Tasting the Future?

Peter Kay once said "Garlic Bread, I've tasted it; it's the future," an amusing quote but someone should have told him that garlic bread has been a staple part of many people's diet years before he came up with it. It was with this quote at the back of my mind that I decided to cook my own Garlic bread yesterday. I had been picked for two cricket matches, however both were cancelled due to the third rate, damp June weather  leaving the wickets looking like Irish Peat Bogs so the next best thing was to do some cooking.

I looked to the web to find some inspiration but found that most recipes involved taking a prepared baguette, stuffing it with garlic, chives and butter and then cooking it. For me this was all too easy and frankly pretty boring.

The soundtrack for the day's cooking was Elvis Costello and the Attractions' 1981 effort Trust an album which contains songs about working men's clubs, relationships and fish and chip paper and spans the genres of post punk, singer-songwriter, ska, soul pop, country, hard rock, rock and roll and rockabilly in a touch over half an hour.  

I poured twelve ounces of white bread flour into a bowl with one sachet of yeast (available from most supermarkets) and an ounce of margarine. I mixed these together with a metal spoon until the margarine disappeared into the drier ingredients. Next I made a well in the middle of the bowl and poured in a beaten egg and a quarter of a pint of milk. I stirred them into the dry mixture until they made a soft dough.

At this stage the dough was too soft and sticky to knead properly so I added three tablespoonfuls of white bread flour into the bowl and kneaded the dough into the floor to make it lose its stickiness. Following this I punched the dough hard for about five minutes to remove any air pockets from it and left it on my window sill to rise for an hour.

In the meantime I made the filling. I cut up five cloves of garlic into the smallest pieces possible together with five heads of parsley. I then fried them on a low heat for five minutes in olive oil and then left them to cool.

Frying the garlic and parsley in olive oil. 

After the dough had risen I sprinkled some flour on the work surface and rolled the dough out until it was about a foot long and half a foot wide. I then spread the garlic and parsley evenly on top of the dough together with 100 grams of margarine.

The dough was then folded so the filling was covered and the dough resembled a square parcel. I brushed the top of the dough with milk and then cut some slits in the top to let the air out while it cooked.

I greased a high sided baking tray and put the dough into it. I cooked the dough in the oven for half an hour at 165 degrees (175 degrees if you have no fanned oven).

Freshly baked and ready to eat- in this case with homemade lasagne.

When I removed the dough from the oven the smell of cooked garlic and melted margarine was the first thing I smelled. The bread itself had a soft inside which included just the right amount of garlic to give it taste but not so much that it was overwhelming. Through the cooking the 100 grams of margarine had sunk to the bottom of the bread and soaked into the base to make it crisp and very tasty.

Cross section of the bread with the melted margarine sunk to the bottom. 

Rapid Pasta

On the weekend of the 12th and 13th March I had an exciting and strenuous weekend playing cricket at Denby and an enjoyable walk with the dog in the hills. That said I wanted to cook something that was quick and easy to make which would fill me up after all the energy I had expended.

I decided to make Pappardelle with tomatoes, peas and broad beans. The soundtrack to the preparation of the meal was Elvis Costello's 1978 effort This Year's Model; an album that contains aggressive guitar, carnivalesque organ riffs and fiercely literate lyrics. I hadn't tuned to his frequency for a while and hearing the album helped me recall the summer term of my fresher's year at University when I had first bought the album.

The first task to undertake was to take eight ounces of peas and broad beans and steam them for five minutes. I had to use frozen peas and broad beans as their fresh counterparts were not quite in season at this stage in the  year. Once the peas and broad beans had been steamed I left them to one side.

I then took fifteen ounces of Pappardelle and added them to a pan of boiling water. The best type to use for this recipe is the dried stuff that's available from Sainsburys. I boiled the Pappardelle for fifteen minutes, drained it and left in the colander. In order to enhance the taste I added an ounce of margarine and a quarter of a teaspoon of black pepper and mixed these thoroughly into the pasta.

I next prepared four plum tomatoes by cutting out their hard tops and then slicing them length ways. To help them retain their taste I decided not to peel them. I then took my Le Cresceut dish and poured olive oil into the bottom of it before putting it on a low heat.

The next task was to add the peas and broad beans and warm them through for about a minute. I then added the tomatoes together with a pinch of white pepper and a generous helping of fresh basil. I followed up by adding the Pappardelle and then stirred everything together to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the dish.

In order to help enhance the taste further I added four heaped tablespoons of Mascarpone Cheese to it. The dish was now ready to serve.

The results were completely first rate; the fresh basil and tomato gave the dish a flavour that simply wouldn't have been possible if i'd used dried basil from a jar. The Mascarpone Cheese helped to give a richness that wasn't enough to make things too sickly while the Pappardelle gave plenty of protein.

Oddly enough the meal took exactly thirty-two minutes to prepare; the same length of time as the album I was listening to.

The Mascarpone, tomatoes and basil were what made the dish  top quality.

