Garlic paste

Here's a worthwhile time-saver: garlic paste on hand in the fridge, no need to fry off before adding to - well, anything you're cooking, really. You just need a food mill, unless you've got strong arms and a sieve. Keeps well.















8 heads of garlic
2-3 bay leaves
a bunch of thyme
peppercorns and salt
a little oil
water

Break the heads into cloves, but no need to peel them. Put in a single layer on a baking tray; add the peppercorns and herbs, a splash of oil and enough water to come not quite half way up. Cover the dish with foil. Bake for 90 minutes at 150C, until the garlic is completely soft.

Fish out the pepper and bay leaves, and some of the twiggier bits of thyme. Drain and push through a mill or sieve. Add a little sea salt and bottle. Keep in the fridge.

Note: These quantities make about 300ml.

Quick real bread - a new take on Jim Lahey's loaf 2

Karen at Cornflower baked the original Jim Lahey bread today ... it's a two-day process that makes good bread. If you need bread on the table NOW, just bake your usual dough in a covered Le Creuset pot (what Americans call a Dutch oven) in a hot oven. The fastest I can manage this is 90 minutes start to finish (45 minutes in the breadmaker on dough setting), straight into the hot pot without a rest (better to rest the dough for at least 10 minutes, but things are not always perfect, and yeast is very forgiving), 30 minutes covered, 10 uncovered. A little time to cool. Method and links here.

The loaf in the photograph was made in a hurry, but, even so, had a good holey crumb and tasted great

Lemon pots

My sister brought Meyer lemons from her garden in California. It's impossible to buy a Meyer* lemon here, so it was a wonderful gift - they have a scented taste quite unlike other lemons. So, something special. But my sister's only here for a few days, and I don't want to spend them chained to the stove.

These little citrus pots take moments, although you'd never guess. They're rich, so tiny quantities - a shot glass would work well, if you don't have ramekins (which, in truth, are too big; I half-fill mine). Perfect. So there was time for a walk by the river in the snow, even though we were nine for dinner.

Lemon pots

75g sugar
300ml double cream
one lemon

In an ordinary saucepan, melt the sugar in the double cream. Add the juice of a lemon and pour into tiny pots or shot glasses. Put them in the fridge, and by the time the cream is cold, it will have set. I generally use the zest, too, because I value the sharp taste over a truly smooth appearance.


* Just before my sister arrived, David Lebovitz, who used to be Alice Waters' pastry chef at Chez Panisse, posted interestingly about Meyer lemons, with a recipe for lemon curd

Plums in muscovado

Breakfast this morning: yoghurt with stewed plums. Bliss. The plums were slightly past their best, but fully revived with a little muscovado sugar. So much flavour there's no need for spice. 20 minutes, covered, in a moderate oven.

Little cheesy biscuits

These are seriously more-ish, so I've made them very small to avoid over-doing it. The recipe appears in various guises in virtually every recipe book that has a chapter on party food. I'm making them tonight for a community party on Saturday evening; there won't be another opportunity to make my plate of nibbles. These also have the advantage of being quick and easy.

You'll need equal quantities of:

• strong cheese
• white flour
• butter (at room temperature)
  

plus a little cayenne pepper, and whatever you decide to decorate the biscuits with ... fennel seeds, chopped pistachio nuts, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, etc etc

I used 100g each of cheese, flour and butter, and used a mixture of parmesan and cheddar. Put all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until a ball is formed. Roll the dough into a sausage and refridgerate for at least half an hour (you don't need to wrap it unless you're making this well ahead).

Slice the sausage to about the thickness of a £1 coin and place on a non-stick baking sheet (no need to grease). They don't spread much, so can be quite close. Decorate (or not). I used a few fennel seeds. Another time I might roll the whole sausage in poppy seeds before slicing.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 10 minutes. (My fan oven was set at 175C and they took 12 minutes.)

Cool on a rack. These can be made a couple of days ahead and put in an airtight box.

