Sorry for the delay in publishing – we were away for the weekend. It’s the time of year for lists and ‘best ofs’, so I’ve been looking at a few best books of the year posts, and also bookmarking recipes to make over Christmas.
I’ve kicked off my Christmas baking by making dough for chocolate sables and clementine biscuits, and tart pastry for mince pies, and stashing them all in the freezer. Rolling and baking commences next this week.
This week has been full of cooking prepared in advance: some very unsuccessful braised beef that was supposed to be Sunday dinner, and ended up being eaten on Monday; following Sassy Radish to combine previously frozen lentils, previously washed and shredded kale with a couple of sausages to make a super-quick dinner; parsnip risotto from this month’s Delicious, prepared halfway (in the Thermomix) and in the fridge, ready for dinner tonight (with more sausages); and a batch of April Bloomfield’s porridge, also made in the Thermomix last night, and reheated for dinner this morning. Oh, and brownies with marmalade, and, inspired by a friend who is baking crazy amounts of bread, I’m attempting to revive my frozen sourdough starter. Fingers crossed…
Emma at Poires au Chocolat has sensibly suspended her blog while she completes a Cambridge Medical degree (!!), but her blog remains an amazing source of thoroughly tested, creative baking recipes. I’m planning to make these mincemeat squares soon.
I am definitely cooking differently with a child, especially now she’s weaning. To get dinner on the table while minding her through the grumpy late afternoon, I mostly rely on something that can be prepared earlier in the day, or something from the freezer than can be easily reheated. The oven is a better option than the stove, especially because I can set it to turn on and off by itself on a timer – useful if I’m trapped under a sleeping baby when something should come out of the oven. I also lean on prepared food a fair bit – some prepared meals like lasagne and fish pie, good bought curry sauces, supermarket pizzas. I’m learning to dial down my ambitions – better to eat something simple or bought than to make something entirely homemade, but not get to eat until 9pm.
Some seasonal recipes to try out:
Mashed potato pie – In Jennie’s Kitchen. This sounds so English – bake mash together with cheese and eggs – and yet I’ve never come across it before. Ideal autumn comfort food.
April Bloomfield’s English Porridge – Food 52. I made it this week in my Thermomix. I think her recipe is too salty, but I like the mix of rolled oats and pinhead oats, and it works well with maple syrup and a couple of chopped dates. It reheated well too.
I finally cracked and bought Diana Henry’s latest book, A Change of Appetite, which the twitter food world has been adoring for weeks now. The first thing I made was the black bread, a gorgeous dark loaf with rye and flavoured with cocoa, coffee, treacle and caraway. And it’s as good as that sounds.
It is peach and nectarine season, so of course, there is peach pie everywhere. Not here, of course – who has time for pastry with a 4 month old?? – but enjoyed vicariously:
The Observer Food Monthly did a great feature on St John last weekend, and how it has influenced restauranteurs and chefs in the 20 years since it started.
I made these slightly insane ‘scones’ from a recipe by Zoe Nathan at Lottie + Doof, a Los Angeles bakery. When we were in California last year, we visited another of her bakeries, Milo + Olive, and had a rather wonderful lunch. These scones are a long way from cream tea scones, having a ratio of about 1:1 of flour to butter, and including cornmeal and ground nuts. Delicious as they are, they are a bit too crumbly and fragile for me, so I’m going to try and adapt the recipe and reduce the butter somewhat. Watch this space for a recipe.
A plain chocolate cake
I was pointed to this lovely, straightforward chocolate cake by The Wednesday Chef (the same post that also links to the scones above). It behaves exactly as described – is subtlely chocolatey (I would consider increasing the cocoa next time) and needs to be a little underbaked (some ground almonds might help keep it moist).
Different sides of the Michael Pollan story
I picked up Michael Pollan’s ’’Cooked” last weekend, after reading a wholehost of interviews and reviews. So far I’m enjoying it a lot. I like Pollan’s writing style, and he blends in the personal with interviews and authoritative references. This article, although the headline is clearly linkbait, is worth reading. I think there’s a useful debate to be had about whether everyone should cook, whether they enjoy it or not.
Amazing MRobin cake design
Via I-don’t-know-who, these cake designs are just beautiful. There’s a lovely video showing how she makes the cakes, which are entremets, a French style of layered mousses with thin layers of sponge. The fantastic exteriors are made by patterning and colouring a thin sponge cake which is wrapped around the outside of the cake. Stunning.
Heale House Gardens
Another beautiful thing – Heale House near Salisbury has an small but enchanting garden that is open to the public. We went at the perfect time, with cherry blossom, bluebells and tulips all out simultaneously. The website doesn’t even slightly do justice to this garden, which is tucked away in an isolated valley below the A303. If you’re off to the West Country this summer, this could be worth a diversion.
As you like it
We spend a weekend in May in Stratford, and although the skies were pretty much slate-grey throughout, there was considerable sunshine in the RSC’s production of ‘As You Like It’. Pippa Nixon as Rosalind was by turns heart-wrenchingly lovestruck, androgynously masculine and then full of sunshine and smiles at the end. There’s a little video that gives you a taste – sincerely hoping this transfers to London.
Cherry Bombe
While on hospital-visiting duties, I picked up yet another new food magazine in Selfridges this week – ‘Cherry Bombe’. What’s unusual about this one (apart from it’s price and thick paper) is that the contributors and interviewees are all women. While I could probably do without the cover interview with model-turned-cookie maker Karlie Kloss, the Oma & Bella behind-the-book feature is very good.
April has been a waking-up month. This winter has seemed so long and cold that when the sun finally came out, and the ground started to warm and flowers started to appear, it was like emerging from hibernation. Suddenly outdoors was something to linger in, instead of something to be battled through as fast as possible.
I was nudged by someone to buy bulbs from Bloms Bulbs in the autumn, and now I am really glad I did. The tulips in particular have been spectacular. I’m always surprised by how many come up from previous years as well. I have a habit of planting them in tubs and forgetting about them as soon as they have gone over. So the ugly pot of weeds I’ve been hosting on my front step for the last six months or so is suddenly filled with creamy tulips.
I found this article about J Crew really interesting, especially the interaction between Jenna Lyons, the creative director, and the Chief Exec. If you’re in the UK, you may have come across J Crew in references to to Michelle Obama – she and her daughters often wear the brand. They are essentially a preppy, clean-cut clothing company, a little like Gap, but have moved towards a more cutting-edge look in recent years, as the article describes. I still have a couple of items from there that I really like that I bought when I was living in Palo Alto in 2004/5.
Although it’s just the two of us that sit down to dinner in our house (and sometimes not even that), I really enjoy Jenny Rosenstrach’s ’Dinner: A love story’ blog and [her book of the same name](“Dinner A Love Story – Amazon.co.uk”). I really loved her 100 Rules of Dinner post – not just rules for dinner, but rules for cooking, good food and life. My favourite is probably #71:
Performance enhancing drugs are to sports as butter is to cooking. Which is not
to say that butter is evil. But it is cheating.
although I am a completely on board with #29 and #54, and a total evangelist for #15:
Resist the urge to apologize when you’re cooking for people. Most of the time your
dinner guests won’t notice anything is wrong until you bring it up.
Some lovely friends bought me a gift subscription from The Spicery for my birthday, and I’m already enjoying it so much that I’ve ordered a stack of extra things from them – including beautiful long Cinnamon quills and really fragrant garam masala. Check out the recipe kits.
Using Mainly Spoons 