Baking Master Class

Once again I've lapsed in my cooking and also missed out the September Daring Bakers challenge (unforgivable!), but I fully intend to catch up.

Last Thursday I used up a birthday voucher on a master class in croissant making at The Bertinet Kitchen in Bath run by Richard Bertinet himself.

We also made brioche, which I hadn't expected, so it was a nice bonus. I hadn't realised how much effort goes in to make these wonderful things.

Here are some photos of what the class of 12 produced.

Pain aux raisins


Danish pastries


Croissants


Brioche


And the leftover dough from the brioche and the cut-offs from the puff pastry were deep fried and rolled in sugar resulting in wonderful doughnuts and crispy sweet twiglets.

Needless to say that I was in a happy place all Friday, despite hurting feet and all that.

So while things are still fresh in my mind, I'm in the process of making brioche according to the recipe we used at the school.

Ingredients

500 g strong white flour
15 g fresh yeast
50 g caster sugar
10 g salt
6 eggs
225 g butter

Egg wash
1 egg
pinch of salt

Method

1. Measure up everything and have ready to add at the right moment. Ensure the work surface is clean, as the dough is entirely worked by hand.
2. Cut up the butter into 1 cm cubes and leave on the side.
3. Rub the yeast into the flour until well incorporated.
4. Add sugar, salt and eggs and incorporate into a very sticky dough. This doesn't take too long. Mr Bertinet recommended using a dough scraper, but I haven't managed to get hold of one yet.
   
   


5. Turn out on the work surface. Do not add any flour, it's supposed to be sticky.
6. Now work the dough by sticking your hands under the dough on either side, palms up like fork lifts. Bring your thumbs together on top of the dough and lift. In the air, turn your hands and the dough down and slap it back onto he work surface, then pull the part you're holding towards you and fold over the part that's stuck to the table. This brings you back to the starting position approximately.
   
   
   
   
7. As you can see a lot sticks to the work surface, but that's OK, keep doing this movement and about 30 minutes later the dough will stop sticking to the table. Use a dough scraper or similar to incorporate whatever's stuck to the surface every now and then. This is quite good exercise and I recommend standing with one foot forward and one behind to get the better swing to it.
8. Once the dough stops sticking to the surface, flatten it out a bit and put the butter dice on top of it. Tuck in from all sides an keep doing this until enough butter has been incorporated so that you can start the flap and fold motion again. The butter will try to ooze out, but be persistent, it'll all get in and the dough will feel easier to work with.
9. Once all has been incorporated and the dough seems smooth, make a nice fold to get a smooth top side on it, flour a bowl very lightly and put the dough in. Dust a little flour on top, cover with a cloth and leave to rest for a couple of hours.
   
   
10. In the mean time, scrape off any leftovers from the work surface, but do not wash, as the dough will need further work. Just make sure there are no dry bits stuck, as they'll ruin the dough in the next run.
11. When it's rested, take it out on the work surface again, making sure the smooth side of the dough ends up underneath. Imagine there are corners along the edges of the dough, pick one and fold towards the middle. Working in one direction only, keep folding the corners that appear towards the middle until you've done a couple of full circles on the dough. At this point I decided to add 100 g of sultanas that I'd rolled in a little flour.
12. Put back in the bowl and leave in a cool place (about 10 degrees C) overnight, to allow more flavours to develop. Or leave to rest for another couple of hours if you feel a bit rushed.
13. If you kept the dough in the fridge, take it out and let it come up to room temperature before you form the brioches. This is a good time to make the egg wash by whisking lightly an egg with a pinch of salt and leaving to stand until needed.
    
    
14. Make shapes of your choice with your fingers, avoid touching with the whole of your hand or the butter in the dough will start to melt. Generally avoid fiddling with the dough too much, it should still be as soft as after the first rest. I just rolled balls and snipped at the top. Not too pretty with the raisins
    
    
15. Leave the ready shapes to rise until double in size, about an hour or so. If the kitchen feels a bit cool, turn on the oven on a low heat to warm it up. Pre-heat to gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) shortly before it's time to bake the brioches.
16. Brush carefully with egg wash. Baking time depends on the size and shape. For the buns, it took 22 minutes and I swapped the two trays after half the time.
    
    I also put some balls into a loaf tin, which took a bit longer. Once they're baked and out of the oven, carefully prize them out of the tin mould and leave on the side to cool. This will ensure that the crust stays nice and crunchy.

This was a definite success, despite some initial doubts, and Lundulph had to be pulled away from them, after he'd eaten two in very quick succession. The crust was wonderfully crunchy and inside they were light as a feather. Quite oily though, so I think I'll reduce the amount of butter next time. Once they have cooled, they can be frozen.

Lundulph's Birthday Cake 2008

It's been ages since I put in a new recipe and the only excuse I have is that things have been busy and I haven't had any time to invent new dishes. We've been living on salads and stuff I've done before.

We've also been on holiday for a week in Bulgaria. We were really lucky with the weather and it has also been a fairly good year for fruit and vegetables and everything tasted lovely. Except the pomegranates, they were picturesque, but had at least a month to go ripening-wise.

But it's been that time again - Lundulph's birthday and this year, I decided to try my hand at a Stoichkov cake. Originally it was called Nelka (Нелка), but was renamed in honour of the football player. This is quite easy to make, but looks quite impressive when completed.

We had it as a backup cake on our wedding last year and I'd managed to work out how to make it. One constraint was that Lundulph's been having stomach pains lately and I've been trying to reduce fat throughout my cooking, so to keep the cake light, I thought I'd make white chocolate mousse for the filling. This was a grave mistake to make, as not only is white chocolate basically just fat, I'd discussed the cake with my Mum who said I'd be better off making the cream for Creme Parfait, where the gelatine will keep things together. But I thought I knew better. Obviously not, as you'll see below.

Now, the reason the cake was dedicated to a football player is that it looks like half a football (or soccer if you will). So it's important to use a bowl that's as close to half a sphere as possible. It took me some time to find one that I liked. It came in two varieties - Pyrex and stainless steel - and I went for Pyrex.

The recipe below is as I made it and as in the photos, I strongly recommend not using the mousse as filling. Though it was very tasty in its own right.

