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.

Other people’s shopping

One of the things I like most about going grocery shopping (admittedly, there aren’t many of them) is finding a shopping cart, a shopping trolley, as they’re known on Greenwich Mean Time. The particular chain of supermarkets we choose to frequent (let’s call it chain “W”) very conveniently has little clipboards on its carts to which you can attach your shopping list. I find reading through discarded shopping lists a curiously voyeuristic form of entertainment. Glancing through people’s scribbled lists seems somehow a little more personal than sneaking a peek at your fellow shoppers’ chosen items at the checkout. More than their food habits, you can tell whether they were in a rush when they wrote the list, what their choice of scrap paper is, whether they prefer pen, pencil or felt tip, whether they’re the kind of person who crosses off items as they grab them off the shelf, and other interesting insights into their shopping strategies. I have thus resorted to conducting an unofficial poll of other people’s shopping by stealing their discarded shopping lists. I get a mischieveous sense of glee when I spot a cart that has someone’s scrawny piece of paper with their list of scribbles on it. I quickly claim the cart and discreetly put the list in my pocket.

Most of the lists are short, with fewer than ten items on them. That in itself is strange, because ten items can easily fit in a basket, which enables you to use the faster checkouts. Convenience items predominate the lists; milk, bread, eggs and cheese feature prominently. Starches are the dominant food group, particularly pasta, potatoes and rice. Some people encouragingly make lunch for their kids to take to school (“bananas, apples, peanut butter x 2, childrens yog+yog drinks, choc dig./jaffas”), but then sadly disappoint by feeding them rather questionable items at home (“spag. shapes, Bessie Mash x 2, waffles”). Most of the lists are such that you can hardly make a decent recipe out of them, even though you could make it lots of times (“mince lamb/beef, tin toms x 8 [times 8?!?], chick pea x 4, green lentils x 2″ sounds like a lot of stew to me). Others have rather unmentionable items (“decaf, quorn, marg.”). One person wanted to buy a sofa, but then must have thought better of it and decided to buy soda instead. People buy “bog roll” or “loo roll”, but not “toilet paper”. And it’s good to know that people still like an element of surprise in their grocery shopping (“A little something for you”). Some parents have shopping budgets for their kids (“£6 for Freddy, £10 for Theo” – I’m curious to know what Freddy and Theo bought themselves with their allowance. I hope it was something worthwhile, because otherwise all they had to look forward to was garlic, chillis and kidney beans). A torn off bit of notepad paper appears to be the writing material of choice, although a few people use yellow stickies. But my personal favourite is a list written on paper in the shape of a curvaceous womanly figure in a pink flowery party dress from Lady Jayne Ltd.

I’ve often thought of leaving behind a list of my own (“pig intestines, eye of newt, raven’s claw”), although when I bother writing them, they’re invariably in some form of electronic gadget. But with the festive season fast approaching, I might be tempted to leave one with the most important list of all (“…. and a partridge in a pear tree”).

Aunt Jemima: aka How to brine a turkey

Despite my long-held desire to deep fry a turkey, I’m repeatedly told that it’s not a sensible thing to do, least of all in -20C weather. Dunk a turkey in a vat of hot oil hooked up to a propane tank. Really, I mean, what could go wrong…?

So we opted for the brining approach instead, having heard repeated testimonials of succulent brined fowl. Brining, according to the chef dude on the radio, involves soaking your turkey in a saline solution (1 gallon water: 1 cup salt: 1 cup sugar) for up to 18 hours before roasting. It’s meant to draw out the moisture and tenderize the flesh, helping produce a crisp skin and flavourful meat.

“Sounds like fun!”, we thought. And so thus was the fate of Aunt Jemima (our rather irreverently baptised turkey) sealed.

Brining a turkey does require a picnic cooler or  similar container large enough to hold your turkey, which was kindly provided by JK at great personal cost. Please note that this process requires lifting and handling of heavy loads that may result in personal injury.

