Fermented bread

A couple of weeks back, I decided to make another couronne. This time with wholemeal and I decided to follow the recipe in Richard Bertinet's Dough book. Needless to say, I mis-read again and instead of 200 g white flour and 300 g wholemeal flour, I did it the other way around. Which actually doesn't matter.

I made a double batch. And as recommended in the book, I saved 200 g to use next time I bake. It's quite clever, I thought - you keep it in a box in the fridge, which allows better control of the growth. And I'm in control, not the yeast. Yes, that made perfect sense.

Then it should be fed with 400 g flour and 200 g water after two days and after that every 7 - 10 days in the same way. So, I made sure that I had the same proportions of white and wholemeal flour in the feed mixture - 160 g wholemeal and 240 g white. I ended up with an extremely stiff dough and the stuff about baker's percentages started swirling in the back of my mind. In the original recipe it's 500 g flour to 350 g water. Hmmmm. Never mind, the book says that a stiff dough will result. And as perhaps many beginners, I just plain refuse to throw away any parts of the dough that might be useful, so into a bigger box the ferment went and back in the fridge.



A few days later and it's swollen nicely. And a week after feeding the ferment, I couldn't resist it any longer and made more bread. This time I decided to make a boule and rolls as per Lundulph's request.



I need to practice the slashing, it's just about visible on the boule, but it had disappeared almost entirely on the rolls. I also made the mistake of placing them in paper cups, thinking I'd save myself some strenuous dish washing. Instead, I had to dip each roll in water for a few seconds, then carefully peel off the paper, which had stuck ever so nicely to the rolls. Bah!

But it looked very nice and perfect for sandwiches, I think.



I also didn't notice any particular difference in flavour, but perhaps it's because it was wholemeal and not pure white bread or that I hadn't kept it for a long time.

The freezer now contains a too high ratio of bread vs other food, so I won't be baking for some time. But I have a new recipe that is first in line, which I'm very excited about.

Overall, it was interesting. I'll give it another go with white bread, where the flavour difference may be more obvious.

Caramelisation disaster

Last week I spotted some really nice figs outside the butcher's on the High Street and just couldn't resist buying 6 with a vague idea of doing something fancy with them.

Yesterday, being Friday and thus meaning a nicer dinner with Lundulph, I thought of caramelising the figs and serving them warm with vanilla ice cream.

I did a quick search for caramelised figs and there are plenty of variants around, I fancied one in particular, but when the time came to actually prepare them, I'd switched off the computer and couldn't be bothered to turn it back on just to look up the recipe. Besides it would have spoiled the surprise for Lundulph.

So I made stuff up on the fly. Which last night wasn't a good idea.

I cut them in half and placed with the cut side up in a baking tray.



Then I placed a teaspoon of light soft brown sugar on each and a sprinkle of ground cinnamon.

Then in under the grill, which was on medium. Three minutes later, there was a smell of something burning and blackish smoke was coming out from the grill.



Yes, my hope for the sugar sort of all melting and running down into the figs didn't quite happen. But all was not lost - I carefully scraped off the burnt teaspoon shapes and threw away.

Then I drizzled maple syrup over each of the figs. I had to open a new bottle half way through and it was difficult to pour without drenching half the tray. I then reduced the heat of the grill and moved the rack to its lowest setting and in they went for a further 3 minutes, under constant supervision.

This turned out to work a lot better and the dessert was rescued and was quite edible. However, next time I'll make sure to follow an established recipe or bake the figs first and just do a caramel coat with the blow torch at the end.



My plating could also do with some practice. But thanks to dousing the figs with syrup, there was some nicely semi-caramelised "jus" to add to each serving.

Home Made Paté

My original post is here, but the link to the recipe seems to have disappeared, so I'm entering the recipe into the blog.

Ingredients

400 g chicken livers
25 g butter
1 large clove of garlic
1 sprig rosemary
1.5 dl double cream
0.5 dl muscadet wine
salt and pepper

Method

1. Fry the chicken livers in the butter together with the crushed garlic and the rosemary for 7 - 8 minutes until the livers are done.

Remove the rosemary and put everything else into a blender. Add the double cream, wine, salt and pepper and blend until smooth. It'll have the texture of mousse.

2. Pour into a jar, leave to cool, then place in the fridge overnight. It'll go solid, but will remain spreadable.


3. It is possible to freeze as well.

Apple and Bilberry Crumble

This week, I'm in Sweden visiting my parents and have had an unbelievable luck with the weather, it's been a super Autumn, t-shirt and shorts weather to some extent even. And so, my Mum and I have been out in the woods foraging for berries and mushrooms.



There are loads of chanterelles at the shops and markets at the moment, but the ones in the photo are a relative called "trattkantarell" in Swedish or "trattis" as my Mum shortens it to and translates directly to funnel chanterelle. However it doesn't seem to have a common name in English. Wikipedia says this. The trattis I think has a nicer taste than the regular chanterelle. We picked a few handfuls, fried in a saucepan until the liquid had been released, then added a knob of butter and fried a bit more. Very yummy with oven baked salmon.

The berries we picked are lingonberries.



They are just ripening now and there were loads of large, dark red ones. They are good for jams or sauces for game and Swedish meatballs. We tried some with the salmon, but that didn't work too well.

We also picked some bilberries, they were also large and juicy. One of the apple trees in my parents' garden keeps dropping lots of wonderful aromatic and sweet apples now, so my Mum suggested I make a crumble. And so I did.

