Weekend Cooking

Published on July 11, 2010 by Margaret6 Comments

IÂ don’t think I qualify to write a Weekend Cooking post this weekend as my attempts so far have been a bit disastrous. First of all on Friday evening we decided to have an easy meal and bought a Chinese style meal for two from the supermarket. Simples!

But no, when I opened up the egg fried rice this is what happened to my finger, because stupidly I left it in the lineÂ of the escaping steamÂ – painful and not a pretty sight! D sprained his ankle and tore a ligament two weeks ago and is still limping aboutÂ painfully – we’re hoping there won’t be a third accident!Â

Â Mt second cooking disaster was last night’s meal. IÂ cooked porkÂ inÂ cider, topped with a layer of sliced potatoes. The potatoes hadn’t browned nicely so I put the casserole under the grill and left it too long. Result – a burnt offering of potatoes (I couldn’t bear to take a photo!). Luckily the meat and vegetables underneath were OK. I dread to think what I’ll do for tonight’s meal!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. For more information, see the welcome post, and have a look at some better efforts than mine.

Weekend Cooking – Bread

Published on June 19, 2010 by Margaret11 Comments

Bread is one of my favourite foods. I’ve been baking my own bread for about 4 years now, using a breadmaker. I’ve tried making it by hand but all that kneading just defeats me and it is so much easier with a machine. It is very simple – you just put all the ingredients in the bread tin, choose the appropriate setting, press start and leave it to knead, prove and bake. My breadmaker has a little dispenser so you can add nuts, or dried fruit. Or there is a dough setting – doing all the hard work for you – and then you can shape the dough into rolls, baguettes, plaits, croissants or whatever takes your fancy and bake them in the oven.

I vary what I make, sometimes using a packet mix, which does give a very good result. My favourites are Cheese and Onion, Ciabatta and Mixed Grain. Other times I use fast acting dried yeast and the Very Strong White or Wholemeal flour, sometimes making half white and half brown bread. I recently bought a Country Grain flour – with malted wheat flakes, rye flour and malted wheat and barley flour and mixed that with the very strong white flour to make this loaf:

For this I used 1 teaspoon of yeast, 250 grams of the Country Grain flour, 225 grams of strong white flour, I½ teaspoons of sugar, 1¼ teaspoons of salt, 25 grams of butter and 340 ml of water and set the breadmaker on the wholemeal setting. It took 5 hours to make and bake. There is a rapid setting as well but I find that the bread doesn’t rise as much and it takes more yeast.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs

Weekend Cooking

Published on May 2, 2010 by Margaret4 Comments

My food thoughts this weekend have been coloured by a passage I read in 100 Days on Holy Island: A Writer’s Exile by Peter Mortimer. He spent some time out at sea in a lobster boat catching not just lobsters but velvet crabs and large brown crabs. They’re brought to shore alive, because as Peter writes;

For some reason, humans consider it the height of culinary sophistication to boil a lobster alive in front of restaurant diners’ eyes. (page 89)

I’m not a vegetarian, although I’m edging that way. And this highlighted, yet again, for me the problem I have with being a carnivore – we have to kill a living being in order to eat it.To be confronted with it in person would be beyond me. I know the arguments for and against but having watched Jamie Oliver on one of his TV series (in Italy I think) kill a sheep I’ve only rarely bought lamb – also remembering my granddaughter’s disbelief that anyone could actually eat lamb!

I like crab but Peter Mortimer’s description of how he dealt with cooking the two crabs he was given at the end of his fishing trip also made me think hard about what I eat:

Millions of creatures and animals were slaughtered every day – humans, too. Here I was, anguishing over a brace of crabs. Except you could read of endless deaths. But needed to see only one.

Something of that morning’s experience, something of fishing’s inevitable brutality, had stayed with me, as if here I was about to square the circle, as if I were destined to perform this act of murder to resolve the day.

The two crabs interlocked their claws, as if seking safety in numbers. Their live presence filled the kitchen and though I turned my back on them it made little difference. (page 91)

He did the inevitable and cooked them, dropping them into cold water and brought them slowly to the boil as he’d read that was the most ‘humane’ way. And then he found that the smell of their boiling was nauseous and

… their clattering noise was intolerable. (page 91)

If I had to catch and kill my meal myself I’d soon become a vegetarian!

Weekend Cooking

Published on April 3, 2010November 1, 2024 by Margaret7 Comments

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.

