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.

Getting my 5 a day

Recently I've been feeling like eating super-healthily: Lots of vegetables, salads, vegetarian dishes. This week's new recipes were excellent examples of the kind of food I've been craving.

A Vietnamese Crab and Asparagus soup made a delicious lunch (even though it doesn't look that great!)


It was quite unusual in that it had a beaten egg stirred through to form thin eggy strands. That really enriched the soup and made it taste quite indulgent. The recipe was extremely easy to make. I battled with my 'food miles' conscience since asparagus isn't in season in the UK anymore, but in the end greed won out! Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Crab and Asparagus soup for 2

1 tin crab (or 120g cooked fresh crab meat)
200g asparagus spears
500g chicken stock
3 shallots (finely sliced)
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 egg
salt and pepper
chives

Warm the stock in a saucepan, add the shallots and simmer for a few minutes to soften.
Meanwhile chop the asparagus spears into bite sized pieces and cook in simmering water for 4-5 minutes until tender.
Add the asparagus, crab, fish sauce and seasoning to the stock mixture. Mix the cornflour to a paste with a little water, add it to the soup mixture and stir until the soup thickens a little. Beat the egg lightly, add to the soup and stir briskly to form strands of egg. Sprinkle with some snipped chives and serve.

For dinner the same day I threw together an Ottolenghi salad recipe of broad beans and radishes, which was excellent served with a piece of haddock and pitta breads, with a tahini sauce for dipping.


See: It looks like the book's picture!

I never used to like radishes, but thought it was high time I revisited them to see if I like them now. This combination of salad ingredients was lovely and the radishes gave a great textural contrast with their crunchiness, as well as being a wonderful colour against the grean of the beans. I actually used half and half broad beans and peas as I didn't have enough broad beans for the recipe. That seemed to work just fine.

One revelation is that I don't know why I never thought to pop broadbeans out of their skins before. I have always hated those tough outer skins that they have, but they're very easily peeled off!

Fresh and healthy summery dishes feel exactly right just now.

Daring Cooks July Challenge

This month's Daring Cook's challenge was to make a pasta or noodle without the aid of a motorized machine. We were however allowed to use a hand-crank pasta roller.

The challenge presented me with a conundrum - I got a pasta rolling machine at Christmas and have made my own pasta a few times since then, so I could take the easy route of making a recipe I know, or I could investigate a different kind of pasta. It seemed more in the spirit of the Daring Cooks to attempt something new, so I started to look around for ideas.

I've been reading a memoir by Josceline Dimbleby recently. Its a meander through her life and travels, interspersed with lovely recipes and photographs. Towards the end of the book there's a chapter on a visit to the Gujarati district of India, and a recipe for Khvandi, which she describes as a kind of Indian pasta. It sounded intriguing, and we were planning a curry night, so I decided to give the recipe a try and serve it as a starter.

It is an unusual method for a pasta - you boil the ingredients (gram flour, tumeric, chilli powder, yoghurt and water) down to a thick paste;



then spread it into a greased tray and leave it to set;



The idea is to then cut it into strips and serve it garnished with herbs, seeds and some dessicated coconut.

Mine didn't set though! I imagine I needed to simmer the mixture for longer before spreading it out to set. I will give this another try at some point because the flavours were good - a little bit spicy and sour. Definitely interesing.

This non-setting disaster left me with very little time to acheive a Daring Cooks dish for this month - or at least one that was edible. I got in there with only hours to spare, making Jamie Oliver's Pici with tomato sauce (from the Jamie's Italy cook book) for dinner on the day this was all due to be posted! Pici is an eggless pasta made from semolina flour and formed into tubes. Previously I have always made egg pasta in sheets or strips, so this was still something new for me even if it is a little unadventurous!

Here's what I did - mix the semolina flour to a dough using a little water. Kneed it until silky and smooth:



Wrap in clingfilm and leave it in the fridge until needed.

Divide it into small pieces, place a skewer in the middle and roll the dough around it to form a tube of pasta:



Mine were a little thicker than intended because my skewer was a bit of a thick one for this task - the thinner the better.



Served with very tasty cauliflower from the farm shop, tomato sauce and prawns, this made a good dinner. It was fairly straight-forward to make really.



Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Buffalo Ricotta

I think I've documented reasonably often on these pages my prolems with dairy products. I can't seem to get along with cow cheese and other milk products at all. I have however been gradually exploring the non-cow options out there. In the last year or so I have discovered a number of soft cheeses which I like and don't make my tummy hurt - buffalo mozzarella, halloumi, feta. I can cope with one or two hard cheeses (manchego mostly), although I still wouldn't eat them in chunks - just grated into other food. And, surprisingly, I have overcome my childhood hatred of yoghurt. I'm sure my bones and joints are grateful for the extra calcium!

Last week I was in London so I paid a visit to the Whole Foods Supermarket on Kensington High Street (they do the best olives of anywhere I've found in the UK). I was interested to spot Buffalo Ricotta in their fridge, and I couldn't resist buying some to try.



I didn't have a plan for it, but when I got home I flicked through my books and decided on Fennel and Ricotta Risotto from the Jamie's Italy cookbook.

The recipe can be found here.

I was a little worried that the fennel flavour would be overwhelming, but the risotto turned out really well - creamy with nicely balanced flavours. It was pretty simple and quick to make, so I would definitely recommend it for an easy week night dinner.

PS I also discovered that you can mix ricotta with a little honey, berries, lemon juice and zest for a creamy but surprisingly low calorie dessert.