I went to a friend’s for lunch so the bread is slightly over proofed, but I’m very happy with the shaping. I used the Dough standard white bread recipe (500g flour, 350g water, 5g dried yeast and 10g salt) and that makes 3 good sized baguette style loaves to bake in 1 batch.
This is the perfect dense madeira cake, made in a load tin to be eaten in thick slices with mugs of tea. Perhaps not summer food, but as we’ve had no summer yet I suspect I’ll be making it again soon. If I wanted to fancy it up I’d glaze it with lemony icing, but it is just as good without. I’m planning to make some for the cafe at the Harrison Playgroup Celidh, if anyone fancies coming along.
Lemon Loaf Cake
3 eggs, weighed in their shells
An equal amount of self raising flour
Ditto vegan marg
Ditto caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Zest and juice of a lemon
Line your Loaf tin with paper. You can do fancy cutting out to make the paper fit the tin perfectly but I like the rustic look of paper stuffed in roughly.
Oven should be 170 C
Beat the sugar and marg together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, with a small amount of flour to stop it splitting. Mix the remaining flour, baking powder and lemon zest together and add. Fold it together and then thin the batter with the lemon juice.
Put the batter in your tin and smooth out the top. Cook for 35-40 minutes. It is done when a toothpick in the centre comes out dry.
The icing isn’t perfect, so the recipe needs fiddling before posting, but it tastes good.
A little bit up from the end of the Union Canal in Edinburgh, someone has set up what is basically a burger van in a canal boat. On Saturday, eldest and I were doing errands in that part of town, and we decided to sample their food. In fairness to them, they have lots of non burger options, which also looked good, but the siren call of burger was difficult to resist.
They were happy to give eldest a plain burger in an unbuttered bun with nothing added but ketchup, while I got the full on lots of salad, onions and burger relish. This isn’t fancy dining, but what it is was done well. And if I worked in what we are now supposed to refer to as the financial district of Edinburgh, I’m sure the thought of a bacon morning roll would make a cold trudge along the canal more enjoyable.
I think people tend to think of garlic mushrooms as a dish which has to have butter to be tasty. For me, though, the best bit is the dark earthy liquid that comes out of the mushrooms if you cook them slowly for long enough (still not all that long). Served with some bread for mopping up and maybe some scrambled egg, they make a great quick supper when you have 2 hungry kids and not a lot of time. Of course, the kids might decide that this week they don’t eat mushrooms, but then it’s just more mushrooms for you.
Cooking with kids wise, they can clean (rub gently with kitchen paper) and chop the mushrooms. And my youngest, who is 2, can get very focused on peeling garlic.
This doesn’t really need an ingredient list – you need mushrooms, olive oil, garlic and some green herbs. Prepare the mushrooms and garlic – the smaller the mushroom pieces the quicker the whole thing will cook. Heat a fairly large amount of oil in a pan you can cover (I often use a frying pan which is about the same size as one of my pan lids, but a pan and lid that actually go together will work fine) and add the garlic, swirl it around to release the smell and then quickly add the mushrooms before the garlic starts to brown. Stir to make sure the garlic and oil coats all the mushroom pieces, then lower the heat and cover the pan. Now ignore it for a while – every mushroom batch is different, but if you wait patiently the mushrooms will suddenly soften and release their liquid. Once the pan is suddenly full of liquid, add in the herbs – parsley is traditional, I quite like chives. Then you’re done.
Moments like this image are why I have quite an ambivalent relationship with cooking with my kids. Eldest can make a fair stab at things nowadays but youngest isn’t willing to wait calmly in the living room and the end result is often slightly chaotic. Luckily, the recipes in I Can Cook are flexible enough to deal with this tension.
Eldest is a big Katie from I Can Cook fan and was delighted to get the book for Giftmas. It is pretty much ideally pitched for kids her age with simple recipes of relatively few steps, very well illustrated with pictures of kids doing the various steps. This recipe has become a firm favourite and we made it tonight so Eldest can have some in her packed lunch tomorrow.
Tomato Spirals
Ready to cook puff pastry
Tomato purée
Basil leaves
Grated cheese (a small amount of goat cheddar in our case)
Sprinkle flour over your worktop. Preheat the oven to 200C.
Unroll the pastry onto the worktop. Use the back of a teaspoon to spread a generous amount of tomato purée all over the pastry. Sprinkle the grated cheese over this. Rip up the basil leaves and put them evenly over the top.
Roll the pastry into a tight tube, rolling up the longest side (this way you get more smaller spirals) and place the roll in front a small child armed with a sharp knife. Keep the even smaller child well away and cut the roll into approx 2cm wide pieces.
Place the pieces on a baking paper covered baking tray, tugging at them to make them more circular. Cook for about 10-15 minutes. Can be eaten either hot or cold.
At the moment I have grand ambitions of in the future teaching the kids how to make their own tomato sauce and then puff pastry as part of teaching them how to become better cooks. This might be one of my moments of over ambition, though. Time will tell.
