nasty skank brioche

There are a few things that, once tasted, instantly compel one to try and reproduce. Brioche is one of those things. For me, it has an association with the blue, white and red bags with the plastic tie that you get in supermarkets, from where I suspect I had my first taste of brioche. Inside, a golden, glazed and gleaming loaf, from which you peel off the crimped greaseproof paper to reveal a delightfully soft, pillow-like substance. Of course, those things are probably full of E numbers and preservatives, but I would say that little compares with one’s first imagining of biting into a slice of brioche slathered with a thick layer of nutella (I’m sure that this is a complete travesty, but we won’t let that stop us). Moister than panettone, but more cake-like than bread, brioche is the Lucy of culinary development, a crucial link in the evolution from the unleavened bread of days of yore to today’s dubious Thomas the Tank Engine confections. The key, of course, is in the addition of butter, eggs and milk to the dough, which give the brioche its golden, velvet-like texture.

Now, I say “instantly compelling”, but in truth, the urge has been compelling for years. It wasn’t until this past summer, when my parents brought back a French baking book from across the Channel, that I made my first attempt. And here, just for you, I reproduce the recipe:

Pain brioché:

500g flour (I’ve tried both strong bread flour and all-purpose flour – both yield good results)

50g caster sugar

15g instant dry yeast

220g milk (lukewarm)

2 eggs + 2 egg yolks

125g butter

10g salt

Place the flour, salt and sugar in a bowl and create a well in the centre. Dissolve the yeast in the milk and pour into the well. Add the 2 whole eggs and knead for 15 minutes. Add 100g of butter and knead for a further 5 minutes. Once you’ve achieved a smooth dough, cover with a cloth and let rise for 2 hours.

Divide the dough into 3 balls of equal weight. Shape into loaves and place into buttered loaf tins. Leave to rise for another 2 hours.

Brush the top of the loaves with the egg yolks, whisked with 2 tablespoons of water, and bake in an oven, preheated to 210 Celsius, for 30 minutes. Remove from tins and leave to cool on a rack.

The addition of eggs makes this quite a stiff dough, so kneading it is quite a workout. It’s also quite sticky, so you’ll have to knead it in a bowl unless you want to be scraping dough off your counter afterwards. You can also halve the recipe to make one larger loaf.

Or you could ignore all of the above and do what I do, which is to dump everything in the breadmaker and put it on the dough setting for 2 hours, put the whole thing into a loaf tin and bake it to make one, ridiculously-sized loaf of nasty skank brioche [EN: the term "nasty skank" is not a reflection of the quality of the end product, which is excellent, but a cultural reference to that sassy, yet ultimately mediocre, box office hit "Mean Girls"]. Eat with jam or marmalade, or with the aforementioned unhealthy slathering of nutella. Makes excellent toast the next morning (and for a few days thereafter).

Brownies- the two-bite variety

Yesterday was gray and blustery, and I was feeling a bored and needed to find something exciting to do. Yes, the trials of a housewife are great…

I suddenly decided I felt like making brownies, but not just any brownies. I wanted to make two-bite brownies, from scratch. Every time I’ve had the store-bought variety, I’ve asked myself why I didn’t just make them, free of the chemicals that prolong their shelf-life into infinity. I knew I had seen a recipe in my cookbook, Home Baking by Alford and Duguid. Judging by the quality of their other recipes, I had faith this would produce the brownies I craved. After meandering through the book’s other yummy recipes, I finally found the brownie recipe, only to realize that it called for bittersweet chocolate, and I didn’t have any in my trusty baking cupboard! Having already been to the grocery store TWICE in one day, I refused to make yet another trip. So the hunt was on for a recipe that called for cocoa powder rather than chocolate.

*Note: You can substitute cocoa powder for chocolate in a recipe, but you have to increase the butter content significantly, and I was unwilling to make the brownies any more calorific than they already would be.

The internet is truly a wonderful thing…I found many recipes for two-bite brownies, most of which sounded suspiciously like any other brownie recipe made in a mini-muffin tray rather than a square pan. I discarded all the low-fat recipes. Why bother?! Here are the brownies I finally made, thanks to Canadian journalist, cookbook writer and blogger, Julie van Rosendaal.

I made them in the silicone mini-muffin cups we got for Christmas last year. By far the one of the best kitchen gadgets we’ve received as a gift, these silicone muffin cups are re-usable, fit into a regular muffin tray, and are much more environmentally friendly than paper cups. Just make sure they don’t accidentally get thrown away! (*Note: They aren’t great for gas ovens, although we’re not sure why. And do not put them into the dishwasher. The smell of the detergent will never go away, leaving you with muffins that always taste a bit soapy.)

 

Two-Bite Brownies

1/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Beat sugar and butter together until well-blended. Add in the eggs and the vanilla and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Add to the butter mixture and mix until there are no more lumps of flour. Spoon into muffin tins (lightly greased), or mini-muffin cups. Bake for 12-15 minutes, but make sure you do not overbake! They will collapse slightly when they come out of the oven, but they still taste delish! Makes 24 mini-muffin size brownies, or 12 large ones (which then are no longer two-bite, but more like four-bite, unless you have a big mouth).

