Six more breads

from Short & Sweet by Dan Lepard
Published by Fourth Estate, 2011

I am in the grip of an obsession. All other cooking seems to have gone out of the window. I struggle to think what to cook every day and have resorted to asking the children what they want (big mistake, never do it). On the other hand, once a week or more, I produce marvellous exciting new bread, in addition to the sourdough, white and wholemeal that I'm now producing on a regular basis. It's so easy. It's so delicious. Why doesn't everyone do it, all the time?

Double cheese and chive loaf

Spelt and ale loaf
What a great loaf of bread. This was far lighter than the rather dense wholemeal I've been making so far (not that dense is necessarily a problem, but variety is good). Quite fun watching the children's horror as I poured beer into the dough too!

Simple walnut loaf
Red wine in this one, giving it a pinkish colour, and presumably doing something to the flavour, but I'm not sure what. I love walnut bread and I just don't think this one was walnutty enough for me. I don't know why that should be, it had plenty of nuts in it. Perhaps more ground nuts through the dough and fewer whole ones?

Multigrain and honey loaf
This was very strange to make, with a sticky porridge of oats, honey, linseed, sunflower seeds and water mixed in. It's delicious though, light and moist, slightly sweet and the seeds give a lovely resistance as you bite.

Cinnamon and raisin loaf
Produced this dense, sticky raisin bread the first day of the holidays, hoping to make it an exciting breakfast treat, but they all got up too early. Typical! Perfect for tea though, and it all disappeared in no time.

Black bread
Dark, savoury smelling bread that I made today. The colour comes from cocoa, coffee, and treacle. I have to admit to not yet having tried it - I put it straight in the freezer because the breadbin was still full. I wonder if it will taste sweet? There are fennel and caraway seeds in it too. Crying out for smoked salmon?

Wholemeal loaf

from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
Published by 4th Estate, 2011











Tackled the wholemeal with slightly more trepidation, and felt very fearful when it sat rather squatly in its tin, looking sullen compared to the perky white. However, Dan Lepard came up trumps again. The crumb is dense, it's true, but the texture is just the right combination of chewy and soft.

So now my main problem is can I keep up with the speed bread gets eaten around here?

I can't seem to cut a nice smooth line in the top of the dough before baking. Apparently it is sometimes done with a razor blade, but who has one of them?

White Farmhouse Tin Loaf

from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
Published by 4th Estate, 2011

The breadmaker broke, so having had a bit of success with my sourdough, I thought it was time to give ordinary bread a try. So I carefully read through all of Dan Lepard's instructions, all the explanation of ingredients, timings, methods. Then began to cook, but still with a wavering doubt in my mind all the time, because, after all, every other time I've tried to make bread it has turned out like a nasty, solid, yeasty lump.

But look what I made! It looks like bread! It tastes like bread! It was not solid, or yeasty, but full of air pockets and soft but slightly chewy, exactly like good bread should be. Forgive me if I sound a bit over the top, but I am astounded at my success.

What is more, it isn't even all that difficult to fit it in timewise. In my head it takes all day to bake bread, but actually, it's just a few minutes here and there which seem to fit in fairly easily around other things. Of course, my days tend to be short, which makes it easier, but there's even a recipe in this book specifically designed to work around going out to work all day. Shall I try that next? I have a feeling I'm going to be working through all the recipes in this book. I love Dan Lepard!

Kashmiri Butter Chicken

from Ultimate Slow Cooker
by Sara Lewis,
published by Hamlyn, 2008.

Curry is always a tricky one in our house. I love anything spicy, ideally good and hot, but I’m happy to eat the more aromatic spicy things too. Robert loves curry as much as I do. It’s a joy when his brother Matt comes to stay and we get to indulge in fabulous spicy deliciousness thanks to Matt’s seemingly bottomless curiosity about the culinary world and enthusiasm for throwing himself into cooking eight to ten different things at once (often enhanced, it must be said, by ingredients he brings himself from the Great Metropolis, which are largely unavailable here in the depths of Nowhere). In the normal run of things though, curry is confined to when Robert and I are eating alone and one or other of us can bring ourselves to make the effort, and it very often involves a jar of curry paste, good quality curry paste, and with lots of extra goodies added to enhance it, but hardly the same as toasting and grinding your own spices, which is where Matt normally starts! The trouble is that our children seem to regard anything spicy with suspicion. I’m not entirely sure why. I certainly started out with good intentions, giving them many and varied foodstuffs when they were teeny. But somewhere along the line we seem to have ended up with the spag bol-pizza-sausages default child diet. 

