These are the cookies I made for a bake sale I organised at the Good Food Channel. Love heart cookies for Valentine's Day - a recipe from the lovely Angela Nilsen.
Her writing is clearly steadier than mine - my cookies look like threatening messages from a zombie. But they tasted nice - and is that not what really matters in a cookie?
This weekend I'm experimenting with gluten free recipes.
I've had a few close calls with a gluten free lifestyle. As an infant, I was misdiagnosed with coeliac disease. Luckily, before I wrongly spent a lifetime avoiding wheat, my well-meaning Dad snuck me (then five years old) a doughnut on a day-out. I had no reaction, and so he had to wrestle with the decision of whether or not to tell my mum!
Years later, we narrowed The Husband's horrific bouts of IBS down to his higher-than-normal consumption of bread. The automatic conclusion was gluten intolerance, so we thought we'd have to deal with a special diet for the rest of his life. Turned out he was just allergic to the cocktail of preservatives and enzymes pumped into mass produced factory bread - so I began baking all our own bread, with no nasty side effects!
We've been living a gluten fuelled existence ever since. Until this week, when Doves Farm sent me a box full of gluten free flour and other baking treats to try out for the Good Food Channel gluten free recipes section. As much as I love baking, I'm totally unfamiliar with the intricacies of gluten free cooking, so was well up for this challenge!
I woke up early, and started mixing together the doughs for the two breads I would be trying, Gluten Free Brown Tinned Loaf, and Buckwheat Soda Bread:
It didn't take long to notice the difference between normal wheat flour and gluten free flour. The dough had no elasticity whatsoever, felt a bit slimy, and was the consistency of cement mix. On the bright side, there's no kneading required!
The buckwheat soda bread was shaped into a lump on a tray, and baked for 75 minutes. The brown gluten free loaf was dropped into a tin, and baked for 55 minutes. Both looked great when they came out of the oven!
Inside the loaves was another story. There was no disguising the fact that these were gluten free loaves.... by the lack of.... gluten! Gluten free bread is inevitably crumbly and cakey inside. The taste of the brown loaf was pleasant, but the buckwheat was quite bitter and gummy for my liking.
Next up was gluten free pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. Seeing as the ratio of flour to liquid is much lower in this recipe, I had much higher hopes for it. The batter (using Dove's plain white gluten free flour) was identical to regular pancake mixture, and there was absolutely no difference in look, feel or taste in the final outcome. We indulged in pancakes with lemon and sugar for lunch, not missing the gluten at all!
For dinner, we tried the recipe for gluten free mushroom tart. This gave me the opportunity to try out gluten free pastry, which I was the most curious about. Using some fresh mushrooms from our veg box, the tart was really quick and easy to put together.
Gluten free short crust pastry is made exactly the same way as normal pastry, but with gluten free plain flour. After mixing the dough, the texture felt no different. However, after letting the dough rest, it was clear that the lack of gluten meant it wasn't going to roll out as easily as traditional pastry!
After a few attempts to roll the pastry out, I ended up just spreading it out in the dish with my fingers. After baking for an hour, the cooked pastry was extremely crumbly - a bit like a cheesecake base - and fell apart when cut out of the dish. For those limited to a gluten free diet, you'd be pleased to know the taste is just as buttery and satisfying as regular pastry - however the crumbly texture would make it difficult to serve at a dinner party.
Experiments like these should always end on a sweet note. My final bake of the day was gluten free carrot cake. Jam-packed full of juicy raisins and tangy citrus peel, this cake stays moist and light, despite the gluten free self raising flour. It's recipes like this that make baking for the coeliac sufferer a breeze.
We've come a long way since my days as a phony coeliac disease suffering toddler. Dove's gluten free flours are made from a mixture of rice, potato and tapioca flours, plus ingredients like xanthan gum and sugar beet fibre to improve the flavour and texture. The supermarket shelves are filled with gluten free alternatives, and it's easy to find recipes and information online from the UK Coeliac Society.
