Festive focaccia!

I have been making bread dough for pizza bases for a while now, but have only recently started trying to turn the dough into bread instead, and have been surprised by how easy it is (and cheaper than buying posh garlic bread from the supermarket - plus you can put whatever toppings you want on it!). It's great for a party, and you can easily double the quantities if you want to make more.

I've tried a few slightly different recipes, and this one is the one that seems to be the most effective. This time, I topped one loaf with garlic and rosemary, and one with sunblushed tomato (and more garlic!). Utterly delicious, and I will definitely be making it again (regularly!). 

Ingredients:

500g strong bread flour

1 7g packet of fast action yeast

About half a pint of hand-warm water (or perhaps a little more)

2 tsps sea salt

2 tsps golden caster sugar

Olive oil

To top it:

Good olive oil

Sea salt

Chopped garlic

Rosemary

Sunblushed tomatoes

(or anything else you like - red onions, cheese etc)

1. Mix the sugar and yeast into the water, and leave for a couple of minutes.

2. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt - make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast and water mixture. Mix together with a spoon until it becomes clear you need to get your hands in.

3. Bring all the ingredients together with your hands, and place on a floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes, until elastic.

4. Place in a large, oiled bowl and rub the top of the dough with olive oil too. Cover with cling film, and place in a warm spot (I put mine by the radiator) for an hour and a half, until roughly doubled in size.

5. Once rise, remove the cling film and 'punch' the dough back down. Re-cover it, and leave it for 10 minutes or so.

6. Take the dough out onto a floured surface again, and knead for a couple of minutes. Using a floured rolling pin, roll out until about 2cm thick. 

7. Place the dough into an oiled tin or onto an oiled baking sheet. Using your fingers, make little indentations in the top, and scatter with your chosen topping. Rub or brush all over with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt.

8. Cover with cling film again, and leave in a warm spot to prove for 30-45 minutes, until visibly puffed up - this should be very obvious!

9. Remove cling, and place in a hot, pre-heated oven (about 220 C) for about 15 minutes, or until starting to brown on top.

10. Remove from tins and leave to cool slightly before drizzling with a little more oil, and slicing.

This recipe made 24 squares of bread, and is probably enough for 10 hungry people.

Dodgy photo, yummy mushroom

This is a ludicrously poor pic of a lone mushroom - but all the others had been eaten by then, so it was one mushroom or none!

This year I hosted our family Boxing Day do, and decided to go with an Italian theme (Grandma's favourite food - and mine), so put together a small mountain of antipasti.

I was also determined to create The Perfect Stuffed Mushroom, and, ladies and gentlemen, I think I may have succeeded!

This stuffing mix made enough to stuff about 16 standard closed cup mushrooms.


Ingredients:
16 closed cup mushrooms
A few dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in boiling water, then chopped
A big handful of chopped parsley
c. 60g finely grated parmesan
70g pancetta cubes, slowly fried in olive oil until crisp - then cooled
Breadcrumbs of a 2-day-old medium white bloomer
1 medium onion and 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, and fried gently in olive oil and cooled
Plenty of fresh black pepper and sea salt to taste (the pancetta and parmesan are quite salty)

1. Mix together all stuffing ingredients and a little of the water from the porcinis - it needs to be a moist and ever-so-slightly sticky mix.

2. Squidge it into clumps and stuff into the mushrooms (after you've removed the stalks!) - squidge a bit more on top too.

3. Place in an oiled dish and drizzle with good olive oil. Cover in foil.

4. You may need to amend this dependent on your oven, but I baked them in a medium oven, at about 180 C, for about 15 minutes covered in foil for the first 10), then whacked it up to 220 C for another 5 minutes to crisp them off. I then let them cool a bit and served them warm (not hot).

Boozy chocolate truffles

I should start by noting that my family's a bit mad - not only does everyone buy presents for everyone else in the extended family, but at around 4pm on Christmas Day (this time it was between the turkey and the puddings....) we all get out another present for everyone else, "from our Christmas Trees". Yes, my tree buys small presents for about 15 people!

