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!

Bread and Jam

Strawberry honey butter.

Doesn't it sound lovely?

The idea for this came from a blog I read last week, although I did tweak the recipe a little to make it a bit less sweet. This is the blog which inspired me.



The butter is nice alternative to jam, and was easier and quicker to make too. You need really good in-season strawberries for the best results; don't bother with inferior under-ripe examples. I enjoyed my strawberry honey butter on a slice of olive bread (basically the same as ciabatta); homemade and fresh from the oven just a few hours before. Tasty.



The bread was a good method: marvellous with in-season asparagus and poached eggs for breakfast, and a life saver when the in-laws came round for sunday lunch with only 4 hours notice. Father-in-law (sort-of, Dan and I aren't actually married we've just been together for ages) declared it the best bread he's ever eaten. The bread recipe was from the Bourke Street Bakery book. Its turning out to have been a very good purchase.

My top tip from today's sunday lunch: steamed new potatoes are way nicer than boiled ones and don't take any longer.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Pizza!

I have finally achieved a decent pizza base. Would it be blasphemous to say 'Allelujah!', particularly on Easter Sunday?

Until now my pizza bases have been a bit too thick and doughy for my liking, and although tonight's wasn't quite as thin and crispy as I would like, it was a definite massive improvement on previous attempts. Oh yes, I'm developing an all consuming love of the Bourke Street Bakery methods, of which this was one. I'll have to make a pilgrimage to Sydney some day.

The Easter weekend seemed to call for junk food, so sunday night was pizza night. I made a pizza bianco (no tomato puree on the base) using the Bourke Street Bakery base method.The topping I chose was wild garlic pesto mixed with a little yoghurt to loosen it (I went out foraging on saturday as I had spotted loads of wild garlic in one of the patches of woodland near us), roast purple sprouting broccoli, finely chopped preserved lemons, and buffalo mozzarella.



Not exactly your traditional topping choices. And yummy with it.

Croissants and other pastry delights

Generally speaking I'm not a massive lover of pastries for breakfast. They're one of those things that I occasionally get lured into buying by the smell, but then the taste almost never lives up to that promise. I usually find them too greasy, too flakey, and they just don't have enough flavour.

Of course there are some notable exceptions to every rule - I love the much breadier varieties that they make at the Natural Bread Company (an Oxfordshire bakery with a shop in Woodstock) - they're always buttery but not greasy; flakey, but not so much that you get annoyed with the bits of pastry all over you. They have texture and chewability. This, for me, is definitely how pastries should be.

Well, having set my bar quite high, I decided it was time to have a go at making breakfast pastries myself. I have a recipe book from the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney, Australia which gives brilliantly clear instructions on how to make croissants. Time to take the plunge.

So here goes...

The night before, I mixed up a small amount of yeast, flour, milk and sugar, kneeded it well, then left it in the fridge overnight. This is the croissant ferment.


Next day I mixed the dough, kneeded it well and put back in the fridge. The instructions said to leave it there for at least 2 hours; I left mine for about 3 hours.


Next, I weighed out a truely extraordinary amount of butter. I actually used 400g instead of the recipe's 500g, as I wanted to achieve pastries that were a bit less greasy than the norm. I bashed the butter into a square about 1cm thick - I placed the butter between 2 pieces of baking parchement and hit it with a rolling pin. Quite theraputic!


After this I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about the same width as the butter square and about twice the length. I placed the butter in the middle, then folded the dough over the top.


The next step was to roll the dough out into a long rectangle then fold it over; I folded in thirds - one third towards the middle, then the other side over the top of that. I then returned the dough to the fridge to rest for 20 minutes. This had to be repeated twice more, turning the dough through 90 degrees each time I rolled it out. The dough was rolled out 3 times in total.


After a final rest in the fridge I had a laminated dough:

This was now ready to form into pastries.

I had inadvertantly made a hundred-weight of dough, so I had enough to make about 12-15 croissants and also about the same number of bear claws.

Here are the croissants, formed, risen (I let them rise for about an hour and a half, but if its a cool day it may take a bit longer), and ready to go into the oven:


I was very proud that the croissants actually looked like croissants. Amazing!