Whether you suffer from a medical intolerance to gluten, or are following the likes of Chelsea Clinton and Gwyneth Paltrow in the latest diet to the stars, a gluten free lifestyle can be challenging. Always check labels before buying products in the supermarket, and get into the habit of baking your own gluten free food - that way you can be sure of everything that goes into it!
Edinburgh is a great place. This was my fourth time in this cosmopolitain Scottish city. The people are friendly, the history is rich, the buildings are beautiful. There's an array of good food, with cuisines from around the world. I love eating American Macaroni at Hamburger Heaven, or Sausage Sandwich at Pani Solinska.
This time I was here on business. So no husband, a swanky hotel room, and a conference to attend during the day, instead of unlimited kilt shopping and tower climbing. I made the most of my free time, visiting my favourite spots and cafes.
But during the second afternoon, my dear Japanophile American colleague friend casually mentioned one word that drove my stomach wild: Miso.
Miso! Had I seen a single Japanese restaurant since we arrived? Where were the chains of Yo Sushi, Wagamama and Wasabi? For a city that loves its chains, Edinburgh was seriously lacking in any of these run-of-the-mill Japanese standards.
No independent Japanese restaurants either! Where were they? We had a quick look in the phonebook to find that the Scottish like to combine Japanese and Chinese restaurants into one category in the Yellow Pages.
A quick conversation with our concierge revealed that an excellent Japanese restaurant was conveniently located just around the corner! We made the trek down to road only to be shocked and disappointed to learn that the restaurant he had recommended was actually Thai. Those wacky Asians all eat the same food, don't they?!
By this time, all we could think about was fresh tofu, sashimi, noodles and seaweed. Our cravings were equivalent to those of pregnant women, and we toyed with the idea of catching a train back to London to fulfil our desires.
Then, like a shining light… a saviour from above…. angels had answered our prayers. There before us stood a church, which showed us the path to our holy salvation. A Japanese community group was cooking homemade food in the church hall to raise money for charity. Hallelujah! Praise be!
50p for tea, £1 for a dish of tempura, okonomiyaki, and all the free carrot cake we could handle. The Japanese food gods smiled upon us that day.
This week, I'm over-the-moon to be attending the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, on their four day bread baking session. Taught by baking legend of the future, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, it's a comprehensive bread extravaganza.
Day Four
I was a bit sad when I woke up this morning. Day four: the last day of the bread session. I'd grown used to baking bread every morning, chatting with all my new bready mates, and generally forgetting all about work and every day life.
We had a lot of bread to bake today, and it was our last chance to get in any final questions. On the menu for today was a sunflower loaf, a spelt loaf, wholemeal sourdough and ciabatta. Our potato and tomato breads from the night before had been retarding in the fridge, so we needed to get those baked, too.
It was a pretty busy day with all those loaves to bake, and everyone had a bit of 'last day of school' rowdiness to them.
Our ciabatta dough had been sitting in the fridge overnight. Ciabatta is one type of bread I've never tried at home - mostly because I'm scared of wet dough sticking to my elbows and the toaster. When we pulled it out of the fridge this morning, it had made some fantastic huge bubbles. Some of us took turns folding it over throughout the day.
Our baskets of tomato and nigella seed sourdough then came out of the fridge to warm up, and were then baked in the rack ovens.
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We cooked our potato, onion and dill breads, then settled down in the open area for lunch.
Have I mentioned how amazing lunch is? I'll go ahead and mention it again. Incredible. The entire class of thirteen sometimes go into complete silence during lunch while we just shovel all the deliriously delicious locally grown salads and cheeses into our mouths.
After lunch, we baked our sunflower and cracked rye loaf, spelt and wholemeal sourdough.
As the day drew closer to an end, the whole class cleaned the last of the bowls and dough scrapers, and took photos of the day's bread, fresh out of the oven. We got in the last of our questions, and packed up our breads. Loaves were loaded into cars, bundled into bags for train journeys, and wrapped up tightly to be smuggled back to Ireland as contraband on Ryan Air.