Ingredients

3 small chocolate flavoured Swiss rolls with white filling
500 g white chocolate
1 dl icing sugar
6 eggs - yolks and whites separate
250 g blueberries
1 medium banana

Method

1. Break up the chocolate into pieces and put in a bain marie to melt on low heat. Pour the icing sugar on top and stir occasionally.
2. In the mean time, cover the inside of the semi-spherical bowl with cling film, making sure there's enough to go over the edge. This will make it easier to get the cake out.
3. Cut the Swiss rolls into 1 cm thick slices and line up inside the bowl as closely as possible and up to the very edge. If a piece sticks up above the bowl edge, cut it level with the edge.
   
   
4. When the chocolate has melted and the icing sugar has dissolved in it, take off the heat and leave to cool for a bit, then add the yolks, one at a time, stirring vigorously to incorporate them.
5. When the chocolate-egg mixture has cooled completely, whisk the whites to stiff peak stage, then add them slowly to form the mousse. Remember to stir in carefully so the airiness isn't lost.
6. Pour some into the bowl with the Swiss rolls, then sprinkle a layer of the blueberries.
   
   
7. Pour some more to cover them, then slice the banana thinly and lay out the slices over the mousse.
8. Cover the banana with more mousse, then sprinkle another layer of blueberries and top up to the edge.
9. Close off with a few slices of Swiss roll, cover with tin foil and put in the fridge for the mousse to set.
   
   
10. When ready to serve, remove the foil, place the serving plate upside down on top of the bowl, then flip both around and use the cling film to pull it out.
    
    
11. I'd bought strawberries to decorate around the edge, but since the cake collapsed, I didn't get a chance to use them.

Still, just like last year, the cak disappeared very quickly anyway and it occurs to me that the cake once again has Swiss rolls in it. This was not on purpose though.

This is what it looks like, when made by a professional.

Daring Bakers Challenge August 2008

I skipped last month, because Lundulph and I are still struggling with the previous cakes I've made, but when this month's challenge was announced, there was no way I could resist. Éclairs are among my favourite type of pastry.



In Bulgaria they are made with vanilla custard inside and toffee glazing. This time the challenge was for chocolate éclairs from Pierre Hermé. A certain amount of freedom was given in that at least one of the glaze or cream should be made with chocolate. But the whole recipe seemed good and I opted to do both with chocolate.

The instructions were quite involved and I ended up doing things over several days. The pastry cream is basically a custard and I made that first.

Chocolate Pastry Cream

Ingredients

4.75 dl full milk
4 large egg yolks
6 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp corn flour
200 g dark chocolate, melted
2.5 tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

Method

1. Bring the milk to the boil in a large-ish saucepan.
2. In the mean time, whisk together yolks, sugar and cornstarch.
3. Once the milk has boiled, add 6 tablespoons of it to the yolk mixture, one at a time, to temper it. Then pour the rest of the milk slowly, while whisking vigorously. The tempering prevents the yolks from coagulating.
4. Strain the mixture back to the saucepan, to remove any bits of yolk that might have scrambled.
5. Place the saucepan over medium heat and whisk vigorously until the mixture returns to a boil. Keep whisking for another couple of minutes, it'll go thick very quickly.
6. Remove from the heat and add the melted chocolate, stirring it in well.
7. Plunge into ice water to stop the cooking, but continue stirring, so the mixture remains smooth. Once the cream has cooled to about 60 degrees C, remove from the ice water and stir in the butter.
8. Leave to cool completely, stirring occasionally. Store in the fridge until needed.

The chocolate glaze is made in two steps - first a chocolate sauce is made, which makes an ingredient for the glaze.

Chocolate sauce

Ingredients

130 g dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
2.4 dl water
1.2 dl double cream
0.8 dl sugar

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a thick bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil on medium-high.
2. Reduce the heat to low and let simmer for 15 minutes until the sauce thickens, while constantly stirring.
3. The sauce is ready when it forms layers on the back of the spoon, when it's dipped repeatedly.
4. Leave to cool completely, then refrigerate until needed.

This results in a bit more than needed for the glaze and can be used as hot chocolate sauce on various desserts.

Chocolate glaze

Ingredients

0.8 dl double cream
100 g dark chocolate, finely chopped
4 tsp unsalted butter at room temperature
7 tbsp chocolate sauce at room temperature

Method

1. Bring the double cream to the boil in a thick bottomed saucepan.
2. Turn down the heat to lowest possible and start adding the chocolate a little at a time, stirring it in well.
3. Finally stir in the butter and the chocolate sauce.
4. The glaze should be heated up over a water bath before using.

Here is where I made my mistake, mis-reading tsp for tbsp and I added 4 tbsp of butter to the glaze. Of course the fat separated from the chocolate and although I tried to soak it up with kitchen towels, it was far too much and I couldn't use it. Luckily there was plenty of the chocolate sauce left and I used that as glazing instead. It didn't set, but was sufficiently hard in room temperature to work.


Here you can see from left to right, the glaze before I realised I'd forgotten to add the butter, glaze with far too much butter and using the chocolate sauce.

Choux dough

Ingredients

1.2 dl full milk
1.2 dl water
115 g unsalted butter cut into 4 pieces
0.25 tsp sugar
0.25 tsp salt
2.4 dl plain flour
5 large eggs at room temperature

Method

1. Bring the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to the boil in a large thick bottomed saucepan.
2. In the mean time, sift the flour onto a piece of baking paper.
3. When the liquid is boiling, add all the flour at once, reduce the heat to medium and whisk vigorously. The dough will come together very quickly and a thin film will form at the bottom of the saucepan, that is OK.
4. Keep whisking for 2-3 more minutes to dry the dough. I used my electrical whisk and had to change to a wooden spoon at the end to get the dough to come together.
5. Transfer the dough to a mixing bowl and start adding the eggs, one at a time, and make sure each is incorporated well before adding the next one. The dough may separate for the first two eggs, but will come back together at the third egg.
6. While the dough is still warm, pipe it onto baking paper and pre-heat the oven at gas mark 5 (190 degrees C)
7. Bake for about 25 - 30 minutes until puffed up and golden brown. Rotate the baking sheet back to front after about half the time.

It was amazing to watch how these yellow sausages puffed up and began to resemble éclairs.



Constructing the éclairs

1. Allow the éclairs to cool, then cut lengthwise in half with a serrated knife.
2. Spread the glaze on the top halves and leave aside to set

I sprinkled some of the pink sparkly things I had left over since the April challenge.


3. Pipe the chocolate cream into the bottom halves, then carefully place the top halves over

Gratuitous photos of chocolatey things.

