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.

Clams and jams

I had a weekend off! Hurrah!

That meant I had time to do some slightly more interesting cooking.

First up: clams. So much prettier than mussels and so much easier to prep (no scrapping off nasty beards and barnacles).
I steamed them with a combination of chilli, garlic and coconut milk and served them with noodles.

We'll gloss over the fact that I nearly gave Dan a heart attack because the (one) chilli was so hot. I'll be cooking these again next time I see them in the fishmonger. I'll try not to make my boyfriend cry next time (wuss!).



Then since I was a lady with far too much time on my hands this weekend, I made jam. Pear jam with dark chocolate sprinkles. Oh yes. I am a culinary genius. It was gorgeous!

Actually, I am not a culinary genius at all... this lady is.



I'm inspired to have more lazy weekends, and each one will start with fancy french bread and home made jams for breakfast.

When's the weekend? Is it here yet?

Summer berry madness

I love the time of year when summer berries come in season. I could happily gorge myself on strawberries and blueberries for breakfast, lunch, and tea when they're juicy, sweet and super-fresh. And here we are at last....proper summer time, with sunshine for days and days (hope I'm not jinxing it!) and berries everywhere.

So what's a girl to do when she's got over excited and bought too many rasberries in the market? Make jam of course!

I'm no jam-making virgin, but rasberry jam is one I've never made. I just prefer strawberry so I tend to make that. However, Dan's a rasberry man, and he's been resorting to stealing rasberry jam from his parents everytime he goes to visit. It was time to make him a stash of his own.



Its very simple to make, just as most jams are. The only tricky bit is gauging the right point to take it off the heat. I highly recommend a jam thermometer for this. It makes it a lot easier, and you will probably find that you use it more than you initially expect to. (Mine has been useful for making fudge and cheese too.)

Rasberry Jam
Use equal weight of rasberries and granulated sugar
Make sure you use a large saucepan as once the jam is boiling it will rise up alot.

Warm the rasberries through slightly until the juices start to bleed out.
Add the sugar and stir through. Turn the heat up and clamp your thermometer on the side of the pan.
Bring the jam to the boil, stirring occasionally to ensure bits don't stick to the bottom and burn.
Keep it on a fairly high heat until the jam setting point temperature is reached (it should be marked on the thermometer).
Remove pan from heat and pour into sterilised jars.
Allow to cool without the lids on for about an hour, then loosely screw on the lids and leave the jam to cool and set completely before tightening the tops.



But that still left some yellow rasberries and blueberries (I told you I got over-enthusiastic with my berry purchases!).

I bought a copy of Red Magazine to read on the train the other day. (Should I admit to that? Its hardly the most cutting-edge reading material!) Anyway, quite apart from whiling away my journey to and from London quite satisfactorarily, it also had a section on berry recipes. Whilst most were cream and sugar filled, of which I am not a fan (I like to keep my berries fruity), there was a suggestion for Wine Jelly with berries. I haven't done the taste test yet, but they were easy to make and seem to have set quickly.
I reduced the recipe sugar amount slightly and upped the fruit quantity.



Berry Jellies (for 2)
160ml white or rose wine
5g fine leaf gelatine
60ml water
50g sugar
150g mixed berries

Divide the berries between 2 glasses or teacups.
Put the gelatine to soak in a bowl of cold water & leave for 5 mins.
Meanwhile gently heat the wine water and sugar together, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. The liquid should get not hotter than hand warm.
Take the softened gelatin out of its water. Squeeze any excess water out of it and add to the wine mixture. Stir until the gelatine has dissolved.
Pour the wine mixture over the berries and put in the frisge to set overnight.



Serve with more berries on the side, or cream of you are a berries+cream person.

Hope you're enjoying summer!

Jelly and nostalgia

On a roll from last week's jam experiment, and with a massive bag of damsons from my parents' trees, this week I attempted Damson Jelly.
It took a while because you first boil up the fruit, then strain it through muslin for several hours, then boil it up with sugar. So although its not in any way labour-intensive, it does take pretty much the whole day to get to the finish point.
Except, for me, it took until the next day to get to the finish point because the jelly didn't set on the first attempt.
Turns out I was over-eager in potting my jelly and should have let it get to a hotter temperature first. So back in the pan it went the next day, and it did set on the 2nd attempt. Phew.


Then for a bit of nostalgia. Last Christmas we took a day trip on Eurostar to Lille for the Christmas market.


It was one of those crisp cold December days, so after a bit of wandering round Lille we found ourselves a cosy cellar-like bistro for lunch. The only thing on the menu were gallettes. Now I may be ignorant, but I didn't know what gallettes were before that point. They were a revelation. Savoury buckwheat pancakes, with a leek ham and cheese filling, served with a pichet of local cider. Absolutely perfect.
Back in the UK, I searched high and low for buckwheat flour, to no avail. So I had to substitute wholemeal. Not quite the same, but a reasonable result nonetheless.
I had never made pancakes of any kind before so this was a learning curve. The first one was a disaster. Soggy, and disintegrated! The second was not much better. But I did manage to get a couple of decent examples done after a bit of swearing and persistence. Filled with onion, ham and cheese they made a yummy weekend lunch.
I later found out that the french always say that the first pancake is "pour le chien" (for the dog), so clearly I'm not alone in struggling with pancakes. Which is comforting.

Here's the recipe (makes enough for 3 or 4 gallettes):

75-80g flour (wholemeal or buckwheat)
1/2 beaten egg
200ml cold sparkling water
10g melted butter
pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients and whisk together with a fork until smooth and runny.
Cover and leave to stand in the fridge for at least 2 hours. I found that its still good the next day.
When ready to cook your gallettes, remove the mixture from the fridge. Beat with a fork for a few minutes, then heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan. Ladle in some gallette mixture, swirl around to make it as thin as possible and cook for a few minutes. Loosen the edges with a pallette knife (or a fish slice if you're like me and don't have a pallette knife), then flip and cook on the other side. set aside and keep warm.
Repeat for all the mixture.
Make whatever filling you fancy.
Heat pan again, add the gallette, spoon your filling in, fold gallette over to cover your filing. allow a minute or so to get warm through.
Serve.
Yum!

Rhubarb and ginger

Apparently there has been a massive surge in sales of jam-making equipment this year. I feel a little grumpy about this, as if there's one thing I hate its to be part of a trend! Nonetheless, I have made jam this year.
I started my jam making with an unsuccessful attempt at blackberry jam last year. What can I say?...I was a trendsetter!


Problem was, the jam was too hard to spread easily (we ate it anyway, of course!), so this year I bought a jam thermometer before I made a second attempt.
After a yummy and spreadable strawberry jam I was feeling confident, so when I was sent the instructions for rhubarb and ginger jam I resolved to give it a try.
And it worked!
The result was tangy with lovely little surprises of stem ginger throughout. Definitely one to do again when rhubarb comes into season. And a great alternative to marmalade, which I just can't stand.
Find the recipe here.