Gooseberry Fool Recipe

We've finally got something of a harvest from our collection of gooseberry bushes this year.  We have one called Invicta which is a green-skinned variety, and 2 Hinnonmaki Red, which are, unsurprisingly, red-skinned.  We also have another bush picked up cheap from our local diy store, but I'm not sure what it is yet - it's only a baby and hasn't fruited this year.


To celebrate the harvest we had gooseberry fool as our Sunday lunch treat today.  Here's the lovely simple recipe that we used, which is based on the one in Good Things by Jane Grigson.

Gooseberry Fool


350g gooseberries 
50g butter
sugar to taste
300ml double cream


Top and tail the gooseberries (a yawn but it'll be worth it in the end).  Place in a lidded pan with the butter over a low heat and cook until the gooseberries are soft.  Stir and a squish the gooseberries.  DO NOT sieve the gooseberries - the skins are a vital part of the flavour of the fool, and you really don't notice them in the finished dish.  Add sugar a tablespoon at a time until the fruit is sweetened to your taste.  Set aside to cool.


When the gooseberries are at room temperature, lightly whip the cream until it has very soft peaks, then gently stir in the fruit.  Pile the mixture into a dish/dishes and put them in your fridge until you need them - or, if you can't wait, eat straight away.  If you have the time and inclination, some crunchy almond or shortbread biscuits  are delicious with this.


If you are lucky enough to have a good supply of gooseberries this year, and you really hate topping and tailing, then I recommend this delicious recipe for Gooseberry Curd.  Yum..

Sourdough Rhubarb Kuchen

I have a passion for those delicious German cakes that consist of a base of rich bread dough, a lovely layer of fruit, and a sweet crunchy buttery topping.  I've made some delicious versions over the years - Nigella Lawson has a really good Apple and Blackberry Kuchen in Nigella Bites, for instance - but I'm so into making naturally leavened bread these days that I really wanted to create something with a sourdough base.  I was also curious to see if it was possible to make an enriched sourdough, using egg and milk in the dough.  I think it works very well - but here's my recipe - have a go and tell me what you think.


Ingredients
(these are the totals - check the recipe to see how much you need to use at each stage)


100g wheat sourdough starter (mine is made according to the instructions in Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley)
100g plain wholemeal flour
200g strong white flour
1egg
80g milk
3g salt
250g rhubarb
100g plain flour
75g butter
100g granulated sugar


Stage 1
First you need to wake up your sourdough starter.  Put 100g of starter in a bowl and add 50g of strong white flour and 50g of plain wholemeal flour and 60g of lukewarm water.  Cover and leave in a warm place for 3-4 hours.


Stage 2
Mix together 150g strong white flour, 50g wholemeal flour, 3g salt, 1 egg and 80g milk and knead until you have nice soft dough (7-8 minutes, or quicker in a mixer with a dough hook).  Then add all the leaven from the first stage and knead together until soft and elastic.  If the dough is very sticky after a couple of minutes kneading then add an extra spoonful of flour.  Now cover the bowl and leave the dough to rest and relax for an hour.


Stage 3
Whilst your dough is resting prepare your toppings.  Wash and slice 250g of rhubarb thinly (0.5cm slices) on the diagonal, then put aside.  In a small bowl rub together 100g plain white flour (or wholemeal if you prefer) and 75g butter until you have a lovely lumpy crumble-type mixure.  Stir in a generous 100g of sugar - granulated is fine here and gives a nice crunchy texture.  You do need quite a bit of sugar to counteract the sourness of the rhubarb - if you are using a sweeter fruit (dessert plums would be delicious for instance) then use less sugar.  Line a large baking tin or tray with baking parchment.  I use a roasting tin that measures 30x25cm that works really well - I push the dough right up to the edges.


Stage 4
Chuck your dough onto your prepared tray and press it out so you have a rectangular shape that measures around 30x25cm - it really helps to wet your hands first!  Cover the surface with rhubarb and then sprinkle your crumbly topping over the top.  Put the tray into a large carrier bag (making sure the bag is nowhere near your kuchen or you will have a very sticky incident) and leave for about 2 hours to rise and become puffy.  About 90 minutes into the rising time pre-heat your oven to gas mark 5/190C.


Stage 5
Bake for around 40 minutes until the bread base is cooked through and the crumble topping is golden brown.


Leave to cool and then slice into squares & store in an airtight tin.  This is delicious for breakfast and keeps well for 2 or 3 days.

Quick Rye Pancakes

These are a popular breakfast treat here. I like them particularly because they don't use any raising agents like bicarbonate of soda or baking powder - they rely entirely on egg whites to give them their light fluffy texture.

The recipe is taken from John Seymour's classic work The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency - although he calls them dropscones. I call them pancakes because I am sure that if I called them drop scones my boys wouldn't touch them. They're pancakes in the American sense of the word - small, thick and fluffy.. Seymour's introduction to the recipe always makes me smile, because he sounds like such a nice chap. He says:

These really are mouth watering, and if you, or your lady, can make them when your kids have their friends round, so much the better.

Seymour was a hugely influential figure in the self-sufficiency movement who passed away in 2004. You can read more about his fascinating life on his family's website.

