Cobblers!

Chicken Cobbler(s)

I have another in the freezer, a portion of chicken stew without the cobbler topping also in the freezer plus two lots of...hmm....can't think of the words...mirepoix... ready to form the base of some soup. When my energy is limited I like to make the most of it.

Hugh Fearlessly Makes it all.

There is a new River Cottage book out: Veg. These are the Swede and Potato Pasties. I didn't have swede so used sweet potato. They are simply delicious.

Making Monday

joining in with Natalie's Making Mondays theme.
OK, technically, this was Making Sunday...but well, let's not be too pedantic.

This is the Banana and pecan cake from Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly: Recipes from Southern Appalachia . The recipe is actually for a layer cake with cream cheese frosting. I added some sultanas, chucked it into a larger and a small loaf tin, gave the smaller away to one of my neighbours. It is totally delicious and about to be wrapped in slices and frozen for those times when emergency tea-and-cake is required. Like ...around 4 o'clock of any given day.

There has been sone good 'stuff'

Like these:

Fancy one with a cuppa?





Blueberry Muffins

No, I don't have a mustard seed problem...

Sure looks like it, though. But do not worry, I have not yet descended into madness. I decided to make a little culinary gift for two of my foodie friends. Most of what you see here was converted into honey mustard. To that I have added some oatcake type biscuits for cheese.




Don't let this limpid photo put you off. These biscuits are seriously delicious. They are made from wholewheat flour and porridge oats and flavoured with salt, dried mustard powder and black pepper. Not only are they going to be great with cheese, I think I have stumbled upon the perfect Digestive Biscuit recipe. If you are an ex-pat Brit, you will know what an amazing discovery this is. SOmetime this week I am going to knock up a batch without the mustard and pepper, dip them in melted chocolate and then sit down with a cup of tea and a good book. And eat the lot.

Recipe suggestion

Much as it saddens me to write this, the Kenwood Chef that was passed down to me by my mum, is no more. Well....it is...it hasn't been recycled yet, but it has been making lots of very.bad.noises. So come the New Year I will trudge with it into the local recycling centre so it can be eternally present in some other form...

But in the meantime I am the very happy owner of an early christmas present- a fire-engine red Kitchenaid stand mixer. Yippee!! So, my question is....what special recipe would you recommend for her maiden voyage? Oh, and she also needs a name' Any suggestions?

Southern Cakes.

Number Guy has spent a very pleasant weekend in the company of three friends from the UK. I have also found it very pleasant, but I was cooking and baking as opposed to board-gaming and Dungeons & Dragonning.

Due to the, ahem, weight issue, I don't bake as much as I would like to. Having people to stay allows me to relax the rules a bit. This weekend I pulled out
Southern Cakes.. I had wanted to try out the Tomato Soup Cake (yes, really) but I had bought a can of the ordinary stuff, not the condensed as required. Never mind, the Banana Chocolate Layer Cake came to the rescue.

I have to say that this picture does not do justice to this light-as-air creation.



The butter and sugar are beaten together, and then the three eggs are added one-by-one. Once the eggs are incorporated the mixture is beaten for another few minutes before the other ingredients are folded in by hand. The resultant batter is a dreamy mousse-like creation that I could easily have eaten straight from the mixing bowl.

The finished cake I loved. The chocolate frosting I found a bit too much, but this cake is deserving of another outing, I'll just need to think about the frosting issue

In the kitchen

I've had two new toys to play with recently.

The baker's Edge has been in my sights for quite some time, but the cost of shipping it from the US was out of the question. So you can imagine that I was rather pleased at having scored one on my recent trip to the US.

The whole point of this cake tin is that everyone gets two chewy edges on their piece of brownie, something I had come to understand was vital ;0)I've only tried one recipe so far- Katherine Hepburn Brownies in Dorrie Goldspan's book . The recipe didn't fill the tine, but boy, they were good.

Next up- my Fleishwolf, or meat grinder to you and me. Given the ferocity of this machine, I think flesh-wolf is a very apt name! I don't have casings yet, so decided to just make meatballs instead. I chose a 'breakfast sausage' recipe off the internet, and they were not bad at all for a first attempt.

The ingredients were pretty simple, as you can see:



I want to make some Sweet Italian Sausage, so if anyone has a favourite recipe, please drop me a line in the comments.

On a non-domestic front, I've just started German lessons again. We have a test on Monday and I am trying, and failing, to work up the enthusiasm to study for it.

A bad photo

...of a great bread.



This is the Millet and Dried Fruit bread from Healthy Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. As you can see I had just started smearing butter on it when I remembered that I needed a pic. It is moist and delicious and will definitely be made again. After all, I do have approximately 12.499999 kg of gluten left...

Do you think I've got enough?

It seems I did in fact understand what the baker was saying to me on the phone- I am now the proud owner of 12.5kg of wheat gluten. Given that about a quarter of a cup is needed to make 3 or 4 loaves, this is going to be around for some time. Fortunately I know some people who could make good use of it. In the meantime, I'm off to choose my first recipe from Healthy Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Weisenkleber

I eagerly awaited Healthy Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day , so was very disappointed to see that every recipe was calling for Vital Wheat Gluten. I was fairly certain that getting my hands on some would be a long and painful process.