For the bear claws I made about 150g of frangipane and put a teaspoon of it in the centre of each piece of dough along with a teaspoon of damson jelly then folded the dough over and sealed the edges. Any jam would work nicely but I thought the slight sharpness of damsons would complement the frangipane.

The bear claws looked pretty good as they came out of the oven.



The house smelt lovely for the rest of the day after making these. I was really hoping that their taste would live up to the smell! When I finally did the taste test the next morning (5 minutes in the oven at 180C crisped them up beautifully) they were just as I'd hoped; flakey but still with plenty of dough-texture. The croissants were lovely with some homemade strawberry and mint jam, and the bear claws were tastey just as they came; no extras needed.

Just as well we both liked the outcome as we have freezer full of pastries now! This isn't a recipe I would make often as it is time-consuming and very messy, but I definitely will attempt it again. Its nice to be able to have pastries made to my own preferences. The recipe quantities makes such a lot of pastries that I have several months worth now. I will have to try making the Pain au Raisins recipe next time - its my favourite kind of pastry.



Full marks to the Bourke Street Bakery instructions. Its shaping up to have been an excellent cook-book purchase.

Cocktails and baking

First things first: the most important recipe for this week was clearly tonight's Vodka Gimlets. Yummy. I'm coming over all Mad Men! Shame we didn't have Martini glasses - clearly something for the shopping list.



I don't know what's got into me lately, but I'm really enjoying trying out new bread methods. The freezer's now completely chock full of bready things, so I must stop baking. Afterall, I have enough in store to last me many many weeks!

Having made Bialys the other week, I used up some of the yeast I had leftover from last weekend's baking-fest to try out bagels. Dan Lepard's column in The Guardian gave me the recipes for bagels and bialys. I also tried out the Light Rye Flatbread from his book The Handmade Loaf (bought on impulse when browsing in Foyles last week).



So the verdict? Well clearly I need to make larger holes in my bagels next time! But other than that they were lovely and chewy on the inside with a good crunchy crust. The flatbreads were well-flavoured from the rye flour, and good with soup or houmous.



Flushed with the success of my first bagel batch I tried a second lot - this time my favourite cinnamon and raisin flavour. I should have checked how much white flour I had left! I ended up using 2/3 white to 1/3 wholemeal, which worked out OK, but they didn't have quite that same chewy texture. White flour's clearly the way to go in future. But, as you can see, I did do better on the holes.

Bready baking

Oh yuuummmmy. I really struggled to only eat one of these lovely fruity spiced buns. I could have happily gobbled the lot in one go. I made a hot cross bun dough, but since it isn't even Lent yet, let alone Easter, I didn't put the crosses on the top.

They were beautifully soft, slightly sticky from a bit of honey brushed on the top, and properly fruity from all the dried fruit.

Delicious.

Bialys

Continuing my exploration of bread-baking, I made bialys for breakfast. There's nothing quite like fresh bread for breakfast. MMmmmmmmmm.

I came across bialys for the first time when investigating how to make bagels. They're alot like bagels in that they have a lovely cispy crust and a chewy doughy interior. The best thing about bialys though is how low effort they are! I mixed up a batch of dough on friday night and left in the fridge until sunday morning. Then I shaped it, let it rise for an hour while I had coffee and read a magazine. Then it was a matter of 12 minutes in the oven for lovely fresh breakfast bread.

I haven't made bagels yet, so that's for another time.

The recipe was adapted from Dan Lepard's recipe published in The Guardian. I left out the black olives to make them a bit more breakfasty. I wasn't sure about the onion top for breakfast, but I tried it anyway and it was tasty. It may not be the point, but these would be good without the topping too - just warm with jam or honey.

Here's the recipe.

Sourdough

One of my favourite breads is sourdough, and I've been dying to have a try at making my own for quite some time. Well now that we finally have some heating in the house I figured we had the kind of ambient temperature that might be condusive to sourdough production. Sourdough is naturally leavened bread - it has no yeast in it, just flour and water. Given long enough in a warm place it will naturally ferment.