Anyway - to the recipe. Seymour's version specifies using all rye flour, but I use half plain wholemeal because of my fussy fussy children who don't like pancakes 'with bits'... They're equally delicious (to bit eaters!) either way.

Rye Pancakes

100g rye flour (or 50g rye and 50g plain wholemeal flour)

2 eggs

pinch of salt

around 150ml milk

Grease a griddle or large frying pan and put it on to pre-heat.

Separate the eggs with the whites in a small bowl and the yolks in a larger bowl.

Add the other ingredients to the yolks in the bowl and mix together thoroughly.

Beat the egg whites until they form peaks. Then first fold one tablespoon of the egg whites very gently into the main mixture. When this has loosened it a little, very gently fold and stir in the rest of the egg whites.

Add a large tablespoon of this mixture to the griddle pan - you'll probably fit three or four on. Cook for about a minute, then turn and cook the other side for about a minute.

Keep them warm in a little foil parcel & then serve with jam, honey, maple syrup, sliced banana, whatever you like, really.

Hot Buns

Just time to make March look a little more respectable by slipping this recipe in before we end up in April. I'm not quite sure where this month has gone, really, but this is a nice one to finish it with.

It's a lovely recipe for hot cross buns, as I didn't put the crosses on them I've called them 'hot buns'. I used the recipe from The Dairy Book of British Food, published in 1988 by the now-defunct Milk Marketing Board for 'British Food & Farming Year', apparently.

I'm sure you used to be able to get MMB cookbooks from your milkman - one of the reasons I'm fond of this one is that my mum gave me a copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery when I left home for university many years ago (it's still in print, from these people now). My dad gave me the rather more dashing Len Deighton books. But the dairy one was a good, basic book and its yellow cover still reminds me of my first steps in cooking. They make a nice change: a lot of the recipes are a bit of their time, but they're refreshingly free of all the aspirational lifestyle-y guff that pads out so many of today's cookery books.

Anyway, that's enough blather - here's the recipe. It's pretty much as given in the book, except that I included sultanas instead of currants (as our two kids prefer them) & left out the chopped peel (as our two really don't like it). I also cut down the salt - the original recipe calls for a teaspoon.

Here's what you'll need:

1.5 tsp dried yeast (or 15g fresh)
300ml lukewarm milk
450g strong white bread flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50g caster sugar
50g butter
80g sultanas
1 egg, beaten

For crosses:
50g plain flour
25g butter

For the glaze:
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp caster sugar

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. If, like me, you're using dried yeast, then sprinkle it & mix into the milk with about 1 tsp of the sugar & leave it for 10-15 minutes somewhere warm.

Put the flour, salt, spices & sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter into chunks, add it to the bowl, and rub it in. An easy way to do this is to give it a gentle whizz in a mixer. Then add the dried fruit & the peel too, if you're using it.

Make a well in the centre, add the beaten egg & milk and yeast mixture and stir it together until you get quite a soft, sticky dough.

Turn this out onto a well floured surface. I tried this one in the mixer with a dough hook, but it didn't work as well as kneading by hand. So knead it for about 10 minutes until it's soft but not sticky (leaves your hands clean) and it's nice and stretchy. I ended up adding quite a bit of flour as I kneaded.

Put your dough into a clean bowl (big enough for it to double in size), cover with a polythene bag or wet tea towel and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour. It should start like this:



And then double in size to this:



Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead again, this time just for about 3 minutes.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. I am rubbish at this, as you can tell below. I always end up with a noticeable variety of sizes.. Not that it really matters. Then form each piece into a bun shape (try tucking the edges under and then shaping with your hand) and put them on floured baking parchment on a baking sheet with plenty of room for expansion.

Leave for 30 minutes in a warm place, with a polythene bag tented over the top, and they'll roughly double in size:



While they're rising, pre-heat your oven to 190C (gas mark 5).

You can make crosses to turn them into hot cross buns. Rub together the 50g of plain flour & 25g of butter until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Add enough water to bring it together and knead gently. Roll it thinly and cut strips that you can make into a cross shape - wet them slightly on the back to attach them to the top of your buns.

Bake them at 190c (gas mark 5) for 15-20 minutes until they're a nice golden-brown colour.

While they're baking, make the glaze by heating the milk, water and sugar together. So that when they're done you can brush each one as you transfer them to a wire rack for cooling:



I made these last night for breakfast this morning. They were delicious both warm and cold and were very popular indeed.

Splat Buns - or Baps to You and Me..

Woops - missed last week, naughty! We did actually make some Barm Brack, but I wasn't particularly happy with how it turned out so didn't bother to blog it. That's one for a bit more experimenting I think.

This week's recipe is from the brilliant Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley. I can't recommend this book highly enough - since reading it I've finally got my head round how making bread actually works. I haven't by any means made every recipe in the book, but the fact that I can now make wheat and rye sourdoughs with ease and have a sourdough leaven happily living in my fridge, makes it worth every penny we paid for it. Can't tell you how my manky, evil-smelling sourdough starters I have thrown away in the past...