As it’s Easter my contribution this week is Simnel Cake. This recipe is from Marguerite Patten’s Everyday Cook Book in Colour, which was first published in 1968. It was the first cookery book I bought and I’ve used it extensively ever since.

The ingredients are the same as a Rich Dundee Cake (fruit cake). You put half the cake mixture into an 8 inch round cake tin, put a layer of marzipan on top of that and then add the remaining cake mixture. Bake for 2 to 2½ hours at 160°C or Gas 3. When cold brush the top with egg white or apricot jam and cover with a round of marzipan. Traditionally this is decorated with eleven marzipan balls, representing the eleven disciples (leaving out Judas), or sugared eggs, or chicks.

Originally Simnel Cake was made for Mothering Sunday, but it has now become an Easter Cake. Nigella Lawson’s beautiful book Feast: Food that Celebrates Life also has a recipe for Simnel Cake and she uses a light fruit cake mixture and after decorating the cake with marzipan she paints it all with egg white and blow-torches it to give it a burnished look. I haven’t tried that.

Weekend Cooking

Published on March 13, 2010 by Margaret10 Comments

Salmon and Broccoli Fishcakes, or how to make a mess in the kitchen.

Simply steam the salmon in the microwave with a bay leaf and a little white wine. When cooked, flake into small pieces.

Add some cooked broccoli florets and cooked mashed potato, salt and pepper, mixed herbs and an egg yolk.

With damp hands form into whatever size cakes you want, coat in flour, dip into beaten egg white and coat in breadcrumbs.

Then fry, turning once, until golden brown and crisp, drain on kitchen paper.

You then have sticky, eggy, breadcrumby hands and a mess in the kitchen as well as delicious fishcakes.

Weekend Cooking – French Cookbooks

Published on March 6, 2010 by Margaret8 Comments

Last week for my Weekend Cooking post I wrote about Italian cookbooks, so this week I thought I’d stay on the Continent and write about my French cookbooks. I only have four – two over 20 years old and two more recent. Three are by British food writers and one by a French woman writer.

The first one is Floyd on France – an old book with a photo of a young (well youngish) Keith Floyd on the cover. It was published in 1987 by the BBC based on his BBC 2 series of the same name. Keith Floyd hosted many TV programmes on cooking, combining food and travel. He died last September. This book includes his personal selection of some of his favourite French dishes. They’re French provincial recipes.

After a description of the “Principal Gastronomic Regions of France” the book follows the standard cookbook formula of recipes of Soups, Vegetables, Fish, Meat etc; recipes such as Shrimp Bisque made with live grey shrimps (I’ll never attempt that!) from Charente, a variety of omelettes, Carp in Wine Sauce from Burgundy, Jugged Hare with Tiny Dumplings from Alsace, and Nut Tart from Perigord.

I’m going to make his Leek Pie (from Charente) tomorrow.

(Click on the photo to see the recipe.)

Next The Frenchwoman’s Kitchen by Brigitte Tilleray, published in 1990. The brief biographical details given in the book are that she was born in Normandy and was a journalist before writing books on food. This is a beautiful book, one I love to peruse, admiring the photos of food and of France. It’s arranged by regions with information about the land and the people as well as recipes – such as Escargots Baked in a Wine Sauce from West France, Spicy Pear Pie from Normandy and Chicken with Cepes from The PyrÃ©nÃ©Ã©s .

French Leave by John Burton Race is an account of 2002, the year he and his family spent living in a farmhouse in the south-west of France. Another book full of beautiful photos and recipes. John is a two Michelin star chef, who was once a sous chef at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, before opening his own restaurants. His book follows the seasons from Autumn to Spring, with recipes such as Cauliflower Soup with Truffle Oil, Loin of Veal with Pieds de Mouton and Crepes Suzette.

And last but not least Rick Stein’s French Odyssey. This is the book of Rick’s “journey of gastronique discovery from Padstow to Bordeaux and then on to Marseille”. It’s divided into a diary section and recipe chapters arranged by courses. Rick is one of my favourite TV chefs, and I would love to eat in one of his seafood restaurants in Padstow in Cornwall. There are recipes for classic French dishes such as Vichyssoise, Bouillabaisse, Cassoulet and Tarte Tatin as well as “new takes on traditional ingredients”, such as Fillets of John Dory with Cucumber and Noilly Prat and Prune and Almond Tart with Armagnac.