks' time and he will be there on the same day. Could be interesting - I hope to garner some top tips.

Daring Cooks August Challenge

So this was this month's Daring Cook's Challenge:
Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

I had mixed success with the dishes. Sadly I couldn't get my appam's out of the pan in one piece! They kept sticking (not sure why; I'll have to try again to find out). Most of them came out like this:



Not exactly flat breads! The flavour was lovely though, so definitely worth another try in the future.

I did manage one partially successful flatbread on the final attempt. Even though its a bit rubbish it felt like an achievement!


The Shrimp in Coconut milk curry that I served with the appams was delicious. I added spinach and sweet potato to the recipe provided by Mary to make it go a little further. That recipe's definitely a keeper.



Now if only I could master those dratted Appams!

Apologies

Apologies that my blogging has been neglected for a couple of weeks: I've been working on a different kind of creativity.

Last week I did a week-long course at London College of Fashion on how to make custom-designed and fitted corsets. It was amazing! I learnt loads of good sewing techniques, as well as cutting a pattern for a corset to fit me, and making it (well, nearly anyway - I have some finishing up to do at home). The course was just a starting point though - there's loads more that I can learn through trial and error, practice and experimentation. I'm looking forward to improving on the skills I've learnt!

So here's the pattern as I drafted it:



Then traced out into individual pieces and ready to cut the fabric:



Snipped to size!



Catching up a bit by doing some of my sewing at home:



And the front (on the right) and back parts of the corset in the workshop:



You can see the industrial sewing machines in the background - they gave me a lot of grief! Being used to a domestic sewing machine I found it tricky to get the hang of the heavy, FAST, industrial machines. I'm sure I would manage them if given enough time to get accustomed to them, but a week wasn't really long enough to do so.

I'll be finishing the corset at home over the next couple of weeks, so watch this space for a snap of the completed project.