Dinner at the Chapel

Sour dough stage 1

Sour dough has been on my hit list for a very long time, but its one of those things that you need to be in the right place for, psychologically that is; for me anyway. This is because it needs effort, and regular intervention and it takes time, and when I am not in the mood, I can't pay it enough attention, and have failed before at making it.

So I have been in a super cooking mood in the past few weeks, and then on Sunday night I was watching River Cottage bread, and immediately I had to go and make the sour dough starter there and then, thinking that I could make bread the following weekend because the starter takes a week - 10 days.

On the programme, Hugh chucked in a peice of rhubarb into the starter to get the acidity up, to kick start the dough, the only thing I had that was acidic was fresh pineapple so I sliced a chunk of and chucked it in...nothing to loose I thought, its only a bit of flour and water!

So I started with a plastic bowl, 100gms of flour and 150mls of water, whisked it up, and chucked in the pineapple (skin off obviously)

Monday morning I couldn't wait to check it, but was resigned to the fact it probably looked like it did the night before, but incredibly it was bubbling on top, that was the moment I became obsessed with my sour dough starter!.

I fished out the pineapple, and chucked it away, and then everyday (next 4 days), scooped out a glass of the starter threw it away (as per instructions) and added fresh flour and water.

By now its going quite mad, way better than I was expecting so early on in the process, so I thought 'what the hell', with the glassful I throw away I'll see if its good enough to make bread with. So I am....

Stage one is to make a sponge and leave it over night....this is what my sponge looked like this morning:

Then you add more flour, knead it and you get your dough:

Its super sticky though and takes a bit of effort, BUT it smells yummy. This is only stage 1, as this has to rise all day, then get knocked back and have another rising...but I'll be posting pics :D

 ETA....

This is the dough 1.5 hours later....amazing!

 

Added later.... this was the rather incredible result :)

Green tea Cookies

Yesterday my order of Sencha powder arrived, (green tea powder) something I have wanted to try for a really long time. It smells divine, and comes in a cute little tin that looks awesome in my pantry cupboard...yes I am shallow when it comes to packaging!

I googled green tea recipes and found this one which looked pretty simple. I didn't have any white chocolate because SOMEONE ate it and didn't tell me, but I did have dark chocolate so used that instead. The result was a nice pairing of flavour, but the chocolate somewhat overpowers the delicate taste of the green tea, so I understand why white chocolate is preferred.

The dough is scarily bright green, and so are the cookies, they would be awesome for children, and completely natural!

I love them, I cooked one roll, and then cut up the second log into pieces for freezing, I love freezer cookies, perfect for a late night snack or treat for unexpected guests!

Japanese Cheesecake

When I saw this recipe about a year ago on the Green Cilantro Blog, I added it to my mental list to cook in the future, the light fluffy texture intrigued me, not to mention the fact that I LOVE cheesecake.

So after visiting Germany a few weeks ago, and eating lots of cheesecake, I was in the mood to make one, after pouring over my new German cook book, I couldn't stop thinking about the one I had seen and decided to have a crack at it.

The recipe is not the simplest, but its good and it makes the most incredibly fluffy light cheesecake, I need more practice at this because I got alot of cracks, but I really don't mind practicing this one :)

Moroccan Chichen with saffron Honey jam - Diana Henry

My favourite food writer at the moment is Diana Henry, her books are so good to read that I read them from cover to cover, each chapter has a tantalising introduction, and each recipe has an entrance in which means I read the recipes all the way through. I am transported to another world when I read her books. Currently I am reading 'Crazy water, Pickled Lemons' and its beautiful, engaging and the recipes are delicious.

This evening I cooked Moroccan chicken with saffron honey jam, served with home made flat breads.

If you haven't read her books I implore you to get them, they are in the list of my top 5 cook books....

Moroccan Chicken...

Flat breads...also in the book and perfect accompaniment:

 

Blackberry Jam, mirabelle plum compote and peanut butter granola

One thing I love the most is making food which feels super indulgent for free, well nearly free.

It seems a little early for blackberries, but here in the cotswolds there are a tonne of them ripe already with alot to come.

Yesterday afternoon was spent picking blackberries and any other free fruit I could find. I managed to get 2.5 kilos of blackberries and made some jam....

There was about 2 kilos of jam in the end...I am going to have to think of ways of using it!!!

I also picked loads of mirabelle plums (little yellow sweet plums) I can see why they might not be available commercially, they are small with stones, so are a faff, BUT they taste wonderful, and super delicious stewed with blackberries and some vanilla sugar. I had the compote for breakfast with home made peanut butter granola...which IS yum!