As a final request, Emmanuel knocked up a quick recipe for a soda bread. And then the course was over.
I only spent four days with this group of complete strangers, but already I miss them all. I miss the banter, I miss baking endless bread, and I miss the beautiful setting of the school. You really couldn't ask for a friendlier bunch of people running the School of Artisan Food - and the course is truly fantastic.
While attending the School of Artisan Food, I stayed at the Woodend Farm Guesthouse, which is only five minutes away. I can't recommend it highly enough! Trevor and Joy took such great care of us, and even gave us lifts back and forth to the school. The black pudding was pretty darn good, too.
This week, I'm over-the-moon to be attending the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, on their four day bread baking session. Taught by baking legend of the future, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, it's a comprehensive bread extravaganza.
Day Three
We were all pretty knackered when we arrived this morning. Luckily we were allowed to come at 10am, since we'd spent most of the previous evening in the bakery, watching the wood fired ovens being used.
As soon as we arrived, we were off again in a convoy driving to the nearby Tuxford Windmill.
The millers at Tuxford have only owned it for five years, and it was fascinating to learn the process.
I have to admit, the ferocious windmill blades were much more exciting than the constant pulse of a water mill. Most of us loaded up with bags of flour from the Mill Shop, and we headed back to Welbeck.
Later, back in the classroom, we got stuck back into baking straight away.
Today's breads were flavoured ones. A tomato and nigela seed sourdough, and a potato, onion and dill sourdough. We also put together the dough for tomorrow's ciabatta, and baked yesterday's baguettes.
We each had a go at slashing the baguettes, and putting them in the oven.
When they came out of the oven, I wasn't overly disappointed with my rogue pointy-ended baguette. Some ends looked better than others, but most of them weren't too burnt.
Needless to say, we were exhausted when the day ended at five o'clock.
Only one more day left now! I'm feeling a bit sad that it's all going to be over tomorrow. We started on day one as a quiet group of polite, restrained strangers. Now that we're on day three, we've all really bonded, and the camaraderie is fantastic.
Tomorrow's final class will be a review of what we've learned, and a few requests such as plaiting and making soda bread.
This week, I'm over-the-moon to be attending the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, on their four day bread baking session. Taught by baking legend of the future, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, it's a comprehensive bread extravaganza.
Day Two
Today's session was all about sourdough. I'm a bit of a sourdough junkie, myself - so this was right up my alley.
We'd made up a few sponges the night before, so we were ready to get going first thing when we arrived at 9am. On the menu for today was a white sourdough, whey sourdough, rye sourdough, and levain de campagne.
I'm fully convinced on this no-knead technique now, where you just fold the dough over on itself every ten minutes. The result is pretty clear - there is no difference. (No need to knead!)
We worked with a lot of really wet doughs today (the rye dough wasn't even shaped - just poured into the tin!). Wet dough makes me really agitated at home - it always feels like something's gone wrong. But it was really good to just have a go with it in a different environment. (It also helps to calm the nerves to have a huge work station with plenty of surface area to put things down.... and no toaster/kettle/coffee grinder imposing on your workspace.)
First in the oven were the tins of rye sourdough. They were 100% rye breads.... but I'm itching to get home and try the variations recommended on the recipe - onion, and prune and pink peppercorn!
To experiment, my workstation partner Declan and I decided to leave one loaf coated with flour, and the other uncoated. When they came out of the oven, I much preferred the cracked look of the floured one.
Over lunch, we discussed such nerdy things as the Real Bread Campaign, the Brockwell Bake, suppliers of proving baskets, and using fermented apples in bread. Speaking of lunch - it's out of this world. The food is all made on site (obviously), and is sourced from local ingredients. Quiche, salads, garlic potatoes, and bread galore!
After lunch, it was time to shape the white sourdough into baguettes. Emmanuel showed us how.