It's recommended that these are served immediately, which is not always possible to do. They should be stored in a cool dry place. Fridge works, but a lot of condensation forms and soaks into the choux buns and they become a bit chewy.

The above recipe gave 24 éclairs and 3 profiteroles (which I used as tasters, before taking some of the éclairs to the barbecue we were invited to in the week-end).


I made the profiteroles before I made the glaze and used Nutella instead, which worked very nicely too.

Proper éclairs shouldn't really be cut in halves, but two small holes should be made at either end and the cream should be piped into the cavity. Then the upper side should be dipped into the glaze and excess stricken off with a finger. Perhaps my éclairs were too long for this, but there wasn't one big cavity inside. However, the little profiteroles worked perfectly and had one big empty space inside.

Most recipes on choux pasty only have water, whereas this one is enriched with full milk, I'm guessing this makes the dough a bit softer.

Overall towards the end I had a bad feeling that there's not enough sugar and way too much dark chocolate and I was worried that it wouldn't taste very nice. But I was wrong, all the dark chocolate tasted wonderfully velvety and creamy and the textures were so nice, it didn't need any more sweetness.

I'm definitely going to try making choux again, and will experiment with different creams and glazes.

First anniversary

Just over a year ago, Lundulph and I got married and our dear friends Fred and Ginger gave us three bottles of wine, each with a label:



Lifting the label of the first bottle:



And so we did and it was absolutely wonderful wine. After the first sip, I thought it was asking for a nice mature brie and I happened to have a nice looking one in the fridge, so I went to get it. Unfortunately looks were deceiving, the brie did not taste of anything, so I continued on the wine alone.

There's more information about this wine here. There are two more bottles to go, but not yet.

Korv Stroganoff

This is something that they used to serve at school. At first everyone just wrinkled their nose at it. But a bite made me change my mind (and everyone else too) - it was absolutely delish.

Sadly I don't remember what was in it, apart from the Swedish Falukorv, and that it was served with rice.

So, after some amount of googling, it seems that Korv Stroganoff is a Swedish variety of Beef Stroganoff, "korv" meaning sausage. I think Frankfurters would do as well and I even spotted a recipe with chorizo. But having the regular benefit of working in close vicinity of an IKEA store, I have access to the lovely Falukorv.

Another advantage of this dish is that it's very quick too, definitely for a working day.

Ingredients

5 tbsp grape seed oil
2 onions
2 garlic cloves
400 g Falukorv
1 can of button mushrooms (230 g)
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp flour
1 dl water or stock or milk
1 can of plum tomatoes (400 g)
2 red peppers
100 g green beans
1 dl yoghurt
2 tbsp dill
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper
chopped parsley
basmati rice

Method

1. Boil the rice according to instructions on the packet.
2. Peel the onion and garlic and dice finely. Slice the sausage into circles, then cut the circles into strips. Drain and quarter the mushrooms
3. Heat up the oil in a deep saucepan and fry the onion and garlic until soft.
4. Add the mushrooms and sausage and fry for a few minutes, stirring occasionally until they get some colour.
5. In the mean time, liquidise the tomatoes, wash and cut the peppers into strips, wash and cut the beans in half.
6. Stir in the flour and let it soak up the liquid in the pan. Add the tomato puree and your choice of liquid - water, stock or milk and leave to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring every now and then.
7. Add the peppers and the beans, stir in, cover and leave to simmer for a further 5 minutes.
8. Take off the hob and stir in yoghurt, dill, sugar, salt and pepper.
9. Sprinkle chopped parsley when serving.

This makes 4 portions and was rather tasty.



Update 16.01.2009:
Today I didn't have any peppers or beans, nor did I have yoghurt, but I had a 300 ml tub of double cream that I'd frozen as I hadn't used it. It looked pretty solid as it does when it's been frozen, but it melted nicely and resulted in a very creamy (and probably highly unhealty) version.

Vegetable stew

Both Lundulph and I are working such long hours lately, quick dishes are what we aim for, often on week-ends as well, particularly when we get a chance for some decent gardening, like yesterday. This is something my Mum has been recommending for ages as well.

What I did was buy some greens more or less at random in the hope to find a suitable recipe in my Bulgarian National Cookery book. The closest thing was "пролетна яхния" which can be translated to "Spring stew". Only a couple of the ingredients were amongst the ones I'd bought.

The stew ended up ridiculously sweet, thanks to the 2 giant carrots I put in and I suspect the red peppers contributed as well. So I've changed the below list of ingredients in the hope that it won't end up too sweet. So fewer carrots and green instead of red peppers.

On the plus side, we got to try out our potatoes - it seems in my previous attempt at growing potatoes, I missed out quite a lot of them and so this year they sprouted happily and are now ready for harvesting.

Ingredients

6 shallots
3 cloves garlic
2 medium carrots
5 tbsp grape seed oil
3 tbsp tomato puree
4 tbsp paprika
1 kg baby potatoes
5 dl hot water
250 g baby sweetcorn
200 g green beans
2 green peppers
200 g okra
3 tbsp fresh chopped basil
3 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and trim shallots, garlic and carrots. Wash and scrub the potatoes.
2. Dice the shallots and garlic. Cut the carrots and potatoes in bite sized chunks. Boil the water in the mean time.
3. Heat the oil in a deep sauce pan and fry shallots, garlic and carrots for a few minutes until they go soft.
4. Add the tomato puree and the paprika, stirring vigorously for about 1 minute, then add the water and stir, in case anything is stuck to the bottom of the pan.
5. Add the potatoes, cover and reduce the heat to low. Leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes
6. Wash and trim the baby sweetcorn, beans, peppers and okra. Cut them in bite sized chunks.
7. After the time is up, add baby sweetcorn, beans and peppers, stir in well and cover and leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.
8. Add the okra, stir in, cover and simmer for 5 further minutes.
9. Remove from the hob and add basil, parsley, salt and pepper.

This is fine as it is on it's own, but Lundulph generally likes some meat, so I grilled some Toulouse sausages. He said it worked quite well. And it was even better the second round when we added a bit more salt. The potatoes went quite mushy and helped thicken the stew.

As usual, Lundulph suggested adding some chili. In fact, he suggests that "seasoning" should mean salt, pepper and chili, not just salt and pepper.

