October 5, 2014

After our weekly Saturday watch of GBBO, tiny Paul and tiny Mary and I had ginormous cravings for doughnuts. It’s the kneading that always puts me off, though - but guess who’s got two thumbs and just bought a big ol’ Magimix with a cheque from their dead father? (Wait, that joke didn’t turn out quite how I intended.)

Likewise, the recipe didn’t turn out the way I’d intended. We started off on Justin Gellatly’s doughnuts, but the dough was so dense that the Magimix just gave up half way through the recipe. With a sad face, I spent the necessary 400 hours cleaning the machine and left the scraped-out dough in a bowl on the side. #foodhygienetothemax

This morning - fine, this afternoon; I’m having a beyond-hideous time with my hormonal contraception (oh, I’m sorry, you *didn’t* ask?) and my moods, appetite, and sleeping patterns have gone completely haywire, so I’d tucked myself back into an empty child’s bed at 7am and been left to sleep until noon by my magical family - the dough had swelled and crusted slightly, and smelled enticing. We agreed to experiment. And it was worth it.

Pseudo Churros (serves 6)

7g dried (not instant) yeast + 2 tbsp warm water

500g strong white bread flour

60g + 50g golden caster sugar

10g salt

4 large eggs

zest of half an orange

150g water

100g dark chocolate

50ml + 250ml double cream (that’s one small tub)

50ml whole milk

2 tbsp golden syrup

750ml sunflower oil

3 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix the dried yeast and warm water. Let that brew for a little while. If you have a hardcore mixer, throw in the flour, sugar, salt, orange zest, eggs and water (warmish, too) then the yeasty water-mix, at the very last moment. Turn the mixer on. Justin Gellatly recommended mixing it for 8 minutes, but mine broke down before even 2 minutes were up. Maybe I managed 4 in total, between turning it off, cleaning the dough off the spindle, then turning it on briefly before it got jammed again? So mix for about 4 minutes, maybe a bit more if you can. If you don’t have a mixer, I suppose you have to just knead it like a human, on a cool surface. After the kneading and mixing, stick it in a bowl, cover, and leave somewhere room temperature overnight.

The next day, it should look like my hungover face: pale, puffy, and slightly crusty. Mmmm. Distract yourself from that simile by making the chocolate sauce. In a bain-marie, melt the chocolate (broken up into pieces), and add the milk, cream and golden syrup. Keep stirring and stirring until smooth and dark and fully mixed together. Try not to eat it all while ‘testing it’.

Heat the oil in a saucepan (recipes tend to say 'a heavy-bottomed saucepan’, but I wasn’t about to hammer a decent pan with boiling oil. Can you tell I’m nervous about boiling oil? I was about to throw the family out of the house to wait at the side of the road with some foil blankets, rather than risk them coming into any kind of contact with the BOILING OIL). Anyway, it’s fine.

While the oil is heating, beat the cream, and put that and the chocolate sauce into little serving bowls. FYI, tiny serving bowls are my spirit animal, this year. Je les aime.

Heat the oil in a saucepan, until a little bit of dough you’ve broken off from the dough-bowl fizzes and rises to the top, turning golden in thirty seconds or so. Once you know the oil is ready, pull pieces off the dough - it doesn’t matter if they’re misshapen; in fact, I strung mine out and pulled them between my fingers to get nice long, thin churros-esque pieces, but there were also fatter, puffy pieces. I put in two or three at a time.

Once the pieces are cooked, puffed and golden, remove to a piece of kitchen roll. Drain them there for a moment, then roll on a plate covered with the mixture of 50g of golden caster sugar and 3tsp of cinnamon until it’s pretty much coated. Cook the whole batch, pile up on a plate, and serve with the chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Jesus Christ, that’s so good.

This photo doesn’t even begin to do this dish justice. I had only seconds before the baby woofed my portion, so this had to do.

It was comforting but not too heavy, and the cabbage and bacon added bite to the soft cheesy macaroni and sweet squash.

Fancy Autumn Macaroni Cheese (serves 6-8)

1 squash

Olive oil

Flake salt & fresh ground pepper

450g macaroni

½ a savoy cabbage

3 rashers of smoked bacon

600ml whole milk

50g butter + 1 tbsp more

50g flour

300g cheese (with as much flavour as you can get - no point using Mild here), grated

Peel and deseed the squash and cut into 3cm cubes. Put in a tinfoiled baking tray, slosh with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, crumble some flake salt over and bake at 180c for 30-40 mins or until soft and a tiny bit crisp at the edges.

Meanwhile, cook the macaroni in a big pot of boiling water (with some olive oil and salt. Blood has been spilt over my mother’s refusal to salt pasta. *It tastes like gummy flour if you don’t*, fyi). While it’s cooking (it doesn’t take long, and you want to leave it with a little bite) chop the half-cabbage into strips. In a frying pan, melt the tbsp of butter and, once bubbling, add the cabbage and stir around for only about 15-20 seconds. It’ll soften more in the heat of the macaroni.

