This month, The Daring Bakers are making our own kind of history.  For the first time, the monthly challenge is hosted two ‘alternative’ Daring Bakers, Shel and Natalie.  The challenge was to make Lavash Crackers from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice plus a vegan and gluten-free dip.  Fantastic!  I’ve been wondering when our next savoury challenge would come and yay!  Here it is!

So what is lavash?  Lavash is an Armenian flatbread that is pretty versatile.  Straight from the oven it is soft and pliable, but upon cooling it hardens to a cracker texture.  I’d never heard of this bread before the challenge was announced, despite owning The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  I guess I must have skipped over the page whilst flicking through my own copy of the BBA but now that I’ve been introduced to them I’m quite enamoured.

The dough was very quick to mix, with a nice smooth texture from the oil.  Perhaps I added too much water, but my dough didn’t double in size, despite leaving it for almost two hours at room temperature (21.5C according to our fantastic new digital thermostat) but as it had risen a bit, I figured that I could just go ahead and roll it out as I did want very thin crackers.

To make life easier on myself, I rolled the dough out directly on a teflon sheet and then wiggled a baking sheet underneath the whole affair.  It took maybe about 15 minutes to get the dough as thin and even as possible.

I really liked the spice and seed combination shown in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice so I decided to go with that and proceeded to sprinkle and strew the sheet of dough with the most amazing array of earthy colours and textures.  As I was worried about the seeds and spice falling off after the crackers had baked, I prodded them down into the dough.  Oh, I did make one small change.  I used smoked Maldon salt to give it a bit of a kick.

As they baked, a spicy-sweet aroma drifted out from the kitchen.  I tried not to hover over the oven, but as usual I found myself standing there watching the crackers bake.  I guess I shouldn’t laugh at Lucas watching the washing machine going round and round and round if I can stand in front of the oven and watch bread baking with equal levels of fascination…

The crackers came out wonderfully thin and crispy with all the toppings firmly stuck in place.  Hurrah!  As I’d opted to pre-cut the crackers, all I had to do was snap off as many as I wanted and taste away.

I originally planned to serve the lavash with some pea guacamole, the idea being that the sweetness of the peas would contrast nicely with the earthiness of the spices.  But… when it came down to it, I realised that not only had I forgotten to thaw the peas, I’d used up my limes and salsa earlier on in the week.  There was no way that I was going out to the supermarket on the busiest night of the week, so I hit the pantry for inspiration.

After tossing back and forth a few options, I settled on making a chickpea and pomegranate molasses dip.  I guess this is really just a bit of a twist on hummus, but who cares?  It was very easy and very delicious with a gorgeous balance between the sweet and sour molasses and the creamy chickpeas.  I loved how the pomegranate was the first and last thing you tasted in the dip, effortlessly sliding from achingly sour to a wonderfully sweet aftertaste which combined perfectly with the spices.

The lavash were an absolute breeze to make and great fun, too.  I’m really proud of how thin I managed to get them, but there’s still room for improvement.  Next time I’ll run the dough through my pasta machine for the ultimate in thinness.  These would be great, broken into artistic shards and served with a rainbow of dips, at a drinks party if I ever were to host such a thing.  Less glamorously, but equally as delicious, they make a great afternoon snack with just about any dip or extra topping–gluttonous?  Moi?–you can think of.

Check out The Daring Bakers Blogroll to see everyone else’s lovely lavash and dips!  Thanks for an awesome challenge, Natalie and Shel!

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It was love at first sight when I saw the mound of magenta pods, streaked with trails of cream, on Farrington’s stand at the Bristol Organic Food Festival.  Borlotti beans! I squeaked with delight and received some very odd looks from the other shoppers around me.  I make no apologies for my excitement, though… I’ve been a bean-lover for years but I’ve never had the opportunity to eat fresh beans, other than the very British sort.  So as I sifted through the bean mountain, searching for the plumpest, prettiest pods, I pondered what to do with my newest treasure.  Pasta e fagoli?  Some sort of stew?  Italian-style beans on toast?

Nothing seemed quite right until I remembered one of my newest books.  (I am trying, really really trying, not to buy any more cookbooks until the New Year.  Believe me, it’s been tough.)  In My Favourite Ingredients by Skye Gyngell (from Petersham Nurseries) there is a whole chapter of bean recipes, which is one of the reasons my eyes lit up when I spotted the book in Waterstones.

I loved the concept of Skye’s first book, but I found it rather inaccessible and to this day I haven’t cooked from it.  However, upon flicking through her newest effort, I found myself wishing that the book came with more than four bookmarks.  I want, desperately want in fact, to make so many things from this book.  The roast halibut with preserved lemon and crème fraiche sauce is screaming out to be made— and I’m not much of a fish-lover —cherry cordial, blood oranges with warm honey and rosemary, squash and tomato curry with lime and coconut, pickled pumpkin with burrata, apple ice-cream with toasted cobnuts and caramel sauce…  I’m practically listing every recipe from the book, so I’ll stop here.  Suffice to say that this book is crammed with wonderful recipes that are accessible to the home cook.  Both in terms of ingredients and technique.