Be warned though: If you are planning to make sourdough for the first time you need to start it nearly a week before you want to eat it. This is taking slow food (and anticipation) to extremes!
I started to make my sourdough on Monday morning, and we ate the bread for lunch on Sunday. Don't be put off by that though - its very low effort every step of the way, and the results are lovely.



Because I like to think I'm quite fancy I had by bread with smoked salmon. And then because I can eat fesh bread until it comes out of my ears, I had another chunk with honey.



Dan had just a smear of butter, which went all melted and lovely on the warm bread.

Want to know how its done?

STEP 1 (Monday morning)
50g wholemeal flour
pinch of ground cumin
15ml milk
15-30ml water

Sieve the flour and cumin into a bowl. Add the milk and enough water to make a firm dough. Kneed for 6-8 minutes. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with a damp teatowel.
Total time: 10 minutes
Leave in a warm place for 2 days.

STEP 2 (Wednesday morning)
60ml water
115g white bread flour

Pull off the hardened crust from the dough, scoop out the moist centre (about the size of a walnut), and place in a clean bowl. Mix in the water. Gradually add the flour and mix to a dough. Cover the bowl with clingfilm.
Total time: 10 minutes
Leave in a warm place for 2 days

STEP 3 (Friday morning)
60ml water
115g white bread flour

Pull off the crust and discard. Gradually mix in the water. Mix in the flour and re-cover.
Total time: 10 minutes
Leave for 8-10 hours.

STEP 4 (Friday evening)
75ml very warm water
75g white flour

Mix the sourdough starter with the water. Gradually add the flour to form a dough. Kneed for 6-8 minutes until firm.
Total time: 10-15 minutes
Cover with a damp teatowel and leave for 8-12 hours (or overnight) until doubled in bulk.

STEP 5 (Saturday morning)
175ml lukewarm water
200-225g white flour

Gradually mix the water into your sourdough starter. Mix in enough flour to form a a soft, smooth dough.
Total time: 10 minutes
Re-cover and leave in a warm place for 8-12 hours.

STEP 6 (Saturday evening)
280ml warm water
500g white bread flour
1 tbspn salt

Gradually stir the water into the dough, then work in the flour and salt. This will take 10-15 minutes. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and kneed until smooth and elastic. Place in a large bowl, cover with lightly oiled clingfilm.
Total time: 20 minutes
Leave to rise in a warm place for 8-12 hours (or overnight).

STEP 7 (Sunday morning)

Divide the dough in half. Shape into 2 round loaves, place in lighly oiled & flour dusted tins.
Total time: 5 minutes
Re-cover and leave to rise for a further 4 hours.

STEP 8 (Sunday lunchtime)

Preheat the oven to 220C.
Place a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven.
Slash the top of the loaves with a sharp knife.
Uncover the bread tins, place in the oven and immediately drop a couple of ice cubes into the roasting tin to make steam.
Bake the bread at 220C for 25 minutes then turn the oven down to 200C and leave for 15-20 minutes further. If its done the base will sound hollow when tapped.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

So by my reckoning that's 1 hour 20 minutes of actual effort, which isn't too bad spread over 6 days, 40 minutes cooking time, but an astounding 6 days and 4 hours waiting time!
Yummy results though.

A New Year wish list

My belated New Year's resolution is to expand by bread-making repertoire in 2011.

I make bread a reasonable amount already - maybe once every 1 or 2 months - but I only have one really successful method for a loaf so far. I've managed foccacia, soda bread, and flatbreads, but the foccacia selection could definitely be expanded to include some different toppings.

On my recipe wish list are:

Sourdough bread
Bialys
Bagels
Pitta bread
Pizza dough (I struggle to get this thin enough as I love a thin and crispy pizza base)
Hot cross buns (when we get to Easter of course)
Chelsea buns (for a nostalgia kick - a childhood favourite!)

I'm sure this list will expand massively as I get more into experiments with bread-baking. I hope our appetite for bread can keep up! We don't eat masses of the stuff, but I am an awful bread snob, so when I do eat bread I demand that its decent! Is there anything better than the smell of fresh bread wafting through the house? Other than perhaps the taste of the fresh bread, with the butter melting into the crumb and a lovely crunchy crust. If I'm feeling extravagant then a thick smear of honey on the top too. Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.