This year, I decided to be a bit creative with some of my tree presents, so made a massive batch of truffles for my Grandma and Grandad - plus many spare to take to people's houses over the festive season.

These were dead easy to make, though rather messy if I'm honest (though I think that was me, rather than the recipe!). Actually, the biggest problem I had was finding gift boxes to put the chocs in - I actually ended up making them out of card and covering them in tissue paper, which was a faff and a half!


Ingredients:
700g dark chocolate (around 70%)
600ml double cream
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
100ml amaretto liqueur (or other booze of your choice)
Cocoa powder
Chocolate vermicelli
Paper petit four cases

1. Heat the cream in a pan to just before boiling point.

2. Break the chocolate into pieces in a large bowl, and pour the cream over it.

3. Add the butter, and mix gently for a few minutes until all the chocolate is melted and it's glossy.

4. Pour in the booze and mix until all combined.

5. Pour into a large shallow dish, cover with cling and refrigerate for several hours until set (overnight is better, it takes longer then you think!).

6. Remove from the fridge for 5-10 minutes. Use a teaspoon to create 'chocolate shapes' and then use your hands to turn them into lovely round shapes, or slightly messier ones (my preference!).

7. Roll in the vermicelli or cocoa and place in the petit four cases.

8. Keep in the fridge til you want to eat them!

This made about 80 chocs.

Christmas Tea Party

'Tis the Season for unnecessary baking! I have to say it doesn't feel like Christmas 'til I've started making excessively iced cakes and biccies and so on. Today, I had some friends and their 5 children round for tea before going off to our Parish Carol Service -an excellent excuse to make some sweet goodies, and try out my new camp-as-Christmas cake stand.

Cliché it may be, but as ever my first stop was Nigella's Domestic Goddess - the Christmas section is wonderful, and it is just one of those books that makes you feel like you can aspire to the Christmas baking dream. I went for her Christmas tree decoration biscuits, as well as her festive Christmas cupcakes.

It was a great tea party (made better by the addition of some nice red wine - but then, aren't all things better with red wine?), and it certainly feels like Christmas now!


Christmas Decoration Biscuits

These are lovely, spicy bics that can have ribbons added and be hung on the tree. Or, they can be gobbled up! I made these yesterday, and was initially a bit disappointed. The mixture was very soft and difficult to roll, so I had to use a lot of flour on the worktop - and, unsurprisingly they turned out a bit tough. However, the addition of icing and an overnight rest rendered them much softer and less dry. I also found that the second batch I made, which I rolled out a little thicker (more like 8mm than 5), and cooked two minutes less were far better.

In terms of spice, I found them to be much milder than expected (she suggests that the 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper means they are not really child-friendly). However, I added in an extra couple of teaspoons of ginger and still found them warming, but not overwhelming. And the kids definitely ate them quite happily! They could probably have taken a bit more pepper and spice, to be honest!

In conclusion - definitely a winner, and doing the coloured icing was highly entertaining.

Ingredients:
300g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed ground spice
(I also added 2 tsps ground ginger)
1-2 tsps freshly ground pepper
100g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs beaten with 4 tsps runny honey

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips, 'til it resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Slowly add the mixture of the eggs and honey, until it resembles a dough (I didn't use all the eggs, and it was still very wet).

3. Refrigerate the dough in a disc-shape, and pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C.

4. Roll out the dough on a floured surface - to about 8mm thick. Cut out Christmassy shapes with cutters and place them on a lined baking sheet.

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the bottoms seemed cooked and firm-ish.

6. Cool on a rack, then ice with bright or minimalist icing of your choice.


Christmas Cupcakes

These are dense, rich spicy-chocolatey bites of loveliness. Really moist, and grown-up enough for the adults, whilst the chocolate means the kids should still eat them. Not only do they look ever-so pretty, but the taste matches the cuteness. My only 'moan' is that some of the cakes didn't stick to the inside of their cases very well, and the cases gaped a bit, which didn't look amazing - but the icing soon stuck them back together!