But back to the beans.  A flick of my thumb and the cranberry coloured pod split open and revealed one of Mother Nature’s surprises!  The speckled theme from the pods carried through to the beans, but the colours were reversed–cream speckled with magenta, which reminded me a lot of the marbled eggs that we used to make around Easter-time.  They were so pretty that I had to go and show them to my boys, whereupon Lucas tried to eat one raw.  He’s getting to be quite the little adventurer–I caught him munching on a shallot at the farm shop today.

I didn’t have quite enough fresh beans for the dish, so I supplemented with some quick-soaked beans from the cupboard.  My dried borlotti were very different to the fresh, both in colour–a tan or chestnut colour–and were a lot smaller too.  Still, as I stirred everything together in a big baking dish, I was hopeful.

As the beans cooked, the most amazing smells floated from the kitchen, drawing us all toward the oven.  I had to disappoint Dave and Lucas by telling them that the delicious smells weren’t in fact part of that night’s dinner… the beans were just sharing space in the oven in a fit of environmental efficiency.  When I finally peeled back the tinfoil lid, I discovered that the speckled colours of the beans disappears during cooking, but the flavour made up for that small disappointment.  The dried borlotti fattened up, almost to the size of the fresh but not quite and all of the beans came out gorgeously creamy in texture, bathed in the most amazing green sage and garlic oil.  The sage and garlic intensified the naturally earthy flavour of the beans as well as contributing their own robust flavours and the whole dish barely needed more than a pinch of salt.  After cooling and sitting in the wonderfully flavoured oil overnight they were even better, and as you might expect, the flavour kept on intensifying until they were all gobbled up.  I’ve got to say that the fresh beans were way better than the dried, even though the former were excellent.  Better flavour and creamier texture… these were little beans of joy whenever you encountered one.

I served the beans–on the first day–with some slow-roasted shoulder of lamb, itself liberally strewn with robust herbs and garlic, and Ottolenghi’s broccoli with garlic and chilli.  Yup, loads of garlic.  Lucas gave Nanny an absolutely garlic-laden kiss after all of that!  Good thing she loves garlic almost as much as we do.  Unsurprisingly, Lucas ate the lion’s share of the rest of the beans.  He loves strong flavours and you can’t get much stronger than garlic.  I thought he’d like them, but I was still surprised to have his bowl handed back to me twice with him asking for more beenz.  I think we can call this a definite success.

I’m really looking forward to growing my own borlotti beans next year.  I may not have dug the beds yet–very lazy, I know–but I do have the beans all picked out.  I’m going for the classic Lingua di Fuoco or “tongues of fire” variety, which is, I believe exactly what I bought from Farringtons.  At £5 a kilo, I should save an absolute fortune with a few plants of my own!  Now if only I could succeed at growing garlic and sage, too…

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Until recently, the craft of curing and preserving meat–charcuterie–has been a mystery to the home cook. You merrily skip along to your local deli and buy your favourite proscuttio, chorizo or sausages and rarely does it cross your mind to wonder if you could make your own.

With the publication of Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand and more recently Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, the alchemical art of turning meats into vast arrays of preserved goods has now come to the attention of the keen home cook. Over at egullet there is an immensely long thread devoted to working through Charcuterie.

I discovered the concept of making your own pancetta through fellow food-blogger Matt’s adaptation of the Ruhlman recipe, so I just scaled everything down accordingly. I loved the smell of the marinade, so pungent with fresh bay leaves from the garden and loads of juniper berries. Reader beware, however… juniper berries know no fear where plastic bags are concerned. Despite double-bagging the pork belly, my fridge began to smell strongly of juniper after a day or two. I wound up transferring it to the beer fridge (turned down low, low, low) to keep our milk and yoghurts from smelling (and perhaps tasting) a bit odd.

After a week of marinating and regular turning, I washed the meat clean, spent ages drying the surfaces thoroughly and then covered the meat side with loads of freshly milled black pepper. As you can see in the picture, I didn’t get it spread evenly across the meat as there’s a bit of a build-up in the centre of the roll. It was still delicious, though.

I let it dry in the beer fridge which worked out really well. I’m not sure I’d ever be brave enough to leave meat hanging in the kitchen, garage, or wherever else charcuterie-fans have been curing their meat recently. To me that seems dangerous–even though it really isn’t as the books explain–but the fridge provides comforting familiarity even if it doesn’t yield an authentic pancetta.