My Christmas present from Dan is going to be a bread mixing bowl. We've asked a potter who lives in the next village to make one for me, so it should be ready in a couple of weeks' time. Then I can get started on my list. I'm quite excited! Here are some of the other things the same potter has made...I wonder what he'll come up with for me?





Also on this year's recipe 'to do' list: rice pudding, onion bhajis, fondant potatoes, pain bagnat, lemon meringue pie, gravlax, sweet and sour (I don't like the takeaway version, but suspect I may like a homemade attempt), sorbet, cranachan, toad in the hole, treacle sponge, salted caramel icecream, macaroons.

What would you add?

banana soda bread

Branching out and looking for interesting, easy breakfast recipes I came across a banana soda bread recipe. It looked pretty simple to make, even pre-coffee, and I loved the idea of a warm banan=y bread with runny honey and a good cup of coffee for breakfast.

Just to help my fuzzy head out, I weighed the flour the night before - 50g each of white and wholemeal flour - added 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 15g (about 2 1/2 teaspoons) of caster sugar and mixed it all together.

Th next morning I set the oven to heat up to 220C. Mashed 1 banana to a pulp, then mixed that and 125g yoghurt into the flour. (You could also add a splash of milk if the mixture is still a bit dry.) Kneed the mixture until it makes a smooth but sticky dough. Form into 3 round loaves and place on a greased baking tray.

Bake for approx 15 minutes.

Serve warm with honey.



I enjoyed these. Very banana-y.Definitely one to serve warm though - I don't imagine they would work cold. Soda bread has a quite cake-y, crumbley texture so I'm not sure how well they would toast. Tastey warm from the oven, and even my sunday morning sleepiness didn't make the recipe unintelligible so they must be easy!

Pao de Queijo

hurrah....I made the Pao de Queijo (Brazilian cheese breads).



They were a bit chewy and doughy, not overly cheesy but enough to taste, and very nice warm with a salad of scallops and chorizo.

They definitely wouldn't be any good cold, but you can freeze them cooked or uncooked and just bake or heat them up when you're ready for them (just as well because even just 1/2 the recipe quantities made 15!).

They breads weren't all that bready - I guess there was less flour and more cheese in this recipe than in the ones I had before in London. I imagine a breadier version would keep better for selling in a shop, but I don't think I'll bother trying to amend the recipe as I liked them as they turned out.

I think these would be good with tomato soup, salads, pasta dishes (as an alternative to garlic bread). Quite versatile really. And quick too as there's no rising involved in the bread making.

The recipe came from by Cuban recipe book, but there are versions to be found all over the internet.

Brazil!

A while a go I went through a short phase of trying out a few Latin American recipes which jogged my memory and made me recall the delicious Pao de Queijo which I had eaten with my friend Yu Chen at a Brazilian place at the grotty end of Oxford Street in London.
They are light and puffy cheesy breads, even delicious to me - a non-cheese eater. Even better there was a recipe for them in my Cuban recipe book. However, they call for tapioca flour. And where on earth can you buy that?!

Well, it turns out you can buy it in the health food shop of our little market town. Who'd have thought it? So, watch this space, because as soon as I have a couple of hours spare I will be getting my Brazilian groove on and having a try at Pao de Queijo.



Now all I need is some Havaianas, a beach, and a massive party!

cooking up a storm

My Dad likes to say that if there's an easy way of doing something and a difficult way of doing it I'll always find the hard way. This sprung to mind today as I spent all afternoon in the kitchen.

On the May Day bank holiday monday Dan and I are having a little house warming party/birthday party for Dan. It will be lovely to have our friends, new and old, round to visit. Its going to be a busy few days though: I'm off to the ballet on the friday evening, then my parents are coming to visit for saturday and sunday. Its going to be a lovely social weekend, but there will be no time to cook anything for our party guests that weekend.

I really didn't want to buy frozen pizzas or other crappy processed food that would be easy but not particularly nice. So, today I've been getting organised, and cooking up a storm with freezeable food.