This recipe for Baps is also an absolute winner. It never fails - everyone who has tried them has been impressed and there have been many requests for the recipe. So I thought it was about time I got round to it.

Some notes on the recipe:
Whitley suggests using all strong wholemeal flour - we do this sometimes, but we usually white flour too, so that's what I've give quantities for here. We've also tried it with half wholemeal spelt and half strong white flour - this makes delicious baps which rise a little more quickly.

Whitley is very specific about his water temperatures - which is extremely comforting when you are beginning with sourdough, but I haven't found it vital with baps, so I'm not bothering with that here. One more thing - he specifically says that the dough should not be kneaded after it's first rise - but we have found that if it is kneaded fairly thoroughly at that stage (err, thrown around the room - why do you think we call them splat buns?) it actually seems to give the baps a much better final texture.

Splat Buns (Baps) based on a recipe by Andrew Whitley

5g dried yeast
390g lukewarm water
300g stoneground strong wholemeal flour
300g strong white flour
5g salt
30g butter, lard or olive oil

Put the lukewarm water in a large bowl (or your food mixer bowl), add the dried yeast and stir it around with your fork to dissolve it. Add the flour, the salt and fat (we always use farmouse butter from Westry Roberts - gorgeous stuff). Knead (or use your mixer) until, as Whitley puts it 'the gluten [is] properly developed' - that is until the mixture is no longer very sticky, and springs back when you poke it.

Then cover your mixing bowl with a damp cloth (another Whitley no-no - but it works for me...) and put it in a warmish place for 1-2 hours. Towards the end of that period get some flour ready in a small bowl, flour your work surface a little bit, and get a baking tray ready (just lined with baking parchment/sprinkle with flour).

Then get the dough and bang it around a bit (it helps to get some help from small children at this stage, but it's not vital) and divide it into 12 equal-ish sized pieces. Mould each piece into a ball, pulling the dough round tightly to form a smooth rounded top and then dip them in a little flour before putting them on the baking tray, about 2cm apart (see picture).

Then put the whole tray in to a large carrier bag (Bag for Life again), making sure that the buns are in no danger of touching the bag, even after they've risen. Put this into a warm place for the buns to rise for about 30-45 minutes.

Sometime during this period pre-heat your oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8 - (it really depends on how long it takes your oven to do this - it'll become second nature). When the buns have risen so that they are just touching each other - see picture - put them in the oven for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 210C/Gas 7 for a further 7-12 minutes.

When you're happy that they're done, remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Hope you enjoy these baps as much as we do. If you want to see Whitley's original recipe then it here on Google Books. There's also a recipe for overnight baps (which have an even better flavour & are more easily digested) included here in his article Let's Have Some Decent Bread in Resurgence Magazine.

Our Breakfast Buns

This is another recipe using buttermilk so I hope you've found your supply by now! This recipe has an interesting twist - the flour is soaked overnight in buttermilk before being baked. I first encountered this idea in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Her theories are a bit too complicated for me to go into now (buy or borrow her book - it's well worth a read) but one of her ideas is that soaking grains before use (as practised in many traditional cultures) makes them more easily digested and makes their nutritional content more easily available.

We call these Breakfast Buns at home because that's when we usually have them - they make a great weekend treat. The recipe is very much like that for buttermilk scones - but they are more moist and lighter than ordinary scones. They keep better too - although if your family are anything like mine, there wont be any left to keep. They also, I assume because of the soaking process, need considerably less bicarbonate of soda than ordinary scones require.

Our Breakfast Buns

325g plain wholemeal flour (spelt makes a brilliant alternative)

90g chilled butter, in cubes

200ml buttermilk (maybe a little more)

100g (very approximate!) plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

pinch of salt

Put the flour in a large non-metallic bowl. Add the cubed butter and rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs (see picture). Or use a food mixer of course!

Add the buttermilk and stir in with the flat blade of a knife (this bit is definitely better done by hand rather than machine). You are aiming for a mixture like a very wet bread dough - if your mixture isn't sticky, add a little bit more buttermilk. You need something that looks like this:

Cover the bowl with a plate, clingfilm or a plastic bag and leave overnight at room temperature.

The next day, put your oven on to 220C (Gas 7). Line a baking tray with baking parchment and get a round pastry cutter ready - I use a 6cm cutter. Add the salt and bicarbonate of soda to the dough and then add enough plain white flour to make the dough into a rollable state, like this:

I find the amount required can vary wildly - start with a couple of tablespoons and add more as required. Start mixing with a knife and continue with your hands.

Flour your work surface and use your hands to flatten the dough into a round disc about 2.5cm (1 inch) thick. Cut out rounds with your pastry cutter and transfer to your baking tray - they can be pretty close together - like this:

Keep cutting and re-rolling the dough until it's all used up - I can usually get around 14-17 buns from the mixture.

Put them in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool a little on the tray then transfer to a cooling rack. Eat quickly with lots of butter, and spread with honey, jam or (especially) marmalade.