Ingredients

1 dl plain flour
2 dl porridge oats
0.5 dl caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp semolina
100 g unsalted butter
3 - 4 apples
250 g bilberries
2 tsp cornflour
0.5 dl caster sugar
whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Method

1. Place flour, oats, caster sugar, cinnamon and semolina in a bowl and mix well.


2. Cut up the butter into small dice and add to the dry mixture, then work it in with your fingers until it is incorporated and crumbs form.


3. Wash, peel and core the apples, then slice thinly. Butter a pie dish, about 25 cm diameter and line with the apple slices.


4. Sprinkle the bilberries making sure the fruit is evenly distributed, then sprinkle caste sugar and corn flour.


5. Again using your fingers spread the crumbles evenly over the fruit, it might not cover everything completely, but that's OK.


6. Pre-heat the oven to 225 degrees C (gas mark 7), then bake the crumble for 25 minutes. The bilberries will release their juice and colour the apples purple.


7. Serve hot with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

I wasn't the first one to get to the pie when it was ready. Mum had a bite before I managed to get a photo.

I think it'll be nice with chopped nuts, perhaps hazel or pecan. I was thinking of adding corn flakes for extra crunchiness, but Mum didn't have any. Still it as quite tasty.

Aioli

We (my parents, Bip and I) first made our acquaintance with aioli in Spain (and there they call it alioli). This is many, many years ago and a few years back, my Mum worked out how to make it and would always make loads and it would run out really fast.

Well, finally I've got round to making this myself, it's a lot easier than you might think. OK, so I used technology - the blender attachment on my trusty Kitchen Assistent.

I also had a couple of elephant garlics from a visit to this year's Chili Fiesta at West Dean. It's from the stand of The Garlic Farm and it's the first time I've seen these in real life - They are massive - think grapefruit size and each had "only" five cloves, but each was the size of a golf ball. They said the elephant garlic is milder flavoured and that it was ideal for roasting. I planted the cloves from one of the bulbs and used 2/3 of a clove to make aioli. That seemed to be about 2-3 regular cloves of garlic.

Ingredients

2-3 cloves of garlic
1 medium egg
about 400 ml grapeseed oil
2-3 tbsp water (if needed)
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt to taste

Method

1. Peel and cut the garlic in chunks and place in a blender, along with the egg and some salt.


2. Blend on high and slowly start pouring the grapeseed oil.


3. If it gets too thick, add water a tbsp at a time.


4. Depending on how strong garlic flavour you want, you can stop blending before the 400 ml oil has been added, or you can keep adding more.


5. At the end, add the lemon juice and more salt if needed.

I served these with the wonderful bread sticks from my Dough book by Richard Bertinet. I made two types from the dough batch recipe - one with sesame seeds and one with poppy seeds. I didn't follow the instructions of folding in three, but only folded in two. I got about 20 sticks out of that and they worked ever so well for dipping. I also made hummus and had some of the now very spicy olive oil from the pickled roasted chillies. I also put some olive oil, but that didn't quite compete with the other dips.

Hottest tip from my Mum - do not use olive oil! It goes solid in the fridge and can cause the aioli to separate and go funny.

And sorry no photos, things disappeared way too quickly for that.

Lunduph's Birthday once more

It is that time of the year, when Lundulph sort of catches up with me, age-wise. For a few months before reverting to being a trophy husband.

Now Lundulph loves marzipan and I've been promising him for ages to make him a Princess cake. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the most popular of Swedish cakes and is certainly the height of any cake party. It is traditionally green, dusted with icing sugar and decorated with a pink marzipan rose. It can be made pink with a white rose, in which case it is called Prince cake. Go figure. And of late, I've noticed lots of other colours as well - white and blue. There's also the option of writing a message in melted chocolate.

This year it's particularly lucky that my Sister Bip is visiting us, so I asked her to bring along some Swedish marzipan. Overly ambitious perhaps, but I'm sure the Swedish marzipan is different to English marzipan. But she did bring ready rolled green marzipan and a pink rose.

I've never made this before, but had a recipe for it in one of my old baking booklets. They are normally good, but not this time.

The base consists of 4 eggs, 2 dl sugar whisked white and fluffy. Then carefully stirred in 1 dl plain flour and 1 dl potato flour and 1 tsp baking powder. Now, I've not yet managed to find potato flour here, so I substituted for maize flour. This was to go into a 25 cm cake tin. I didn't have one, so I used my 20 cm cake tin. The cake mix did fill it up to about 3/4 and I know the rule is it must be only half full, to allow for expansion. The instructions also said bake at 175 degrees for 40 minutes. I added 30 further minutes due to the increased cake thickness. Still, it wasn't sufficiently baked and collapsed on cooling, so into the bin it went. Dang!

Rush off to the shops to get more eggs and a new 25 cm cake tin. Do the same again, but this time swap out the potato flour for plain flour. I tasted the first lot and it wasn't nice at all and was very yellow. This time the cake mix came to just under the middle of the tin - so far so good. Into the oven it went and stayed there for a 40 + 40 minute period. I took it out and when it had cooled, it shrunk back to half the tin depth. Bah!

So, I had to be very careful to cut the base in two and still it turned out it wasn't quite cooked in the middle. Also I could only cut it in two, not three as the instructions said.



The next thing that really should have set off the big alarm bells is that there was only one type of cream. This is just wrong. So I consulted my big baking book from Bo Friberg, which of course had industrial quantities, but at least stipulated strawberry jam, some sort of custard cream and whipped cream. It also said brush the base with cake syrup, which I quickly had to make. The custard was easy enough, but it didn't go solid as expected. Oh dear. Maybe should have skipped the cake syrup so the base would absorb some of the custard?