Supreme de poulet aux morilles

Last night's dinner was supreme de poulet aux morilles. Except that it wasn't, because there were "only" porcini in the larder. And although I was notionally following the recipe in Raymond Blanc's A Taste of My Life, I don't think he'd have given me the keys to a restaurant, because I couldn't help but disobey some of his orders.

The recipes in A Taste of My Life are fully explained; on top of that there are notes giving details of the science, the art, the prejudices of cheffing. Enough to intrigue.

Well, this was good, but we both agreed the sauce would have been better poured over a little pork. Lucius thought it should become part of my standard repertoire. That good. Also pretty simple, shorn of some of M Blanc's strictures.

I did, however, follow this guidance (given again and again): I like to boil wine before adding it to the dish. It intensifies the desirable flavours and removes the alcohol, which can leave an unpleasant flavour in the mouth. If you over-reduce the wine, however, you will lose the freshness and acidity.

Chicken breast with porcini & manzanilla sauce

30g dried porcini, soaked in 150g hot water
4 chicken breasts
a little butter
120g button mushrooms
120ml manzanilla, reduced a little
double cream (RB says 400ml, but I didn't use even half that)

Soak the mushrooms for as long as you can. RB says at least six hours for morels, but porcini rehydrate in less than half an hour. At the same time, bring the sherry to the boil in a small pan, and keep on the heat for a couple of minutes.

Brown the chicken on both sides in the butter - RB says two minutes each side. Put the meat onto a plate while you make the sauce in the same pan. Add the sliced fresh mushrooms and the drained porcini. After a few minutes, add the soaking water and the manzanilla, stir, then add the cream. Put the chicken breasts into the pan, cover and cook. RB says that 180g breasts will take six minutes; although I didn't weigh the chicken, I found this timing spot on.

Plate the chicken, then reduce the sauce a little further.

Roast grouse with bread sauce

Last week, looking at the butcher's display, I realised I have never cooked grouse. Now, it will be hard to resist ... delicious, an easy treat ... but, of course, ruinously expensive. Cheaper than a restaurant, and much much nicer - I've been off restaurants for years*, really. It began, I think, when I saw Gordon Ramsay making something on telly with a slice of processed "bread" from a plastic bag. How do you earn Michelin stars if you don't know anything about bread? The prejudice was confirmed at the gastropub where my daughter worked all last year - fabulous food, except that it was all always thoroughly oversalted.

Buying two young grouse was the easy part. How to cook them? I thought Lady Maclean's Cookbook would be a good place to start, but she and her upper crust Highland friends all assumed you knew how to roast a grouse, and were full of suggestions for what to do when you'd got fed up and wanted a change: grouse salad, anyone? perhaps a little devilled grouse? So I read everything Hugh FW wrote in Meat, and then followed the cooking (but not preparation) instructions given by Norman Tebbit in his wonderful new The Game Cook.

Of course, if you're eating game birds, then you've got to have bread sauce, which is a doddle providing you have proper white bread on hand. You just peel a shallot or two (or an onion), put it in some milk with a couple of cloves and some bay leaves, heat it up a little and leave it to steep. You do this early in the day. When it's nearly dinner time, you strain the milk and chuck in your white breadcrumbs, let them expand, then check the seasoning. Another of those things which is not much more difficult than the processed equivalent, yet 100x better.

As for the grouse, it roasts quickly with a minimum of fuss. I cooked ours during the first half of the England match, and we ate it at half time - well, actually, we missed a bit of the second half. And when the match was over, we had a little cheese with the last of the oatcakes I made the other day.

Roast grouse

one grouse per person
one apple per grouse
streaky bacon
a slice of good white bread per bird
paté de foie gras (in the absence of grouse livers)
oil
wine and stock for the gravy

Heat the oven to 190C.

Cut the apples and put them into the grouse. Cover the birds with streaky bacon (stretch it first on the back of your knife; it will crisp quicker). Roast on a rack in a tin, if possible. After 20-25 minutes, take off the bacon, then return the birds to the oven for 10 minutes to brown. Let them stand for 10 minutes before eating.