It's Shrove Tuesday today and we forgot to have pancakes this morning - so we'll have some after dinner I think. Our boys prefer thick American style pancakes - which is good because I am useless at making the thin kind - I think you need a really good frying pan too. We like to use the banana and buttermilk pancake recipe, as blogged here by Kit in South Africa, from Nigella Lawson's Feast - they're quick and easy to do, and I like to tell myself that the banana is getting a little bit of extra nutrition into their tummies. And, of course, it's another use for buttermilk... It really is a useful thing to have in your fridge!

Irish Wholemeal Soda Bread

A very tasty, non-yeasted, quick to make loaf this week. Soda bread is a traditional bread in Ireland, and is brilliant if you need bread at the last minute, because it only takes an hour to make from start to finish.

Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is used as the leaven (raising agent) rather than yeast, and buttermilk is the traditional liquid component. Buttermilk can be hard to get hold of, but once you have some, it is very easy to maintain a supply (see below for information about this).

The 1st time I made soda bread the result was pretty unpleasant - it was very heavy and really tasted nothing like the wonderful versions I had had on holiday in south-west Ireland. This, much more successful recipe, is taken from Rick Stein's Food Heroes - Another Helping. It has more white flour than the recipe I used first time round, I've learned an important lesson - it's important not to over-mix the dough, as Rick Stein points out, very little kneading is required.

A final note before you get started - you need ordinary plain flour to make soda bread - bread flours are no good for this because the gluten content is too high.

Wholemeal Irish Soda Bread

275g stoneground wholemeal flour

275g plain white flour (plus a little extra for kneading)

1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1 tsp salt

450ml buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre, pour in the buttermilk and mix together (note: I use a knife and then my hands) to make a soft but not too sticky dough. Add a little more buttermilk if the dough seems a bit dry.

Turn the mixture out on to a lightly floured surface and knead lightly and very briefly into a round. Flip the dough over and gently flatten in into a disc about 4cm (1 inch) thick. Lightly dust a large baking sheet with flour (note: I use baking parchment), place the dough on it and then, using a large knife, cut a large cross in the top, almost all the way through the dough. Stab each quarter once in the centre with the point of the knife.

Bake the loaf on the middle shelf of the oven for 15 minutes, the lower the oven temperature to 200C/Gas Mark 6 and bake for a further 20-25 minutes, until it sounds hollow when you tap the base. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before serving.

*****

Soda bread is very definitely best eaten on the day it was made - although it isn't bad toasted the next day (although the slices can be an odd shape for a toaster!). We like it with soup or cheese, but it is particularly good with fishy things like gravadlax, smoked salmon and my personal favourite, rollmops.

Buttermilk

I think a bit of confusion surrounds buttermilk. There are 2 products called buttermilk - one is the by-product of butter making - the liquid that remains after cream has been churned into butter. This is pretty much unobtainable, although we've been lucky enough to get it at Farmers' Markets in the past. The second, more widely available version, is a cultured milk product similar to yogurt. It's available in bigger supermarkets - the brand I have seen most frequently is Yoplait.

Once you have bought buttermilk it is easy to keep a supply on hand indefinitely. All you need to do is add a little buttermilk to ordinary milk (in the proportion 1 part buttermilk to 4 parts milk) and leave at room temperature for around 12-18 hours. You can use a bowl covered with a plate or cloth for this, but the easiest container for this is a a clip-top preserving jar (the type with a rubber sealing ring). Once the mixture has thickened you can transfer it to your fridge where it will keep for a week to 10 days.

There are other uses for buttermilk besides this delicious bread. To make creme fraiche just add 3 tbsp of buttermilk to about 200 ml of double cream. Leave at room temp and after 12-18 hours you will have a delicious creamy creme fraiche. Or, leave 1 litre of buttermilk at room temperature in a large clip top preserving jar until it separates into curds (solid white stuff) and whey (liquid). Line a sieve with muslin or folded kitchen paper and pour in the buttermilk. Then tie up the white solids in the cloth and suspend overnight to let more liquid drip out. After the curds have drained you will be left with absolutely delicious creamy curd cheese. Try this mixed with garlic and fresh herbs and spread it on your soda bread. Scrumptious.

Pitta Bread

Pittas are really versatile and good fun to make yourself. Even better, they freeze well, so you can make a big batch of them every so often and have stacks in. There are lots of recipes for pitta breads easily accessible from Google; Delia Smith has a good one too, but she uses a breadmaker to make the dough. This one is based on the recipe by Madhur Jaffrey in her Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, with a few tweaks here and there.

Ingredients:

250g strong white bread flour

200g plain wholemeal flour

1tsp sea salt

1 tbsp olive oil

250g lukewarm water

2 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp sugar

Method:

Mix together with your hands in a large bowl:

250g strong white bread
200g plain wholemeal
1 tsp sea salt

Then dissolve in 50g hand-warm water in a small bowl or glass:

2 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar

- and leave it for 5-6 minutes.

Make a well in the flour, add the yeast mixture, 1 tbsp olive oil and 200g hand-warm water. Mix it together until it comes together in a ball and the sides of the bowl are clean. You'll probably have to add some more lukewarm water to bring it together - about 2-3 tbsp probably.