So yesterday’s new recipe was likely to be a bit contentious. When asked what was for dinner, I told them the name of the dish, avoiding the c-word, but as the smell began to waft out of the slow cooker and through the house, someone said “Smells like curry” and I had to admit it. But still, I thought perhaps the case wasn’t hopeless. For all the heaps of carefully ground spices that had gone into it, it was definitely mild and aromatic rather than hot and spicy. And then there was the cream and toasted nuts added at the end. Surely these would appeal?

And...?

Everyone liked it, everyone had seconds, everyone said they wanted to have it again. I do wonder if Livia’s enthusiasm was not partly to do with being handed a chapatti and told she could eat with her fingers, but if that is a way to get her to be more adventurous, I’ll let her eat anything with her fingers.

Spicy tomato, aubergine and apricot soup

from Soup and Beyond
by The Covent Garden Soup Company
Macmillan, 1999

I thought perhaps I had exhausted the usefulness of this book. I have a handful of fabulous recipes from it, chief among them being fennel and smoked fish chowder which is a real winner. However, the need for new and different soups continues to plague me. We really need to have soup at least once a week. It's easy to prepare in advance. easy to heat up at short notice and easily digestible. That makes it perfect for Tuesdays, when Marianne, Livia and I rush in from the French club I teach and they attend, then 45 minutes later rush out again for two hours of swimming/gymnastics/trampolining (at least two of the above per child). So, new and different soup is a boon. And of course there's the perennial vegetable problem. How can you ensure each child eats five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and ideally had at least some variety in these five? So, I did wonder if this soup might be pushing it a little, but tomato and apricot are both acceptable, and I thought perhaps the aubergine might meld in with the flavours so that they wouldn't notice too much...

Of course I avoided the question 'what type of soup is it?' by hiding the book and telling them is was a 'tomatoey' soup. And the result? Before they found out what was in it, both Marianne and Livia said it was pretty good. Better than lentil, not as good as leek and potato or minestrone or (for Marianne) the spicy chorizo and potato one I did once that no other child would eat. There was a certain amount of shock-horror when I told them what was in it, but they thought on the whole they'd be happy to have it again. Whoopee! The repertoire widens.

Sourdough 3

 from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
4th Estate, 2011









Hooray for me! I did it! I did it! I made proper sourdough bread with no yeast except what I had managed to generate in my starter. And look, it had lots of air bubbles in it and it tasted perfect - chewy and sour. I had a bit of trouble with the crust, because Dan Lepard really expects quite a lot of input from you in terms of flicking back and forward from one page to another in order to apply what he says in his quite dense explanation to what you're doing on another page. However, the explanation helped, and I feel sure that having it explained thus will give me a better grounding for experimenting than just a Delia-type recipe where you follow each step precisely and must use the appropriate-sized tin to ensure it turns out right. I have to say, no one else seems to be quite as excited by this as me. I can't understand this. Isn't is AMAZING that you can make bread with flour and salt and water and heat and time and NOTHING ELSE? They were pretty complementary about the taste though, and I'll have to get a move on with the next batch because the breadmaker's had it (again).

Rye Apple Cake

from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
published by 4th Estate, 2011

Fairly plain, but moist and spicy, with that grainy texture you get from rye, and an extra graininess from the ground up flaked almonds. I was not sure about these (couldn't see why you wouldn't just use ground almonds), but they did give it a beautiful texture.


I'm not sure that any children were very impressed. They'd almost always rather something sticky or sugary or chocolatey and covered with icing. So, a grown-up cake, perfect with a cup of coffee, I expect, though actually I only had it with tea, because it never occurs to me to have cake when I have coffee, except when I'm out. How odd.

Sourdough 2

from American Home Cooking
by Miranda Whyte
Published by Macdonald Orbis, 1987

Another attempt at making a sourdough starter. This one was very different, starting with a boiled potato and adding sugar as well as flour and water. I did feel a bit dubious about it, but thought I might as well have a go since the other version had been so long-winded and such a failure.

A boiled potato to start off with?

Soupy-looking starter

I was even more sceptical when I began making the bread. It has yeast in it! How is that sourdough! Oh well, nothing ventured...