While they are standing, fry the bread in hot oil, and spread with the foie gras or fried grouse livers (we were not lucky enough to get any giblets with our birds). At the same time, make gravy with some fortified wine and good stock - I used some homemade trotter gear, which makes everything it touches silky smooth and flavoursome.

Serve with redcurrant jelly, watercress or steamed cabbage, and some little roasted potatoes. On hot plates. Make sure to save the bones for stock. That's today's task.




*I'll make an exception for Leon, where the food is always exactly what you want, and Pizza Express, Alfred's favourite; both serving proper food at decent prices. But that's lunch, not dinner. Actually, I'm not really that bah humbug, I enjoy a meal out as much as the next cook. It's just that I think we mostly do rather better at home. And definitely last night.

Oatcakes

Last night I made oatcakes. Easy peasy. Delicious. Far cheaper to bake at home (also no plastics or other wrapping). I'm ashamed it's taken me so long, and that the impetus was laziness: it was easier to make them than to go out and buy some.

Oatcakes

250g rolled oats
a pinch of bicarb
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp butter
very hot water

Begin by making oatmeal from the rolled oats; blitz them in a food processor until they are coarse or fine crumbs, depending on the texture you are aiming for in the finished biscuits.

Tip them into a big bowl. Add the salt and bicarb, then stir in the melted butter (you could use olive oil). Add the water very slowly - you want as little as possible, just enough to make the oats stick together. I'd be surprised if I used more than 100ml.

Gather the oats up into a ball, then roll them out as thin as you can. Either stamp them into little rounds, or make traditional farls* by cutting a large circle into six.

Put the cakes onto a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven (200c) for 15-20 minutes. Watch them carefully towards the end; you want them just beginning to turn brown at the edges. I baked mine in the wood oven; the temperature was rising from 180 to 210 while they were in, and they took 18 minutes. I suspect they are pretty forgiving.


* I've just discovered that farl comes from Viking for 1/4, but these days farls of oatcake and shortbread are cut into six rather than four.

Quick plum tart

Last night was the last time until Christmas that all six of us will sit down together to eat. So I made a quick pudding - I went into the garden in the gloaming, picked a few sticky-sweet Victoria plums, halved and stoned them and put them on a sheet of puff pastry which I'd brushed with jam made from last year's crop. 15 minutes in a hot oven. Mmm ... except for one thing: those fabulously sweet plums turned sour in the oven. Any ideas why this should be?

Spaghetti with mussels

Lettice and I went to the market this morning. I found damsons and Kent cobnuts; Lettice found mussels. We ate them for lunch - quick, easy, delicious.

Cook the mussels as if you were making moules marinière. Cook the spaghetti. Soften a few halved tiny tomatoes in a frying pan with some oil (and perhaps a little basil). When everything has finished cooking, serve it together in hot soup plates: put the spaghetti in first, next the tomatoes, then the mussels, then the soup. Fabulous.


PS a kilo will easily do four people served this way

Cold beef with lemon and thyme

When families gather together in the summer, the most convenient way to picnic is for everyone to bring a plate of food ... and even if there's no-one co-ordinating, there's rarely much duplication. Yesterday 11 families brought a picnic lunch to share at the lunchtime break of the school cricket XI v the old boys. First to go were the onion bhajis, made by the mother of the captain, who also made vegetable samosas. Quiche, crostini, dips, sausages, raw veggies, smoked salmon - all easily transportable summer favourites.

I made cold beef strips using rump steak, a really good standby when you need something that won't take long and will travel well. The trick is to marinade the meat after you cook it to give it flavour. Quick and delicious - it's just as good hot, too.

Steak strips with lemon and thyme

Choose a thick piece of rump, and trim away the fat. When it's at room temperature, brush it with oil and cook it on a smoking hot griddle pan so that it is rare. A couple of minutes each side should be enough - it will "cook" a little more in the marinade, and if you're eating it cold, it will also carry on cooking as it cools.