Turn it out onto a clean, dry surface and knead for 10 minutes until you've got a smooth and stretchy dough. Brush the large bowl with a little olive oil, put the dough in, cover it with a damp cloth and leave to rise somewhere warm for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Make sure your bowl is big enough for it to double in size! I used a smallish glass bowl for these before and after photos and the risen dough nearly took over the kitchen:



Once it's risen, knock it down and knead it again until it's nice and smooth. On a clean, floured surface roll it out into a sausage shape. Actually I did it into two sausages, about 6-8 inches each, which were easier to manage. You should divide your dough into 12 equal pieces. Squish them down into ovals and then roll out until they're about a quarter of an inch thick.

They need to prove for about 45 mins next. I found the best way of doing this (so they didn't end up sticking together) was to line roasting tins (or baking sheets) with baking parchment, sprinkle this with flour, lay out the pittas and then cover it loosely with a tented polythene bag. Leave out on the surface.

About 20 minutes before the end of this period, heat your oven to its maximum temperature and put either a cast iron griddle or frying pan, or a baking sheet, into the oven to heat up. When the oven's got to the top temperature, add 2-3 pittas at a time to your pan in the oven and cook them for 3 minutes.

When they're done, wrap them in a damp cloth to cool. Before eating, re-heat them under the grill.

*********************

What to have with them?

Hummus is a good thing to make and one of these days I'll work out the measurements for my bung-it-all-in recipe! A really good way to make hummus is to blend together all the ingredients (chick peas, a teaspoon or two of light tahini, a garlic clove, 2 tsp or so of roasted & ground cumin seeds, the juice of half a lemon, 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil**) in a bowl using a hand blender.

**ok, so that's almost a recipe for about a tinful's-worth of chick peas (although we cook from dried). It's vague because I usually start the extras (especially the tahini and the lemon juice) small, taste as I'm going along, and add some more if I think it needs it.

Another really nice thing is some spiced or otherwise flavoured yoghurt. Here you can experiment a lot. We like to just squish a couple of garlic cloves in salt and add that. Another thing we do is roast & crush coriander seeds then stir them through, maybe with a pinch of cayenne pepper too.

Pittas are great for packed lunches and picnics, especially for kids. Our two like them filled with hummus, chunks of sausage or fish. They're really nice with salt beef and English mustard in them too. There's also the old Grub on a Grant student special of pitta bread pizzas, which are pretty much what you'd expect!

Baking Day: Banana and Apple Bread

This week's bake - Banana and Apple Bread - is a recipe from the original Cranks Recipe Book. Cranks was the first ever vegetarian restaurant in the UK in the 1960s. I got this book in the early days of my vegetarian period (around 1990 I think) and it has served us very well since - even though I'm back to eating meat now. You can see from the picture that it is very well used - half the pages are falling out these days. There are some quite hard going meal ideas in here, but it has some excellent, very wholesome recipes, especially for baked treats. Favourites in this house include carrot cake, ginger and orange cake, sticky prune cake and bara brith.

Whilst I had the oven on for the bread yesterday I also made a loaf of bara brith - twin 1 has now demolished a fair proportion of it (it's his absolute favourite), but this is how it looked before he got his hands on it. Bara brith is a tradional Welsh recipe (bara brith means speckled bread) and appears to have 2 different styles - yeasted and unyeasted. I expect the yeasted style is more authentic, but the recipe in the Cranks book is an unyeasted one. Sultanas, raisins and currants are soaked overnight in tea (this is the traditional method) which plumps them up so they are lovely and juicy in the finished cake. The next day you add flour, an egg and some spice, and a little sugar (I don't usually bother) and bake for 40 minutes or so. The huge advantage of this recipe is that it contains no fat and you can make it with no added sugar - there aren't too many delicious cakes that you can say that for!

This week's bread is another no-added-sugar recipe. We make this very regularly - it's a good way of using up left over apple puree (a favourite pudding with the boys) and over-brown bananas.

Banana and Apple Bread

450g plain wholemeal flour (for a slightly less dense bread you can use half plain white flour)

7g dried yeast

150 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp of apple puree (1 apple, chopped small and cooked in small pan with 1 tbsp of water until mushy)

25g sugar (optional - you can omit this entirely or use a tbsp of honey)

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

4-5 gratings of whole nutmeg (or 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg)

50g sultanas

1 large (or 2 small) mashed bananas

grated rind of 1/2 lemon

In a large mixing bowl, mix together 100g of the flour, the yeast and the warm water and leave in a warm place until it rises and bubbles (see left). If you are using a food mixer, put the flour and water straight into your food mixer bowl as I've done here. While the ferment is rising, line a 1lb loaf tin (21cm long by 11cm across by 6cm deep) with baking parchment. You can use a bigger tin but your loaf will be flatter when it comes out of the oven.

Now add the rest of the ingredients (including, obviously, the rest of the flour!) and stir thoroughly, either with a wooden spoon, your hands, or the beater attachment on your mixer. You do not have to knead the dough - just ensure that the ingredients are thoroughly combined. If you are using a mixer then leave the sultanas out until near the end of the mixing process, so they don't get mushed up by the beater.

The dough should be quite wet and sticky - if it feels a little dry and is not sticking to your fingers, add more apple if you have some, or a tablespoon or 2 of water.