Drain the macaroni and put in a serving dish with the cabbage on top, then cover with some tinfoil and a tea towel (to keep it warm). In a saucepan, put the milk, flour and butter, gently heat and beat continually with a silicon whisk (this is literally the only use I’ve found for that utensil. Imagine people trying to beat eggs with it HAHAHHAHA). It’ll thicken up beautifully and smoothly, at which point you can take it off the heat and add the cheese and a few grinds of pepper. While that cheese melts in, cook the bacon (I tossed it in the cabbage frying pan - you know my motto about reduced washing up - but you can always grill it if that really floats your boat), then slice it into 2cm squares. Precision is not required here.

Remove the squash from the oven once browned and soft, and add it to the macaroni and cabbage, along with the bacon and cheese sauce. Stir gently. Serve with a fresh green salad in a nice lemony dressing.

SIDE NOTE: a jam jar with a lid got M not only into salads, but also into tasting the food as we go along. M’s now our trusted salad-dressing maker. Another chore delegated. #success

October 4, 2014

I am crying as I write this.

Lol, jk, but this is a total thing of mouth beauty and I have to share it with you. It’s liquorishish yet buttery, everything that’s good about an autumnal oven. And it’s perfect for using up those bananas which you bought in good faith but have somehow become scattered around the house, slowly and silently browning.

Banana Bread (serves 1 if you’re quick enough, otherwise makes 10 or so slices)

4 medium-large ripe or overripe bananas

80g butter (plus some to grease the tin)

200g dark brown sugar (this is v v important, it raises the flavour level to MAGIC)

1 large egg

1 and ½ tbsp vanilla paste

1 tsp bicarb of soda

Pinch of salt

180g spelt flour (I know this is a fussy ball-ache, and back into the realms of Waitrose, but I have *two bags* in my cupboard from when I keep meaning to make Hugh F-W recipes then never get round to it. It is TOTALLY worth it)

Preheat the oven to 170c fan. I don’t know what that is for any other cooking temperature system.

Vaguely mash the bananas in a big bowl. They should be ripe enough that it doesn’t take much effort, so you can stop and leave it quite rough, with lots of chunks in. Melt the butter and add to the bananas, along with the dark brown sugar, the egg which you’ve briefly beaten in the melted butter bowl (why make more washing up for yourself), the vanilla paste, the bicarb, the salt, and finally the flour. Mix well, so there are no clumps of flour left.

Pour into a buttered loaf tin, and cook for between 60-70 minutes. The fractionally lower temp but longer time means the loaf is cooked all the way through but the outer layer is *almost* burned, so has a beautiful treacly flavour.

It’s *so* good, it doesn’t even need butter.

I know.

October 2, 2014

October 1, 2014

I took no care of myself at all over the summer, and mostly comfort-ate at my dad’s bedside. I went to one wedding at the start of August and another at the end, and assumed I (my mother) had managed to shrink my favourite dress between the two; it was actually down to a month-long feast of brioche and Minstrels and buckets of milky coffee and not a single piece of fresh fruit or veg.

As the season turns (or doesn’t, as it happens - it’s still too warm for me to wear tights, goddammit) I’m drawn to autumn vegetables: squashes, etc. I want to *cook* dumpling stews, but my overheated body doesn’t want to eat them. So here’s a nice meal with those flavours, but still (relatively) light (on a scale of Nigella to Hugh F-W, it’s somewhere in the middle).

Pumpkin Soup (serves 6-8, or use leftovers as a pasta sauce)

Olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped

1 pumpkin (approx the size of a human head), peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks the size of half a human thumb

Salt & pepper

4 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped a bit

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp cumin

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 and ½ litres of tap water

150ml double cream (half a small tub - you’ll use the other half for dessert)

A good sourdough loaf

Over a gentle heat, cook the onion for a couple of minutes, then add the carrots and pumpkin and cook for 5-10 minutes, until they are all softening and mashing at the edges. Add a large pinch of salt and a couple of twists of pepper (or however you want to measure it), garlic, paprika and cumin and stir over a medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Add the red wine vinegar, beans and water, bring to a boil, then cover and leave to simmer on a gentle heat again for 25 minutes. Once all the veg is soft soft soft, add the cream and blitz with a stick blender/food processor until smooth. Eat with a hunk of sourdough loaf, or a slice of white Hovis for all I care. It’s all good.

Passion fruit Fool (serves 4)

150ml double cream (aka the rest of that small tub)

6 tbsp yoghurt

4 passion fruits

DISCLAIMER 1: I wouldn’t normally bandy about with something as exotic as passion fruit, if only because I only ever see them when I’m slinking into Waitrose for a free coffee and I hear my other half’s voice in my head saying, ‘Think how many family apples you could get for that price.’ But I happened to be walking through the market today (#procrastination) and I got 4 for 50p. Joys.

DISCLAIMER 2: I found three pots of yoghurt in the fridge, two of which had gone entirely brown-grey, and one of which had only started to at the top. Long-handled spoons are your friend, people.

Beat the cream until starting to stiffen. Add the yoghurt, and the passion fruit seeds. Mix. Spoon into bowls, and if you’re serving infants, see how quickly they’ll switch from revolted suspicion to giddy wolfing when they find out it’s called a Fool.

Bien manger.