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.