First up, a trip to the farmers market and farm shop for ingredients.
Look how lovely the eggs I bought are:



I suppose its a little odd to feel pleased by pretty eggs, but I did enjoy a childhood-nostalgia lunch of dippy-egg.



Then I knuckled down to the catering.

First up; bread.
I was a bit stupid and forgot to to dust the baking paper with flour to stop the bread sticking. Consequently, the 1st batch will not be going to the party. Dan and I will have to eat it ourselves and pick off the paper as we go!

Then cheesecake.
Its somewhat horrifying the amount of cream and cheese in a cheesecake, but it always seems to go down well. Yummy. I have tried making cheesecake before but it didn't set. This time I had more success, so we have one Rhubarb and Ginger cheesecake, and one Mixed Berry cheesecase.



On to the quiches. A couple of roasted vegetable ones and one quiche-lorraine style onion, bacon and tomato quiche.

Ooof. The freezer's pretty full now.

I'll make a couple of tomato and mozzarella pizzas tomorrow, then that's enough for now.

It wasn't all hard work though. I had time for an icecream in the sunshine at the farmshop. Apple pie flavour no less.

coming over all biblical

This weekend I have been mainly baking loaves and fishes. Ironic for a dyed-in-the-wool athiest!

Friday night we ate Greek Roast Cod. I came across the recipe on the BBC website. Its here.



This is the 2nd recipe I've made from Silvana Franco - the 1st was lemony meatballs with pasta. Both recipes are from her Hi-Low Cookbook, and after this one I figured that two really tasty dinners was enough evidence for me... The recipe book is on the way via ebay.

Saturday was a French trout recipe - whole roast trout with sorrel sauce. I had to adapt a little; there was no sorrel to be found anywhere in the shops near me so I substituted spinach, and I used yoghurt instead of creme fraiche. I got the trout at the Banbury farmer's market, and it was a lovely subtle flavour and superbly fresh.

Trout with Sorrel sauce

2 whole trout - cleaned, gutted, heads removed (always sounds gruesome to type that!)

200g baby spinach or sorrel leaves
1/4 onion or 3 shallots - finely chopped
10g butter
100g plain yoghurt
75ml dry white wine
A shake of nutmeg
salt, pepper

Put oven on to heat to 180C.
Melt the butter over a low heat and gently fry the shallots or onions until soft.
Add the spinach or sorrel leaves and a small splash of water. Cover and allow to cook gently for 3 or 4 minutes, until the leaves have wilted.
Add 1/2 the yoghurt, salt and pepper, and a shake of nutmeg, and allow to cook for a minute or so more before taking off the heat and allowing to cool slightly.
Stuff the trout with the sorrel mixture (don't worry if you don't use it all - keep it for making the sauce later), then place the fish in a roasting tin, pour over the wine and cover with foil.
Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes depending on the size of your fish.
5 minutes before the end of the cooking time pour the juices from the roasting tin into a small saucepan. Return the fish to the oven.
Add the remaining yoghurt to the saucepan, and any of the sorrel mix that you may have left. Place over a fairly high heat and allow to reduce to about 1/2 the volume.
Serve the trout with the sauce from the saucepan poured round it.
It goes well with boiled potatoes or mash, and leafy green veg or salad.

Now then I realise I haven't addressed the loaves bit.

A few weeks back I watched a Raymond Blanc cookery programme in which he made bread. I also watched a programme on BBC4 about craft bakers, and it got me thinking about bread-making again.

I have made bread fairly regularly in the past, but I haven't hit upon a recipe/method that I think is really my ultimate process. All of my attempts have been quite nice, but not write-home about it delicious.

Until this weekend that is.
I tried out the Raymond Blanc method (find it here) and it was just GORGEOUS. Even Dan liked it, and he's never particularly liked the bread I've made in the past.



I made it by hand in 2 batches of 2 loaves - I mean, really; who has an oven large enough for 4 loaves in their home kitchen? Or a food mixer big enough for over a kilo of bread dough?! But lack of reality for us home cooks aside, the bread tasted really good.
I will have a try at baking the bread in tins in future so that its easier to use for sandwiches.