Right, layer one - strawberry jam. Layer two - custard cream. The original recipe said custard cream on both of these, shaping the second one into a dome. Then covering with the third layer, then using the remaining custard all over the cake, before covering it with rolled out green marzipan. They had a very useful tip - use the bottom and the top parts of the base for layers one and two and the middle part of the base as layer three. This allows shaping the dome, without the crusty bit cracking. I didn't have a layer three, so I whipped the cream to stiff peaks, then spread it over the cream. It was still very runny and the stiff whipped cream sort of pushed it towards the edges, but I managed to shape a dome.



I finally unrolled the fancy green, scored along the edge as recommended and flopped it over my cake. It barely fitted to cover the cake and I really shouldn't have scored it. I took the additional precaution to brush the marzipan with egg white, to prevent it from soaking in the liquid from the whipped cream. Though this is more of a thing to do if the cake is made a day in advance.

However, using the third layer to form the dome is heavy duty cheating. So in a way, I'm glad that I didn't have a third layer to play with.

The end result worked ever so well, though.



And it tasted correctly. It is also very delicate and I really should invest in a cake slice thingy. There is barely anything left now.

Still, I'm very miffed at the base not working out and will check with my Mum to see what she does. She's made several Princess cakes for Bip, as it's her favourite too.

But, I should try again and with my original plan - to build up an almost hemispherical shaped cake. In fact, it took me a couple of years to find the right bowl for it. The idea is to cover the bowl with cling film, then place the rolled out green marzipan in the bottom. Fill up with whipped cream, a layer of cake base, custard cream, another layer of cake base, strawberry jam and a final cake base layer. Then flip it out of the bowl and in theory, voilà there it should be.

And I think the cake base for my Swiss roll should be more suitable.

Last day before going on holiday

I've been unbelievably busy over the past couple of weeks. I keep saying that, as an excuse of not blogging anything and this time I'm 3 dishes behind and counting.

But since last Wednesday I'm on holiday for two weeks. My Sister Bip has come to visit and I've been spending time with her.

However, I thought I'd bake something as a good-bye thing to my colleagues and went for the popular Swedish "kokostoppar", which translates to coconut tops. There is a plethora of recipes, I decided on this one. And here is what they looked like straight out of the oven:



These were offered at my school in the café/playroom and were a favourite of mine. They are very simple and are also very good for wheat intolerant people, as there's none of that in them.

Ingredients

50 g unsalted butter
2 eggs
1.5 dl caster sugar
200 g dessicated coconut
grated zest of 2 lemons
1 tbsp dark rum

Method

1. Melt the butter and let cool down.


2. In the mean time, whisk the eggs and sugar until white and fluffy.


3. Carefully stir in the coconut, butter, lemon zest and rum.


4. Leave to stand for 30 minutes in room temperature. The mixture should expand further still here.


5. Pre-heat the oven at gas mark 4 (175 degrees C).


6. Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and with the help of a couple of spoons or just with your fingers, form small pyramids (about the size of a walnut) and place on the baking sheets.


7. Bake at the bottom of the oven for 15-30 minutes.


8. Leave to cool completely. The coconut tops can be frozen.

I made a double dose on Monday night, I didn't have any lemons, so skipped the zest, I used medium eggs and I whisk in the coconut, butter and rum. Thus the mixture was stiffer than expected and it didn't expand during its resting. I started out fiddling beautiful shapes with two spoons and realised that I'd be stuck doing that all night and moved on to rolling the mixture with my fingers. I ended up baking them for 30 minutes and I increased the heat at the end to get the tips a bit browner, but in hindsight, I definitely over-cooked them, they need to be gooey in the middle and mine weren't.

From a double dose I got 42 tops. Lundulph and I had one each on the night and I left another one for him the next day, the rest came along with me to work and didn't last very long, so despite the mishaps, they worked ever so well. My boss thought they were like macaroons, but a quick shufty at the google, indicates that the coconut macaroons have flour and sometimes milk or cream. Lundulph was a bit upset that there weren't any left to take back home again. I was very happy that for once I could also cater for a colleague that can' eat any wheat products.

Some people recommend that the tips be dipped in melted dark chocolate, but I personally thing this is not necessary at all.

Bean and courgette casserole

Tuesdays are normally salad nights. That is, we have salad for dinner in our efforts at a healthier lifestyle, however, I sill had some of the lovely French beans left over, a few baby courgettes and lots of young runner beans from my last PYO escapade. They'd gone a bit limp, but were otherwise unharmed after the long stay in the fridge. But needed to be used up pretty much ASAP. So I planned ahead this morning and flicked through my Bulgarian National Cuisine book to find something suitable. And I did - green bean stew.



But as often is the case, the recipes in the book are just to get me started, I always end up adding more things. Besides, it recommends serving every dish with yogurt on top and that's just not right.

Ingredients

4 tbsp grapeseed oil
2 medium onions
2 cans (400 g) plum tomatoes
2 dl boiling water
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp crushed chillies
500 g courgettes
250 g French beans
250 g runner beans
1 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp chopped parsley
salt to taste

Method

1. Peel and dice the onions


2. Cut off any stalks, wash and cut the beans in 2-3 cm long pieces.


3. Trim, wash and slice the courgettes.


4. Heat up the oil on medium heat and fry the onion until it goes translucent.


5. Blend the tomatoes and add to the onion, then add the boiling water, paprika and crushed chillies and stir in well.


6. When it starts bubbling, add the beans and the courgettes, cover and let simmer for 15 - 20 minutes.


7. Sprinkle the flour to thicken a bit.


8. Add the parsley and salt, stir and it's ready to serve.

Today I also put in a packet of Swedish meatballs to get them heated through. Unfortunately I did this after I'd cooked the casserole, so the courgettes went a bit yellowy and over-cooked.