I've shaped baguettes many times before, so I thought I'd impress the instructor and give them little pointy ends! He wasn't impressed. I was given a stern warning about them burning in the oven! That'll teach me to try to be teacher's pet!!
We then had a quick lesson about using proving baskets. I never flour the tops, only the inside of the basket, but Emmanuel suggested we did. That should make it stick a lot less than mine currently do.
The levain de campagne and whey sourdough are currently retarding in the refrigerator at the school.
It's now 6pm, and I'm back at my B&B. We're having a few hours break until we go back to the school and watch while they light up the wood fired oven. Then we'll take turns baking our sourdoughs late into the night.
Back to school this evening. We arrived at the Welbeck Bakehouse (which is in the same building as the Artisan School) to watch the regular evening shift in the bakery. What an eye-opener! No dainty faffing about here, this is serious manual labour.
Emmanuel showed us all the different pieces of equipment used in the bakery. It's quite new, and everything looks like top spec.
Roman, the head baker, gave us the run down on how the huge twin wood fired ovens work. They took months to build, by a specialist team of oven builders. It's incredible how hot they get, and how deep they go. You need to really know what you're doing when baking with these bad boys.
While we waited for the oven to heat up, we watched in awe as Roman whipped out about a bazillion croissants before our very eyes.....
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The croissant machine is similar to a pasta machine - the rollers get closer and closer together to roll the dough out thinly. Saves all that retched rolling pin work! "What a lazy baker I am!", exclaims Roman with a hearty laugh.
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We loaded up our own sourdoughs in baskets onto racks - I've never seen so many baskets at once! We also had a go at shaping rolls and round tea cakes. (That's me!)
Back at the oven, we watched as the white hot inferno was cleaned out, then loaded up with bread. This is efficiency at it's best - almost a hundred loaves slashed and loaded in around five minutes. Light-years away from the panic that ensues every time I scramble to put a single loaf in my oven at home.
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Finally, our sourdoughs were removed from the huge oven (along with next days' orders for the bakehouse). They all looked fantastic! It was eleven o'clock at night and, bleary eyed, we all headed back to our cozy B&Bs, as the bakers stayed on into the night to clean up.
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Tomorrow..... flavoured breads and a field trip to Tuxford Windmill!
This week, I'm over-the-moon to be attending the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, on their four day bread baking session. Taught by baking legend of the future, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, it's a comprehensive bread extravaganza.
Day One
Fourteen of us arrive bright and early on a Sunday morning to begin our four day bread learn-a-thon. After introducing ourselves, it's clear that we all have varying degrees of experience baking bread. Most students are new to bread, some bake once in a while. I suspect I'm the only total all-out bread obsessive in the bunch. I might have to snooze my way through some boring questions on day one.
Sure enough, we start with the basics. Emmanuel is a good, clear instructor, and walks us through types of flour, and kneading (or lack thereof) techniques. Only fifteen minutes into the first day, we're already putting on our aprons, and weighing out flour.
Emmanuel is not the only baker to suggest that we needn't bother with kneading. Dan Lepard also recommends leaving the dough to develop its own gluten, through quick tightens every ten minutes. I've always thought of this as cheating a little - and I like kneading too much - but I must confess the results are very much the same as if I'd spend ages pummeling the dough around on the counter. What would Elizabeth David say?
He showed us fresh yeast, and dried yeast. As I do with all professional bakers I meet, I asked the question - does fresh vs dried yeast make a difference? Emmanuel's answer to this ongoing controversy: No it does not.
We made three different types of bread today: white, wholemeal and malthouse - all in loaf tins. Basic stuff.
While the first loaves were in the oven, I overheard a woman raving about the Real Bread Campaign. Yesss! Another bread nerd in the class! I'm not alone! I stuck with her for a while. We dislike the same American bread book. We've heard the same rumours about Poulaine bread. Bread nerds unite!
Amazingly, everyone's loaves turned out really well. No disasters - even amongst the beginners - which I think goes to show what an organised teacher Emmanuel is.