In Dan Lepard's book, he gives a kneading method I've never come across and which I thought I'd give a try. Rather than knead for hours (15 minutes for the recipe here), he says to bring the dough together into a 'shaggy lump' then leave it to rest for 10 minutes, when you knead it by folding it in half, pressing the edge together, giving it a quarter turn just about eight time, then leave it to rest again and repeat twice more. This sounded very effortless, so I gave it a go. It's extraordinary - incredibly straightforward and the dough seems to do all the work by itself.

The result? Well, it's not really sourdough yet, it doesn't taste nearly sour enough and doesn't have that open texture you expect, and of course, there's the added yeast... However this bread is absolutely delicious, chewy and full of flavour. I've kept the starter going, but I don't know that it's ready to raise a loaf by itself yet, so I'll do a couple more this way, with added yeast, but I'm determined that I'll eventually get to the stage of a successful pure sourdough loaf.

Sourdough 1

from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
Published by Fourth Estate 2011

I thought it would be fun to attempt a proper sourdough from scratch. The instructions from Dan Lepard's Short & Sweet were a little on the sketchy side, mostly because, as he says, this is NOT a 'short' cooking experience so is more of a parenthesis in this book. Here are the results of my attempt: 

First make a big ball of rye flour and water and leave it to grow some natural yeast. Kitchen chemistry at its most obvious.

Leave the ball until it cracks and begins to smell 'pleasantly sour'.

'Starter soup', i.e. the ball mushed up with more water and flour and left again. I can't believe this will turn into anything, but it does smell pleasantly musty.

The soup begins to bubble. Recipe now says discard most of it and add equal quantities of flour and water, cover lightly again and leave for another day before discarding and adding again.

But the next day, ph-ew, this smells like a teenage boy's bedroom. I think it died... The recipe did say chuck it out and start again if necessary. This this may be the moment.

Spinach and Thyme Pasties

from River Cottage Veg Everyday
by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall
 Published by Bloomsbury, 2011

I'm rubbish at pastry. I used to be better, but somewhere along the line I became rubbish. Is it the hot hands thing? Maybe so, though I'm a little sceptical about it. But temperature does seem to matter, and resting the pastry makes a difference too.



 I'd planned to make these on a Friday night, and I'd done the pastry and the filling, but when it came to the moment of putting it all together, I just couldn't be bothered.  I dumped all the stuff in the fridge and left it until Saturday. Then of course, when Saturday came, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get the pastry at the right temperature to roll easily, you know, warm enough to be pliable, but not so warm as to be breakable (I was going to say 'friable' there, does that mean breakable? quick trot over to dictionary... yes it does; but it would be a rather odd sentence, 'pliable but not friable'). Anyway, as it turned out the pastry was the most wonderful forgiving stuff, allowing me to stretch it and shape it with no trouble at all. Hooray! I chicken out slightly after I had it just about right, and I should have made my rectangle slightly larger to accommodate all the filling, but even with some rather bursting at the seams they cooked beautifully.

Look at them, all egg-washed and ready to bake.

And then emerging from the oven, golden and cracked, just spilling their green contents.

We ate them with the baba ganoush I'd made, and tomato salad. They were perfect, though at their best hot, I think.

Baba Ganoush

from River Cottage Veg Everyday
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Published by Bloomsbury, 2011

I asked R what I should cook and he said to cook something that was extra, not part of a normal meal. A little pondering to figure out what he meant was needed, but of course it's perfectly obvious really. It's those things that you generally only make when you're pulling out all the stops, when you have visitors, or you're in a cooking-mad frenzy, or maybe when an actual meal is not required, just a little something.

I'm sure I must have had baba ganoush before at some point, because the idea of it is not wildly appealing - cold roast aubergine puree - and yet it did appeal. I'd planned to make this on a Friday night along with some the spinach and thyme pasties, but by the time I got in from taking Livia to her swimming lesson, the whole thing seemed like far too much effort. I roasted the aubergines and made the pastry and the filling and then left them to the next day. That was probably all for the best, as otherwise perhaps the baba ganoush would have been perhaps too warm. Actually though, the effort was minimal so probably even in my Friday night state of mind I could have pulled it together quite easily!

Oh, and baba ganoush is worth the effort! It's so delicious, silky smooth and garlicky. We had it with the pasties, but I also had some seedy rye crackers that we scooped it up with. Absolutely a winner.