Having left Aunt Jemima alone for a prolonged bath in her picnic cooler for some 14 hours, the next step was to rinse her thoroughly in the bathtub. We were warned that she might otherwise turn out very salty. Once rinsed and patted dry, the preparation can continue in the conventional way, stuffing and seasoning in your preferred manner. We opted for a sprinkling of orange juice and paprika, stuffing with a clove-studded onion and dressing with a generous rubbing of parsley butter applied sub-cutaneously.

The ceremoniously dressed Aunt Jemima was then roasted breast side down at 190C, half and hour per kilo plus an extra half hour at the end, basting regularly with the fat and butter drippings, which went mostly without a hitch with the exception of a minor emergency resulting from a leak in our disposable baking tray.

Et voila! That’s it. And the result? By all accounts, the best turkey everyone had eaten.

Brine bath

Do not disturb

Desalination

Sub-cutaneous butter application

The carving

The good, the bad and the merely adequate…

A culinary review of 2008.

This blog is dedicated to our favourite recipes of the year, trusty recipes that got us out of a bind, and recipes that weren’t worth the ink they were written in.

We’ll start by saying that our most successful culinary experiments have come from Alford and Duguid’s Mangoes and Curry Leaves, with Nigella Express coming in a close second. Particular highlights from the former were Zinet’s chicken with tomato and greens, Colombo chicken curry (note that this isn’t called ‘Colombo chicken curry’ in Colombo. Trust me, I’ve asked…. I think they probably just call it ‘chicken curry’) – a brothy, zingy dish made with rice vinegar, yogurt, cilantro and lots of onion.  Also delicious were the ginger-lamb coconut milk curry, and Katchhi village potato curry. In fact, there hasn’t been a recipe that we’ve tried from that book that hasn’t been a resounding success, as this blog will prove.

Regardless of what you may think of cookbooks that promote the shortcut route, Nigella Express does have some handy tips for those office-till-late, crazy-commute-home, can’t-be-bothered-to-cook weekday evenings. Naan pizza has been one of our most popular recipes this year (the variations are endless….).  We’ve even gone as far as testing all the varieties of naan available from the major supermarket branches (branch T won out). We also loved her delicious pear and ginger muffins.

And as for those recipes that were, at best, merely adequate… Well, let’s just say that flaked haddock and Camargue red rice cakes may sound nice on paper, but in practice, these structurally unsound creations are not worth the aggravation and frankly, become rather tedious after the second one. And the second day. And the second week…..when they become simply inedible.  We may have discerning palates, but it takes a lot for us to declare a recipe as unworthy of repeating.

The disaster with the Camargue red rice cakes, however, did lead to the resounding success of the filo pie from another of Nigella’s cookbooks, which was actually improved by the substitution of Camargue red rice for plain rice.

Finally, for those trusty staples. Our standard granola recipe (from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café) has undoubtedly been our most-used recipe, largely encouraged by any sane person’s refusal to pay £3 for a bag of Liz’s granola (to say nothing of the £8 you pay at Borough Market for 600 measly grams). And the gooey chocolate puddings – a recipe courtesy of SN – which are great backup in the event of a dessert emergency (every other day, really….).

What will 2009 bring? We’ll keep you posted. I peer over at the Culinary Institute of America’s Breakfasts and Brunches as I type (a recent addition to our collection)….

Sunlight Café granola

Naan pizza

Chocolate pudding

It’s not nut-loaf…

…it’s Nigella’s chickpea and courgette (zucchini) filo pie, and it’s SO much better than any nutloaf.  For those of you unfamiliar with the nutloaf phenomenon, let me explain.

The Sunday roast in the UK is a deep-rooted tradition.  Pubs everywhere have a Sunday roast special and with the changing tastes of Britons, the traditional beef roast has expanded to include lamb, pork and occasionally, chicken.  The widespread popularity of vegetarianism brought about the infamous nutloaf.  Think meatloaf…with nuts, vegetables, etc.  There’s nothing wrong with a good nutloaf, but I pity vegetarians who really only have one option at a Sunday dinner.