Steak

Lundulph judges restaurants based on how good a steak they do. Last week we went to the butcher's and fell for the juicy looking steaks in the window. There were three kinds - fillet, rump and rib eye. We went for the rib eye, because Lundulph reckoned that's the tastiest one.

I'd been planning to do Hasselback potatoes so this was a good opportunity for this. I also made some beans plakia for "greens".

Given the build up Lundulph and I worked ourselves up to, I was pretty nerveous about getting the steaks right. We decided to just season them. I quickly read up on how to deal with steaks in The Lore and Science of the Kitchen book. The thing about steak is that it is a tender type of meat that requires very short cooking time to avoid losing the moisture. Short cooking times are achieved by pan frying or grilling and we opted for grilling. But there is a danger - the temperature in a pan or under a grill is quite high and the surface of the steak will go very hot, thus risking a dry out, before the middle bit of the steak even begins to warm up.

The book said it's notoriously difficult to tell when a steak has been cooked to perfection, but made the recommendation to bring the steak to room temperature before cooking begins, that way the temperature difference between steak surface and steak middle will be lower, this will give more control in the cooking.

So I preheated the grill very hot, seasoned the steaks and put them on. Kept an eye and as soon as the colour changed a little, I took them out, turned them and seasoned on the other side. Then back in again until the surface changed colour.

Now the surface was sealed, I lowered the heat to low and kept turning the steaks every minute. I did 2 minutes in total on each side like this and served immediately with the potatoes and beans on a bed of spinach.



All I can say is YUMMY! The steaks were perfect and pink in the middle and ever so juicy.

Croissants From Scratch

Well, since the June Daring Bakers Challenge, I've been planning to repeat the attempt at making laminated pastry and this week-end the opportunity arose.



I scoured the web for recipes and there is a lot of variations on the theme. I decided to go with the recipe from Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef. And for the first time ever, I used the imperial weight setting on my kitchen scales, I just couldn't be bothered to check the conversions given in the book. I used the small batch recipe that would result in 15 croissants.

For the butter block, I had to add some flour, just like for the Danish braid. And this is my first failure - I didn't mix it in well enough, there were still a few lumps of butter in it, but I was worried that mixing by hand would warm the butter too much, so I left it at that and just formed it into a square and put in the fridge, just to be on the safe side, while mixing the dough.

I also mixed the dough by hand, it took me ages to dissolve the dry yeast in the milk. The recipe calls for fresh yeast, but I didn't have any.

Once I'd added all the flour, the dough was more a paste than a dough, extremely sticky, so I added some more flour. Not much, still I think the dough went a bit too stiff and it said it should be soft and not rubbery. Also it was not to be overdone!

Anyway, I rolled it out, placed the butter block onto it and folded it in. I think the consistency of both was similar, but there were those butter lumps that hadn't been softened...

So once I started doing the turns, the word lumpy would be the best description to it - all those butter lumps that I hadn't softened up were indeed too hard and went through the layers and squirted out from everywhere.

The book also said 3 single turns only in total, whereas most other instructions I'd found called for 6. I noticed that with each turn, it seemed that the butter lumps dispersed, so I did 10 single turns in total yesterday.

Finally this morning, after oversleeping, I rolled out my laminated dough to the specified size. I couldn't find a ruler, so guessed on the measurements. I cut the dough into the triangles and started rolling. Well the dough mostly insisted on sticking to the baking surface and I had trouble rolling the croissants into a recognisable shape - mostly they ended up looking like hedgehogs.

They rose a bit, but not very much and I should perhaps have left them for longer. All in all I got 21 pieces.

At this point I was hungry and sick of the whole thing, so I didn't bother with egg wash, but brushed with milk. The book said this is how it's done in France.

I baked them in the oven for 17 minutes at which point they were well brown on top, but probably not entirely baked inside.

Still, left them to cool a bit and had them for an extremely delayed breakfast (almost noon!).



The taste was the right one, but the texture wasn't and given my alterations to the recipe, perhaps it's no wonder. Very fatty of course, but fairly edible with a dab of Nutella.

I'll leave the laminate doughs for a few months now I think, it's such a big effort and the final result is not really as expected, I need some time to recover from this failure.

I was planning to make some cinnamon buns today as well, but half the day is gone, so I'll leave that.

On a different note, we barbecued yesterday and Lundulph got to try out his new barbecue wok. It worked rather well - got all veggies done nicely and also the king prawns I'd bought especially for this occasion. It's a uni-tasker, but a useful one.

Chicken Do-Piaza

Now that I work long hours as does Lundulph, we end up eating salad many evenings during the week, but occasionally it's nice to have a cooked meal and chicken do-piaza is a very quick dish to make.

I originally got it from Mridula Baljekar's Fat Free Indian Cookery, which is sadly out of print now but seems to occasionally come up on Amazon.



Over the years, I've made changes to the recipe and here is what I did today.

Ingredients

2 large chicken breasts (300 - 400 g)
4 tbsp blended ginger
4 large cloves of garlic
4 pieces of cinnamon stick about 5 cm long
6 cardamom pods
6 cloves
4 bay leaves
2 large red onions
1 tsp turmeric
1 - 2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
4 tbsp plain yogurt
225 g boiled and blended onions
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp tomato puree
300 ml beef stock
1 tbsp plain flour (optional)
8 large button mushrooms
2 bell peppers
1 head of broccoli
2 large tomatoes
2 -4 green fresh chillies with stalks intact
6 tbsp chopped fresh coriander leaves
a handful of Thai basil leaves (optional)

Method

1. Clean, trim and cut the chicken breasts into bite sized chunks and place in a large non-stick wok or pan.
2. Add the ginger, press in the garlic, add the cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cloves and bay leaves. The cardamom pods should first be bruised by placing them on a chopping board and hitting them with the end of a knife handle. Not too hard, or the whole thing will explode and spread the seeds all over the kitchen, just enough to crack the pod.
3. Stir around, while heating up over medium heat and cooking until the chicken is browned, about 7-8 minutes.
4. Add the sliced red onion and keep stirring for another 3-4 minutes until it releases its juices.
5. Add the turmeric chili powder, ground cumin and coriander and stir vigorously for about 1 minute to mix and release the aromas.
6. Add the yogurt and stir in. It'll melt and go thin and help distribute the spices more evenly.
7. Add the boiled blended onions and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
8. Stir in the salt, tomato puree and beef stock and bring to the boil. If you want a thicker sauce, add the plain flour. Once boiling, reduce the heat and leave to cook uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. Peel and dice the mushrooms, wash, trim and dice the pepper and wash and cut the broccoli into small bite sized florets.
10. Half-way through cooking, add the vegetables.
11. While the dish continues to cook, dice the tomato and chop the coriander and Thai basil. Just before taking the curry off the hob, add the tomatoes, the whole chillies, the coriander and the Thai basil and stir in.
12. Serve with naan bread or rice.