For one or two pieces of rump, finely zest a lemon, then squeeze half the juice. Add a handful of finely chopped thyme, lots of pepper, some crushed garlic if you like. For a picnic, put everything in a plastic box. Take a board and a sharp knife, and slice the meat when you're ready to eat.

If you're eating this at hot and at home, put the meat in a shallow dish and pour on the marinade; leave it for about 10 minutes - you'll have to turn it, as there's not much liquid.


Other good things to take to a picnic

Travelling beef sandwich
Superquick noodles

Honey-seared salmon with noodles

Guest post from daughter Lettice, who cooked dinner for the two of us this evening. She's just back from three months volunteering in South Africa, and says she really missed cooking:


Just tried this recipe and it was delicious. Few things: i didn't use the bean sprouts (couldn't find them) we thought they/cold cucumber sticks/mushrooms would have been equally nice. Also the frying pan was too small, and everything went everywhere, so maybe use a deep set pan or a wok - which we have i just failed to use! The pan was also slightly too hot when i added the salmon so slighty too cooked outside/not cooked inside... just cook how you would normally cook salmon - not how the recipe says!

2 strips egg/rice noodles
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 thick salmon fillets, skinned and sliced 2 cm thick
1 tbsp runny honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp sesame seeds
1 bunch spring onions, sliced
100g spinach leaves

Cook the noodles; drain, add a little sesame oil. Toss the salmon with the honey and soy sauce. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a high heat and toast the sesame seeds until lightly golden. Remove from pan. Add half the oil to the pan; once hot, cook the salmon for 1 minute each side. Remove from the pan; keep warm. Add the remaining oil to the pan; fry the noodles, spring onions and bean sprouts. Add the spinach, seeds, remaining honey and soy mix. Toss until the spinach wilts. Sit the honey seared salmon on top of the noodles and spinach - serve.

Very quick, very delicious chocolate pudding

Fabulous Easter pud - make it with the best chocolate you can find. I make it with Willie Harcourt-Cooze's Peruvian or Venezuelan, but anything darkly delicious will do. It's (more or less) his recipe, too - they come on the inside of the wrappers.

I've got one sitting in the fridge for dinner tonight. I may make another for lunch tomorrow ... it's the work of moments, only you'd never guess.

Tartuffo
for 8-12 (it's v rich)

180g cacao, grated
300ml double cream
150g icing sugar

Melt the chocolate. Whip the double cream to soft peaks, add the sugar. Let the chocolate cool a little, then beat it into the cream. Pour this mixture into a mould lined with cling film - this is enough for a small loaf tin. Chill.


Related links

Jennifer Paterson's adult chocolate cake - particularly good with Willie's cacao
Nigella's fudge icing for chocolate cakes
Rich chocolate refrigerator cake
Dense chocolate loaf

Weed sauce

These are the leaves I used to make a salsa verde for lunch. The dandelions came from the lawn, just before its first cut of the year; the nettles came from a newly-sprung patch just outside the greenhouse; the rocket had self-seeded in the greenhouse; the sorrel has seeded itself all over the path - my fault for not picking it hard enough last year. In other words, this is the lazy gardener's sauce. Tastes good.

This variation on my basic salsa verde recipe went as follows:

Blitz:

• a small basket of mixed green leaves
• a little red wine vinegar
• two or three anchovies
• some mustard
• olive oil

PS if you are using nettles, you need to blanch them briefly, to defuse the sting:











Related links

Nettle pesto
Nettle soup
Nettle tea
Nettle beer

Daily bread 3

Another five minutes' work this morning, and there's fragrant fresh bread for lunch. Not a smooth round ball, because I'm cack-handed. But who cares, when it's gone in minutes? This is a good daily loaf, achieved with very little effort (see previous posts for details).

It takes a little more salt than I usually use in my bread, but that is both to preserve the dough in the fridge and to keep fermentation in check (a couple of months ago I posted at length about the role of salt in bread dough).