I was really impressed with the results. The meat sliced beautifully and tasted incredible when I turned it into pancetta crisps to adorn a bowl of gnocchi–dressed with maro, if you were curious–and it was a huge hit with Lucas who wolfed down a man-sized portion of broad bean and pancetta risotto. It was quite superb in our staple pasta dish of leeks, mushrooms and pancetta, too.

Alas, all the pancetta is now gone. I’ll definitely be making more and I plan on finally laying down some cash for Charcuterie and discovering how to make smoked bacon as well as other delicious porky products!

By popular demand, here is the recipe for the best mincemeat in the world: Hettie Potter’s Suet-free Mincemeat from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

I have no objection to suet in mincemeat, but I have yet to find a recipe for Proper Mincemeat that rivals this one for sheer succulence and moistness after baking. The suet is supposed to provide this, but whenever I forsake this recipe and try one with suet I am always disappointed with the dry, chewy fruit that inevitably results. So, I remain faithful to the lovely Hettie Potter and her mincemeat.

Incidentally, Hettie Potter is Nigella’s right hand woman (or Home Economist, if you want to be formal about it.) She’s from Devon, which might well be the explanation for the apple base to the mincemeat recipe–they do love their apples and cider down there.

This isn’t a hard or time-consuming recipe. In fact, the hardest thing about this recipe is peeling and chopping the apples. (Yes, I still loathe peeling apples.) Other than that, it’s very quick and easy to assemble. For best results use the undyed glace cherries. Not only do they taste better, but you’ll cut out a bunch of E-numbers.

Nuts in mincemeat are a personal choice in my opinion, so I always leave them out and just add a mixture of extra fruit. (I do exactly the same with fruit cakes, although I do happily use ground almonds for additional moistness. I suspect it’s the crunch factor I don’t like.)

Whilst it cooks, the house fills with the most amazing spicy-sweet aromas and it’s very hard to resist sneaking a spoonful (or two) from the pan. Once cooked, and cooled sufficiently to avoid third-degree burns, the mincemeat tastes fabulous and full-flavoured straight from the pan immediately after cooking, and gets better and better with age–much like Judi Dench or Sean Connery. The mincemeat pictured above is probably about three–maybe four–years old, and it’s still absolutely fine to eat. I can tell that there’s been additional fermentation–which will probably horrify food safety people–but there’s sufficient booze in there to keep everything safe. Besides which, the extra alcohol just makes it taste even better!

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Do you look longingly at jars of fruit in alcohol when in your local deli? And then wince at the price?

Me, too.

But no longer will you need to regretfully place that jar of plump, luxurious fruit back on the shelf and walk on. You can easily make these sweet delicacies at home for yourself and your friends. All you need is a microwave and half an hour of your time. (Obviously ingredients help, too.)

Dried apricots are simmered gently in an orange syrup until they plump up and are then liberally doused in Amaretto. Amaretto liqueur is a natural partner for apricots as the secret liqueur recipe itself contains cracked apricot kernels which–oddly enough–taste of almonds.

Over the course of a month–minimum soaking time–a delicious flavour exchange will take place and of course, the apricots will continue to swell in the liqueur syrup and become meltingly tender and exceedingly potent.

For some added complexity of flavour, I added a split vanilla pod. Other great options could be an organic cinnamon stick, some gloves, allspice/pimento berries, cloves, or black peppercorns. (I wouldn’t advise using all those spices at once, though!)

So, what can you do with your jar of boozy apricots?

• Well, the obvious thing to do is simply pop an apricot into the bottom of a shot glass and top up with some of the liqueur syrup from the jar. Makes for a nice digestif after a heavy meal.
• Chop a few apricots and fold them into pound cake batter. You could also toss in some of the liqueur syrup and some ground almonds.
• When making a flourless chocolate cake, spread half the batter in the tin and then spoon over a thin layer of finely chopped apricots. Carefully spread over the remaining batter and bake as normal. A fruity and boozy surprise inside!
• Spoon some apricots and liqueur over vanilla ice-cream, Greek yoghurt or mascarpone.
• Add some soaked apricots to a trifle and use the liqueur syrup to soak the cake.
• Blend some apricots and liqueur syrup to a puree. Fold in slightly sweetened whipped cream and stiff egg whites to form a simple mousse.
• Something savoury? Add chopped apricots to some pork sausagemeat along with sage and onions to form a delicious stuffing for turkey at Christmas or Thanksgiving.

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Yesterday we went plum-picking. In our own garden–how cool is that?

The much-neglected plum tree at the bottom of our garden is absolutely dripping with fruit in varying degrees of ripeness. I’m pretty surprised as the weather has been rotten this summer, but clearly our tree is the Little Plum Tree That Could and has come up trumps. Next year I may even treat the tree to some pruning as a reward for all of its hard work.

After 15 minutes of picking–Dave standing on a chair, me holding the bowl–we had about a kilo of ripe fruit with tons more left on the tree to ripen up some more.