Transfer the dough to your prepared tin and smooth the top of the dough with wet hands. Put the tin inside a large polythene bag (a supermarket Bag for Life is, as usual, ideal for this) and leave in a warm place until the dough is teetering on the brink of rising over the edge of the tin (see right). Now's the time to put the oven on to pre-heat to 190C/Gas Mark 5. When your bread has risen, transfer the tin carefully to the oven and bake for about 35 minutes until the top of the loaf is golden brown and the bottom sounds hollow when you give it a tap. Remove from the tin straight away and leave to cool on a wire rack. This is delicious, still warm from the oven, with butter and honey. We also like to have it toasted for breakfast, with honey, marmalade or fruit butter. Twin 2 likes it with chocolate spread, but the rest of us are not convinced by that one!

Focaccia

An Italian flat bread, rich with olive oil and with a nice firm texture. The recipe below is based on the one given in Ursula Ferrigno's brilliant The New Family Bread Book, which goes into really helpful detail and has stacks of great recipes. It's her quantities we followed for the 'biga', which is a yeast starter added to improve the texture of the bread.

It's one to be done over two days:

The evening before

'biga'
100g strong white bread flour
1/4 tsp dried yeast (or 1/2 tsp fresh) dissolved in 130g warm water

Mix thoroughly - it resembles a stiff pancake batter. Cover & leave for 12-24 hours at room temperature.

Main recipe

250g strong white bread flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp dried yeast (or 2 tsp fresh)
160g warm water
olive oil
4 tbsp biga

sea salt crystals

extra virgin olive oil

Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl.

Dissolve the yeast in 2 tbsp of the water.

Add the dissolved yeast, olive oil & biga to the flour & then add the water, a little at a time, bringing it together into a soft, but not too sticky, dough.

Knead for 10 minutes on a floured surface - at the end of this, the dough should stretch nicely when pulled, and not break. Oil a bowl, put the dough in it, brush a little more oil on the top, then cover with a damp tea towel or a polythene bag and leave it somewhere warm to rise for 1.5 hours.

Knock back and knead for 5 minutes, then cover again and leave somewhere warm to rise for 10 mins.

Roll out into a square or circle, about 1cm thick & transfer to a baking sheet. Tuck a polythene bag around the sheet like a tent over it and leave for 30 minutes to prove.

Pre-heat the oven to 200c (gas 6). Make little dimples in the top with wet fingertips, sprinkle with salt crystals and some fresh rosemary. Leave it to rest for another 10 minutes.

Bake for 30 minutes or until it's a nice golden colour.

Leave to cool and then sprinkle and spread the top with good extra virgin olive oil.

*****

What we like to do with focaccia is something we read Nigel Slater recommending once - which is to slice it in half across-ways, fill it with yummy stuff, wrap it in foil and return to the oven until everything's piping hot.

We did two fillings. The first was spread on both sides thinly with tomato puree then layered with sliced mozzarella, chopped black olives and parma ham. The second had tomato puree mixed with a touch of chilli powder spread on each side and was then filled with mozzarella and anchovy fillets.

Dark evenings, squash and lovage

Clocks put back an hour today, the year's turning to winter properly now. I've always liked these early dark evenings: we even had some cocoa late on this afternoon as it got dark. It's soup weather - so I've included our recipe for squash soup below.

Mostly I love winter better than summer, even though having summer crops has been so great this year. We can still pop out for some things to cook - the beans are having a last hurrah now - but it'll be the greenhouse that'll come into its own soon. We've already moved in some more tender herbs, like parsley, tarragon and some little thyme plants. We may end up moving the lovage plant in there too.



It's a pretty unprepossessing plant, just stalks and leaves, tattered and a bit faded, but it has the most wonderful flavour. A sharp, savoury, celery-like tang, it's particularly good when it comes to making soups and stews.

Which is what we've been doing. We had a nice-sized onion squash in our veg delivery last week, which we decided would be best turned into soup, with a little help from our much-reduced lovage plant.

Soup-making's really easy. The key to it is to sweat down the vegetables for long enough before you add the water or stock. Even better if you have some good, home-made chicken stock to go in it, but for the strong flavours of this soup, you're fine with a light vegetable stock, or even just water.

A quick note on ingredients first. You don't really need lovage - a stick of celery chopped into a small dice and added to the onion would also be fine. Similarly, the fresh parsley's good, but not essential. However, the fresh grated nutmeg is, we think. Nutmeg's one of those great traditional ingredients that seems especially good at lifting hearty, warming foods in autumn and winter.

Squash Soup

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 tpsp olive oil

butter

1 medium to large onion, chopped
1 onion squash (you could use other orange-y squashes), diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
a generous pinch of lovage, chopped (or a celery stick)
1 good sized cooking apple, peeled and sliced
1 bayleaf
1 litre water or a light stock
squeeze of Lemon juice
fresh nutmeg, grated
fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

Method

In a large casserole, sweat the chopped onions (and celery, if using) in some olive oil and butter for 5 to 10 minutes, until the onion is soft.

Add the diced squash, the garlic, apple, lovage (if using) and a bayleaf and sweat on a very low heat, with the lid on, for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking to the pan.