Because I cook Indian food quite often from this cookery book, I buy about 1 kg of fresh ginger a couple of times a year, spend an evening in front of the telly peeling it, then blend with a dash of water. I then distribute the pulp into ice cube trays and freeze. Each ice cube is about 1.5 tbsp and generally I go for one large clove of garlic for each ice cube of ginger.

The same goes for the boiled blended onions - I get a larger amount, boil with a couple of bruised cardamom pods, then blend with a little of the water. Then I distribute it into 225 g portions and freeze.

On the whole it may seem like a complicated dish, but it's easy and very quick if you line everything up ready to add.

And the best thing of all - no fat, besides what's in the yogurt and the chicken! And it becomes even leaner if you use turkey instead.

Tunnbrödsrulle!

Tunnbrödsrulle translates directly to thin bread roll and constitutes of thin soft bread rolled up with a couple of spoons of mashed potato, a sausage, ketchup and mustard in it. This is the basic form. Optionally onions, salad and pickled gherkins can be added.

I love Swedish thin bread and I still haven't found a recipe that's close enough to the ones sold in the shops. They tend to be used like tortillas, but unlike tortillas they are very tender. Not a hint of chewiness. I think they have yeast in them and are flavoured with anise seeds.



This is the standard thing to have after a night out in Sweden. Or a luxury cooked meal as a poor student. There's a place in Stockholm that used to make them with real mashed potato - as opposed to the mix the powder with water stuff. I have many fond memories of this dish and I try to have one every time I go to Sweden, for old times' sake.

I even introduced Lundulph to this delicacy a few years ago.

At my last trip to IKEA, I bought some tunnbröd -Swedish soft thin bread, which is what you need and on my way home today, I got some jumbo Frankfurters from the supermarket, along with crème fraîche and a bag of potatoes claiming to be perfect for mashing.

Now, for the mashed potato, since I tried Delia's recipe, I don't make any other type. But I do tend to be very generous with the crème fraîche. The potatoes too ages to boil, and once they were done, I put them through my potato press to get a smoother texture than I tend to get when I use the whisk.

I grilled the Frankfurters, I think they taste best grilled, though you can go for boiled in Sweden if you prefer that. There's also a choice of chorizo and cabanosse.



And then it's put together.

1. Place the thin bread on a piece of baking parchment.
2. Place a couple of spoons of mashed potatoes in the middle and stick the sausage into the mash.
3. Squirt some ketchup and mustard over the sausage and mash.
4. Add shopped onions and what ever else you'd like.
5. Fold up the bread along with the baking parchment. The paper helps hold the thing together.
6. Ready to eat.

Lundulph said that my photo set-up looks rude. And looking at the photos, he's right. Well, so what, it was ever so tasty, but I need to get hold of larger thin breads.

Be warned though, this is extremely filling. Lundulph had two and is regretting it now - no room for dessert.

Falukorv with stir fried vegetables

Well, one of the advantages of my new job is that every now and then I end up very near an IKEA store, like last Friday and I took the opportunity to check out the Swedish food shop. I spotted this wonderful Swedish sausage called Falukorv - "Falu" as from the city of Falun and "korv" as in Swedish for sausage.

This is something I haven't had since school and then I always loved it (though would never have admitted it, as no one else claimed to like it). And so I bought one. Traditionally they used to be wrapped in a bright red skin and used to be huge and shaped like a horse shoe. Nowadays they've been spruced up - for starters they aren't as large, so you don't have to keep eating it for a week. Second, the skin was orange and had flowers printed on it. This refers to an old Swedish children's song - "Jag vill ha blomming falukorv till lunch, mamma!" basically a child asking for a flowery falukorv for lunch, because it doesn't like any other food. In addition, they also support the BRIS foundation. This is Barnens Rätt i Samhället translating to Children's Rights In Society.

This week-end we also went and spent some of the vouchers we got for our wedding (despite having said that we didn't want any presents). So now we have fancy new everyday cutlery that we're both happy with (so far Lundulph has used his ones from the days before we moved together and I've used the ones I inherited from my parents). And I have a new set of pots from Tefal - compact ones, where the handles fold to one side and take up a bit less space.

Today I tried the large one out by stir frying some vegetables, a bit inspired from having had lunch at Wagamama yesterday. Actually we were supposed to barbecue, to try out Lundulph's new unitasker - a wok-shaped colander that can be used to "stir-fry" vegetables and prawns over a barbecue. But the Sunday rained away, so we had to change our plans.

I peeled the bright skin off the sausage and cut it in 1 cm thick slices. It has sufficient amount of fat in it, not to need additional oil for frying in a non-stick. It's enough to just brown the sides.

For the stir-fry, I had an aubergine, a courgette, half a leek, 2 bell peppers, 1 chili, 6 mushrooms, about 20 leaves of Thai basil and a couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds. I fried them in toasted sesame seed oil and added some Japanese soy sauce. The cutting in strips was made very quick with using my Alligator cutter, that I got from my Mum a few months ago. This is yet another unitasker that I'm slowly getting used to, as it's quite useful for chopping vegetables quickly. It sort of works, if everything is needed in julienne form...

Anyway, the cooking part was very quick on both sausages and stir-fry, which was the main idea I think, we've been shifting furniture around today and sifting through a lot of our things and throwing away quite a lot, while keeping an eye on the Wimbledon tournament and time flew by and suddenly we were hungry. I had some left-over rice in the fridge, so that made the carb part of our meal.

The stir-fry tasted very much like a Ratatouille with a hint of Thai basil. The falukorv was saltier than I remember it, but very tasty. The chili was not noticeable, despite being labelled as very hot. We had to add a couple of drops of Cajun sauce (can also be used as rocket fuel) to give it a bit of a kick.



For dessert we're having biltong - I found a small bag in the larder. Must remember to put it on my shopping list.

The Daring Bakers' Challenge for June 2008

Gosh how time flies - it's been a whole month since I last blogged. But I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks and I've started a new job, where I'm still settling in, so I haven't had any time for culinary adventures.