And then lastly; pizza from my little old Carluccio recipe book (I had a little yeast left over). I didn't eat any of it, but Dan tells me it was lovely. Praise indeed!

This seems to sum up our weekend eating (Dan's sunday lunch) rather well, even if it is a somewhat unorthodox mixture!:



The sushi is from the deli a couple of villages away - turns out moving to deepest-darkest rural Oxfordshire doesn't mean you have to abandon all interest in foods from round the world after all. Hurrah for that!

PS This was week 30. Wonder how long I'll keep feeling inclined to be an enquiring cook? I think its a habit now...I can't imagine going back to a routine of similar dinners all the time.

Oysters and rhubarb

At the end of the summer Dan and I moved house, and we've been slowly getting to know our new area. Last night we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out instead of cooking. And to up the ante a little we chose The Plough at Kingham as our venue of choice.

I've been keen to go there for a few months. Its run by a lady who trained with Heston Blumenthal, and although she doesn't go in for some of the extremes of oddness that he likes to create I figured that the cooking would be good and the menu imaginative. I also really liked the fact that they don't publish a menu online as the menu depends on what ingredients look good on any given day.

So, a table was booked, we got out of our DIY outfits, dammit I even wore perfume! I was possibly looking forward to it a little TOO much!

Now, usually when you build somewhere up like that it disappoints. The Plough didn't.



It was oyster night. Have you ever eaten oysters? Neither of us had. They do seem to get rather bad press, and I’d consigned them to that category of “not worth paying the premium price to try something that will probably be nasty.”

However, last night curiosity got the better of us and so we asked if we could try an oyster each. (It seemed like the kind of place that wouldn’t be snooty about that sort of request.) They arrived on a bed of salt with a little shallot vinegar and the barman-proprietor suggested a little dab of the vinegar then just suck the oyster down, a couple of chews if you fancy it, and gulp to swallow (sounds a bit obscene doesn’t it?!). I went first….Dan looked a little apprehensive.

But actually, it was lovely.

When people say oysters taste of the sea I’d always thought that sounded disgusting. I mean, the taste of sea water is revolting – it burns your throat and makes you feel nauseous. But now I understand. Oysters are mildly salty, but with a light seafoody freshness. They taste like summer holidays at the seaside - Cornwall, not Blackpool!

I followed my oyster revelation with halibut. A very nice piece of fish served with a crab bisque and some kind of leafy green veg that I didn’t try very hard to identify. But the thing that made this dish memorable was the fennel bread that accompanied it. The slight aniseed flavour was a surprising but inspired compliment to the fish.

And then the pudding.

I find desserts are often a bit of a let-down in restaurants. All too often its just the same old choices of something chocolatey (which I always find too rich for the end of a meal), icecream (too cold for winter), crème brulee, maybe sticky toffee pudding. What I want at the end of a meal is something fruity.

The Plough came up trumps with Rhubarb cheesecake with rhubarb icecream. This turned out to be beautiful slices of rhubarb in a light syrup arranged on a crispy biscuit, with a cheesecake-textured goats curd mousse on the side (I know that doesn’t sound all that appetising, but trust me, it was), a scoop of homemade rhubarb icecream, and a little rhubarb jam to finish it off. Light, tangy, interesting but not alarming.

I was seriously tempted by some of the icecream flavours on offer – all homemade. Dark chocolate, elderflower and raspberry sounded intriguing, as did banana and stem ginger. Obviously, we’ll have to go back to sample some of the other delights on offer. I think we made need to save up a little first though. Its not overpriced, particularly given the quality of ingredients, the excellent service, and the well trained, imaginative chefs, but I can’t afford to pay £70 for dinner for 2 every week!

Here's the pub website.

Snow snow go away

When its cold outside and I'm housebound because of the state of the roads I always feel like baking.
When I was snowed in last year I made shortbread, and last week when I was snowed in I got some yeast out of the freezer and turned to my trusty old Carluccio recipe book for foccacia. It turned up trumps with instructions for a rosemary and salt topped version - Handy as I had some rosemary sitting in the fridge which was getting rather ancient and needed using up.