Bank Holiday Battenberg

On the Monday of the Queen's Jubilee Bank Holiday I decided to make a suitably Jubilee themed cake whose name is of course the German translation of Mountbatten; the surname of the always politically correct Duke of Edinburgh.

The music on the playlist for the weekend's Bank Holiday revelry included the Smiths' 1986 masterpiece the Queen is Dead and God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols (good for comedy value). However the soundtrack for the cooking a preparation of the Battenberg itself was Shaun Ryder's obscure 2003 solo effort Amateur Night in the Big Top which sounded like a slightly more blue version of a chill out dance compilation album. It also displayed a refreshingly DIY approach to music making that caused me to think that if myself and a few of my mates got our hands on some beers and a copy of DJ Hero we could probably make as good an album.

I first measured into a bowl fifty grams of margarine and fifty grams of caster sugar. I stirred them together with a wooden spoon until the sugar had disappeared into the margarine. I then poured the contents of an egg into the bowl and added fifty grams of self-raising flour. Next it was time to try and use my limited upper body strength to bind these ingredients together. I stirred them thoroughly by pushing the wooden spoon deep into the mixture and moving it rapidly in a clockwise direction over and over again until the ingredients were properly blended.

I prepared a 25cm long loaf tin that was around 10cm and 5cm wide. I greased it with margarine and sprinkled flour in the bottom of it. I then poured the mixture into it and spread it evenly over the bottom of the tin.Next I covered the mixture with grease proof paper and left the tin to one side.

It was now time to make the other part of the mixture. In order to do this I simply repeated the process outlined above with the same amount of ingredients apart from that I added a quarter of a teaspoon of red food colouring. I then poured this mixture onto the top of the grease proof paper and spread it out evenly.

I cooked the mixture in a fanned oven at 170 degrees (180 for non-fanned ovens) for thirty minutes, then waited for the ingredients to cool and turned the two pieces of sponge out onto a wire rack. I was left with a yellow piece of sponge and a pink piece of sponge. I then cut the two pieces length ways down the middle and left them to cool.

In the meantime I made almond icing. I decided not to play safe and use ready made icing and instead made it from scratch. I took fifty grams of ground almonds, seventy five grams of icing sugar, seventy five grams of caster sugar, a quarter of a teaspoon of almond essence and one beaten egg. I then stirred the ingredients together thoroughly in a bowl until they formed a sticky paste.

I then turned my attention to the sponge and stuck the pieces together so the pink and yellow parts were at diagonals to each other; which made the end of the cake look like a psychedelic chess board. In order to help the sponge stick together I used mango and lime curd which I spread along the sides of the four pieces of sponge.

There are better looking cakes available for sure but few that are tastier.

After this I coated the pieces of sponge with the almond paste and left the newly constructed Battenburg to set.

So what were the results? Well this cake was very much one where taste outshone aesthetics. The sponge had come out a little wonky in the tin and the ends of it were more of a golden colour then a vivid contrast between yellow and pink. Also the recipe for the paste was perhaps a touch runnier than was ideal. However when the cake was cut into the contrast between the pink and yellow became apparent and the mango and lemon curd complimented the extreme sweetness of the almond paste. It may not have looked perfect but with taste of the quality described I wasn't too bothered- happy Jubilee Bank Holiday.

Like a psychedelic chess board- a cross section of the cake.

Give Quiche a chance

The Sunday of the May Day bank holiday was going to be a busy and exciting one; the afternoon was to involve a trip to the pub to watch the penultimate round of Premiership matches and the evening promised a trip to Sheffield to watch the original incarnation of the Happy Mondays play together for the first time in nearly twenty years.

I realised that I needed to have a big dinner so I cooked a spinach quiche. I first greased a 2cm deep and 25cm wide pie tin with margarine and then dusted it with plain flour. I next made some wholemeal pastry out of eight ounces of wholemeal flour and lined the tin with it in the same way as I did when I made the olive and onion tart (see entry on this blog on 5 May 2012).

With the mannered, wintry new wave sounds of Peter Gabriel's sophomore solo album playing in the background I set about making the filling of the quiche. I first fried a pound of washed spinach in a deep frying pan until it had reduced by around two thirds. I then added four ounces of cream cheese, four ounces of grated cheddar cheese and two ounces of grated Parmesan together with a pinch of nutmeg. I then stirred the mixture and left it to cook on the lowest light possible on the gas hob.

In the meantime I cracked four eggs into a bowl and whisked them together thoroughly. I then poured them into the pan with the spinach and stirred them into it. I then dropped the contents into the pastry case and spread them evenly throughout it.

The next step was to cook the quiche the oven at 190 degrees (200 for a non-fanned oven) for half an hour. I knew the quiche was cooked through when I put a skewer into the mixture and it came out clean.

The quiche was exceptionally savoury to eat and the varieties of cheese made it very rich without being too filling and it certainly set me up nicely for the action-packed afternoon and evening that followed.

Freshly cooked- it was a little bit burnt round the edges but  the taste wasn't compromised at all