This month's challenge was Danish Braid and after reading the recipe, I was well excited - I've been wanting to try and make puff pastry for ages - my first and only attempt was when I was in Munich for my exchange year over 10 years ago and I misunderstood the recipe and only did two folds and didn't bother with chilling sessions in between. Needless to say, my croissants were anything but.



I took time to look at the recommended links in the challenge description to make sure I get things right this time.

So my first surprise was that there was yeast in the dough - from my browsings this isn't needed and I was wondering if all the butter wouldn't ooze out in room temperature while the braids were rising. In my case it most definitely did.

Also it shouldn't have mattered if the butter was soft or hard. I followed the instructions and had it soft.

I also didn't manage to make the braid on the following day, but had to keep the dough in the fridge for 3 days.

And to make a long story short, the dough smelt wonderful, the braids turned out really pretty and rose well too, while the butter oozed out on the baking sheet. I baked anyway and the result, although still pretty, was heavy regular bready thing with filling. No flakiness, no lightness.

My joy over this challenge dropped well below zero when I tasted the thing. Greasy and heavy and I decided never to do this one again.

Having looked at a number of fellow Daring Bakers - some had similar results to mine, judging by the photos. Others had was was intended - with obvious lamination and rising and all that.

So even better planning next time - Saturday to make the pastry, Sunday to bake it. Use cold butter, because to some extent I think the butter may have become incorporated into the dough, but some definitely just oozed out, so not sure what to do about that.

Another thing that seemed odd is that the other Daring Bakers seemed to have nice white pastry, where mine was well yellow. Did I use too much orange juice and zest? It sure smelt of Christmas while I was doing the turns.

For the filling, I could have made the apple stuff that was recommended, but given the option of using jam as long as it was home made, I seized the opportunity to use up some of the quince jam I made a couple of years ago. It also had the advantage of being fairly jelly-like and the chances of it running over should thus be minimal. Plus we're not big jam eaters in our house, which is why even smaller quantities last years.

Anyway, I feel I should give this anther go, just to be on the safe side. And here is the recipe (taken from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking):

Ingredients

Dough (detempre)

1 tbsp dry yeast
1.2 dl full milk
0.8 dl caster sugar
zest from 1 orange
0.75 tsp ground cardamom
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
0.5 vanilla bean, split and scraped
2 large chilled eggs
0.6 dl orange juice
5 dl strong flour
2.7 dl plain flour
1 tsp salt

Butter block (beurrage)

226 g cold unsalted butter
0.5 dl plain flour

Egg wash

1 large egg
1 large egg yolk

Method

1. Prepare all ingredients and mix the two flours and the salt. In a mixer, combine yeast and milk on low speed.
2. Slowly add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract and seeds, eggs and orange juice.
3. Increase the mixer speed to medium and add the flour a little at a time. Mix until the four is incorporated. If it seems too sticky still, add a little more flour.
4. Transfer the dough to a suitable container if needed, cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
5. In the mean time, combine the butter and the flour in a mixer and beat on medium for 1 minute. Scrape the sides, then beat for another minute or until smooth and lump free and set aside at room temperature.
6. After the detempre has chilled, take out of the fridge and turn out onto a lightly floured surface, then roll into a rectangle of 45 x 33 cm and about 1 cm thick. If the dough is sticky, keep dusting with flour lightly.
7. Now divide in your mind the long side into 3 parts of 15 cm width. Spread the butter over the middle and one of the side parts as evenly as possible, going all the way to the edges.
   
   
8. Starting with the butter-free part and fold over the middle to cover the butter. Then fold the other side part on top of that, making sure to keep the edges and corners as straight as possible. This is turn 1, so either mark the dough with a poke or keep a tally on a piece of paper. Place the dough on a baking sheet, cover with cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
   
   
9. Then turn the dough rectangle carefully out onto the lightly floured surface, preferably so that the short open ends are to your left and right. Roll the dough again to 45 x 33 cm and 1 cm thickness.
10. Once more in your mind divide the long side into 3 equal parts and fold one side over the middle, then the other on top of that. This completes turn 2, so poke two fingers into the dough or add to the tally, place on the baking sheet, cover with cling film and place in the fridge for another 30 minutes. Note that because the open ends from turn 1 were folded, the butter is now well sealed into the dough.
    
    
11. Repeat this two more times, then leave the dough in the fridge for at least 5 hours, but preferably overnight.
    
    
12. If the dough won't be used within 24 h, it's best to freeze it wrapped tightly in cling film. Defrost slowly in the fridge.
13. The above quantity makes two largeish braids, so line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
14. Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out to 33 x 60 cm rectangle. Then cut in the middle of the long side to make two pieces of 33 x 30 cm rectangles.
15. On each, mark lightly three 10 cm wide strips, then cut the two side ones into 2 - 3 cm wide strips perpendicular to the middle strip, but leave 5 cm from the bottom and top edges.
    
    
16. Put a jam of your choice in the middle strip, then fold the top and bottom "flaps", then start folding the side strips, alternating left and right.
    
    
17. Repeat with the second rectangle, then transfer to their respective baking sheets.
18. Whisk the egg wash lightly and brush the two braids gently.
19. Spray or brush two pieces of cling film and cover the two braids, then cover with towels and leave to rise for 1.5 - 2 h in room temperature, until doubled in size and light to the touch.
20. Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 (200 degrees C), then bake in the middle of the oven for about 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to gas mark 4 (180 degrees C), turn the baking sheet so that the side of the braid that was towards the oven door now is on the other side and bake for another 15 - 20 minutes or until golden brown.
    
    
21. Take out and bake the second braid.
22. Leave to cool a bit at lest before serving, or serve at room temperature.
23. The cooled braid can be frozen.

As you can see, I didn't do the first turn very well and some butter squeezed out from the open ends. And even in the second turn, I didn't do too well - I'd managed to trap some air in the first turn, and rolling in the second turn made them burst and more butter squirted out. At the fourth turn, I'd got the hang of things and it looked very nice and tidy indeed.

You can see all the burnt goo around my finished braid - some of it was quince jam, most of it was grease.

One very clever thing I spotted on Gretchen's blog Canela & Comino was how she's done the edges - she'd cut out a wedge from each end flap, so that it would fold a lot easier, not become too thick relative to the middle of the braid and also it looks rather esthetically pleasing, I think.

