Anniversary Issue

It’s been a year, twelve months, fifty-two weeks, whatever you want to call it, I have been blogging for that long, I didn’t realise it was sneaking up on me like that.

So how to mark this occasion? Well I could bake myself a cake, or take myself out for a meal, but I guess I’ll just keep on plugging away with the usual drivel.

Those of you who are keeping up will remember I spoke about Nature’s Kitchen, whose spice blends I discovered recently. Well I tried rubbing some of their Lemon Pepper mixture

on a couple of chicken fillets,

wrapping in breadcrumbs and baking,

 I didn’t have chance to take a picture of the cooked article as they went quickly, but did snap a record of one half piece.

I must recommend the mixture, take a look at http://www.naturekitchen.co.uk, for lots of ideas, next up I will be trying their Herb Salt on New Potatoes.

I’m off to the Devon Show this week, so must take plenty of money for the food tent!  

Took the dogs round Sharkham on Weds, loads of Bluebells and other wild flowers about.

Lots of White food on Wednesday, Yvonne’s a big fan of Cauliflower Cheese, whilst I prefer Mac’n’cheese myself. I didn’t realise that July 14^th was Mac and cheese day in the U.S.A. (Thanks Wiki)

So I made a single portion of each!

Is This Cauliflower Cheese?

Or is this Macaroni?

I had to do them in different shaped dishes to tell the difference.

Also I wanted to try a Focaccia recipe I had found that used mashed potato in it, and a hydration of just under 80%.

It was a little hard to knead, but a bit of stretch and fold got it into shape, I never cease to be amazed by the effectiveness of that manoeuvre. Also a lot of Olive Oil helped in handling.

After a rise of about 90 minutes, I dotted them with green pesto and garlic and baked for about an hour.

They didn’t really come out like I expected, but were delicious anyhow. The Olive Oil gave them a crisp, almost biscuit-like crust, and the mashed potato made them soft inside.

My sourdough is also improving,

Stay tuned for the foodie report from the show.

More Bits and Pieces

I thought I’d try a recipe from one of my vast collection of bread books, so for a start I got out Peter Reinharts “Artisan Bread Every Day”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peter-Reinharts-Artisan-Breads-Fast/dp/1580089984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336717263&sr=8-

and tried what he calls biscuits. Really they are a kind of rough croissant pastry in that you use grated butter and lots of laminating, but no yeast, only Baking Powder. As it’s bound to be copyright I mustn’t give the game away, but they were very nice. He also suggests various sweet or savoury fillings which I may try.

Biscuits

Last Friday, we found a local food market in Torquay, wow lots of good stuff, a particular mention to The sausage Shed http://www.thesausageshed.co.uk for their excellent Pork and Marmalade bangers, and a spice company from Falmouth in Cornwall  http://www.naturekitchen.co.uk who produce some interesting blends.

In the interests of research I have brought a load of stuff, which I will be testing over the coming weeks.

In the meantime I have bottled my wines,

Ready for Winter's Evenings

 clearing space for the summer’s crops, our Elder tree is just starting to produce flowers, it’s just a pity that the torrential rain has not let up, as I’m going to have a job drying any for later use.

Leading on from the bread course, I have made both soft rolls and baguettes, also a potato and caramelised onion bread, more of which later.

A while ago I brought some local Devon Ruby beef steaks, and we decided to have them on Monday, with potato wedges and balsamic onion relish. So I got the steaks out of the freezer and left them to defrost, when I opened the bag ready to marinate them, I found that I had got out half a kilo of braising steak out by mistake.

Spot the Difference - Braising Steak

Spot the Difference - Rump Steak

 Clearly this was not going to fry very well.

So I emptied the freezer and found the steaks, in an identical bag! It was hurriedly defrosted. Dinner was a little late but the wait was worth it. And I will slow cook the braising steak with veg for later

 I made pre-ferments for both Baguettes and Morning Rolls Tuesday evening, and by Wednesday morning they were both bubbling away.

Morning Rolls Pre-ferment



Baguette Pre-ferment



The finished articles looked alright and tasted excellent. It never ceases to amaze me how you can take the same 4 ingredients and make such a variety of things, all tasting completely different.

Baguette Dough

Rolls Ready to Bake



Baguettes Ready to Bake



Rolls

Baguettes

For my last trick, I had some caramelised onions left over, and I part roasted a potato (Cubed) in olive oil. I added these into half of the baguette dough as I folded it, until I had a loaf. Good with soup.

Dough with Potato

And Onion

Bread

I feel so much more confident with the bread making since I have been on the course, I have found it so much better learning from watching, as opposed to from a book, and you can compare results and discuss them.

Salmon with Shallots and Cider Vinegar is a thing I do inspired by Nigel Slater, basically it’s a bed of Shallots, New Potatoes, Raisons and Brown Sugar,

Shallots

And Potatoes

Raisins and Sugar

all mixed with garlic and oil and Cider Vinegar. This is slow roasted for about an hour and a half stirring a couple of times,

After 90 Minutes

Add Salmon

Et Voila!

you then place the salmon fillets on top and give it an extra twenty minutes. The veg are caramelised and when serving the juice is poured over the fish.

To use up the Roast Pork from Sunday I made a Stir Fry with Peppers, onion and soft noodles,

Shread the Pork

 for a sauce I mixed equal parts of Plum Sauce, Sweet Chilli and Crunchy Peanut Butter, adding this for the last bit of frying.

In our front garden there was a flower box attached to one of the posts on the deck.

However it started to fall apart this year,

so a replacement was required. It was actually dry on Thursday, so I broke up one of the old pallets that I had “acquired” and made a new one.

Unfortunately it started raining just as Yvonne was filling it with compost, so the planting will have to wait. It’s the same with all the rest of the plants, both the flowers and the veg, the weather has just been so bad that the conservatory is full of stuff waiting to go out.

There’s a lot going on.

After the bread course, and work, I’ve a lot of catching up to do; fortunately Thursday was a rainy day.

So we have, in no particular order:-

Grapefruit Marmalade

Burger Relish

Bread

Wine to bottle

Hot dogs for tea

So in a burst of multi-tasking, at 7 this morning, I cut up 6 Red Grapefruit,

minced a kilo of onions,

made a sourdough using 300g of Hortense

and took two baguettes from the freezer. The onions I salted, and left (to draw the water out). I will make the relish tomorrow.

Next up I boiled the blitzed grapefruit with water until the peel was soft, then added sugar and – well you know the rest.

Meanwhile, I stretched and folded the dough a couple of times, leaving it to rise in-between for 45 minutes each time.

While that was going on I bottled my Rhubarb wine, I will need the room soon, the Dandelion and the Elderflower are still fermenting, so I can’t rack them for a while.

Marmalade bottled, and by mid afternoon the bread was in the oven. Using my shiny new thermometer, I gave it 30 minutes and found the internal temperature to be 91 degrees, after a further five minutes, it was 97, job done.

 The bread has come out SO much better now that I have been on the course.

The baguettes were from the course, I brought so many home, now I needed fried onions, and as always I added brown sugar to them whilst frying.

Good Hot dogs

To finish the relish, next morning I drained and fried the onions, together with a pepper and an apple, with a little Cider vinegar and brown sugar.

The recipe is from Jill Nice's excellent book “Preserves”, and is easy to follow. Although she uses white sugar, I think that brown gives a better colour. It will be ready in about a fortnight; as long as the rain has stopped we can get the BBQ out.

I have a new toy,

Five Pounds in a charity shop, I feel a casserole coming on.