We ended the day by learning a little about sourdough starters. (Always such a tough concept for newbies to get their heads around, and always such a boring lesson to sit through when you've been doing it successfully for more than a year.)
Although today's breads were pretty basic for me, it's still great to solidify the fundamentals. It was fun, and exhausting, and I'm looking forward to taking on some more advanced types of bread tomorrow!
I'm not really a dessert kind of girl. I have no trouble resisting sweet dishes of any kind. (Put a bowl of salt and vinegar crisps in front of me, however, and I'll have my nose in there like a snout in a trough.) So it's weird that I keep trying out Delia's puddings every time Waitrose releases their Delia recipe of the week.
But they're just the kind of desserts I like - light, fruity, creamy. Not a flake of chocolate in sight.
This sweet little number is Delia’s Vanilla cream terrine with raspberries and blackcurrant coulis.
It was amazing. It looked like tofu, but tasted like heaven. It was basically just a big block of cream with some berries drizzled over it. The base is double cream, Greek yogurt, vanilla and gelatine to set it. Pretty much like a panna cotta. The topping was a blueberry coulis (the recipe calls for blackcurrants), with raspberries and basil leaves (the recipe calls for mint - I can't leave any recipe un-tweaked.)
It's while I'm in the middle of making desserts like this that I remember why I don't eat dessert. This delicious hoover-able dessert consists of an entire tub of double cream, and most of a tub of Greek yogurt, and a whole load of sugar. (I love the traffic light system supermarkets use to help you determine how healthy a product is. "Hey, this double cream gets a green light for salt! Excellent!")
We wolfed down two servings, and I reluctantly took the rest in to work. I must remember next time only to make pudding when I have guests coming around who can help eat it. Delia's making it hard for me not to become a "dessert person".
On Monday, I shared a meal with a group of fellow foodie tweeters and bloggers, and Masterchef's John Torode, at his new restaurant in Spitalfields, Luxe.
We were all there to try John's burger for Burger Monday - an event organised by Daniel Young of Young and Foodish (left, with John Torode), on a quest to find London's perfect burger.
We didn't find it here.
I really and truly wasn't one of the ones who arrived with the intention of "judging the judge". I'm not a huge Masterchef fan, so wasn't sure what to expect. But the guy has made a career out of judging promising chefs - he has to know what tastes good and what doesn't, right?
Cue the burgers arriving:
On first impressions, not bad. I'm not a hamburger purist, so I quite liked the idea of putting an egg and bacon on the burger. The egg was done right, and everything looked juicy and fatty. The bun was a big improvement over what had apparently been on offer when Dan went to scope the place out earlier.
The Husband had asked for his burger to be done rare, I requested medium rare. "We don't do medium rare", the waiter informed me, "You can either have it rare, medium, or well done." Hmmph. I chose medium, so we could compare the two. They both looked exactly the same.
Then we noticed the fries. Oh, the fries.
We lived in Brighton for four years - we know bad chips. We've many a time found ourselves in a fish and chip shop on the seafront at 3am, desperate for something greasy, and been placated with cold fries that had been drying under a heat lamp for twelve hours. And these were much, much worse.
The burger was weird, too. I'm not sure it really qualified as a burger - more like a "burger style" meat loaf sandwich. It totally crumbled apart when I started eating it. I was sort of hoping for an opportunity to use a Masterchef catchphrase, like "it doesn't get any tougher than this!" - but unfortunately, the meat seemed to have the opposite problem!
For a famous chef judge, and author of a cookbook about beef
Overall, it was a lovely evening of socialising and chatting with fascinating people. And in a lot of ways, the car crash meal served to us by the Simon Cowell of cooking was a delicious conversation piece. But those fries.....
Of course the man himself didn't wait around to hear us doing impressions of him sending a contestant home while we ate his food - he scurried away shortly after his introduction.
John Torode: You are not going through to the next round.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
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