Dave also discovered a blackberry bush behind the garage, so he braved the weeds and thorns to pick a couple of handfuls. They’re surprisingly sweet and not too pippy, so I think I might stew them with some of the plums for Lucas. Should work well with some rice pudding or Greek yoghurt.

The rest of the plums have now reached their zenith–plum jam. Ruby red, fragrant, with a nice wobbly (but not runny!) set and intense plum flavour with a slightly caramelised edge to it. The biggest surprise was the colour–I can’t believe how vibrant it was compared to jams that I’ve bought from the supermarket in the past.

Good thing that there’s plenty more fruit on the tree… I don’t think this jar will last for long!

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Red pepper pesto? Heresy, I hear you cry! Well… not really. Pesto simply means a pounded sauce, or in these modern times–blitzed in the food processor. Sure, the classic Ligurian sauce contains basil and pine nuts, but you can legitimately call any number of variations pesto.

I’m really proud of myself for finally knocking pesto off my very long Things to Make list. I feel rather silly for having taken so many years to make it, to be honest, but it has (or rather, had) a weird intimidation factor for me. No longer! What could be easier than tossing a couple of peppers in the oven, peeling them, then throwing them in a food processor with some other goodies for a few seconds? Well, opening a jar, but work with me here!

Roasting peppers can turn even the most appallingly bad peppers into something quite delicious. I always make a point of buying the ugly and unloved peppers as they tend to have the best flavour and that really paid off today. I tried roasting one on the gas burner but quickly abandoned that idea after a couple of glowing embers flew off the underside of the pepper. With visions of the Towering Inferno in my mind’s eye, I turned the oven on full blast and threw the peppers in. I have no idea how long they took–I pottered around tidying and cleaning while they roasted, with the occasional peek in the oven whenever I happened to remember that it was on. I transferred them to a bowl when they were blackened all over, and collapsing in on themselves.

After that, I grated the cheese, tracked down a clove of garlic–am I the only person who keeps losing heads of garlic in their kitchen?–and collected the rest of the ingredients. After some light peeling, I threw everything bar the olive oil into my tiny food processor and blitzed away. In a few seconds I had pesto! Why had it taken me so long?

When dinner-time rolled around, I simply stirred the pesto into some penne rigate–don’t forget to add a few tablespoons of the starchy cooking water from the pasta–and dished it up. No dusting of parmesan, no shower of greenest parsley… I wanted to taste every last drop of pesto.

Luscious.

Despite my heavy-handedness with the parmesan, the smoky flavour of the peppers shone through clearly. The non-traditional almonds provided the same slight knobbly texture as pine nuts usually do, and the occasional bit of crunch where the processor missed a bit. I’d class it as a huge success.

Next time I’m going to save some pesto to spread on some crusty bread, perhaps paired with a rosemary-spiked cannellini bean spread. Or stir it into soup….

My head’s a-whirl with possibilities!

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I promised that I’d post a picture of the finished Strawberry Liqueur and here it is. Apologies for the dreadful photo; I found it very hard to capture the true colour of the liqueur (its a much darker red than shown). The original recipe can be found here. I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s tried similar recipes (or even this one) with a vodka base. We’ve had the same bottle of vodka lurking around for years and I should really do something with it….

This month’s edition of “Is My Blog Burning” is hosted by Donna of There’s A Chef In My Kitchen. This months theme is wines and spirits which is perfect timing as I’ve just decanted my home-made strawberry liqueur!

I really wanted to showcase the wonderful flavour of the liqueur (intense strawberry and burnt caramel flavour), so the first thing that sprang to mind was scenting and flavouring a crème brûlée with some to create a very adult version of strawberries and cream. Unfortunately the rest of my brain kicked in at this point and I ended up almost drowning in ideas ranging from boozy trifles to layers of strawberry and white chocolate mousse…. Eventually I came full circle last night and settled upon the crème brûlée.

The liqueur flavour was very subtle, just gently scented and flavoured which worked perfectly with the explosions of flavour from the sliced berries. The berries managed to soak up quite a lot of additional flavour from the liqueur (I felt obliged to taste them before macerating them, and afterwards too!) so they were particularly good. Unfortunately the berries all floated to the top once the custard was poured in which spoilt the look a little; next time I’d be tempted to halve the sugar and weigh down the berries with a spoonful of strawberry conserve. All in all, a successful experiment!

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It’s been two weeks since I started this year’s batch of strawberry liqueur, so time for a quick update! Thus far, it’s looking great. The berries have been leeched of most of their colour, the sugar is dissolving nicely and the liquid is turning a nice deep red. I’ve given the jar a quick shake to encourage the bottom layer of sugar to dissolve and now I just have to remain patient.

Only another two-and-a-half months to go….