I might not bother with the orange zest and juice next time either.

Home Made Pasta

This is something I've been looking forward to making pasta for ages and I was so very happy to find durum wheat flour a couple of weeks ago in our local farm shop. The recipe I'd chosen was the one from my Cordon Bleu book, and had saved three eggs, that were required.

Sadly the recipe was completely wrong. In fact, it repeats the recipe once for manually mixing the dough and once for mixing it in a food processor and there's a typo in the second one, asking for a whole tablespoon of salt. But the worst part was that it called for 2.5 cups of flour for 3 eggs and 2.5 cups is 5.9 dl. I had large eggs and used 6 dl flour - about half the 1 kg packet. Lundulph looked at the book's own conversion table, which would have amounted to even more flour.

And so, my pasta dough never became a dough, at best it looked like polenta. I tried a rescue by adding more olive oil, but that didn't help much and I ended up throwing it all away.

A quick glance at the flour packet listed an almost identical recipe, but half the amount of flour. 250 g flour to 3 eggs. This sounded a lot more likely.

So I'm a bit sad now, but such is life. I'll buy more eggs and try again soon. I wanted to notify the publisher about these mistakes, but there does't seem to be anywhere to do this.

Otherwise, we've been living on salads lately, so that's the main reason for me not blogging.

Opera Cake - Daring Bakers May 2008 Challenge

Well, this is my third Daring Bakers challenge and the best one so far, I think.



Though part of the reason for this is that the quantities of the previous challenges were way too big for me and Lundulph, we just finished the cheesecake pops the other day and most of the perfect party cake is still in the freezer. So this time I decided to reduce the recipe to a third of the original size. This produced a decent sized cake, that would serve 8 - 9 people.

The Opera cake is a layered cake with buttercream and ganache and a glaze on top. The sponges are called joconde and are moistened by a flavoured syrup.

So without further ado, here it is - light coloured Opera cake.

Joconde Ingredients

2 large egg whites
10 g granulated sugar
75 g ground almonds
1.2 dl icing sugar
2 large eggs
20 g plain flour
1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled + some for the baking sheet

Joconde Method

1. Preheat the oven at gas mark 7 (220 degrees C).


2. Line a deepish sheet with baking parchment and brush with melted butter, not forgetting the sides. A 27 x 31 cm baking sheet gives a 1.5 cm thick joconde.


3. Beat the egg whites to soft peak stage, then add the granulated sugar and continue beating to hard peak stage. Set the meringue aside.


4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the ground almonds, icing sugar and eggs until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes on high.


5. Switch to low speed and add the flour, whisk just long enough to incorporate it.


6. Gently fold in the meringue, follwed by the butter.


7. Pour into the baking sheet and bake in the middle of the oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes.


8. Unmould immediately onto another piece of baking parchment and remove the parchment the joconde baked in. If it's a bit sticky, wet it with a little bit of water. Leave the joconde to cool.

Syrup Ingredients

30 g water
20 g granulated sugar
1 tbsp flavouring of choice, I used vanilla extract

Syrup Method

1. Stir together all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil.


2. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Buttercream Ingredients

35 g granulated sugar
20 g water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
70 g unsalted butter at room temperature
1 tsp flavouring of choice, I used dark rhum

Buttercream Method

1. Combine sugar, water and vanilla extract in a saucepan and bring to the boil on medium heat. Continue until the mixture reaches 107 degrees C. It's a very small amunt so may be difficult to measure. 107 degrees C is just under the so called thread stage, so this could be used instead of thermometer. The original recipe calls for 124 degrees C which is just over soft ball stage. Remove from the heat when the desired temperature has been reached.


2. In the mean time, whisk the egg at high speed until pale and foamy.


3. Reduce the mixer speed to low and very slowly pour the hot syrup into the egg foam, avoiding pouring it directly onto the whisks themselves, or it'll fly off to th sides and go solid.


4. Increase the mixer speed to high again and continue to whisk until smooth and satin looking and cool to the touch. With such a small quantity this shouldn't take long at all.


5. Once again reduce the speed to low and carefully incorporate the soft butter, a little at a time.


6. Go back up to high speed and beat until thick and shiny, then add your chosen flavouring and beat for another minute.


7. Refrigerate for 20 minutes to firm it up for spreading. Stir occasionally.

When I made this, as soon as I started to add the butter, the whole thing collapsed and went rather lumpy.



When I took it out of the fridge, it had released some liquid as well.



White Chocolate Ganache/Mousse Ingredients

70 g white chocolate
2.4 dl + 3 tbsp double cream
1 tbsp liqueur of choice, I used amaretto

White Chocolate Ganache/Mousse Method

1. Melt the chocolate and the 3 tbsp cream in a saucepan on low heat, stirring until the chocolate has melted completely and the mixture is smooth.


2. Take off the heat, stir in the liqueur and set aside to cool.


3. In a separate bowl, whip the 2.4 dl cream to soft peaks stage.


4. Gently fold in the whipped cream in the the cool shocolate mix to form a mousse.


5. If it's too runny, refrigerate for 30 minutes to make it firm.

This is the first time I've made ganache or mousse and I generally don't like amaretto, the only reason I used it was to echo the flavour of the joconde. I wasn't sure if it would work at all with white chocolate. As it turned out, it was a very good combination.

Glaze Ingredients

140 g white chocolate
1.2 dl double cream

Glaze Method

1. Melt the chocolate and the cream in a bain marie, whisking until the chocolate has melted completely and the mixtue is smooth.


2. Leave to cool completely. If it still feels too runny, refrigerate for 15 - 20 minutes.

Because of the buttercream not being enough, I was a bit worried that the same might happen with the glaze, so I made the double of the above listed dose. This turned out to be a miscalculation on my part, since there was loads left over. It's ever so tasty of course and can be used for other things too.

Cake Constructon

1. Cut the joconde into three equal sized parts.


2. Place one part on a cake plate and moisten with one third of the syrup.


3. Spread the buttercream over the joconde and place the second joconde part on top, moistening with the second third of the syrup. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.




4. Spread half of the ganche/mousse over the second joconde, then cover with the last part of the joconde, moisten with syrup and spread the second half of the ganache/mousse, then refrigerate again for about 1 hour.