Overall, the combo worked OK and as carbs, we had some of the tiny bread buns I baked the other day. I think that Bulgarian meatballs would work better. Of course the bean casserole would work well on it's own as well. The book has some 20 other recipes where the main vegetable is varied only, so alternatives are endless.

Enhanced Gazpacho

Last week Lundulph and I visited some god friends that we'd not seen for a long time and we had Gazpacho from New Covent Garden. It was very tasty and had noting to do with what Lundulph had concocted at primary school and certainly not related to the stuff I bought in Spain many years ago that came in a carton as well. This tasted more like Bularian tomato sauce without the potatoes.



But they only had one packet left at the supermarket, so I decided to enhance it with the baby courgettes and beautiful French beans I picked last Sunday. The Pick Your Own farm has become quite an addiction.

I didn't measure things sadly. I cut the courgettes with my alligator cutter into match sticks and fried them in quite a lot of ground nut oil. When they were well browned, I poured out as much as I could, then poured the soup over them and put back on the hop to heat through. I added about a tea spoon of hot crushed chillies, a tea spoon of dill and a tea spoon of thyme and stirred through. In the mean time I steamed the French beans. To be on the safe side, I topped with a table spoon of crème fraîche and crispy bacon.

Pretty quick and very tasty. Pity I only had one pack of the soup. In the future it would be nice to work out a good recipe for gazpacho though.

Paprika Chicken

Yes, once again it is time for a Ye Olde Recipe Collection. I've been keeping the whole pile of them in my breadbasket in readiness to be used and finally I'm kicking into action.

This is one of two I've selected for this week, and since there were plenty of left overs, I doubt I'll do the second one before the week-end.

It fits nicely with our continuous attempts at eating healthily too. It is the Paprika Chicken with Spicy Red Cabbage and Beetroot.

Looking at the recipe 500 g of chicken seemed way too little for 4 portions. I had two massive chicken breasts from the butcher and they came in at just under 700 g. At this point I mis-read the recipe and mixed the paprika with a little flour instead of salt. So I added salt after I'd put the bits in the pan to fry.

For the red cabbage and beetroot, I followed the recipe, but I peeled the beetroot, as the skin looked too tough to cook.

Finally I used a bit more than 75 g of crème fraîche too, but it melted when I put it into the chicken juices for the sauce. Looking at the picture, the sauce looks a lot thicker, so I wonder if the instruction to heat up until it bubbles is correct. It worked though, it was just very little, for the runny consistency, so will remember to heat up the cooking juices and the water, then take off the heat and mix in the crème fraîche. Or make a lot more of the runny variant.



Combined with our own homegrown potatoes, what we ended up with is one fabulous and festive dinner. The paprika on the chicken was very nice and with the sauce, it just tasted so very creamy. Lundulph was a bit unsure about the beetroot at the beginning. He likes the crinkly cut variety from a jar and I did buy him some boiled ones, but they were not a hit. He pinched one of the matchstick pieces and said it didn't taste of anything. I thought it had a quite clear and distinct flavour, though not as strong as the pickled ones. Either way, red onion, red cabbage and beetroot is a very good combination and I could have been a bit more generous with the crushed chillies too.

This one is definitely a winner. Yummy!

Fried Courgettes with Yogurt and Garlic

Yesterday I had a bit of a cooking day. Especially since Lundulph decided to challenge himself earlier in the week and bought random ingredients to see what he could make of them and me going for PYO early on Saturday and coming home with wonderful courgettes and plums. So I had to make the most of things yesterday, now that I no longer have a house husband.



Following on the wonderful weather we had on Saturday, I thought we could do a really Summery dish - fried courgettes with yogurt and garlic. This is a very popular dish in its own right in Bulgaria, very easy to make and perfect when it's hot and you don't have much of an appetite. And it works as a side dish or a starter.

Ingredients
500 ml Greek style yogurt, preferably strained
garlic, salt and dill to taste
1 kg courgettes
1 dl grape seed oil

Method

1. Put the yogurt in a bowl, peel and press in as much garlic as you fancy and season with salt and dill to taste. Stir in well and put in the fridge to chill.


2. Wash the courgettes and trim off the stalks and the flower end, then slice thinly lengthwise, about 0.5 cm thick.


3. Heat up the oil in a flat non-stick frying pan. It'll look like lots of oil and that's how it should be, almost like deep frying, but not quite.


4. Fry each slice for a few minutes on each side, just so they get a bit of colour, don't keep them in too long, though, or they'll taste a bit burnt.


5. Serve immediately with the cold yogurt sauce. If there are any left over, mix them in with the left over yogurt sauce, they work quite nicely this way too.

Actually Lundulph and I gobbled down the lot, there was no room or dessert even. Then we had an afternoon of happy feelings.

Chocolate Cigars

This is an old favourite in Sweden. I found a Swedish web site with possibly hundreds of recipes for biscuits and of all of them, these had to be the first ones to do, I think.



It's surprisingly easy, given how very tasty it is and a colleague at work asked me for the recipe for his kids to make for school.