So, I got the woodburner going so that at least one room in the house was warm enough for bread to rise, and set about bread-making. Just the smell of baking bread and the waft of rosemary was enough to make the house feel more inviting. The bread was fragrant from rosemary with a lovely salty top.



This is a bread to be eaten super fresh. It was wonderful warm from the oven, but not so good the next day, although it might reheat or toast well.

Also this week, a curry bonanza! Prawn boohna (just what I needed after a long run), spicy rainbow trout (lovely flavours, but I overcooked the fish a bit so it was slightly on the dry side), pakoras (I hate deep frying things but I don't suppose there's any other way of doing these, and they are a great addition to a curry dinner).

A good food week!

At the weekend I went to see the film of Julie and Julia . Since the book inspired me to cook in a more varied way I thought I should definitely see the film. It was amusing and engaging, and made me realise that I still haven't attempted lobster thermidor. That was the first thing onto my recipe list, and I haven't yet steeled myself to dispatch a lobster in boiling water.

I feel I need to face up to it fairly soon.

Although, my 6 month marker is in sight so maybe I can put it off until then.

Julia Child must have been America's answer to Elizabeth David, although I'm not sure who came first. My mum tells me she has 2 copies of Elizabeth David's French Cookery book and has offered to donate one to me. Until now I haven't taken up the offer, as whenever I browse through it it has VERY bossy instructions, and VERY daunting looking recipes. However, I think the time has come to stop being a scaredy cat.

UPDATE:
Ooooh...Meryl Streep just won Best Actress at the Golden Globes for her portrayal of Julia Child.

Week 10!

I am quite surprised that what started as a vague resolution to do one new recipe per week has actually reached its 10th week, and still going strong. In fact, I'm finding myself actively seeking out new ideas in my recipe books even when I've already done my recipe for the week. Its definitely reawakened my interest in cooking.

I think I'd got myself into a bit of a food rut - not that I was living on takeaways or ready meals or anything like that, but I was cooking the same few dishes week-in, week-out. Easy, but it gets boring after a while.

I haven't been buying any extra ingredients these last few weeks, but I've just used what I have in the cupboards in a more varied way. It helps that since we moved house we've had a vegetable box delivered each week from here. This forces me to be a bit more inventive as you don't know what you're going to get that week until it arrives on the doorstep. Sometimes we get things I would never have added to my shopping list (celeriac, corn on the cob, avocado) so I've had to find recipes to suit the vegetable selection. Its forced me to try vegetables I didn't think I liked - avocado being a case in point - and I've become a master vegetable soup maker!

In honour of week 10 I attempted quite a few recipes over the course of the week:
Steamed Italian chicken spirals with hazlenut pesto and pasta
Spinach gnocchi
Japanese steamed prawn custards
Shahi Murg (a creamy chicken curry)
Soda bread

Actually none of them were particularly tricky, and it was a bit of a cold, wet weekend so there wasn't a hell-of-alot else to do! (except DIY. Yuck!) No photos I'm afraid, as it was after I realised that I'd lasted 10 weeks that I started taking the odd snap of my 'masterpieces'.

Let's see if I last another 10 weeks on the culinary experimentation experience!

Soda Bread

This is much quicker to make than a normal loaf of bread. It has a slightly sweet taste and a texture closer to cake than most breads. It was nice warm with a bowl of soup (I had roast squash and red pepper soup with it) and kept well until the next day, but I wouldn't recommend keeping it much longer than that.

250g plain flour (not bread flour). I used 75g wholemeal, 175g white.
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
200ml live yoghurt

Heat the oven to 230C.
Sift flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl.
Add the sugar, then stir in the yoghurt and bring the mixture together to a dough with your hands. (This is another one where you get messy - its usually the way with baking!)
Kneed for a minute or so until its smooth, shape into a tall ball and place on a greased baking sheet.
Cut a deep cross in the top of the dough - going almost all the way through the ball of dough, but not quite.
Bake for 12 minutes at 230C, then turn the oven down to 200C and leave for another 15-20 minutes.
Allow to cool for about 15 minutes before serving.