If you like, you can replace some of the white flour with wholemeal, but not too much, or you'll lose the lightness.

This type of baking originated in the US: Jim Lahey's no-knead bread swept the blogosphere a couple of years ago; around the same time Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois published Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Peter Reinhart is currently testing recipes for a second book on the subject. These notes are based on a recipe in Hertzberg and Francois's book, which I have adapted for a European kitchen.* Americans cook and bake using cup measures, which are in some ways very freeing. But with bread, I like to know what I'm doing so that I can do it again, and that means weighing. I use a very cheap scale, the sort you can re-set to zero between ingredients. Perfect for weighing water, yeast, salt and flour into a box - no washing up. And if you like the taste of sourdough, no need to wash it up between batches.



















Dough to make four loaves over a fortnight

5 litre food-grade plastic box

650ml cups of water
15g tablespoons dried yeast
20g tablespoons Maldon salt
780g cups strong white flour
cornmeal / flour for dusting

• Weigh the water into your box. Add yeast and salt, then the flour. Mix with a spoon until there are no more lumps of flour. You should have a shaggy mess. Cover the box loosely, and leave for 2-5 hours. I use water straight from the tap and leave for four or five hours; if you use water warmed to no hotter than blood heat, this stage could take as little as 2-3 hours.

• When the dough is smooth (see yesterday's photo if in doubt), put it in the fridge. You could use it straight away, but after 2-3 hours, it will be easier to handle (and this is a material consideration).

• When you are ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour over the dough, then pull off roughly a quarter (do it by eye). You will probably have to cut it with a bread knife, and you should flour this first. Stretch the dough, pulling it out as if you were playing an accordion. Then, on a floured board, tuck the ends underneath four times, giving a quarter turn each time. This will give you a boule (the smoothness of which will be related to how well you played your accordion). Put this on a floured peel - just a flat metal baking sheet in the absence of anything fancier. Leave it to rest for half an hour.

• Put a stone in the oven and switch it on to very hot: 220C - more, if you can. Flick the dough** from the peel onto the stone***, shut the door, then add a low baking tin with a little water into the oven. Half an hour. You might finish it upside down if it's not quite ready when you check. Cool it on a rack.

The rest of the dough will keep for a couple of weeks, covered loosely, in your fridge.


















Notes

* These notes should be enough for an experienced baker to follow. If you're having difficulty, email me and I'll try to help out. Better still, buy the book, as it's full of wonderful variations on the basic doughs. But if you're European, you'll also need a set of US measuring cups.

**This is tricky, and I suspect there are demos on YouTube. But however mis-shapen your loaf is when you deposit it onto the stone, it will rise magnificently in the oven. And it will still taste good. (This dough is first cousin to the NY Times loaf that hit the blogosphere a couple of years ago, and would therefore, I suppose, bake well in a hot covered Le Creuset pan instead of free-form on a stone.)

***You can spend a lot of money on this, or you can buy a paving slab at the builders' merchant.

Related posts

Daily bread
Daily bread 2

Six seed rolls
Bread knots - another simple way to make beautiful and delicious rolls, using this dough, or your default dough

Yeast starter for bread - and the bread make your own sourdough starter

No-knead bread the famous NY Times recipe
Speeded-up no-knead bread and a different take on it

Yoghurt bread fabulous, easy, TRY IT
Quick oat loaf
Spelt bread - it's getting easier to buy this highly-flavoured flour

Anti-oxidant tea bread - I made this for my husband for a pre-surgery boost - delicious, too!

Yeast conversion - fresh/dried/quick

Things to do with stale or leftover bread

Panzanilla
Herb stuffing for roast chicken
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Baked scallops
Anchovy toasts

Quick and easy fish cakes

It's funny, one day there's five inches of snow and only the spears of a few snowdrops, the next day most of the snow has gone and the wood is strewn with snowdrops. This tea glass is full of the false promise of spring: those catkins have been hanging in the hedge since December, the witch hazel is almost over, and the snowdrops - well, they're a winter flower.