Ingredients
65 g hazelnuts
265 g plain flour
4 - 5 tbsp soft brown sugar
200 g unsalted butter

100 g dark sweet chocolate for decoration

Method

1. If the hazelnuts are whole, grind them in a food processor.


2. Add the flour and the sugar - 4 tbsp makes them less sweet.


3. Cut the butter into chunks and add as well, then whizz until the dough comes together. Alternatively mix by hand, it doesn't take very long.


4. Place in a bowl, cover with clingfilm and let rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, to firm up.


5. Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and pre-heat the oven at 175 degrees (gas mark 4).


6. Take out the dough and shape into finger-thick pieces, about 5 cm long and line up on the baking sheets. They can go fairly closely together, as they won't rise much. I got 45 and fitted all on 2 baking sheets.


7. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15 - 20 minutes, until they just start getting a bit of colour. Then take out and let cool down.


8. Break up the chocolate and melt over a water bath. Then dip one end of the biscuits and place back on the baking sheet to set.

My food processor is tiny, so I only ground the hazelnuts in it and mixed the dough by hand. The biscuits turned out very crumbly and delicate, but firmed up over the next couple of days. I also didn't have dark sweet chocolate, but 70% cocoa solids one, so mixed in quite a bit of milk chocolate. This worked, but the milk chocolate seems to melt easier in room temperature, so they never seemed to set properly. However, for baking, I think about 50% cocoa solids is to aim for.

And one final thing - you start by biting off the chocolate bit!

Lundulph Made Roast Chicken

Not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but somehow a roast dinner sounded like a good plan.



Week before last Saturday I went and bought a tiny free range chicken for this purpose. I say tiny, because the butcher gave me a choice between that and a farmed one that was twice the size. Generally their free range stuff is good and also getting too big a chicken would be too much for the two of us. Sadly the chicken had to go in the freezer on Monday as we were so very busy throughout the whole week. But then came Friday and Lundulph started preparations.

One thing about making roast chicken as far away from Christmas as you can get is that there's no ready made stuffing in the house. I'm not particularly keen on mince meat within a chicken either, so we decided to try a Bulgarian style stuffing with rice, onions, mushrooms and herbs. This turned out very successful, so I'd like to share it. Lundulph was good and measured up everything and wrote it down.

Ingredients
170 g pudding rice
2 medium sized onions
1 tbsp grape seed oil
1 400g tin of button mushrooms
3 cubes Oxo chicken stock in 400 ml boiling water
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp dried savory
1 tbsp fresh thyme
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp sugar

Method

1. Rinse the rice and drain.


2. Peel and dice the onions. Drain the mushrooms and dice as well.


3. Heat up the oil on medium heat and fry the onion until translucent.


4. Add the rice and stir to get it coated with the oil. Fry for a couple of minutes. In the mean time make the stock.


5. Add the mushrooms and fry for a few minutes as well.


6. Add the stock and bring to a slow simmer. Then peel and press in the garlic.


7. Add the herbs, salt and sugar and let simmer until the rice takes up all liquid.


8. Stuff the chicken.

Lundulph forgot to add black pepper to the above, but it tasted very nice indeed. He'd also covered the chicken with bacon and made some lovely crunchy roast potatoes and steamed sugar snaps.

The whole chicken set-up had released enough juices to make a very good, thick gravy with bits of bacon in it too.

The chicken still lasted us three days, despite its tininess. The stuffing was wonderfully fragrant from the thyme and savory and would have been enough for a larger chicken for sure. And the fox family worked their way through the rubbish sack and had some of the bones, so they must have liked it as well, even though cooked bones shouldn't be given to wild animals as they tend to be brittle and might splinter inside their tummies and hurt them. But maybe they are used to it nowadays.

Gooseberry Meringue Pie

Last week we finally had some time to visit our local PYO. That's Pick Your Own to the uninitiated. It's been there forever and I first discovered it when I looked into the veggie box thing, but so far we've been too busy to go and check it out. Also they were open Wednesdays and Saturdays only, so that really limited things.

But this year, they are open daily, even on Sundays! So Lundulph and I made our way there, through the lovely cafe they have next to their farm shop. Armed with a stack of punnets, we wandered into the fields along with a few other hard core PYO-ers. The weather was overcast and it drizzled a couple of times, so overall it was a fairly quiet day.

Soon we realised that we might have been overly enthusiastic on what we could actually carry, but still we persisted. In season were Loganberries, black currants and gooseberries, sugar snaps and mangetout. If I'd had a couple of spare hands I wouldn't have bothered picking the sugar snaps, they were so very tasty, I'd just have eaten them right there next to where I picked them.

I bought vanilla ice cream and mixed in the Loganberries. This didn't work at all, so I'll be needing some sort of jam related additive to get through that ice cream.

So what to do with a full punnet of gooseberries? Lundulph has been hankering for a crumble for ages, but that won't really work with gooseberries, I thought. But pie on the other hand would work just fine. OK, decision made - gooseberry pie. But what to cover it with? I really didn't fancy making pie lids. Hm, pie, slightly sour tasting fruit, some sort of lid contraption. Hang on, lemon meringue pie - slightly sour fruit with meringue on top. There it is - I'll make gooseberry meringue pie.

So off to our local supermarket to get butter to make the pastry and what do I see - ready made pie shells from sweet pastry. Waitrose's finest goes in the shopping basket. Then a whole bunch of eggs and off home.

But the gooseberries can't just go into the pie shell as they are - once the meringue goes on top, it'll have to be baked at low temperature. Think, think, think.