Add the water or stock, bring to the boil and cook on a low simmer for 15 minutes.

Liquidise or blend until smooth.

Add a squeeze of lemon juice, a grate of nutmeg and salt to taste.

Serve & garnish with the chopped parsley.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Or maybe posting the unpostable. Or something. It's not really as dramatic as it sounds, but is an acknowledgement that it's time to start seriously thinking about plans for Christmas. If you're the kind of person who enjoys rushing round at top speed through the shops on Xmas Eve, then it probably isn't. But if you want to have a more home-made time of things, you need to be more organised and start thinking about things early.

The most popular thing we've done over the past few years is to make a load of sloe gin, to bottle and give to friends as presents. And you really need to get your skates on with this now, unless you've already done so.

Sloes are easy to identify. Here's the patch we used to visit, by the River Cam in Cambridge:



The berries are blue-black, with a slight whitish bloom on them. They're hard, bitter and incredibly astringent - but they should have a bit of give to them at least when you pick them. Whatever part of the country you're in, they should be at their ripest now. The thorns are a bit evil, so take care. They have a terrible reputation amongst local farmers, apparently.

The recipe we use is pretty simple: 600ml of gin (pick a decent one, 40% or above, but nothing too fancy) to 450g (or a pound) or sloes and 450g of sugar. We prick the sloes with a skewer first, although you can stick them in the freezer to split the skins, or even bash them with a rolling pin apparently. Pricking them means less filtering later on, in our experience. Put the sloes in a big jar or crock, pour the sugar over the top and then the gin. Shake or stir it a few times a day until the sugar's dissolved and then give it the occasional shake or stir. Here's ours on the go:



If you start it off now, it should be drinking from some time in late January or early February. If you're bottling it for other people, put a 'best after' note on the label.

Another thing you can be getting on with is pickling. We've got a few jars of pickled onions on the go now, which are real favourites to go with all those lovely Christmassy cold cuts between Xmas Day and the New Year:



And then there are other things you can be getting on with, especially if you're going to be making crafty gifts. We'll be dusting off the Christmas Blog in the next couple of weeks to post a few hints, tips and ideas through October, November and then a lot more throughout December. Christmas is better if you plan it a bit, we think, so now's a good time of year to sit down with a drink and a list of people you want to give gifts to, and work out just what you need to do.

Ignore any misgivings about 'starting' Christmas early and see now as an opportunity to have a more enjoyable, and less stressful, time later on.

Despite the blight

We managed to get a good bowlful of ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse the other day. A really good way of preserving a large quantity like this for the winter is to half the fruits and roast, with olive oil, in a hot oven until there's a hint of blackening on the edges of a few. Whizz them up in the food processor (or keep them as they are) and stick them in the freezer. Makes a good thickener, or the base for a sauce for pasta. You can roast them with other flavourings too - like garlic cloves, rosemary, anything that you like really.

The anti-blight measures (along with a slight turn in the weather) seem to have proved effective. There are still some green tomatoes which will hopefully ripen -



- and which seem to have escaped the dread blight. And we've had a lot more of a crop than we were fearing a month or so back:



Whether it's been the dithane, or assiduously removing foliage with signs of blight, or the combination of the two, we're feeling a little more cheery than we were. Our second bag of spuds produced a nice crop too - thankfully unaffected after we'd cut the foliage back to just above the soil. There's nothing like home grown potatoes.

Sunshine and showers

But mostly showers. In a brief sunny gap I nipped out to take some pics of what's going on in the garden at the moment. The herb bed is looking lovely now that the oregano is flowering



The bit of hedge you can see on the left is now (as of yesterday) gone - I've tried to transplant it elsewhere. The bees absolutely love the flowers. We've had so many bumblebees in the garden this year, it's been really nice to see them. If you want to encourage them in your garden you could do a lot worse than plant some oregano and let it flower:



Only do this if you've got plenty of space (or if you really like oregano), because it will rather take over!

Sadly it's not just welcome visitors that we're seeing at the moment. The blackfly are a bit of a problem - they pretty much did for our second crop of broad beans and now they're eyeing up our runners. Squishing them seems to be pretty effective, but the long term solution will be to encourage predators into the garden. We've had more ladybirds than last year but not many hoverflies. Here's one, having a rest on the lovely white scabious:



We're growing some fennel, which is apparently good for helping ladybirds to overwinter (they have a nap in the hollow stems, I think). And over the next few weeks we'll have a think about planning for next year.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are producing plenty of fruit:



This is that nice time of year when you can just go and pick what you need as and when. The ones outside are nearly ready now as well, despite the rubbish weather.

One really good thing to do with ripe fresh tomatoes is to make an arrabiata sauce for pasta. Put the kettle on to boil. Put three reasonably sized tomatoes in a bowl and then cover them with the boiling water. Meanwhile chop 2 cloves of garlic and 2 dried red chillies. Once the tomatoes have been in the water for a while you should be able to peel them easily - score them with a sharp knife and peel off the skin. Chop them roughly. Then heat up some olive oil in a pan add a pinch of salt, the garlic and the chilli. When the garlic gives off a nice aroma (if you overcook the garlic you need to start again) add the tomatoes. Cook until reduced.