However, the internet is a wonderful place and someone on Ravelry pointed me at a particular blog post where a fellow 'ex-pat-in-Switzerland' had the same difficulty. She solved it very simply- she bought some from her local baker. In the UK this might be quite difficult, as there are not many local bakers left. Happily, that is not the case here. The next village along has a bakery with shop right on the main street. In fact, you can watch the bakers at work as you go past. I dropped in today and they were most helpful. They didn't have any on the premises but are going to order some for me. Result :0)

ETA: I Had a phone call from the baker. He was speaking Swiss German, I was (wo)manfully plodding on with German. I think it is now on order. All 12kg of it. Yep, they can't get a smaller pack.

Banana cake

I have lost my favourite banana cake recipe, so I am trying this one from
Bake. It was a bit odd as I have never made a banana cake with the rubbed-in method. I added sultanas as suggested, because I always do. I left out the nuts and cherries because they have no business being in a banana cake, no siree!

...check!

meringues made....check
lemon curd made ....check
flaky pastry made....check
chicken cooked....not yet
layer cake made...erm, not yet
raspberry sauce made...tomorrow.

We are having some friends over for dinner tomorrow and it is feeling like a military operation.

I am making:
Chicken and broccoli pie with flaky pastry - if I was in the UK I would buy 100% butter frozen puff pastry, but all I can find here has some rather dubious oils in it - serving it with carrots, peas and new potatoes followed by
A coconut layer cake with lemon curd filling made from Southern Cakes , which I picked up in California.

As a lighter option for dessert, I have made meringues (it took two attempts, don't ask) and will whip up some cream and make a raspberry coulis. Now I could have made a starter instead of two desserts, but hey, I'm the cook so I'm making it my way.

The pastry takes about 3 hours to make - you have to refrigerate it after every fold and roll. I can't make anything else while I am doing this because the kitchen will get too hot. I had hoped to make the sponger for the layer cake today, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow morning, then it will simply(!) be a case of assembling it all and finishing off the pie at the last minute.

What do you do when you've been told to cut down on wheat and dairy?

Why, you bake, of course ;0)

I haven't been told to stop consuming them, just to try not to eat them 5/7. I'll never manage cold turkey, so I am trying to just cut back gradually. One way of doing this is to mix in other grains etc. The Muffins on the right have some cornmeal and with the roasted peppers and mini-mozzarella balls ( just a few) they are delicious with soup. I only made 4, so I am not tempted to pig out.

The muffins on the right are from
Rachel Allan's 30 day muffin recipe . Believe it or not, the uncooked batter keeps in the fridge for 30 days, so you can just use it as and when you need it. Hence, two strawberry muffins all scrumptious looking and ready to eat.

Birthday Cake

It might not be the prettiest cake in the world, but I reckon it's one of the tastiest.

One of my friends is having a "significant" birthday and she asked me to make this for her party. It's the Nigella Lawson Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

It's one of my favourite cakes, but it does make rather a lot. I reckon that even half the recipe would do too much damage to my hips, so I tend to make it only on special occasions. The last time I made it I made a mistake and put whisky in the icing instead of ginger ale - I know, a really easy mistake to make. It was delicious ;0) but I decided to go for the ginger ale this time, in case anyone at the party needs to avoid alcohol.

Now I just need to keep out of the kitchen, as I feel a bit like Alice - the darn thing keeps saying 'Try me'...

baking suppler plea

Does anyone know of a Swiss/mainland European of
King Arthur or Shipton Mill .

You'd be making my day- to say nothing of the cakes and breads ;0)

There's a monster in my kitchen

Or maybe it's just bread....

I resisted buying
Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day for quite some time. I get easily hooked on the latest fad and thought this was just another. But having seen it reviewed on one or two blogs, I decided to give it a go. I found a copy of the master recipe on the net (and inside the book they encourage you to share this recipe, so my conscience is clear) and whipped some up. I love it. To be fair, my son isn't so keen but I notice he is eating it up ;0)

What you see above is a 4-loaf lot of the Challah bread. I am going to be adding some muesli to one loaf-worth to make the Swiss Muesli bread (seems like the obvious thing to do...). The rest will keep for up to 5 (or is it 9?) days. Then it must be used or frozen. The next batch I am going to try will involve an oat bread as the base. With about 100 recipes, I may be some time working through this book.

Health wise, things are a bit up and down. While I am loving the hot weather, my migraines aren't. About 10 days ago I had the worst one for over a year. At one point I realised I was actually moaning uncontrollably with pain - it felt like someone had poked something through my eye and was scraping the top of my skull with something sharp and spiky. Since then I've had to up the migraine meds plus take far too much Zomig. I am assuming it is dehydration so am drinking like a fish. Teeth - I think the second root canal has worked - yipee! I am getting occasional bits of pain but think it is settling down. The 3rd one? Well, it has been fine since the calcium hydroxide was replaced about 10 days ago - almost no pain. However, today it is a bit sore so OF COURSE I am worrying. I go back on Thursday for the next part of the treatment and am trying not to think about other things at the same time as keeping my fingers well crossed.

German- I have stopped for the summer. I am delighted that I am getting to the stage of being able to have more and more conversations with people. I am not saying I am producing cutting-edge theory or interesting discourse, but some progress is being made,

Scotland - will be back for the first week or so of August, hope to catch up with a few folk then.

And now I am going to sit on the balcony with a beer. Life's hard.

Edit to add: if you lie bread, go get this book! I made the Swiss Meusli bread and it is deelish! I am going to try the oat bread next. I want a 'basic' loaf that we all love.