Ah yes! Cook the gooseberries with a bit of sugar, but not too much. So here goes:

Ingredients

1 ready made pie shell, about 25 cm diameter
1 kg fresh gooseberries
1 dl dark muscovado sugar
3 medium egg whites at room temperature
2 dl granulated sugar

Method

1. Place the pie shell onto a baking sheet, ready to be filled.


2. Remove all the sticky out bits of the gooseberries - the little "crown" where the flower used to be and the stalk - and wash.


3. Put the gooseberries in a saucepan on medium-low heat. Add the muscovado sugar and stir.

Keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved and some of the riper berries burst and spill out their juice. Don't deliberately break the berries, though.

4. Simmer for 15 - 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.


5. Pre-heat the oven at gas mark 1 (140 degrees C).


6. Drain the liquid from the gooseberries, but save it for use elsewhere. Then put the berries into the pie shell and spread out evenly.


7. Place the egg whites in a glass or metal bowl, add the sugar and place over a bain marie on low heat. As the water heats up, whisk the whites with the sugar until a firm meringue has formed.


8. Take off the heat and spread over the gooseberries in the pie shell. If you want, put some in a piping bag and pipe decorations.
   


9. Bake in the oven for 1 h, then either serve nice and hot or leave to cool completely.

I finally also got to try out my new blow torch to singe the edges of meringue like I've seen in some really fancy photos. Well, that's not easy either and will require some practice.



So how was it then? Well, actually very tasty indeed, I was surprised, given it's been ages since I cooked. The gooseberries had kept their flavour and some of them didn't burst during the cooking. The meringue went nice and dry on top, but there was some gooey bits in the middle. The pie shell was quite good too, albeit a bit on the crumbly side, but it certainly didn't go soggy as I feared. I think I'll make my own pie shell next time. But on a Wednesday after work, it was sufficiently quick to do as described above.

Fougasse!

Along with family celebration of me aging, I got a whole bunch of lovely presents. Among these were two books I'd had my eye on for a while - Richard Bertinet's Dough and Crust.. A you perhaps remember, I went to his place for two master classes last year. They were for Viennoiserie and Patisserie, but since I started making the kneadless bread last year, I've become a bit obsessed with bread.

So today I opened up the first book, Dough, and made one and a half batch of the basic recipe for white bread. The first recipe is for fougasse, something I first experienced in 2001, when I went to Montpellier to learn French. That was my last attempt of many to learn that language and I doubt I'll succeed, but the fougasse stayed with me. There was a bakery called Paul and they had something very misshapen and with olives in it. I loved it and had done some search on the internet, but all there seemed to be is focaccia.

Ingredients
7 g quick yeast
750 g white strong flour
20 g salt
525 g water

As Richard mentions, fougasse is from the same family of breads, but the way he does it, it is just beautiful to look at, not remotely close to what I bought in that bakery. So you can imagine my joy when the first thing I spot in my new book is Fougasse.

Now, I'm familiar with the method of working the dough, I've done it a few times on the brioches, but today I really didn't feel like slapping dough for 20 minutes, so I followed the instructions for the mixer, which worked ever so nicely.

I did end up over-resting the dough, as I made the saffron sponge cake in between. And I also had to take a break and watch the DVD that came with the book, just to make sure I did things correctly. The whole was surprisingly easy, I almost felt a bit cheated on that there was no shaping etc needed.

The only thing I didn't do (although I started on it) was to use a baking stone/thick tray upside down. I've yet to get hold of a baking stone, so I put in a baking tray, but once the fougasses were ready, I didn't have the confidence to slide them onto the trays, but used my thin baking sheets and put them in. Two things really - first of all, doing it with a swing would most likely have resulted in my beautifyl breads being quickly speeded onto the flame that comes out at the back, thus requiring a brand new oven most likely. Second, they would lose their beautiful leaf shape.



Sadly I was a bit stingy with flouring the baking sheets, so a couple of the breads had to be cut off when they were done.

What I also had confirmed is that my oven is unacceptably leaky. I generously sprayed with water just before and just after I put in each lot of fougasses and yet, I ended up with a sort of dull and very soft crust.



So definitely fine tuning required - put a pan with water in at the bottom and keep it there for the duration of the baking. Also move on to olive oil dough, I think that'll work rather nicely or put stuff in before the dough is left to rest - olives, sundried tomatoes, etc.

But I was unable to resist and had one for lunch and Lundulph and I had one each with our salad for dinner and we dipped in the oil from the pickled roasted chillies I made recently.



One word - YUMMY!

Cake-off

Once again a colleague had put forward the -off. This time sponge cake. Despite it's simplicity, it's well hard to think up a good one to do, there are so many variations!



When I mentioned it to my Mum, she suggested I try with saffron. This kind of appealed and I set about baking. The recipe is a very old one and for muffins actually, given to me by my good friend Doctor Cutie. She's always been a very good baker, so I have quite a few of her recipes.

Ingredients

75 g unstalted butter
1 dl milk or water
1 pinch saffron
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 dl caster sugar
2 eggs
3 dl plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
dissicated coconut for lining the tin
star anise for decoration

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven at 190 degrees C (gas mark 5).Melt the butter on low heat and set aside. Add the milk and stir in.


2. Put 0.5 dl of the sugar along with the saffron in a pestle and mortar and grind it as finely as possible. Then add to the milk and butter mixture and stir in. Add the vanilla extract as well.


3. Whisk the eggs and 1.5 dl of the sugar white and fluffy.


4. Mix the flour with the baking powder.


5. Pour the milk mixture slowly into the egg mixture, still whisking it in thoroughly.


6. Bit by bit, add the flour mixture.


7. Butter a cake tin of 20 cm diameter and line with dissicated coconut.


8. Pour the cake batter into the tin, carefully place the star anise on top, turn down the oven to 180 degrees C (gas mark 4) and put it in the middle of the oven.