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The Granola was super easy to make:

Preheat over to 200 degrees

In a pan, put a glug of olive oil, a table spoon of honey, a table spoon of golden syrup, big table spoon of peanut butter (I used smooth)  melt it all together and then add oats keep on stirring them in until you have enough in there to absorb the mixter and its sort of crumbly (I will make it again and do proper quantities next time lol)

The chop up some hazel nuts or nuts you like and spread the mixture in a dish and bake in oven for about 10 minutes then take it out and give it a stir to break it up, and then put it back in, keep doing this until its nice and crispy.

Then let it cool and store in a airtight container, good for breakfasts or makes a nice instant crumble topping for fruit.

Been a travelling and fattening up!!

So....guess what my favourite thing about traveling is? Its the food I reckon....Its the food, then trying to find the recipes for the food, and then buying the things to make the food to take home with me so I can attempt a good stab at it.

This trip was a 2 week long business trip...first to Italy and then to the South of France, which was a total food fest :)

When ever travelling I always like to make sure I try something I have never had before...this has led to me eating things which might not be very urm...politically correct to some peeps, so I shall refrain from listing them all, but perhaps my proudest moment was the guinea pig salad I had in Peru. I didn't like it much but I ate it and thought it would make a good story someday for my grand children...who hopefully won't have any furry pets....

This trips extravaganza was Gesier's - turkey gizzard...in a salad, and it was so good I ate it 4 times over the course of 5 days in france lol! It seems however that I failed to take a photo....

Secondly I had supions...baby squids...I am a squid lover it has to be said, but the name....I love the name supions....

Rubbish pic...but it was taken on my iphone.

Also ate religeuse....which are like choux buns with creme patisserie filling, they are meant to be nuns, lol, I first had one of these when I was 13 on my french exchange, and I have never forgotten how good it tasted.

Those are just a few treats I ate, but suffice to say I am always inspired to cook when I get home from my travels. This time I was lucky because I went to France in my Van, which meant I could fill it up with as much French ingredients and wine as I could manage. I won't tell you how many bottles of wine I purchased, you would think I was alcoholic, but mainly its for dinners/cooking and for presents...so I am sure it will go fairly quickly lol!

Now the ingredients leads me onto the next conundrum. I love flour...the different types, the protein contents and ash levels and how it effects the dough, and yes I read extensively about flours, sad I know, but I have an obsession with substituting ingredients to get the authentic effect..I mean how many times have you come home from holiday and cooked something and it just doesn't taste the same....its not just because its not accompanied by a tequila, the beach and some sunburn, its because probably the ingredients are not the same...remotely....I know this because of my obsession with pizza bases and my eternal quest to get super thin ones like in Italy, its all about the protein and ash levels in the flour! I will write more about this another time, but suffice to say, I purchased about 6 kilos of french flour, so that I could compare them the the british versions to find out what matches the best for patisseries etc.

I also bought 3 cooking books in French...yup, and no I don't speak french that well...but strangely I learn fast when reading cooking books...who knew huh? Perhaps I should try and learn all languages this way!

I bought  bread machine book...cause it looked awesome...and 2 patisserie books. So far from one of the patisserie books I have made 3 things, an almond an apricot tart, creme patisserie....OMG how easy is this??? super easy...will translate recipe and take pics etc soon, I promise, and something else but I forget now...

So now I am being boring, there are no pictures and thats what peeps want...but if you are like me and you are flour obsessed, the table at the bottom is quite interesting: scrap that, this is much better...

I need to do some more research and compare then to the flours I have...I will write a post for me more than anything soon. I am about to make some bread from the book 'du bon Pain' which is called Pain Marguerite, it has kamut flour in it and I have some.... I'll let you know how I get on ;)

Chow!

 

 

Wild Rose petal jelly and elderflower champagne

Today involved some awesome foraging and cooking fun stuff.

We decided that we wanted to make rose petal Jelly and some elderflower champagne, especially as I found a pink elder flower bush :)

So firstly I used this recipe for the elderflower champagne and this is how its looking so far...all I would say, is that it wasn't easy to get rid of all the bugs...this is the first time I have tried it, so it might take a few attempts before I get it right...

I am hoping the pink will make it pink...I am also very grateful for having a load of cava bottles from my book launch party!

SO secondly I have always wanted to collect wild rose petals and make rose petal jelly....and today we spent 2 hours searching for wild roses and we managed it! We did include 3 red roses to add to the colour, but apart from that the rest were all wild...very satisfying...