A few weekends ago we invited some vegetarian friends for lunch, and decided to try something a little different than the usual fare.  Enter Nigella.  To be accurate, enter Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.  For a few years, I’ve harboured a secret desire to have this book on my shelf (more for the title on the spine than anything else), and my wishes were granted just days before the lunch party.  As usual, I spent a few hours reading the book and found this recipe, which sounded suitably tasty and unusual.

We made alterations – substituting French Camargue red rice for the Basmati rice – and next time would consider other types of squash instead of the courgette/zucchini and add more chili.  Making a pie in a springform pan out of filo pastry was lots of fun, and for any one with a fear of filo, be not alarmed.  Filo pastry is actually much less fiddly than rolling out dough.

This dish is definitely in the running for our Christmas meal (for the vegetarians, of course – the rest of ‘em can eat turkey)!

Canadian Thanksgiving, European style……

Well, it wasn’t nut loaf after all, for which C was extremely grateful.  Rather, we sourced two large free-range chickens, accompanied by mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables, home-made bread, browned brussel sprouts with walnuts, finished off with apple pie and cream.  No, there was no cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, or pumpkin pie, although we did have a traditional Canadian dip made out of chickpeas and sesame paste…… Like we said, this was Thanksgiving European-style.  There was, however, talk of the impending Canadian election, and the sad realisation from one of our guests that after 5 years away from the homeland, you are no longer eligible to vote.  I gave thanks for still being allowed to send in my ballot, in its multiple layers of envelopes.

But getting back to food…

Our chickens were named Hilda and Frida, and the intrigue of the afternoon was provided by asking our guests to choose which one they preferred, before revealing the chef responsible for each chicken.  Frida was stuffed with lemon, onion, butter, LOTS of garlic and mint, while Hilda enjoyed an orange and rosemary.  We’re still not sure what the overwhelming favourite was, but I’m convinced Frida’s garlic aromas tainted Hilda’s delicate citrus tones.

Four days later and we’re still eating mashed potatoes, vegetables and chicken.  Clearly we still have work to do in estimating how much food is required for 6 people!

Note the elaborately carved maple leaf...

The Hoxton Apprentice

The Hoxton Apprentice, 16 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NT, http://www.hoxtonapprentice.com/

After much deliberation about where to go for dinner on my birthday, we finally settled on this place, which I’d wanted to try for some time.

Set in trendy Hoxton Square, the eponymous Apprentice is housed in a converted primary school, now a modern restaurant with a popular bar, exposed brick interiors and a mezzanine. The restaurant provides training and jobs for the homeless and long-term unemployed in the community, helping them to find jobs in the hospitality sector. The menu was designed by the legendary Prue Leith (she of the annoying trio of judges in The Great British Menu), who also serves on its board.

The Apprentice serves what I think is nowadays referred to as “modern” British, presumably to differentiate it from the pile of boiled mush that British restaurants of the non-modern kind used to serve. “Modern” also means that things come in stacks, or what in culinary terms would be referred to as a Crip restaurant. [Editor's note: 'Modern' also means that some dishes came with the ubiquitous FOAM, which looks less like something edible and more like something my cat threw up].  The good thing about the menu is that a lot of the dishes are available in both large and small portions, so you can either have the traditional appetizer and main, or choose several small dishes to share around with friends. Or if you’re complete pigs like us, choose lots of small dishes to share around and then have a main.

On the whole, the meal was good, although both meat and fish were slightly overcooked for my liking. Some dishes were a bit unbalanced; roasted fennel was too overpowering as an accompaniment to scallops. The macaroni with black truffles and Arbroath smokie fish cakes were delicious, but the best dish of the evening was the bread and butter pudding (with candle) – warm, moist, not too sweet. Excellent. Service was friendly, informative, but unobtrusive, and we befriended the couple at the neighbouring table, who seemed rather amused at our continual food photography. They turned out to be interesting company, even if the man called G an American (AR called him a Scot, so fair’s fair…..), and we had coffee with them until closing time!

Scallops with roasted fennel and pea cress

Pork loin with black pudding and chorizo hash

Bread and butter pudding