But there's more and more light, so I'm spring cleaning. It's amazing how the cobwebs show up at this time of year, although I leave as many as possible, because I'd rather have spiders than flies in my house, and because it's a losing battle here - the spiders come in when the nights start to get cold in the autumn, and none of them seems inclined to go back into the garden as the weather gets warmer. Luckily, I'm not afraid of them, although I don't much like it when they drop onto my pillow. Which they do (no rude remarks about cobwebs in our bedroom, please Eleanor!).

There's a culinary side to the spring cleaning: we're eating up the larder and the deep freeze. We've been eating fish cakes, using up various tins and packets, and using my usual recipe. When I used up all the Matzo meal, I forgot to buy more, but I found that fresh breadcrumbs worked just as well.

Mostly I use this method for making crab cakes, but it works well with other fish, and saves a lot of palaver with potatoes - although if there's leftover mash in the fridge, I'll happily use that. I've used this basic recipe with both fresh crab & tinned crab, as well as with a mixture of the two, also with salmon or tuna. I've replaced the Matzo with fresh breadcrumbs. I don't bother weighing anything any more - I find that a mixture made with one egg and one lemon will support enough fish for two or three people, and that if there isn't enough fish, then a little more Matzo or a few more crumbs will eke it out, especially if there are plenty of herbs in the mix. I'm not sure I've ever used the full specification of fish.
















Fish cakes

1 egg
2 tsp Dijon mustard
the juice of one lemon
450g cooked fish - although I rarely use anything like this much
50g Matzo meal
chopped herbs (optional)

Mix the egg with two teaspoons of Dijon mustard and the lemon juice (zest, too, if you like). Add the salmon and Matzo meal and, using a fork, stir together until it's all amalgamated. When you're ready to cook, you can chop in some herbs - dill would be good with salmon, or parsley, chives, perhaps coriander. Shape into patties - these days, I use a ring, because these are a little flaky, but you really don't have to. If you want to freeze them, now's the moment, interleaved with greaseproof paper. I'd thaw them all day in the fridge before cooking them, but I dare say you could cook them from frozen (as if you'd bought the cardboard sort in Tesco). They need about five minutes on each side.

Anchovy sauce for broccoli

This is seriously good, seriously unphotogenic, a wonderful winter alternative to salsa verde. We've eaten it every night this week.

It's particularly good with broccoli, goes well with roast lamb, with lentils. If you make a stiff mix with only a little olive oil, then you can use it to spread on toast (a sort of homemade Gentleman's Relish without the butter). If you make it with plenty of olive oil, then you can use it as a salad dressing for bitter winter leaves. It's also good as a dip with carrot and celery sticks.

For years I've bought Waitrose own-brand anchovies in little tins which come in a black cardboard box. Last summer there was a supply problem, so I began to buy Connétable - lovely silvery fish with a much milder flavour.









This recipe is enough for two or three evenings - it keeps for ages in the fridge, although you may want to stir in a little more oil second/third time round. The very last scrapings from the bowl are good added to gravy or a stew.

Anchovy sauce

5-6 cloves of garlic, peeled
a tin of anchovies
a splash of red wine vinegar
olive oil

Put the garlic and fish into a food processor - I use my Magimix, but a mortar would do. When they're smooth, add the vinegar, blitz, and then add olive oil glug by glug until you get the consistency you're after.

Spoon the warm-ish sauce over broccoli as soon as it's drained and serve hot.

Inspiration for this came from Fergus Henderson of St John.



This time last year, I was blogging about Lady Westmoreland's Soup - possibly the most frugal soup in the world. See what you think!

A Christmas Eve feast

We're having our Christmas feast here tonight: smoked salmon, delicious roast lamb with lots of vegetables. I've made little lemon pots for pudding, and mince tarts, and then there's cheese and fruit. All the children are here (my girls are wrapping all my presents for me, I can hear them chatting by the fire next door ... very soothing).