Finally a little pic of our most advanced marrow:

Recipe for Spicy Kale

Here's a nice, really simple way to serve kale. It's a bit of an adaptation of a recipe from Vegetarian Indian Cookery by Shehzad Husain, although she uses green beans. The sweetness of the kale goes really well with the heat of the spices and the bitterness of asafoetida. Asafoetida's a spice that can be difficult to get hold of: your best bet is to try an Asian supermarket. We got our jar from Daily Bread in Cambridge - you use so little that it lasts for ages. If you can't get hold of it, then you get a similar balance of flavours by using a generous squeeze of lemon juice at the end.

And the recipe:

Spicy Kale

4 good handfuls of kale (if anything, over-estimate a bit, as it shrinks)
2 fresh tomatoes, cut into eighths (optional)
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp chili powder or cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp asafoetida (if you can find it, otherwise a squeeze of lemon juice)
2cm piece of ginger, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped

Start by wilting the kale. Wash it and then chuck a handful into a large heavy-bottomed frying pan set on a high heat. Add a little water if necessary & cook until it goes floppy & changes colour. Repeat for the rest of the kale & set aside on a plate.

Heat up the oil in the frying pan on a medium heat & add the mustard seeds. Meanwhile chop the wilted kale into reasonably thin bits on your chopping board.

When the mustard seeds pop, add the coriander, asafoetida (if you're using it), chili powder & ginger. Stir fry for a minute or so then add the garlic and the kale.

Stir well over the heat & add the tomatoes if you're using them. If you don't have asafoetida, squeeze the lemon. Stir together for 2-3 minutes.

Check seasoning & serve. It's nice with a dal and some breads.


Cook's note

This recipe is good with any dark green veg, like spinach, chard or purple sprouting broccoli.

Now that parsnips are all but out of season...

...I should really post this recipe, which I've had knocking about the place for weeks now. I love parsnips. Apparently they're one of those humble, northern root vegetables that the French rather sniffily consign to animal feed (like swede). Their loss, I say. Apart from their well-known role gracing roast dinners and the Christmas Day meal, they make a delicious and economical soup with sharp cooking apples and a touch of spice. So here's our recipe for:

Parsnip and Apple Soup

2 large parsnips
1 cooking apple
1 pint of stock (or water)
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1 tsp ground coriander
1 pinch dried oregano
1 pinch chili powder or cayenne pepper (optional)
2 tbsp double cream (optional)
butter
salt

Chop the onion and sweat in a large saucepan for 10 minutes over a low heat in a generous knob of butter and with a pinch of salt.

Meanwhile, peel the parsnips and cut into a 1 inch dice or so. When you've done this, add them to the pan. Chop the garlic and add to the pan. Peel the apple and slice it into the pan, stirring it in as you go.

Add coriander, oregano and the chili powder (if you're using it), stir & cook for 2-3 minutes.

Add the stock and cook the soup over a low heat for 20-30 minutes, until the parsnip is soft.

Turn off the heat & then liquidise the soup until it's smooth. Adjust the seasoning and add the cream if you're using it before reheating gently.

Cook's note
This soup tastes particularly delicious when you use ham or chicken stock. You can use vegetable stock, but use a light one like the Marigold Swiss Bouillon powder. Or water, of course!

Fruity oatbars - a yummy recipe with no added sugar

Long hard days in the garden - of which there are many at this time of the year - require something filling and sustaining as a snack. This recipe absolutely fits the bill - it's hearty, tasty, sweet & satisfying and wonderfully wholesome.

Filling
1/2 cup dried figs, chopped small and closely packed into the cup
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
juice and rind of an orange (1/2 cup of orange juice is fine, or just use extra water)
1 cup boiling water
1/4 cup chopped almonds (optional)

Pastry
2 cups of rolled oats
2/3 cup whole wheat flour (doesn't seem to matter whether it's plain or SR)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg (a few scrapes of freshly ground)
90g butter (from the fridge - cut into lumps)
1/3 cup water
2 tbsp maple syrup (optional)

Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8x8cm baking tray. Place all the filling ingredients (except the nuts) in a small pan a bring to a simmer. Simmer until the ingredients are very soft and well amalgamated (20-30 mins). Remove from the heat and stir in the nuts.

Place the dry pastry ingredients and butter in a food processor or mixer and pulse until the mixture looks like lumpy breadcrumbs. This is quite a buttery mixture - don't worry it it looks a bit claggy. You can do this stage in a bowl with your fingertips too. Then mix in the water.

Press a little more than half this mix into your tray then spread the fruit and nut mixture on top. Then sprinkle the rest of the pastry mix over the top and press into the fruit so it's quite firmly compacted (otherwise it's a very crumbly bar!). Drizzle the maple syrup over the top.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the cake is lightly browned. Leave to cool from the tin, and then cut into 9-12 bars (depending on how greedy you feel). Enjoy!

Cook's Note
This is just as nice with other combinations of dried fruit - apricots and prunes can be substitued for the figs, but I think that the raisins and/or currants are necessary for that contrast of flavour.