5. Finally pour the glaze over the cake and smooth with a spatula, then refrigerate to firm up the glaze.




The original cake should have two layers of buttercream and one layer of ganache/mousse, but because my buttercream curdled, there was just about enough for one layer. The mousse was quite sufficient for two layers, so this worked out nicely. Unfortunately, the glaze was way too runny and most of it disappeared down the sides of the cake and I managed to scrape off most of it away. Perhaps I'd used more cream in the glaze than the recipe called for, I didn't measure it too precisely. Also the idea of the cake is to see the layerings, so it would be a good idea, after the cake has been completed, to trim the sides to enhance this effect. To cut the cake, a large, sharp knife should be heated up a bit. This will ensure there is no smudging between the layers. The knife can either be heated up under the hot water tap, making sure it's completely dry before cutting, or over the flame of the gas hob, taking care not to overheat it, or it'll melt the creams of the cake.

The above recipe yields 7 - 9 portions and combines nicely with tangy fruits like physalis. Because there was barely any glaze left on the cake, I used it as a sauce. This was before I'd refrigerated it and realised that it firmed up quite nicely.

Most of the parts I made a day or two in advance as constructing the cake takes quite a few hours as well. It's best served chilled.

Mrs W's Spicy Lamb Kebabs

A few weeks ago, Mrs W published this recipe and I got sold on it straight away.

Yesterday we had our second barbecue and I spent quite some time preparing for it, this last week has been stressful and I needed to relax and what better way than by preparing lots of food?



So the main thing was of course Mrs W's spicy lamb kebabs. I'd ordered a butterflied leg of lamb from the local butcher and I got to see him prepare it, it's quite a skill. He also kindly used a special stapler to puncture lots of holes everywhere, so that marinade could soak in better. Very nice. At home, I removed as much of the fat as I could, then diced it, stirred in the spice mixture and put it in the fridge. I realised only yesterday morning that I'd forgotten the olive oil, so I quickly added it then and decided to keep my fingers crossed that it would work.

On Saturday morning, I sliced the aubergines and sprinkled with salt and pepper and lined them up on a baking tray. I put a small bowl upside down under one end of the tray, so that any liquid that the aubergines would produce would gather in the lower corner. On the skewers I added figs as per the original instructions and they worked ever so well. The glazing didn't go thick, but maybe that's because I might have screwed up the proportions a bit. There was plenty left over as well.

Mrs W also recommended couscous or quinoa to go with the lamb and I decided on couscous, mainly because I'd never made quinoa before and couscous is very quick to make. I made 250 g couscous and stirred in 2 tbsp olive oil. When it had cooled down, I chopped about a handful of fresh coriander and stirred in. This worked out very nicely.

In addition I also made a green salad and this time I mean really green. Green peppers, unpeeled cucumber, parsley, peppermint, dill, iceberg lettuce and lime. Wonderfully tangy. All cut into small pieces, the lime peeled as well. And I got to use the parsley and mint from my new herb garden - an old set of stackable strawberry pots that I've put on the patio.



Then Lundulph said that we can't entertain without crisps and dips. Now I thought the lamb kebabs and aubergines and couscous were very Middle Eastern in style, so I thought I'd get matching dips. The hummus on offer in the supermarket didn't look too nice and I decided to make my own. Also I thought I'd try my hand at "сух таратор", that is suh tarator literally meaning dry tarator - like tarator but with strained yoghurt and with pickled gherkins instead of cucumber. Sadly it turned out I didn't have gherkins, like I thought I did and so only put dill in the strained yoghurt.

I'd never strained yoghurt before. I had two jars of my home made stuff, which isn't too sour. I put my large sieve over the wine bucket, then lined it with three layers of cheese cloth and poured both jars into it, about 1 litre in total. And it started dripping. I put the whole setup into the fridge, because it was taking time and I worried that the yoghurt would turn into cheese. Must remember for next time, do one jar at a time, smaller portions take less time.

If it sounds like I've been busy, then it's because I have. But it was great fun to do. And I remembered to soak the bamboo skewers for hours and still they caught fire, mostly at the end where we'd threaded the meat, I guess the fat that stuck is what made that possible.

Of course we also had dessert. I took this opportunity to make the Daring Bakers May challenge, so I'll blog about it when the time for that comes. All I can say is that it was delicious.



Finally, Lundulph had bought some nice chicken breasts for backup. We didn't use them, but I marinated them in the left over glaze for the lamb kebabs and have frozen them now. I think it will work out nicely in future barbecues - if the weather keeps up like it has this week, we're bound to eat more grilled things this Summer.



But the lamb recipe is a keeper and I'm very grateful to Mrs W for this. Sorry for the lack of photos, but we were busy eating and licking our fingers.

Пърпорени чушлета

The title would be pronounced as purporeni tchushleta and is something my Mum does regularly. It roasted chillies layered with fresh parsley and garlic and topped up with equal parts of water and vinegar. They are then left for about a day, then the water/vinegar mixture is drained and the jar is topped up with olive oil. The word purporeni is an onomatopoeic on the sounds the chillies make as they are being roasted.


As they are not peeled, they need to be washed and dried before roasting. Also I recommend using milder varieties of chillies. This one was a first for me and the chillies I got were rather hot, so we're working our way though the jar slowly.


Basically they are served as side dish and are eaten along with the main food, by people who fancy an extra kick of spicy heat. It's also a good way of preserving them. The garlic and the parsley are tasty as well and the vinegar too, becoming infused with the roast chilli flavour. Sweet chilli varieties are good this way too and work like any other pickle. The roasting enhances the flavour I think.



I'd been meaning to make these for quite some time and finaly had the pepper roaster out last week, when I made kyopoolu. And apologies for not posting sooner, this past week has been a bit busy.

My Beloved Electrolux Assistent

I spotted this in an entry on The Fresh Loaf and wanted to share it. It's an old demo video from Electrolux about their Kitchen Assistent machine. I know it's old, because it has two buttons at the front. My Mum's used to have two buttons, one broke and my Dad mended it somehow with a switch. See one button would set the speed and the other would switch on and off. Mine only has one button - speed and on/off combined.

And I've learned something new - I'd never used the dough hook before, but will give it a try. The lady in the demo used it for a rye bread, so I take it it's for heavier doughs.

I'm getting the double whisk next, as my electric hand whisk is coming to the end of it's life and is struggling even with lighter batters these days. Or maybe I'm imagining, but I've had it for some 9 years already.

The pasta attachment seemed also very interesting, especially since I found durum wheat at my local farm shop, I've been dying to try and make my own pasta.