Bran-less Muffins

I was recently told (by the dubious woman at the bank) that since I was unemployed, but married, I must therefore be a homemaker. Yes, you read correctly. Homemaker is indeed an option on the ‘employment status’ drop-down menu on the bank’s account information. I was also told that it was better to be a homemaker than list myself as ‘unemployed’ since “you can’t get anything for saying you’re unemployed.”  This begs the question of what exactly I’ll get for saying I’m a homemaker, but I digress…

In my new role as homemaker, and in order to elevate (or maintain) my status to/as domestic goddess, I decided to wake up early on Monday morning to make muffins for our houseguests. This is also part of the G&C Bed and Breakfast, which is open for business, if anyone fancies a few nights in London.

Craving some healthy bran muffins, I started measuring, weighing, mixing, and attempting to multi-task as I chatted with our friends and helped them find things in the kitchen for their coffee, etc. After carefully filling the muffin cups with the batter and sliding the tray into the oven, I glanced over at the corner of the counter and only then realised my significant error. There was no bran in my bran muffins! The bag of bran sat, sealed shut, where I’d pulled it down from the cupboard earlier. I contemplated scooping the batter out of each cup and adding the bran, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. That said, 75 grams of wheat bran is a significant amount to forget, and I was convinced I had a disaster on my hands. I was most concerned that I had failed miserably in my domestic duties.

Our friends were quite sure that the ‘branless bran muffins’ would be fine, and indeed, they were right. They just taste like sweet, molasses-y little cakes with dates. Not bad, but not the healthy start to the day I was hoping they’d be. They look and taste fine, but next time, I’ll make sure I’m less distracted. After all, I do have to maintain my reputation and live up to the standards of my newest occupation…

P.S. Here’s the recipe for the yogurt bran muffins…WITH the bran! Apologies who don’t like weighing their ingredients, but all recipes here are in grams, rather than cups.

Bran Yogurt Muffins

Preheat oven to 375-400F. Prepare muffin tins (grease or line with paper cups).

Stir together 225g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt.

In a separate bowl, beat egg with a fork. Add 110-140g brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1-2 tbsp molasses or honey, 75g WHEAT BRAN or 105g OAT BRAN, 60ml milk and 90ml oil or 85g butter melted.

Spoon 240ml plain yogurt (preferably with bacterial culture) into a jug or bowl. Stir in 1 tsp of baking soda and let it stand for 1-2 minutes. Some yogurts will react vigourously and bubble up (very cool!). Stir yogurt into the egg mixture after a few minutes.

Pour all of the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir until just combined, adding 85-100g of raisins or chopped dates if desired. Ignore any lumps. Spoon into muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops spring back gently when pressed.

Although omitting the bran will not ruin the taste, it is highly recommended that you keep these as BRAN muffins! Enjoy!

Caving in

Well, we did it. After months of resisting the daily barrage of leaflets through our door and insisting that we could do it better ourselves, we caved in and got INDIAN TAKEAWAY. Yes, you read correctly. We opted to get foil containers of ‘curry’ instead of using some of our own spices and culinary skills and making our own tasty delights.

Almost every day, we get takeaway menus dropped through our mailbox. They seem to be getting fancier and glossier as more Indian restaurants vie for the same customers. These menus have provided us with some good laughs (‘motor panner’ and ‘doet coke’ for instance), and encouraged me to think that I could make good money as a menu proof-reader. Nevertheless, a quick glance and the menus reach their end in the recycle bin.

Today, however, we decided to sample from one of Surbiton’s finest. We are spoiled for choice, with 4 Indian restaurants on our high street alone, and several more just around the corner. We went with the second oldest Indian restaurant in Surbiton, assuming that longevity in this fickle market meant quality.

This particular restaurant seems to cover all the bases, with food from all the major regions of India. This is usually cause for suspicion on my part – I imagine a kitchen with large bottles of ‘curry sauce’ labelled with a particular region of India, and a chef who glops a spoonful of any given sauce onto chicken, fish, lamb, or vegetables. Suspicions aside, we ordered a Mangalorean fish curry, an eggplant dish with a mysterious name, saag paneer (spinach and paneer), and a lamb biryani. The additional British quirk is that biryani always come with a complimentary order of vegetable curry. This seems strange, since biryani usually is so flavourful on its own that I can’t see the need for a curry to accompany it.

I am pleased to say that the food was great, particularly the fish curry, which tasted authentically South Indian, although it could have been spicier. As you can see, the food didn’t all look the same, wasn’t that greasy, and everything didn’t taste the same either! Never fear, we’ll still be cooking, but at least now we have an alternative to Village Pizza on days that we really don’t feel like slaving over a hot stove.