Chickpea, Chilli and Coriander Soup

from  Winter Collection
by Delia Smith
Published by BBC, 1995

Some books seem to have been on my shelves for ever, or aparently only since 1995, but I suppose that's a fair old time ago now. I think I could probably credit Delia with all her domestic science teacher air as being the first cookery writer I found both easy to follow and inspiring. I don't refer to her overmuch now, but for the basics she's likely to give you a good grounding to start with. When I had to poach an egg the other day, for example, one of the places I checked was old Delia.  But there's a sense that what she does is limited, or slightly fake. If she makes a tagine, for example, it'll be a tried and tested one with ingredients you can get in the supermarket. Fine perhaps to introduce one to the world of tagine-making, but after the first couple, you'll be wanting to move on to the authenticity of Claudia Roden.

So, it being winter, I'm still on a bit of a soup kick. Thought I'd have a look at Delia who was bound to come up with something straightforward. And indeed, here it is, chickpea, chilli and coriander soup (my versio with rather more coriander than was intended. Although it was flawed rther by my inability to grind spices to anything smaller than babies' toenail size and by the fact that I inadverantly threw out the cooking water from the chickpeas, it was pretty good. I'm amazed it didn't blow our heads off as it had eight cloves of garlic and dour chilis in it. Were they particuarly mild, or did the chickpeas somehow soak up their pugency? All round a pretty good soup, and surprisingly less like liquidly houmous than seems possible considering the ingredients. I thinkt he spicy one I made the other week was probably better than this, but R votes for this one. Take your pick.

Can you have too much coriander?

Greens with chorizo and poached egg

from How to Eat
by Nigella Lawson
Chatto and Windus, 1998

Robert's away, so I'm searching for things that are easy to cook for one. No copy of Delia's One is Fun, so I've been trawling the books for something easy and quick and new to cook for myself. Incidentally, how did anyone ever manage to come up with such a lame book title? I don't think there was ever a good book title with the word 'fun' in it. What about that gem Five have Plenty of Fun?  Enid Blyton was so prolific she didn't bother to stop and find enticing titles. I suppose she didn't have to bother much, what with all children reading her books.

Anyway, I suppose I could eat with the kids, but really they prefer to eat about 5.30 and if I eat then I'm starving by bedtime. Mostly it has been a bit of a frustrating week: plenty of scrambled egg and soup. However, one day I took the time (about twn minutes) to cook this  for myself, substituting a bag of spinach, rocket and watercress for the kale which is a fodder-like for me. It was incredibly easy and delicious, although I think Nigella's a bit heavy-handed with the chorizo. I ended up with a bowl full of chorizo bits after I'd finished all the healthy stuff. Not such a bad thing... but definitely more than was needed.

Paul Heathcote's Black Pudding and Lancashire Cheese Hash Browns

From Real Food
By Nigel Slater
Published by Fourth Estate, 1998

A slice of black pudding topped with cheese and then wrapped in herby grated potato and fried... Nigel said a poached egg and hollandaise source to top it, but R and I felt that might be an artery-blocking step too far, so we went with the poached egg, skipped the hollandaise and had some savoy cabbage on the side. It was very hard to get the potato to stretch around the pile of black pudding and cheese, but it was rather easier to handle than I thought at first. 

It also took much longer to cook than Nigel said, but this could have been because the black pudding came in such thick slices. Also, Tesco did not have any Lancashire cheese - 99 types of cheddar, but no Lancashire! - so I had to use Cheshire, which, though similar in flavour, is rather different in texture, and possibly in melting quality. Anyway, another winner here, and this would be great for a brunch. You could very easily make several in advance and keep them warm too.  I wonder if little tiny ones would work? Or am I getting a bit carried away?

Fully formed and ready to cook

 

Carefully into the pan, two at a time.

 

 

 

Doesn't look too dangerous...

What can I say? Don't you just want some?

Parsnip, Leek and Lemon Soup

From Soup and Beyond
By New Covent Garden Soup Company
published by Macmillan, 1999

I'm behind with the writing, but I've been keeping up the cooking, I promise!

Amazing, amazing soup. So simple, just really like making a leek and potato, but with parsnips instead of potatoes. I threw this together in about half an hour, though it then sat about for an hour or so, so I think the bay leaf flavour was probably more intense than if we'd had it straight away. You would think that this would taste thick and wintery, like a leek and potato, but no, it was creamy and delicate, the overwhelming taste was lemon and bay. Absolutely delicious, and one to add to the repertoire. This is such a great book, so many soups in it are like this, little twists on the regular things I make.