Ingredients:
150g plain flour
Half tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground mixed spice
Pinch of salt
160g dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tbsps sour cream
125ml boiling water
75g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
1 tsp instant coffee
150g instant royal icing
Ready-to-roll green icing
Cranberries (or balls of red icing!)

1. Mix the flour, bicarb, baking powder, spice and salt.

2. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar.

3. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar, one at a time, mixing well.

4. Add the flour mixture to the sugar and butter, in three parts - adding 1 tbsp of sour cream after each 'third' of flour.

5. In a pan, put the chocolate, water and coffee. Melt the chocolate gently over a low heat.

6. Add the chocolate to the cake mixture, and fold in gently and quickly.

7. Pour the (fairly runny) mixture into 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin, and bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees C for 20 minutes.

8. Leave the cakes in the bun tin for 5 minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool.

9. When cool, ice thickly with the made-up white royal icing, then decorate with holly leaves made from the green icing, using either cranberries or balls of red icing as berries.

This 80s girl loves her Meatloaf

So, having launched myself onto the internet today, it seemed only right and proper to report on my first Adventure.... Meatloaf!


Clearly not the most glamorous of dishes, this was a bit of a staple of my childhood (not that I remember having much of a liking for it - sorry, Mother!). Anyways, I had a look in the freezer this morning and saw a small mountain of frozen mince, so decided to get it out to defrost. I was actually planning on doing meatballs, initially, but though do like them I find them a bit unsatisfying - the cold weather and the credit crunch call for more substantial fare!


Sitting on the bus to work having a think about what to do with the mince, it struck me that it might be worth having a bash at meatballs' bigger and heartier sibling. Traditional staple though it is, I've never made one before, so did a bit of research online, before deciding on what to put in my own version. I decided to go for the more 'Italian' style, and also plumped for 3 eggs for my 2lbs of meat (internet recipes suggested anything between 1 and 4 - 3 seemed a reasonable guess!). I also made the (wise) decision that the best thing about food like this is the crispy bits, and thus poured my tomato sauce on after cooking, rather than beforehand.

In conclusion - yum! It certainly was filling, though this may be due in part to the roast root veg I served with it. But it is definitely a keeper of a recipe - the onions, garlic and parmesan really add to the mince, taking it to a whole new level. I am also looking forward to trying out some of the leftovers in sandwiches tomorrow!


Italian-ish meatloaf

Ingredients:
450g pork mince
450g beef mince
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely grated
4 fat cloves garlic, minced
3 large eggs, whisked
100g fresh breadcrumbs
50g grated parmesan
Large handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley

To serve:
Freshly made tomato sauce of your choosing

1. Sweat the onion, carrot and garlic in olive oil on a low heat, until soft and melting together. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

2. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients (not the tomato sauce though!). Season well with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

3. Using your hands (such fun!) squish all the ingredients together until they are all well mixed.

4. Transfer the mixture onto a greased baking tray, and use your hands to create a sort-of oblong 'loaf' shape. Smooth the top over.

5. Bake in an oven at 180 degrees C for about an hour and a quarter, or until brown and crispy on top.

6. Allow to sit for five minutes before slicing and serving, with the hot tomato sauce poured over the top.

Serves 6-8.

The Beginning Of The Adventures (or, The Beginning Of Writing About Them!)

So, I've spent some time reading and enjoying other people's food and cooking blogs, and have finally felt compelled to have a bash at it myself (though I suspect my food photography skills are nothing compared to the lovely pics you see on many sites).

Obviously, I have no reason to assume that anyone will read this at all, so it's probably more for my own enjoyment than anything else (I like cooking and I like writing - this would seem to be the ideal combination!).

Anyway, we shall see how it progresses. It being Christmas, I will be off work and will also have more opportunities for cooking, so it might well be that there is an enthusiastic start followed by a blog fade, but who knows!