9. Bake for about 30 minutes, check with a skewer for readiness.

As you can see my cake went a bit volcano and the reason for this is that I baked it a bit too hot - 195 degrees C, which causes the cake surface to set before the middle has heated up sufficiently and once it does, it expands and the only way to go is up in the middle of the cake, thus a volcano.

Due to various reasons I was not able to submit my cake into the competition, but will just bring it in to work anyway. It smells very nice, I suspect the star anise might have released some flavour as well.

Second Birthday Celebrations

Well, it's that time of the year again, when I officially go older overnight. Lundulph had made up plans for the day in question, sothe family celebrations took place a bit later.

This was the perfect opportunity to repeat the Stoichkov cake with an alternative filling and see if it would collapse again or not.

Well, it worked quite a treat!

I squashed the chocolate roll slices quite a bit and used the edge offcuts to fill in most of the gaps between. This resulted in running out of Swiss roll and not having any left for the bottom of the cake. So 4 Swiss rolls next time.



This time for the cream filling, I soaked 8 pieces of gelatine. The packet had 12 and was to set 1.7 l liquid. I soaked the gelatine in cool water. I used 500 ml ready fresh custard from Sainsbury's, which I heated up, while the gelatine was soaking. Then I squeezed out the water and dropped the gelatine in the custard. Note, that the custard never started steaming, so on low heat, just to heat it through. I also added 3 tbsp caster sugar, which dissolved nicely as well.

As expected, it went runny when the gelatine melted and I set it to the side. I then whipped 300 ml double cream together with 2 tbsp icing sugar. To stiff peaks, no less.

At this point the custard had cooled down sufficiently and I stirred in the cream with a spoon very gently until it was well mixed through. The cream was still fairly runny, but it was a good thing I started filling the cake, because towards the end, it had started to set. I managed to get in one layer of really large blueberries, then one layer of bananas and finally another layer of blueberries. Each with cream on either side and there wasn't much left in the pot to lick.

Then on with clingfilm and in the fridge to set overnight. When I poked it in the morning, it seemed pretty solid.

I was intending to use the remaining four pieces of gelatine for the glazing, but was too scared to take the cake out early and risk it collapsing. Now that I know that it'll hold, I'll do the glaze next time.



In fact it was ever so nice, although some cream seeped through a couple of holes I thought were too small. So even more squeezing of the Swiss roll next time as well.

Once we'd cut the cake up, it was sufficiently stiff to stay in shape, and most people had seconds, so overall a success!

Oeufs en Cocotte

Once again Angi of Rice and Wheat has been my inspiration when she made oeufs en cocotte. I've seen this before, but never really given it much thought and it sounded very easy to make.

Besides, a couple of weeks ago, I boiled a couple of eggs for breakfast, but sadly overdid them and we couldn't dip in the runny yolk. This method seemed a bit more easy to control.



So I buttered the ramekins, cracked an egg in each, poured a little bit of milk, sprinkled salt, pepper, paprika, sage and thyme and put in a few small pieces of reindeer salami that I bought during a recent visit to IKEA. And into the oven for 10 minutes. Well, at that point, there was a lot of still transparent egg white, so I left them in for another 10 minutes. Now they seemed to be ready and Lundulph and I sat down with our buttered bread sliced into strips - soldiers he calls them.

And still the eggs were way too runny. Another 8 minutes and the whites were at a good stage, but the yolks had gone a bit hard.

So I thought I'd look up what Delia had to say about it. She'd decorated with asparagus tips, so that's a thing to try. But mainly she recommends a bain marie in the oven for these, this will give a quicker heat transfer, but hopefully also ensure that the yolk remains runny.

Overall, it was very tasty and a definite repeat.

Belated Easter presents

After my escapades in Art You Can Eat last year, I decided to try my hand at these cuties. The concept of modelling chocolate was very novel as well, I have no confidence in working with chocolate, what with failing miserably with both the chocolate eclairs and the baumkuchen.

So this Easter I thought I'd do them for Lou and Falbala. In fact, Falbala specifically asked about it, just to be on the safe side, in case I'd forgotten.

As with New Year, Easter celebrations with the family were not to be and I haven't seen either of them since well before Easter. Which worked out rather well, I'd no time to make the bunnies then.

Now, Kinder eggs are easy to get hold of. But for the modelling chocolate, the recipe called for cocoa butter. I'm aware of it's magical powers, but finding some turned out tricky and the best I could find on the topic of substitutes was groundnut oil, though the article was talking about molecules etc, not how it behaves in cooking.

But a stroke of luck, waiting a few weeks and searching slightly differently cropped up this online chocolatier supplier - Squires Kitchen. So I quickly ordered 100 g of the precious material. It was pricey for sure.

Then I read the recipe - there was no need for the cocoa butter at all! Well, perhaps there is, depending on the type of chocolate, I remember from the patisserie class, though that was mostly on the percentage of cocoa. Never mind.

I did a search for modelling chocolate and most recipes were about chocolate and corn syrup, again something that I've not been able to find in the UK. But the recipe for the bunnies listed glucose and sugar and I also found another one, which had slightly different proportions and only used glucose. I opted for the bunny one, but I halved the amounts. The recipe didn't specify the type of sugar, so I went for caster sugar.