Now I'm off to get dressed in the half hour before my oldest friend and my parents arrive. Suddenly, after the usual Christmas Eve pressures, I feel Christmassy. Lovely to have everyone under one roof - I always get it in the neck for saying that, but it's true.


The lemon pots are quick and simple: melt 75g sugar in a 3ooml tub of double cream. Add the juice of a lemon and pour into tiny pots or shot glasses. Put them in the fridge, and by the time the cream is cold, it will have set. Mmmm

The mince pies were particularly easy: I bought a jar of very standard mincemeat, and jazzed it up with the grated zest of an orange and a little armagnac. I made pastry with 240g flour, 120g butter, and the juice of the orange. I then pressed this with a wooden stick into the tiny holes of my tart tin. I then put the pastry into the fridge to rest for an hour before putting a little mincemeat into each tart and putting them in a very hot oven (220C) for 10 minutes.

Alfred says that he likes them to have lots of icing sugar (or what he calls sweet flour) ... and the more sugar they have, the better he likes them. They're also my father's favourite.

Frying pan bread

I've made all the bread we've eaten in this house this year. Occasionally there's a crisis when I forget, or when appetites are larger than I think they will be. Those days, I either make soda bread, or this frying pan bread. It's not perfect, but it's better than going out shopping. Shamingly, I've had to make it this morning (absent-mindedness last night).

Emergency frying pan bread

Mix a soft dough from self-raising flour and water, with a little salt. You can use plain flour, or strong bread flour, but I find you get a slightly lighter result with self-raising. Flatten into a round and fry lightly on both sides in a little oil.

It's not perfect, but it's what we do. Does anyone have a better "instant bread" recipe?



















We ate our flatbread with a stew made from a tiny bit of leftover tomato salad and a small box of mushrooms simmered for a few minutes until everything was cooked through. Much nicer than plain mushrooms, and a good use for the spoonful or so left in the bottom of a bowl overnight. A very good breakfast, even though you can't make toast.


Incidentally, I blitzed the leftover wedge with a handful of parsley, some mushroom stalks, a couple of anchovies and some lemon juice. I put this into an ovenproof dish, and it's going to be a stuffing / forcemeat to go with a very small joint of lamb which has suddenly had to stretch to feed to extra mouths. (Delicious: the lemon juice made it; some zest would have been even better.)

The frugal kitchen produces delicious food, full of different tastes.




Related posts

Six seed rolls
Bread knots - another simple way to make beautiful and delicious rolls, using this dough, or your default dough

Yeast starter for bread - and the bread make your own sourdough starter

No-knead bread the famous NY Times recipe
Speeded-up no-knead bread and a different take on it

Yoghurt bread fabulous, easy, TRY IT
Quick oat loaf
Spelt bread - it's getting easier to buy this highly-flavoured flour

Fresh corn bread - now is the perfect autumnal moment for this
Late summer hearth bread - another perfect autumn bread, this one with grapes

Anti-oxidant tea bread - I made this for my husband for a pre-surgery boost - delicious, too!

Yeast conversion - fresh/dried/quick


Things to do with stale or leftover bread

Panzanilla
Herb stuffing for roast chicken
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Baked scallops
Anchovy toasts

Links to the best blogging bakers I know

Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups
A Year in Bread
Susan at Farmgirl Fare

this list is not exhaustive, there are dozens of wonderful blogging bakers

Red cabbage salad for winter days

The other day, Lettice was moaning about the lack of salad at this time of year: I HATE winter ... she's missing soft salad already, but we really are committed to not buying leaves which are flown in from abroad. This red cabbage salad was my response, we've eaten loads of variations.

Finely chop as much red cabbage as you need. Grate some orange zest onto it. Squeeze the juice from the orange, add a little salt, some oil. Chop parsley, perhaps some leeks too; grate carrot. Mix everything together. You could add caraway if you've got some.

I've made it with clementines (as you see): great, but they're hard to zest - and the zest really does add zing, so I'd be loathe to leave it out.