So the recipe we used was from a book called Herb Sufficient by Christina Stapley, its an interesting book with alot of things in it...the basic recipe was:

90ish grams of rose petals (the more fragrant the better)

425ml cold water

100ml of liquid pectin

juice of 1/2 a lemon

900g of sugar

3 jam jars which equal about 1 litre in total or 2 kilner jars of 500ml each.

 
This is what they looked like. I used my Le Crueset heavy pan to do this as it kept the temp controlled better...

You pop the petals and the water in the pan and warm it up, BUT  don't boil it, or even simmer it, ist just below that, keep the lid on as you want to keep all the moisture in.

set the pan aside and leave to cool for 2 hours.

The petals will have lost all the colour, and the fragrance will be in the liquid.

Strain them, and then give the petals a good squeeze to get all of the moisture out, return the liquid to the pan and add the lemon juice.

Gently warm it, whilst adding the sugar until its all desolved, then heat it so its boiling rapidly, add the pectin and boil for 2 minutes, then pop in jars....

Apple cinnamen rolls...

I should really go to work rather than posting this, but hey, I never seem to record my triumps, cause they get eaten so quick!

So this recipe is an adaption of this on Green cilantro's blog I made the dough with a slight vatiation, and also used a chunky apples instead of a mushier sauce, and no syrup.

They are absolutely delicious...I will write the recipe here, but I need to calculate the percentages into grams.

It started off like this:

 to this:

to this:

To this  ;)

Caraway cake and growing things to eat

I have this little tiny book called 'Food from the wild', which is a proper old fashioned foraging book, and I love reading it because I love that kind of stuff. I was reading about caraway growing in the wild, and I am going to see if I can grow some of my own, however there was a tiny and brief recipe for seed cake....sounded a bit intriguing, so I thought I would have a go...I made it and its really good, the caraway has a wonderful flavour in the cake.

I will pop the recipe here as it was very vague and so I had to guess quite alot of it and yes the little black things are seeds!:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees.

Butter a tin, I used tin where the bottom comes out, which is approximately 25cm in diameter.

Ingredients:

4 Eggs

250gms Plain Flour

250gms Butter

250gms Sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 Heaped desert spoon of cornflour

1 heaped teaspoon of caraway seeds

Pinch of salt

Sieve the flours together with the baking powder and salt, I did this a few times to make sure it was well aerated and blended, I hate the taste of baking powder if its not mixed in properly. Then add the caraway seeds.

The cream the butter and sugar until pale and then whisk in the eggs.

Fold in the flour gently into the mixture.

Pop it into the tin and into the over, turn it down to 180 and then cook for about 35 minutes, until golden brown and the knife comes out clean when you pop it in the cake.

The next bit of the blog is linked to cooking, kind of ;) I love growing stuff to eat, I don't think I have ever tried to grow anything that can't be used in cooking....

I went to the garden centre to see if they had some citrus trees because have a lovely warm conservatory type thing on my house and it would be perfect for a lemon tree, but all the trees in the garden centre were non edible, so to my disgust I just picked up an aubergine and squash plant and a few packs of seeds, one being swiss chard (it looked easy to grow) and lemon grass, which is slightly unusual so I thought I would try it. After looking at the pots I was deterred because its so costly, I decided I would find something suitable at home to house my seeds.

I came up with the idea of egg boxes:

I will let you know if anything happens....

Oh and as for the lemon tree...I cut up a lemon and have followed these instructions....

 

Wild Garlic Pesto

I decided that foraging for food is much more fun that going to the supermarket and its also something I want to learn about alot more, so the only way to learn is to experiment.

Wild garlic is still in season, but I don't think for long, the great thing about the leaves is that you can freeze them, so you can pick loads and loads and loads and keep them, as they are quite strong so you don't need loads for a dish.

I think the flowers would be amazing in things too, and actually coated in a thin batter and fried would be lush, I intent to try this before the garlic season is over.

So I think the wild garlic I have is the ramsons type. I picked about a kilo and then froze it, so I could just take plenty when I needed it, its a bit like spinach, so it disolves really quickly, so you can use it straight from the freezer.

So to the recipe....

This makes plenty for 2 people.

A big handful/bunch of wild garlic,

75ml olive oil

25 - 30 gms of grated parmesan

a handful of chopped walnuts

half a teaspoon of sugar

3/4 of a teaspoon of salt.

Put the olive oil into a bowl and pop in the garlic leaves, (stems are ok too, they are well tasty).

Blend them with the olive oil with a blitzer, and then add the walnuts and blitz these too.

Stir in the cheese, and sugar, and then add salt and pepper to taste.

You may want to add more cheese and salt.

Stir into hot pasta, if you find the taste too strong, it is softened with a dash of cream.