Melted the chocolate in a bain marie, then heated up water, glucose and sugar until the sugar had dissolved, then poured it into the chocolate and stirred. The mixture didn't go as solid as some of the instructions implied, but it did go a bit harder and developed the look and feel of soft toffee. I left it to cool, then put in the fridge. That was yesterday.

Today I took it out and it was pretty solid. Leaving it on the side while we had dinner didn't change that much, but as suggested, kneading softened it up quite nicely, to the point of melting it again, so hot tip is to only do this in a cold kitchen and on a cold surface if available and only use finger tips.

I weighed up pieces of 10 g for each foot, ear and tail. Once I'd shaped each foot and the tail, I put them together in a triangle on top of a wafer, then pushed the Kinder egg in place. With a tooth pick, I carefully shaped the toes, then put the bunnies in the fridge for a bit, while shaping the ears.

Then the ears went in the fridge as well and I put some water in a shallow pan and put a small ramekin in it with a few squares of white chocolate. While it melted, I made a small cone from baking paper and spooned in the melted chocolate. Then quickly drew eyes and teeth - the stuff is well runny when it's melted and even the cold Kinder egg didn't make it go solid. I was so worried that things would just go runny, but luckily they didn't. Into the fridge again, while preparing the same arrangement for dark chocolate, with which I drew the pupils of the eyes.

I made a couple of attempts at gluing the ears with the dark chocolate, but it just was too runny and didn't work at all. I had to wipe it off, then soften the bottom edge of each ear and push gently into the egg.


Hi, hi, blind and bald.

Finally I made four small balls from the modelling chocolate and put over the teeth as well. The bunnies are now in the fridge until Saturday, when I'll give them to Lou and Falbala. I hope they like them. Which is why I won't publish this post until then. I think next time, I'll make smaller and thinner ears and pre-paint the bunny faces.

Update March 2013:
It seems the website where I found the original recipe for modelling chocolate is no more, so here it is for milk chocolate
200 g milk chocolate
2.5 tbsp corn syrup

Break up the chocolate into pieces if necessary and melt either over a bain marie or in the microwave until completely melted.
Take care not to burn the chocolate if melting in the microwave - do it in 10 s steps on maximum power, stirring between each run.
When all the chocolate is melted, add the corn syrup and quickly stir together. It will seize up and look a bit grainy almost immediately. Keep going until the syrup is completely mixed in.
Place in a plastic food/freezer bag, squeeze out as much of the air as possible and tie it tightly, then let rest in the fridge for at least 2 h.
When ready to use it, take out from the fridge, and carefully work it until it becomes pliable and feels like plasticine. If very solid, cut up into smaller pieces first. Also take care to work it using only your fingers, so it doesn't melt and separate.

Going Bananas

Last Monday was the Early Spring Bank Holiday. This is to cover for the 1st May celebrations in other countries. Lundulph and I had a lot of DIY on the agenda, but decided to also have our first barbecue of the year.

I bought suitable vegetables - courgettes, bell peppers, aubergines and green chillies. And for Lundulph bamboo skewers with tiger prawns and a packet of scallops - he's been asking for these for ages. For myself, I don't eat seafood voluntarily, so I took out a packet of Frankfurters from the freezer - part of my emergency food collection. As I was wandering around the shop, I got the idea of putting bananas on the barbie as well, so I bought 4 - two to be done in their skin and two to be done in tin foil.

The peppers, aubergines and chillies were of course to be roasted to make kyopoolu and pickled roasted chillies.

I also bought a big packet of very nice looking button mushrooms and wild rocket, both of which I managed to forget in the fridge.

We originally planned to do the barbie on the Sunday, but due to various planning issues, this didn't happen. But Monday came and seemed decent enough despite being a bit overcast. Lundulph dug out our old rusty barbecue from under the jungle that now thrives where we plan to have our patio. Cleaned it up nicely and fired it up, while I prepared the food. I skewered the scallops on as well and cut the courgettes in fairly thin long slices.



The advantage with our tiny barbecue is that it's perfect for the two of us and Lundulph has now mastered the art of building it up properly and getting it to light up as it should.


Our Mr Blackbird came very close to inspect what we were up to, but he didn't like the piece of scallop that Lundulph gave him.

Needless to say, we had a very nice barbecue and also got the kyopoolu ingredients done and got to use Lundulph's barbecue wok for the chillies. It was a bit chilly and the wind started picking up, but we quite enjoyed ourselves, even opening up a bottle of bubbly.



As the final thing, I put on the four bananas - two in their skin and two peeled and wrapped in individual packets of foil. The skin bananas went black and I turned them to get the blackness on all sides. Didn't touch the foiled ones though. Once the skins were black through and through, I decided they were ready and Lundulph and I had one each. They were hot and gooey inside and I thought that it would be nice with a bit of sugar of some sort, they weren't that sweet. We ended up pouring maple syrup on them and that just worked perfectly.



We then moved on to the bananas in the foil. Because I hadn't turned the, they'd caramelised on the bottom and not in a bad way at all, on the contrary - it was just enough to give a bit extra sweetness and flavour and a bit of crispiness. These definitely won on account of taste and worked very nicely with the maple syrup as well. In fact Lundulph came up with a number of suggestions to try out next time - coat the banana with sugar or honey before wrapping in the foil, to give even more caramelisation. Or cutting along the length and putting bits of chocolate inside.

Looks-wise, the bananas in their skins were better. I'm sure this idea is not in any way unique, but I've never thought of barbecuing bananas before and I've never come across this concept before.



All in all, it made the perfect barbecue dessert. Next time must also try with ice cream...