Making bread

My Mum's birthday provided the family with the perfect excuse to get together for dinner at my older sister's place. To lighten the cooking work I promised to make the starter. Dips and flatbread seemed to fit the bill, so I made houmous again (never in 30 years then twice in a week!), a cannellini bean and mint dip, and Nigel Slater's flatbread.

Once I got started on the bread I have to confess to feeling a bit fraudulent for counting it as a recipe-of-the-week: it was fundamentally the same as normal bread, except for the addition of olive oil and that it only needs one rising period. Oh, and its shaped differently.

A brief explanation here:
My Dad has been making bread every saturday morning for my whole life. As little kids we "helped" - a tradition which my nephew and nieces continue. Even as surly teenagers the smell of fresh bread would have us fighting with enthusiasm over the crusty end of the warm loaf at saturday lunchtime.
A couple of years ago, growing frustrated by the lack of quality bread available in the shops, I though 'How hard can it be?!' and took up the family habit of making my own.


The following is my preferred method, reached after a few months of experimentation. Any kind of bread flour will do - I have successfully used just white flour, half-and half wholemeal and white, spelt flour etc etc. My favourite is about 1/2 wholemeal or spelt - 1/2 white flour.

Bread
550g bread flour
15g fresh yeast (or about a teaspoon dried yeast)
330ml water at blood temperature
1 teaspoon salt

Roll up your sleeves and wash your hands - they're going to get stuck in!
Dissolve the yeast in a little of the warm water.
In a separate bowl mix together the flour and salt, then pour in the dissolved yeast and mix it together with your hands. Gradually add the rest of the water mixing it in until the mixture forms a soft dough. It shouldn't be too sticky - if it is sprinkle it with a little more flour. Don't rush this and be aware that sometimes you will need a little more water, sometimes a little less. The absorbency (hmm is that a word?) of the flour will vary depending on weather etc. It takes a little while for flour to fully absorb the liquid, so if you rush and add all the water at once you could end up with an overly sticky dough.
Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and kneed for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and silky.
Put it into a clean bowl (I usually just wipe out the bowl I mixed it up in), cover with a teatowel or put inside a clean plastic bag (I usually just put it inside a Sainsbury's bag) making sure there's space above the dough for it to rise without sticking to the cover. Leave in a warm place for an hour, or a little longer if your yeast is a bit old or the room not very warm.
after an hour or so, punch the dough back to knock the air out of it (quite theraputic!) and kneed on your floured surface again for a few minutes. Then shape the dough into a roll and put into a bread tin. I use an 800g size silicon tin. This has the distinct advantage of being naturally non-stick so I don't have to grease the tin. If you have a metal bread tin (I think purists probably would prefer you did) then grease it well before you put your bread in.
Leave your dough in the tin in the warm place for a further 1/2 hour until it has risen to the top of the tin again. Preheat the oven while it rises - as hot as your oven will go; typically 220-230C.
Bake the bread for 15 minutes at this temperature, then turn the oven down to 205C for 10 minutes. After that take the loaf out of the tin and bake for a further 5-7 minutes at about 190C. You can try putting a tray of hot water in the bottom of the oven while cooking to make it slightly steamy if you want - it is meant to help the bread form a better crust, although the jury's out.
If the bread sounds hollow when you tap the base it is cooked.

Sorry the picture is a bit rubbish! This loaf was made with about 200g malted bread flour, 300g wholemeal. It didn't rise as much as a loaf mixed with some white flour would, also it was pretty cold which inhibits the rising a bit. It was tasty this morning for breakfast with some nice strawberry jam.



This isn't the method my Dad uses. He is far more thorough than me, using a starter rather than just mixing the yeast in straight away. He ends up with a bread with a more open texture, but this is a quicker method which can be cooked in the evening after work (as long as I get home on time!). If I start the process at about 6:30pm then the bread comes out of the oven before 10pm. Lovely fresh bread for breakfast!
I think people are daunted by making bread as it seems time-consuming, but actually most of that time is just waiting for it to rise. You don't have to watch it! Go and watch TV, cook the dinner, have a bath - whatever you would normally do in the evening. The other good thing about bread making is that its very forgiving. If the dough ends up rising for a bit longer you will still end up with a good loaf.